He is the founder of Insightiv, an AI and Teleradiology startup dedicated to improving medical imaging in Rwandan hospitals. The AI/ML engineer recently raised funds from the HealthTech Hub Africa and hopes to soon collaborate with Rwanda’s public health system.

In 2009, Audace Nakeshimana (picture) founded Insightiv, an AI and teleradiology startup. At the time, he was studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US. Besides being the founder and executive director of Insightiv, the Rwandan is also, since September 2020, a Machine Learning engineer at Apple. Setting up his business in Rwanda was motivated by the desire to involve local talent in technological development and his ambition to tackle African challenges.

Insightiv’s purpose is to provide easier access to medical imaging diagnostics. “Growing up, we heard stories about people who were sick and [didn’t] know what [they] had. Then that person [would come] home [and] they eventually die. It happens to a lot of people, especially in Africa - my grandma being one of them and actually one of my aunts. … If you really look at it, a lot of people die because of limited diagnostics,” Nakeshimana said.

Insightiv is developing advanced technology to help radiologists detect life-threatening diseases faster, by making medical imaging timely and accessible. The solution provides tools based on various image viewing modalities, giving medical imaging specialists access to a wide range of tools for better analysis. It allows them to create and submit reports using a single platform. As a cloud-based system, the Insightiv Diagnostics platform helps healthcare personnel focus on patient care rather than technical issues.

In 2020, Audace Nakeshimana was a finalist in the PKG Center's IDEAS Social Innovation Challenge, receiving $16,000 in funding. That same year, in December, he won the HealthTech Hub Africa competition and was awarded $30,000. The entrepreneur plans to use the funding to improve his service and reach out to legislators to collaborate with the public health system.

A decade from now, he plans to reach 10% of the Rwandan population with his rapid diagnostics solution.

"If you look today, the current health care system only has the capacity to diagnose about 200,000 to 300,000 patients [...] We think that if a private organization like Insightiv can take care of 10% of the population, that means we would be doing more than the national health care system is doing today. That's an ambitious, but realistic goal," the engineer claims.

Aïsha Moyouzame