Light AI’s claim: That it can revolutionize health diagnostics with your smartphone
Imagine a world where diagnosing illnesses is as easy as snapping a picture of yourself with your smartphone. What a time to be alive!
Or at least not dead.
That’s the future Light AI is claiming it will make possible. As a cutting-edge healthcare company, Light AI wants to pioneer the future of medical diagnostics by combining artificial intelligence (AI) with the 4.5 billion smartphones already in people’s hands, and allow you to take a picture of your open mouth when you feel the first few coughs and quickly work out if you have strep throat or not. No swabs, no lab tests, no appointments, and no extra equipment—just an app and your smartphone and a decent idea whether you should call in sick from work today.
What’s the Breakthrough?
Light AI has developed a patented, app-based technology that can detect illnesses like strep throat (Strep A) in just seconds. A serious global health concern infecting over 600 million people annually and claiming as many children’s lives as malaria, strep is a real problem and has been since doctors used leeches.
But Light AI claims its platform can tackle the diagnosis of the disease faster, cheaper, and easier than ever before.
In pre-FDA validation studies, Light AI’s algorithm achieved 97% accuracy in identifying strep A—matching the performance of the gold-standard lab tests currently in use. Even more impressive, its 100% negative predictive value (NPV) ensures that if the app says you don’t have strep, you can trust the result with certainty. It’s a level of precision that transforms how we think about diagnostics.
NOTE: IT ISN’T A CURE. Light AI won’t spray medicine down your throat or bombard the infection with radio waves – we’re not at that stage just yet. But it can tell you it’s safe to send your kid to school, or that you might want to hit the clinic because there’s an actual problem.
Why Does This Matter?
Today, diagnosing strep A and other conditions often means expensive lab tests, swabs, or proprietary devices that are inaccessible to many people and fill doctors’ waiting rooms. Light AI removes these barriers, turning the phone you already have into a digital clinical lab. With Light AI, a diagnosis that once took hours or even days now takes just seconds—empowering patients and healthcare professionals alike, and pointing to a possible future where a myriad of ailments can be detected, quickly and easily, right where you stand.
The Big Picture
Strep A is just the beginning. Light AI’s platform is designed to expand far beyond throat infections, but those are the low hanging fruit. From analyzing the human eye to identifying skin conditions, the possibilities are expansive, and that’s useful to a global audience. The tech could roll significant healthcare diagnostic upgrades to the developing world, where medical care can be tough to come by.
What’s The Catch?
At this point, I’m not certain. There have definitely been several companies over the past ten years that have claimed to use eye analysis and breath analysis and the like for remote diagnostic care, to some clinical success but none yet having replaced in-person doctor visits like they’d hoped.
But if I look at this with a jaundiced eye (see a healthcare professional immediately if your eye is jaundiced), I could see this tool being utilized by healthcare pros and making revenue in doing so.
Others appear to agree – the shell raised $11m before shifting to the Light AI brand and ALGO ticker, having previously existed as Mojave Brands (MOJO).
It’s day one for this listing and that usually means, for me, that I’ll wait to see how it trades for a few days before climbing in. But going by the number of in-the-know guys that are talking about it in the usual market guy haunts, there may be good reason to keep a close (unjaundiced) eye on things.
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: No commercial interest, not a client, just think it’s a good use of AI with a model that could be quick to revenue