Nigerian healthtech startup Intron Health has secured $1.6 million in pre-seed funding to improve its AI technology for better noise cancellation and managing conversations with multiple speakers. The funding round was led by Microtraction, with additional support from Plug and Play Tech Center, Jaza Rift, Octopus Ventures, and others. Global contributors included Google, ClEAR, NYU, and Optum.
The funds will support research, enhance cloud and on-premises systems, and expand distribution. Intron Health’s goal is to improve healthcare efficiency, patient outcomes, and hospital finances. The company recently developed a clinical speech recognition service with a 92% accuracy rate in understanding medical terminology, even with heavy accents.
Launched in 2020, Intron Health aims to streamline healthcare by reducing patient traffic and addressing clinical inefficiencies. The startup uses localized voice technology to enhance healthcare services and explore new applications in various sectors. It currently operates in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda, helping hospitals with Electronic Health Records (EHR) and reducing administrative burdens. However, many African languages and accents are still not covered.
Intron Health partners with over 30 public and private hospitals, serving more than 56,000 patients. The company has created Africa’s largest clinical speech dataset, including over 3.5 million speech clips from 18,000 contributors across 29 countries, representing over 200 accents. The startup plans to streamline call center operations, generate social media content, perform biometric verification, and provide voice tools for mental health and patient education. They also aim to introduce clinical automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology, which is common in developed markets.
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