How might we diagnose skin conditions using smartphone cameras powered by dermatology image recognition technology, to better serve patients remotely?
Background/Context
Skin diseases are more common than other diseases and have a serious impact on people’s life and health. Skin diseases may be caused by fungal infection, bacteria, allergy, viruses, etc. However, access to dermatology specialists and diagnostic processes is limited, time-consuming, expensive, and invasive even at early stages. While all countries may have challenges for access to treatment, emerging countries face a greater incidence of a variety of factors but much lower dermatologist-to-population ratios to treat disease.
Image recognition of skin disorders can help classify the disorder to help take appropriate action remotely, at an early stage, and in situations where there is lack of access to expertise. In the treatment of skin disease, early detection is the critical factor to cure the disease, effectively reducing its impact and improving quality of life, especially in patients with other underlying conditions such as diabetes and hypertension.
Separately, the accuracy of skin disease recognition is inconsistent due to the similarity between different skin diseases and the limited number of dermatologists with professional knowledge. Nowadays, the majority of conclusions on the patients’ existing symptoms are drawn mainly based on doctors’ years of experience or their own subjective judgments, which may lead to misjudgments and consequently delay the treatment of the condition. To solve this challenge, the algorithm should be highly accurate.
Objective
Apollo 247 is looking to improve overall patient engagement in dermatology by providing easy, low-cost, quick, efficient, and high-accuracy diagnosis of skin conditions with the convenience of patients’ own smartphone cameras. This will help in delivering consistent quality healthcare for patients who do not have immediate access to primary healthcare centres.
Solutions
The desired solution should come with a strong image processing capability powered by machine learning algorithms to effectively analyse the image of affected skin collected through a smartphone camera. It should classify the type of skin condition and report back to an appropriate dermatology specialist to plan the next steps.
The solution should also cover the following requirements:
- A micro-service API and a front-end interface;
- A multicast classification with high-precision and recall of conditions analysed;
- The MVP can be a mobile app with an ability to identify top 10 commonly seen skin disorders in outpatient settings with high precision and recall;
- Focus on the Indian and Southeast Asian markets.
Reward
- Successful entrant will conduct a pilot project with Apollo 247 spanning 3 months to validate the solution and eventually enter into a commercial deployment within 3 to 4 months after incorporating all the learnings from the pilot phase.
- The pilot project will be supported by a SGD20,000 grant from Enterprise Singapore and close guidance from the Apollo 247 team.
Resources
- Publicly available data source: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/shubhamgoel27/dermnet
How might we help patients with high blood pressure (hypertension) better manage their condition by making lifestyle improvements and adhering to their medication routine?
Background/Context
Hypertension is the most common chronic health condition, affecting 1.4 billion (31%) adults globally[1]. With long-term manifestations including cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and chronic kidney disease, hypertension has been identified by the World Health Organization as a leading risk factor for morbidity and mortality, responsible for the deaths of one in six adults annually[2]. Despite significant evidence demonstrating the benefits of antihypertensive treatment, hypertension remains underdiagnosed and undertreated.
Nearly 63% of total deaths in India are due to non-communicable diseases, of which 27% are attributed to cardiovascular disease which affects 45% people in the 40-69 age group. High blood pressure is among the most important risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. Moreover, it remains poorly controlled due to low awareness about hypertension, lack of appropriate care through primary care and poor follow-up[3].
Hypertensive individuals adopting healthy lifestyles, such as being active for at least four days per week, weight-loss in the presence of obesity, consuming a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and sodium below the recommended threshold, avoiding high alcohol consumption and refraining from smoking have been effective lifestyle changes to prevent or control early stage of hypertension[4].
Objective
Apollo 247 is looking to decrease the number of patients with uncontrolled hypertension to improve each patient’s overall health and well-being. A common problem with such programmes is the lack of consistency in adhering to the proposed lifestyle changes. For example, patients do not take their medication regularly, have trouble sticking to their exercise regime, and deviate from recommended dietary changes.
Solutions
The desired solution could come in the form of hardware, software or a combination of both. There are many such health and wellness applications in the market, but a specific application focused on high blood pressure is preferred in the effort to better monitor, engage, and manage patients.
Motivation to follow the required workout routine and recommended diet, clock enough sleep, and take medication on time is generally lacking. The solution provider should take this into consideration and propose an effective solution to address this as well.
The solution should also cover the following requirements:
- Integration capability with leading activity and health trackers. Selection of trackers can be mutually agreed upon alignment of the pilot project. Apollo 247 will help with getting those trackers.
- A front-end to engage the hypertensives, and a back-end for care providers.
- Focus on the Indian and Southeast Asian market.
Reward
- The successful entrant will conduct a pilot project with Apollo 247 spanning 3 months to validate the solution and eventually enter into a commercial deployment within 3-4 months after incorporating all the learnings from the pilot phase.
- Apollo 247 is expecting this to be used by up to 1 million users and will explore embedding this feature into primary health care applications as well.
- The pilot project will be supported by a SGD20,000 grant from Enterprise Singapore and close guidance from the Apollo 247 team.
References
- Mills KT, Bundy JD, Kelly TN, Reed JE, Kearney PM, Reynolds K, Chen J, He J.
Global disparities of hypertension prevalence and control: a systematic analysis of population-based studies from 90 countries.
Circ Res. 2016;134:441–450 [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar] - Organisation WH. World Health Organization (2013), A global brief on hypertension.
Report. 2013 April 2013. Contract No.: WHO/DCO/WHD/2013.2. - Noncommunicable diseases: Risk factors
- Impact of therapeutic lifestyle changes in resistant hypertension
