Tobi Olatunji and Intron Health has raised $1.6 Million to improve Healthcare Systems in Africa.

Intron Health has raised $1.6 million to improve healthcare systems in Africa. Tobi Olatunji launched the clinical speech recognition company in 2020, inspired by his experience as a medical doctor in Nigeria. Fast-forward to launching Intron Health, his original intent was to digitize operations through an electronic medical record (EMR) system, according to TechCrunch. However, he recognized a stumbling block: the speech recognition technology did not produce accurate results when interacting with African accents or complex medical terms.

Thus, Intron Health launched its speech-recognition technology that recognizes African accents and integrates with existing EMRs. Intron Health is now closing the healthcare divide in Africa with its algorithm, trained on 3.5 million audio clips that include 288 accents from 18,000 contributors across 29 countries. It now ensures greater accuracy in the speech recognition technology used for electronic medical records, per TechCrunch.

“Because we’ve already trained on many African accents, it’s very likely that the baseline performance of their access will be much better than any other service they use” Olatunji told the outlet.

“We’re able to provide value to help them improve the adoption of the EMR system,” Olatunji explained to TechCrunch.

Intron Health has already serviced 30 hospitals in five African markets, including Kenya and Nigeria, the outlet reported.

“Hospitals have already spent so much on equipment and technology…We’re able to provide value to help them improve the adoption of the EMR system,” Olatunji said.