By Staff
When Prashant Warier co-founded Qure.ai nearly a decade ago, artificial intelligence in healthcare was largely experimental. Today, the company’s AI algorithms are helping interpret millions of medical images each year — and in some countries, replacing the need for human readers in critical cases.
In a conversation with ET Studios’ Tech Heal moderated by Shilpa Rathnam, Warier, CEO of Qure.ai, traced the company’s origins to a specific gap in healthcare: chest X-rays — the most common and oldest form of medical imaging — were often not being read by radiologists. In India and other parts of the world, general practitioners or technicians often handled interpretation. In some cases, patients received no report at all.
Qure.ai set out to automate that process, training AI models on a large volume of de-identified clinical images sourced through hospital partnerships. The company now works with over 100 healthcare institutions globally and has built a dataset exceeding 1.5 billion images.
The company’s flagship product, qXR, is a tool designed to detect abnormalities in chest X-rays — including signs of tuberculosis — in under 30 seconds. The tool is currently deployed in screening programs across several countries, including the Philippines, where mobile vans equipped with X-ray machines use qXR to produce real-time readings. Before deployment, such scans could take weeks to be interpreted.
In 2021, the World Health Organization formally endorsed Qure.ai’s solution as an autonomous tool for TB detection, without the need for human review. Warier describes this as a key inflection point for the company. It is also now the most scaled use-case of autonomous AI in healthcare, with the system analyzing between 5 to 10 million X-rays annually.
Qure.ai’s path to adoption has not been without challenges. AI used in clinical pathways is considered a medical device, which means every deployment must go through rigorous regulatory approval. The company spent three years obtaining its first FDA clearance in the U.S. and now holds 18 regulatory approvals, including CE certification in Europe. Each submission typically requires data from the local population and independent comparison against certified radiologists.
Warier emphasizes that the role of AI is not to replace physicians but to support them. While automation can handle high-volume, routine imaging, tasks like diagnosis confirmation, treatment planning, and patient communication remain with clinicians. “AI will be there throughout the patient journey,” he says, “but it will be an assist.”
Looking ahead, Warier expects AI to take over more foundational tasks in radiology — flagging abnormalities, creating template reports, and improving scan-to-diagnosis times. As India’s digital health infrastructure evolves — particularly with the introduction of personal health IDs and medical data interoperability — Warier believes the accuracy and value of AI in healthcare will continue to rise.
Qure.ai is currently active in 90 countries, with a growing presence in low- and middle-income regions where radiology expertise is scarce. The company’s approach, Warier says, remains grounded in utility: “We started by solving a problem nobody else was looking at.”
https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech-heal
Disclaimer – The above content is non-editorial, and ET Healthworld hereby disclaims any and all warranties, expressed or implied, relating to it, and does not guarantee, vouch for or necessarily endorse any of the content.
