Author: Lea Jackson
Pfizer, a popular pharmaceutical company located in America, spent about US$120 million to buy a small(ResApp following a claim that they invented a smartphone app that can correctly diagnose COVID-19 by simply listening to and analyzing a cough.
About the App
ResApp, a small digital healthcare company based in Australia, has been working on creating and developing an algorithm that can recognize and analyze respiratory disorders with cough sound.
Initially, the system was able to identify pneumonia. Later before 2019, researchers revealed that the technology could successfully differentiate diseases such as croup, bronchiolitis, and asthma.
When the rapid pandemic outbreak happened in 2020, the company consequently changed the course by adding COVID-19 diagnoses into their algorithm of cough recognition. The initial data from a pilot trial experiment evaluating the COVID algorithm in 2022 showed remarkable results.
The experiment revealed that the system could efficiently identify 92% of COVID-positive patients. The technology also showed an 80% accuracy, which means that just two out of every ten individuals that took part in the experiment had false positive outcomes. Scientifically, this is not bad, but there is room for improvement.
Pfizer pays almost $120 million for ResApp
Pfizer, a major pharmaceutical company in America, started circling soon after ResApp disclosed these findings and made an initial offer of about $65 million for the technology. The company will purchase ResApp for an impressive $116 million, according to a formal acquisition statement.
A Pfizer representative said in a statement that the early results were positive. Furthermore, the agreement extends the company’s involvement in digital health. The representative told ABC News that the COVID-19 screening tool is an innovative option to diagnose and help manage the condition in the nearest future.Â
Pfizer is determined to continue enhancing this algorithm and cooperating with regulators worldwide to provide medicine to patients as soon as possible.
Why does this App matter so much?
The ResApp company predicts that Pfizer’s acquisition will enable the technology to develop and be extensively used in the world’s most remote regions.Â
One of the algorithm’s initial creators, Udantha Abeyratne, stated that the project’s mission was to aid in developing better diagnostic tools for use in local communities all over the globe.
Abeyratne stated that, from the beginning of the project, he had a large ambition to build scalable, affordable technologies to detect pulmonary disorders worldwide, not just in remote sub-Saharan Africa but even in major developed centers like New York and Brisbane.Â
In addition, he stated that he hoped for the day when remote and small communities in Asia and Africa without access to modern facilities will be able to recognize deadly illnesses like pneumonia.
Final Words
Pfizer has paid over $120 million for a mobile app(ResApp) that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to detect coronavirus from cough sounds. The ResApp company expects that Pfizer’s acquisition will enable the technology to develop and become extensively used in most remote places in the world.
