Revolutionizing Healthcare with AI: Impilo's Solution for Early Diagnosis of Complex Conditions

Impilo has developed an advanced AI platform that specializes in diagnosing irregular, complex, and rare medical conditions. By leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, and data analysis, Impilo's platform has the unique ability to identify these conditions long before traditional methods, enabling timely and appropriate treatment while alleviating the significant clinical and financial burdens they impose on healthcare systems.

In this interview with Noam Alon, we will delve into the motivation behind the creation of Impilo, the strategies employed to engage potential clients such as pharmaceutical and health insurance companies, and the vision for the future. We will also discuss Impilo's current customer groups and their plans for expansion, as well as the role that 5-HT can play in supporting their growth and development.

Get ready to be inspired by the remarkable journey of Impilo and its groundbreaking AI platform, which is poised to transform the landscape of healthcare diagnostics and improve patient outcomes. Let's dive in!

How would you explain your solution in three sentences to a professional colleague from the health sector?

Impilo develops an AI platform to diagnose irregular, complex, and rare conditions. We use ML, NLP, and other edge data processing technologies to model the general knowledge of these conditions. Then, through a systematic review of the medical files, we find a match long before any existing solution is capable. This way, we allow providing these patients with appropriate treatment while reducing the enormous clinical and financial burden they create on the healthcare systems. 

What problem motivated you to start the company? 

When my daughter was 14 years old, she was an energetic girl. And suddenly, unexplained and paralyzing pains hit her. After dozens of tests and doctors, three hospitalizations, and three times of “you have nothing, and it is probably psychosomatic,” we finally took her to one more specialist, who read through the medical documents and made a diagnosis. He told us that she had not been diagnosed simply because she didn’t fit the familiar model of her condition and that he had diagnosed her because he just saw someone with the same unique characteristics earlier. So, I promised myself I wouldn't let a similar case happen again, just because no one connected the dots in time.

How do you convince a pharmaceutical company, a health insurance company or another potential client to set up a pilot project with you? 

While other solutions respond to the more common conditions and have difficulty dealing with the uncommon conditions, Impilo designs its algorithms to precisely address the challenge of the irregular cases low frequency, high variability, and high complexity. Although they have a low prevalence, these conditions cost more than three folds compared to other cases and reach up to 50% of the total expenses of the health organizations. 
Our system offers a pharmaceutical company the potential to identify patients early and to provide them with the proper treatment much earlier than today. Moreover, we can identify potential patients and more accurate control groups for clinical trials. For healthcare providers and insurers, early diagnosis of these conditions can reduce overload burden and costs due to fewer misdiagnoses, false treatments and tests, and unnecessary and potentially harmful interventions. Impilo takes privacy seriously. We do not require private information to be taken out of the IT system. Our POC, conducted on real-life data with one of Israel’s leading providers, has already demonstrated the ability to diagnose patients with Tuberous Sclerosis years earlier than their actual diagnosis date, leading to a potentially more effective and timely treatment. 
Currently, we are expanding our value proposition to include twelve more diseases such as Wilson's disease, Prader-Willi, and DiGeorge's Syndrome. Furthermore, we can model additional diseases as needed.

Who are your current customer (groups) and who do you want your potential customers to be? 

Impilo works with Leumit, one of Israel’s largest providers, to expand its POC to twelve more diseases. We are also in advance talks with one of Britain’s largest NHS Trusts to become our design partner and conduct a clinical trial.
We are looking for a pharmaceutical company that wants to collaborate and become our design partner to adapt our system to its needs.

Where do you see yourself in 3 years and how can 5-HT support you?

Within three years, Impilo will market its unique system throughout the British NHS system, and will be ready to penetrate the EU market. Its irregular conditions database will provide valuable insights to pharmaceutical companies for R&D projects and clinical trial missions.
The 5-HT can support us with connections to relevant investors. Additional support will be more connections to pharma companies and healthcare organizations interested in collaborating in Germany and Europe.

You participated in the 5-HT X-Linker Healthtech for Pharma in March 2023. What is your impression of the event and what have you gained (so far) from participating? 

We were very impressed with the 5-HT X-Linker event. The structured preparation and advice during it were helpful and allowed us to arrive well-prepared. As for the event itself, it was professionally organized, and the level and quality of the participating firms were impressive. We have already had initial meetings with some of the companies that participated in the event, and we hope to expand them to collaboration and meet with additional stakeholders.