The value of AI has been accelerating the healthcare space at an increasing rate. In fact, AI-powered medical diagnostics is today driving the critical changes across the care continuum. However, AI technologies are not believed to replace doctors despite its transformative power. “We view AI only as a new medical device that allows doctors to ‘better see’ each case,” says Gabriela Fuentes, COO, Transmural Biotech or TMB. “For instance, doctors with different degrees of training reach different conclusions on a clinical diagnosis. Instead, if they have access to data-driven AI image processing technology to support their decision, objective results can be attained regardless of their training.” Upholding the same principle, TMB develops innovative clinical solutions and services using disruptive technologies based on AI. The company is formed by a group of experienced AI scientists and business developers with strong support from reputable clinical advisors who delivers image diagnosis and processing that helps clinicians to improve healthcare in a reliable, fast, and easy-to-use way, maintaining a worldwide and 24/7 service.

“We offer direct clinical prediction from ultrasound images by texture analysis and have the necessary robustness to ensure reliability in clinical environments,” notes Fuentes. Their flagship product, quantusFLM predicts Fetal Lung Maturity (FLM) from a fetal lung ultrasound and is available via an easy-to-use web application. Through quantusFLM’s novel image processing, AI technology gives a personalized result within a few minutes, helping doctors establish if the fetal lungs are ready to breath out of the womb. In many clinical situations, the decision of whether to deliver or wait is in a “grey zone”, particularly in late preterm to early-term pregnancies. For instance, cases like difficulty-to-control hypertension or diabetes, moderate preeclampsia, maternal fluid retention with edema, etc. For these circumstances, delivery may be a reasonable, but not an absolute, option to avoid danger to mother or fetus. This is where quantusFLM provides a safer and personalized fetal medicine healthcare by identifying the risk of neonatal respiratory morbidity in a non-invasive manner and generating critical information in the decision-making process, either to confirm or otherwise delay delivery. “We estimate that this technology has the potential to be used in 5–10 percent of all pregnancies, and contributes to reduce the number of Neonatal Respiratory Morbidity cases in a 20–30 percent.”

Following the same path, TMB developed quantusPREMATURITY, another easy-to-use web application that predicts the risk of spontaneous preterm birth just by analyzing a cervical ultrasound image. The early detection of premature births is very important considering that more than 15 million babies (1 in 10 babies) are born preterm every year, according to the World Health Organization, and out of those, almost 1 million children die each year due to complications arising from prematurity. The solution is the first test for an early detection of the cervical remodeling based on AI and texture analysis that obtains robust and replicable results regarding the risk of spontaneous premature labor before the neck is shortened. It has been developed to be used as a universal screening tool during the second trimester of pregnancy.

“Our technology not only involves a change of functioning in the image diagnose process but also involves a change of paradigm for the current clinical practice introducing the concept of digital lab. These changes are not always easy to accept or implement,” notes Fuentes. However, TMB has learned to work with different regulations for different territories and to allocate additional resources if needed for technology implementation.

Also, through a Sotware-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, the company lowers the cost of its products and reach patients anywhere in the world. Going forward, TMB wants to start a cost-efficiency study for quantusFLM, consolidate its expanded markets, start FDA process and improve brand positioning. Additionally, “we plan to build a personalized e-commerce to ease billing.”  Alongside, they want to launch their product, quantus PREMATURITY, the tool to early detect cervical remodeling in order to predict spontaneous premature births, and they need to replicate all of quantusFLM’s infrastructure to commercialize it worldwide. “Moreover, we will to continue to validate the technology through a multicenter study and see its clinical use in hospitals around the world,” ends Fuentes.