South African E-health Startup, VitruvianMD secures $659k investment

VitruvianMD, a South African e-health startup, has raised a US$659,000 financing round to scale its technology and launch more pilots. The round was led by the Singapore-based Verge Healthtech Fund and several angel investors.

VitruvianMD combines biomedical engineering and cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) to provide medical laboratories with cost-effective, high-accuracy diagnostic tools, focusing on emerging markets.

Founded in 2021 by the trio of Frando Lin, Ifthakaar Shaik, and Byron Jacobs, VitruvianMD fuses state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering to offer cost-efficient and reliable diagnostic tools for health laboratories. The e-health startup said it is poised on delivering high-quality, decentralized, accessible, and affordable healthcare for all.

Speaking on the raised funding round, and Co-founder at VitruvianMD said:

“The core of our business is delivering AI-powered diagnostic software into under-resourced areas, and to date, we have built a platform that enables this in various fields of pathology.” Ifthakaar Shaik, CEO of VitruvianMD said. “To further facilitate access, we have also developed a low-cost, high-quality camera that can retrofit any microscope instantly enabling digital telepathology.”

Stating further, Shaik explained that the e-health startup is large enough to be deployed in any form of microscopy-based diagnostics and that has been proven by the startup’s pilot programs in the field of histopathology, fertility, and hematology.

He also added that the goal of the raised fund is to achieve the commercialization of one of the startup’s diagnostic modules in the next one and a half years.

VitruvianMD’s vision is creating a world where access to healthcare is no longer limited by wealth or proximity to traditional healthcare providers, such as clinics and hospitals, but is as ubiquitous as the smartphone.