CARPL guides healthcare providers through the growing market of radiology AI apps

There is a worldwide shortage of radiologists, which means it is more difficult for medical groups to complete research. As a result, more than 200 companies have offered to develop applications that use artificial intelligence to perform different tasks in the electronic process. CARPL is an electronic marketplace that includes the Singapore government as a customer and is committed to making it easier for healthcare professionals to access and use these applications.

The San Francisco-based startup announced today that it has raised $6 million from Stellar Venture Partners. The transaction also includes participation from angel investors such as Novo Holdings, Leapfrog PE, Bain & Co., Boston Consulting Group, United HealthGroup and others. CARPL will use the funding to hire employees in North America and continue developing its technology.

Companies include AiDoc, Qure.ai. Lunit, Avicenna, Gleamer, and AZmed are all working on AI-based electronic devices and have developed more than 700 FDA-approved applications to date, but it can be difficult for practitioners to choose and use the one that suits their needs. Integration into radiology workflows. This means that despite the shortage of radiologists, adoption has been slow.

CARPL uses the DEV-D framework to help teams electronically discover (D), discover (E), and apply (V) applications so they can submit them (D) through the AI ​​repository. It has more than 50 AI developers and 100 applications so far. CARPL says this makes it the largest AI market in terms of AI applications available to customers. CARPL customers include the government of Singapore, as well as Massachusetts General Hospital, Radiology Associates, University Hospitals, I-MED Radiology, Albert Einstein Hospital and Clinton Health Access Initiative.

The company was established in 2021 by Dr. Vidur Mahajan is a medical doctor with an MBA from the Wharton School and over 12 years of experience in the diagnostic industry. CARPL's board of directors also includes medical director Dr. Vasanth Venugopal, chief technology officer Rohit Takhar and chief operating officer Dhruv Sahai.

Before announcing CARPL, Dr. Mahajan increased the revenue of his family business, Mahajan Imaging, 10-fold to $20 million in 10 years. A radiologist. His father is Dr. Radiologist Harsh Mahajan contributed to the concept of CARPL while applying and utilizing the expertise of Mahajan Imaging.

Dr. Mahajan (third year) told TechCrunch that his experience in the family business includes writing research papers and presenting, and has published papers in leading journals such as The Lancet.

"The more I work with top AI companies around the world, the more I realize that AI solutions are developed in niche markets and users need these solutions to be different. There are many AI solutions that are used throughout the body. Location and disease together,” he said. For example, there are many types of AI used for stroke, thoracic tuberculosis, lung cancer and prostate cancer. Dr. Mahajan believes this hinders the use of these apps because it is difficult for users. doctors must select and enroll in practices.

Companies developing AI applications must test and validate their software with healthcare providers before integrating it with user interfaces and data systems. Full integration can cost between $10,000 and $100,000 and take six to 18 years. Mahajan said CARPL solves these problems by providing service providers with the same user interface (universal AI viewer), a pipeline and a purchasing system, which not only makes it easier to choose AI applications; Check and ship faster. < br>
An example is CARPL customer Radiology Partners, which performs 50 million radiological examinations annually by 3,500 radiologists in the United States. It is complex and time-consuming for the company to measure AI algorithm performance across four suppliers. They tested the doctors of 20,000 patients using CARPL, Dr. This reduces drive times from a year to a few months and just one day per doctor, Mahajan said.

Cleveland University Hospital also uses CARPL, which is affiliated with Case Western Reserve University and is committed to developing, validating and applying clinical skills. X-rays of patients with potential fractures are sent to CARPL; Here, a third-party AL algorithm developed by AZmed determines whether something significant is present. This means engineers can work more efficiently and patents can be settled faster.

CARPL is a for-profit business that generates profits through a model in which paying customers access its platform to test third-party artificial intelligence algorithms on their personal data. A secure environment behind a firewall. They can also run third-party AI algorithms on clinical referrals.

The company began competing with Blackford Analysis, DeepC and Incepto, but Dr. Mahajan said CARPL is unique in that it is the only PACS that can identify and track and work with radiologists working for image analysis. CARPL's mission is to enable electrical scientists to work 10x faster by providing a complete intelligence ecosystem. Dr Mahajan said he started with electronics because "it has the best impact on AI applications" but plans to expand into other specialties such as digital diseases, oncology, cardiology, dermatology, ophthalmology and Gastroenterology.

Alok Goyal, a partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, said in a statement: "Photo scan volume increased steadily by 9% last year, but only 1.8% of radiologists joined the workforce. The difference is a big one faced by doctors." "The challenge is that we believe intellectual skills will be important. Designed to test, use and monitor electronic systems, the integration of CARPL is ready to combine medical expertise to support doctors at work."