HEALTHTECH start-up Lifetrack Medical Systems is using medical imaging to help in accelerating the detection of potential coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, its chief operating officer Carl Nicholas Ng said.

Mr. Ng said Lifetrack seeks to address the lack of radiologists in the country by giving access to medical images from different hospitals, allowing them to make medical diagnoses remotely.

“In modern medicine, imaging or radiology is an incredibly important part of the diagnostic procedures. Where Lifetrack comes in, we’re replacing legacy radiology software, which basically requires the radiologist to be physically in the hospital,” Mr. Ng said in an April 29 interview.

Lifetrack recently partnered with the Antique local government, offering their technology for free to hospitals and clinics serving as COVID-19 triaging and referral centers.

“They are basically using CT scans to do preliminary screening of potential COVID-19 patients,” he said. He added that Lifetrack is also working with Living Hope Hospital in southern Leyte, among others.

Lifetrack also launched a secured, anonymized global COVID-19 image repository that can be used by radiologists and researchers to identify potential COVID-19 cases faster.

“I think now we have COVID positive or presumptive X-rays and CT scans in our repository so we’re working with different partners,” he said, noting Lifetrack has joined the International Consortium for COVID-19 Imaging AI (ICOVAI).

“So this is basically a consortium of health care providers, health care companies, including AI companies, that are trying to come together and figure out how we can use our technology to accelerate the identification of COVID cases,” Mr. Ng said.

Lifetrack has also partnered with FamilyDOC of Ayala Healthcare Holdings, Inc. and medical insurance company Maxicare HealthCare Corp. They also have customers in Davao, Nueva Vizcaya and Pampanga, as well as in Singapore, US, Brazil, UK, India and Nigeria.

Mr. Ng added that Lifetrack has developed its platforms to likewise include cardiology.

We’ve released some of this features but most of them will be part of a major upgrade which will be released probably end of 2nd quarter. — Charmaine A. Tadalan

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