Imagine a ChatGPT for doctors in the medical profession! Yes, that is what DoctorAI offers healthcare professionals, with a strong scientific and clinical focus.
Invented by Rwandese Kevin Muragijimana, together with David Ndayishimiye, it is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) -powered, mobile-based application designed to support clinicians in improving diagnostic accuracy and clinical decision-making.
A health informatician and general medicine and surgery by profession, Dr Muragijimana said he came up with the idea of the application in 2019.
“It was in 2019 when the idea was a bit clear. I was still a medical student at the university by then, almost finishing I guess,” said Muragijimana during an interview with The Standard in Nairobi recently.
This was after he had just attended the three-day Global Digital Health Forum, which was held in Nairobi.
“I realised that while there are countless innovations targeting patient needs and hospital systems, the healthcare professional is often overlooked. Clinicians are the primary drivers of care delivery, yet they are the most underserved when it comes to tools that support their well-being and clinical precision. DoctorAI was built to finally put the power back into the hands of the clinician.”
This, he said, is despite the fact that nations want to change life, health and impact the lives of its people.
“I have also observed an increase in complaints and legal actions against doctors, often linked to clinical errors. Yet doctors are human, working in complex environments, and they need better support systems to help them make informed decisions,” Muragijimana said, adding:
“In many of these settings, healthcare professionals are not always adequately trained on the complex systems they work within, yet they are expected to deliver high-quality care from the very beginning.”
In 2019, AI was very new. But Muragijimana says he knew that the best way to help doctors is by doing something that can be fast and accurate, and AI was the perfect solution.
“So, DoctorAI is a tool that provides fast and accurate medical insights to healthcare professionals to help them deliver the best healthcare they can deliver and to help them provide or make better decisions faster,” said Muragijimana.
Just like ChatGPT, he says the application, which is available both on Playstore and Appstore, can be given a case, asked any question or anything and it responds.
“I would say it draws from highly reputable medical sources. For a wide range of clinical topics and questions, it provides structured responses supported by recognised medical references,” he said.
Our search on which are the best medicines for a patient with fever and general body weakness, what could be the diagnosis and the right treatment brought us the right medicines gave us the right results. It also brought us the dosage, key considerations, names of drugs to use and medications to avoid, some critical clinical insights that one has to be aware of and some harmful practices to avoid.
That is not all. It told us about renal and hepatic impairments drugs to avoid, specific populations where one should also be cautious with the medications , scientific guideline link sources of the information, follow-up recommendations and resources or references to links of published journals.
Muragijimana said ChatGPT is meant for many different topics and the answers can be quite broad. DoctorAI, on the other hand, is more specific.
