The world’s most accurate health diagnosis service has become the top downloaded health app in New Zealand, even surpassing AirBnB, LinkedIn, and Tinder in popularity.
The free Ada app had its worldwide launch in New Zealand on July 25th and has since secured the top position for medical apps.
“Instead of going to a doctor to tell him or her your symptoms and receive a diagnosis, you can simply use Ada in the comfort of your home when you or a family member is feeling unwell,” explains Ada CEO Daniel Nathrath.
“This is no ‘Dr Google.’ Ada was built in Europe with years of clinical research, input from more than 100 doctors, and millions of dollars of funding. We’ve created an app which is smarter than human doctors at finding diagnoses quickly.”
The health IT industry is growing exponentially with big players such as Facebook, Google and Apple all entering the multi-billion dollar market. Ada has received more than $30m in funding, making it one of the most well-funded health startups in the world.
The app asks its users a series of questions on symptoms they’re experiencing to pinpoint a likely diagnosis causing them. The app knows more than 10,000 symptoms and diseases; making it more knowledgeable than human doctors.
“Ada knows diseases that many doctors have never even heard of, and it can work out a diagnosis more quickly and accurately than even the best human doctors can,” says Nathrath.
“For example, a doctor can generally recognise just four types of nausea. Ada knows dozens of different types of nausea with minute differences between them. These differences may be tiny but they can be hugely significant when it comes to correctly attributing a diagnosis.”
Ada gets smarter as it learns more about its users and other users in their same demographic.
“Effectively, the software gets better for everyone as more people use it because it is continuously learning and improving from the – fully encoded and anonymous – data of its users. This is on the cusp of Artificial Intelligence,” says Nathrath.
“It’s streets ahead of anything else that’s out there. It’s almost too good,” says William Hamilton, a professor of primary care diagnostics at the University of Exeter.
The app isn’t designed to replace doctors’ visits but makes them far more efficient because patients arrive with an accurate diagnostic. It also keeps a record of the patient’s’ medical history to avoid repetitive and time-wasting questioning from doctors.
“Doctors spend more than 80% of their patient-facing time asking questions about the patient’s health,” says Nathrath.
“Ada does the pre-assessment by asking patients questions about their symptoms. That full assessment report gets sent to the doctor so the doctor already knows what symptoms the patient suffers from before the patient arrives. The doctor can get on with helping them get better.”
The completely free Ada app is only one part of a three-part ecosystem being built by the startup. Two other products bring the statistics collected by the app to build useful analytics to help doctors make the best possible decisions.
Nathrath says the Berlin and London based team is delighted with the uptake in New Zealand.
“We choose to launch this app in New Zealand before anywhere else in the world because we knew Kiwis are forward thinking and great with new technology. We’re delighted they’ve taken to Ada so quickly and we think this is proof the app adds real value to people’s lives and health.”
Following the success of the worldwide launch in New Zealand, Ada will now be launched on the Australian App Store next week.
The app is completely free to download and use and is one part of a revolutionary health ecosystem being built by the team.
[Source: Scoop]
