How Dr. Ghosh Is Helping to Save People from Going Blind
Dr. Ghosh helps his patients every day, but his primary role at The Ghosh Center is not the only way he’s making a difference in people’s lives. In 2019, he joined the team of Artelus, a medical start-up that’s using artificial intelligence to save people from going blind.
Artelus, based in the US, builds advanced screening tools using artificial intelligence (AI) to quickly screen for diseases like diabetic retinopathy, breast and lung cancer, and tuberculosis, where early detection is critical.
Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a major cause of blindness, and timely treatment can prevent it. However, limited access to healthcare, especially in rural areas, as well as high rates of Type II diabetes coupled with low awareness of DR, means rates of blindness from the disease are high despite the fact that it’s treatable if caught early.
Artelus is tackling this problem with its AI software, which reads digital images to identify early signs of DR during a simple eye check-up. Typically, DR is diagnosed by an opthamologist using dilation of the eye, which is expensive, time-consuming, and requires advanced training. There is a shortage of opthamologists around the world.
But anyone, even someone without a medical background, can learn to use Artelus’s software in a couple of hours. The operator simply uses an auto-focus camera to take a digital photo of the eye, and then the software scans the photo and provides an immediate report, which flags cases where symptoms of DR are evident. This both increases access to early detection and diagnosis, and frees up the time of ophthalmologists to focus on treatment, where their expertise is needed, rather than diagnosis.
Dr. Ghosh’s Role
In his role as Medical Director at Artelus, Dr. Ghosh is helping design studies to prove the technology’s benefits, as well as acting as a liaison between doctors and the people at the company helping to spread the technology around the world.
In February 2020, Dr. Ghosh will travel to India for a whirlwind trip for Artelus. After meetings in Jaipur, he’ll head to Kolkata to collect data and help launch a study in a post-graduate medical center where they see high numbers of patients with Type II diabetes.
The largest implications for the technology lie in what Artelus’s co-founder Rajarajeshwari Kodhandapani calls “The Forgotten Billion” - those in rural areas who cannot afford healthcare. In India, many rural residents don’t have access to hospitals, or even functional primary care clinics. Introducing an affordable, easily accessible way to screen for diabetic retinopathy is “the only way to save 73 million diabetics in the country from heading toward blindness,” Kodhandapani said.
The technology is poised to help people far beyond India. Currently, it’s available for sale in Europe and Asia, and the company began commercial implementations in the UK, the Middle East, Malaysia, and Australia in 2019. The team is also working on US FDA approval.
Dr. Ghosh also shared that Artelus has developed AI software that scans mammograms to more consistently detect and identify breast cancer. He said this helps to account for the human element in reading mammograms, which is subject to human error. Dr. Ghosh is involved with this work as well.
In addition to breast cancer, Artelus is already set to launch its next set of screening products for glaucoma, tuberculosis, pneumonia from chest x-rays, and multiple sclerosis, all of which are in various stages of validation and field trials.