Voice recognition technology is becoming increasingly prevalent in our daily lives, but there is still a significant gap when it comes to users of minority languages, individuals with strong accents, or those with speech disorders like stuttering. These groups often struggle to effectively use speech recognition tools for controlling applications, transcribing speech, or automating tasks.
To address this issue, Tobi Olatunji, the founder and CEO of clinical speech recognition startup Intron Health, is working towards bridging this gap. Intron Health boasts being Africa’s largest clinical database, with its algorithm trained on a vast amount of audio data from healthcare practitioners across various countries and accents.
Driven by his experience as a medical doctor in Nigeria and his subsequent studies in medical informatics and computer science, Olatunji recognized the need for leveraging technology to improve healthcare systems, particularly in Africa. This led to the development of Intron Health’s speech recognition technology, tailored to recognize African accents and integrate seamlessly with electronic medical record systems.
Intron Health’s technology has already shown promising results in improving efficiency and reducing turnaround time in healthcare settings, such as reducing the waiting time for radiology results from 48 hours to 20 minutes in a West African hospital. Looking ahead, the startup is focused on further enhancing its technology, such as noise cancellation and multi-speaker conversation transcription, to provide more advanced decision support tools for healthcare professionals.
Supported by a recent pre-seed funding round, Intron Health is poised for growth and aims to continue pioneering innovative solutions in the field of speech recognition and healthcare technology. The company is also actively engaged in collaborative research initiatives to ensure culturally attuned models are available for use in African clinics and hospitals.
