Intron Health, a Nigerian tech startup, has raised $1.6 million in pre-seed funding. This funding will help advance their speech recognition technology for healthcare workers in Africa.
The funding round was led by Microtraction. Other participants included Plug and Play Ventures, Jaza Rift Ventures, and Octopus Ventures.
Africa Health Ventures, OpenseedVC, Pi Campus, Alumni Angel, and Baker Bridge Capital also participated. Angel investors from companies like Google, CLEAR Global, NYU, and Optum contributed as well.
Intron Health will use the funds to expand research and improve cloud-native and on-premises capabilities. They also plan to recruit tech talent to support product development and market expansion.
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Boosting Medical Efficiency
Intron Health was launched in 2020 by Tobi Olatunji, to help healthcare workers digitize medical records. Their platform converts speech into text with 92% accuracy on medical terms, even with heavy accents.
The platform is used in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda. It helps doctors complete documentation seven times faster, reducing the administrative burden.
In his remarks, Tobi Olatunji, Founder and CEO, stated, ‘‘We are not only improving efficiency but also enhancing health outcomes and positively impacting hospital finances.
“With the backing of prominent global investors who bring deep knowledge and expertise, we are looking forward to our next phase of growth.”
Voice technology is evolving rapidly worldwide, and plays crucial roles in many industries. In Africa, over 3,000 languages and dialects exist.
Many remain excluded from global speech advancements. Intron Health’s platform bridges this gap by supporting diverse African languages and accents.
Their clinical speech dataset contains over 3.5 million audio clips from 29 countries. This dataset helps train algorithms for deployment in hospitals with minimal fine-tuning.
Intron Health’s speech-to-text AI transcription is accessible via any device through a browser. It converts spoken information into text, saving time and improving productivity for healthcare providers.
Intron Health’s speech recognition solution has potential beyond healthcare. The company is keen to explore other use cases and opportunities for localized voice technology in Africa and beyond.