Ubenwa, a cutting-edge health-tech startup that uses Machine learning and artificial intelligence to diagnose babies between the ages of 0 and Six months, has raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding to expand its business.
Radical Ventures led the funding round, which also included previous investor AIX Ventures, businessmen Richard Socher and Pieter Abbeel, Turing Award recipient Yoshua Bengio, Canadian politician Marc Bellemare, and Hugo Larochelle from Google Brain.
Charles Onu, a Nigerian with experience in the medical industry and a significant amount of AI practice, founded the Montreal-based startup in 2017.
Ubenwa is leading the way in automated sound-based baby diagnostics by combining cutting-edge AI with years of rigorous research.
Ubenwa’s program demonstrated a 40% improvement over APGAR scoring, the generally accepted physical evaluation at delivery, in a successful pilot study to identify neurological damage caused by birth asphyxia.
“Ubenwa is developing a diagnostic instrument that recognizes when a baby’s cry is indeed a plea for medical assistance.” “Our ultimate goal is to be a translator for baby cry sounds, giving a non-invasive technique to monitor medical problems wherever you find a baby: delivery rooms, neonatal and pediatric intensive care units, nurseries, and even homes,” One stated.
In order to turn infant screams into potential diagnoses, Ubenwa has created algorithms to monitor cry activity, find acoustic biomarkers, and forecast irregularities.
Ubenwa boasts of having the biggest and most varied database of clinically annotated infant cry sounds because of strategic alliances with top institutions in Nigeria, Brazil, and Canada.
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