Cure: Tell us a little bit about your company. How would you describe BioticsAI?
Bustami: At BioticsAI, we’re helping obstetricians provide accurate diagnostic ultrasounds for pregnant mothers. The core problem that we're solving is that half of patients with a fetal malformation are misdiagnosed. Fetal malformation means there is a deviation from the normal structural anatomy. More than 300 fetal syndromes can be screened for using a standard ultrasound screening — some common examples include spinal bifida and renal agenesis.
Cure: Can you explain a little more about the core problem that your tool is addressing?
Bustami: The core issue is the lack of standard quality ultrasound screenings all over the world. A lot of patients receive screenings with a significantly small portion of the standard fetal anatomical views that need to be screened. This results in an exceptionally high misdiagnosis rate.
Research shows that a third of patients in the US receive incomplete scans. In other areas of the world, quality screenings can only really be found at institutions in major cities. The racial disparities and the economic disparities are massive. No one realizes how big the problem is unless you look at it on a macro scale. Our AI solution tackles this problem by ensuring that all views are captured and that each meets the minimum quality criteria. This means people who live outside of major cities or highly densely populated areas are still able to access screenings that meet the minimum quality standard.
Cure: Do you have any stories that can bring this to life?
Bustami: Unfortunately, yes. I was talking to an obstetrician recently who told me the story of a patient she sent to get a screening. When they sent the images back, they'd only captured half of the scan, but the doctor was told there was an abnormality in the fetal brain. When she looked at the image, she knew right away it was a picture of the fetal abdomen, not the brain. People in marginalized communities experience these types of errors too often, where the sonographer may not be fully trained in how to capture all the scans necessary or properly read them. That causes errors in diagnosis and care.
Cure: How does the BioticsAI tool work?
Bustami: It’s a vendor-agnostic cloud-based software that can plug into any ultrasound machine. It will process the ultrasound screening to localize fetal malformations and bring them to the attention of the obstetrician. It provides the appropriate capture of over 90 different anatomical views and structures, which makes sure the patient gets at least a minimum quality standard scan. Our solution provides quality assurance through validating the completeness of the screening, facilitates diagnostics by localizing structural anomalies, and automatically generates an ultrasound report, which today, through manual processes, typically takes up to 15 minutes. Our tool mitigates operator dependency.
Cure: Your mom is an obstetrician. How did that influence you and lead you to where you are today?
Bustami: Well, my mom has spent her entire professional career on improving maternal care outcomes. For years she was a physician and then later she became a researcher, working with midwives in remote areas where patients didn't have access to standard maternal services. Through my mom’s work, I became acutely aware of the problems in pregnancy care. And a few years ago, while I was working at IBM Watson as an AI engineer, one of my family members was misdiagnosed during her second trimester ultrasound screening. Seeing firsthand that misdiagnosis play out, and the delays in care that she received, I immediately knew that we could use computer vision AI to solve these problems for all pregnant mothers and make sure that they can get standard diagnostic ultrasounds to mitigate the problems that can arise.
Cure: Do technicians need to be trained in the BioticsAI technology?
Bustami: We integrate seamlessly with existing software, and our product was built in line with the standards set by the International Society for Ultrasound (ICOG). So, we've been able to onboard obstetricians in a day, and they quickly understand how to leverage the tool.
Cure: Does this solution have applications beyond maternal health and the health of unborn children?
Bustami: Yes, absolutely. Each ultrasound machine we integrate with gives us the possibility to collect new data to develop new algorithms for new indications, and we can expand it to adjacent fields like gynecology, urogynecology, pelvic ultrasound, urology, neonatology. That is the logical trajectory for how we can potentially build out diagnostic algorithms and software solutions to impact these adjacent fields.
Cure: What would it mean to you to win the Cure Xchange Challenge?
Bustami: BioticsAI is in this transitionary period between R&D and commercialization. It's not an easy task for any company to take on large scale corporations. So being part of the Cure ecosystem where we can establish strategic partnerships, tap into the wealth of knowledge about the healthcare system in the United States and learn how to get new technologies into the hands of physicians, would be incredible for us.
For me, personally, it’d be incredible to be around other like-minded individuals who are also mission-driven and focused on social impact. The reason I chose this route wasn't just to bring profits back to investors. I wanted to be able to build out a type of technology that could impact at scale and solve a problem that's experienced globally.