On Saturday, 16 May, The Impilo Project, a South African NGO delivering healthcare to underserved communities, facilitated a health screening day at Marconi Beam Primary School in Joe Slovo, an informal settlement in Cape Town, South Africa. The successful initiative provided a first look at the cutting-edge future of Tuberculosis (TB) detection.
Through collaborations with various partners, patients received medical screenings, HIV tests, dental care, women’s health checks, and more. But one screening stood out among the rest: AI-powered TB screening provided in partnership with AI Diagnostics – a South African MedTech company which was one of the event’s two primary partners.
TB screening made accessible
Community health days are not uncommon in South Africa, where a large percentage of the population has limited access to healthcare. But TB screening has not traditionally formed part of the services offered, despite the fact that around 50 000 South Africans die of TB each year. The reason was logistical. It just wasn’t feasible to transport an X-ray machine to a community centre. Now, that’s changed.
A palm-sized, AI-powered stethoscope, developed by AI Diagnostics, has made it possible to bring TB screening to the people who need it most. Described by AI Diagnostics CEO, Braden van Breda, as “Shazam for TB”, the device combines the functionality of a stethoscope with AI pattern- recognition. Trained on thousands of lung sounds, it’s able to pick up the distinctive sound TB makes in the lungs with a level of accuracy comparable to a radiologist interpreting x-rays, even in the early stages.
Out of the lab and into the field
For van Breda it was gratifying to see the company’s technology being used in the type of setting that it was created for. “A screening day like this reflects our mission. It was fantastic to see our device serving at-risk communities and operating in ultra-low-resourced environments,” says van Breda.
The AI-powered stethoscope was designed to be portable, simple to use, and quick. All of these attributes could be seen in action on the day, as community health workers put the tools to use.
“We screened 105 people in a matter of hours,” says van Breda. “It was powerful joining forces with Impilo – they set up for so much more than just TB screenings, creating an incredibly broad healthcare service for the community patients. It also gave us the opportunity to show how our solution can seamlessly fit into and add value to screening and health days like these.”
It was also affirming to see the tool being used by the frontline medical workers it was intended for. “Our technology is designed to meet people where they are seeking care, which can be in primary healthcare facilities or linked to HIV programmes or even at home healthcare visits,” says van Breda. “To achieve this, we’ve designed for a variety of operators. Today, we got to see the product working in the hands of community health workers, nurses, medical students, and doctors, all screening alongside one another.”
Healthcare workers performing TB screenings on the day expressed excitement about finally having access to a tool that makes early detection both possible and accessible.
Dr Dale Smith, a Cape Town doctor and CEO of the Impilo Project, works in underserved communities in some of Africa’s most remote regions. Having seen, firsthand, the devastating effect of TB as a direct result of underdiagnosis, Dr Smith is especially enthusiastic about the tool. “What’s amazing about the device is that this is a tool we can put in the hands of community health workers and nurses, workers on the frontline who can now catch TB early, before anything happens. Previously, you had to wait until you could get to a hospital or a doctor to have any kind of idea whether you have TB or not. But now we’ve got a tool where we can pick that up early, in communities.”
Health champion, Nomfundo Philisane, says: “I love it because our communities are suffering from TB and we are trying to curb TB. And I’m happy because now we are able to detect it at an early stage rather than later. And then we can help the patient get to the clinic or the hospital and get treated.”
In a country where TB has such a devastating effect, exacerbated by delayed detection, the success of the AI Diagnostics stethoscope at the Impilo Project Health Day in Joe Slovo provides a glimpse of a future where early detection is accessible and commonplace at the community level – and where local healthcare innovations equip the everyday heroes already doing the work on the ground.
Thinking about the effect the stethoscope could have in communities across Africa, Dr Smith concludes: “Honestly, this thing is going to save millions of lives.”
