Medical imaging announces distribution partner for Africa

Medical imaging company Oxipit announced partnership with Parasmed - a Nairobi based medical healthcare solutions distributor in Eastern Africa.

With recent partnerships in Nigeria and a foothold in Latin America, the new agreement is a step towards trying to create a global, locally present network of Oxipit software distributors.

Before Oxipit software is made available in the Kenyan market, Parasmed will partner with local high-level medical institutions to evaluate its performance in the local healthcare setting. 

A number of AI solutions were evaluated before entering the partnership. In the words of Prof. Osmo Tervonen, Oxipit software was chosen for its diagnostic performance. In addition, Oxipit software covers the widest scope of radiological respiratory findings, which could bring a significant boost to radiologists in the region.

Parasmed CEO, Prof Osmo Tervonen, said: “We are starting off with this approach to showcase the software performance utilising local real-world clinical data, as well as to demonstrate AI workflow for local medical institutions.

“Furthermore, Oxipit is present at every step of journey with its distributor partners - research, training, deployment and support.”

As well as other regions in the developing world, Eastern Africa suffers from the lack of radiologists and insufficient imaging technology. There are slightly more than 200 practicing radiologists in Kenya - a puny number considering the overall population.

Oxipit chest X-ray diagnostic software provides preliminary reports for 75 radiological findings, significantly reducing the workload of radiologists in day-to-day operations. Further developments of the software - including autonomous healthy patient reports - will produce even more cost and resource savings.

Oxipit CEO, Gediminas Peksys, said: “With economic and population growth, AI diagnostic tools are the best bet to bridge the gap of healthcare quality in the developing countries.

“AI diagnostics are already present in day-to-day medical practice. Yet now we are at an exciting stage, where AI diagnostics are moving towards more autonomous operations. The developing countries will benefit the most from this AI evolution, enabling a developed-world level of patient care without the associated developed-world healthcare costs.”