Five startups that are changing Ukrainian medicine
Every day, doctors have to spend hours filling out paperwork instead of treating patients. But what if there was an assistant who could record patient appointments, analyze them, and fill out reports?
That's what the founders of Tayra, one of the Ukrainian startups changing medicine with artificial intelligence, once thought. Liga.Tech presents five such companies and their innovative solutions.
Tayra
Tayra is an artificial intelligence-powered virtual doctor's assistant. During a consultation, it listens to the dialog between a patient and a specialist, extracts medical information from the conversation, and fills in a document template.
The assistant uses several models for this purpose. The first is a technology that converts voice into text. This transcriber has been trained in surzhyk (Ukrainian–Russian pidgin -ed.), names of medicines, diagnosis codes, etc. so that it can understand the conversation between a doctor and a patient.
Next, AI structures the text, analyzes it, and puts it into a template. As a result, the doctor receives a recording of the conversation and a conclusion with filled-in symptoms, diagnosis, and prescription. There can be mistakes in the words, so another AI model highlights inaccuracies in the final document, and the doctor corrects them. This is how the system keeps learning.
The platform was launched on December 23. Its development took one year and it was tested for the last six months by 150 doctors: family doctors, allergists, otorhinolaryngologists, ultrasound doctors, and gastroenterologists. The AI assistant is integrated into medical information systems that store patient health data. Therefore, these systems are responsible for data protection. Currently, Tayra cooperates with two information systems that occupy 50% of the market, but their names are not disclosed.
The team consists of 11 people and is funded by the founders' money and grants. In particular, the company received $25,000 from the Ukrainian Startup Fund. Clinics that use the assistant pay for the minutes used. The cost of one minute of processing is 2 hryvnias ($0.05).
"An appointment lasts 30 minutes, but the useful record from it is about 5-6 minutes. So one dialog will cost about 5-10 hryvnias ($0.12-0.24)," says co-founder Yulia Tychynska. In 2025, the startup will work only for the Ukrainian market, but later the co-founders plan to expand abroad.
Anima
At the beginning of the full-scale war, co-founders Roman Havrysh and Sergiy Danylov began developing Anima, a mental state tracker. It was released to the public in February 2023. To date, 30,000 people have registered on the site and taken more than 30,000 tests.
The program uses a regular laptop or computer webcam to work. It recognizes the pupil, then different pictures appear on the screen: positive, negative, threatening, etc. The product monitors how the pupil reacts to them, and based on its behavior, it can determine whether a person is at risk of depression, burnout, etc. Artificial intelligence is used to recognize eyes and predict their movements, and language models summarize the data.
After the test, the client receives a report with key indicators and a chat where they can discuss the results with artificial intelligence. Roman Havrysh calls the technology safe because it does not interact with the human body and is confidential. The information the program collects is email and eye movement biomarkers.
At the beginning, the founders invested their own money in the startup, but in August 2024, the business became self-sustaining. The company sells the tracker to customers on its website: a package of 12 tests costs 468 hryvnias ($11), and a monthly subscription (2 tests per day) costs 134 hryvnias ($3). There is also a subscription offer that includes an AI assistant that costs 780 hryvnias ($19). Companies can also order screening, and Anima currently cooperates with six businesses.
However, new developments still require grants. For example, they received money from Brave1 to set up a military therapist's office. Another separate product is being developed for doctors, which will allow them to keep records of patients and consult with AI on how to treat them.
CheckEye
At the end of 2022, Ukraine tested the CheckEye screening service for the first time. It was created by nine people, including doctors, developers, and data scientists.
The product's idea is to make mass health assessments affordable. It works like this: a person comes to a clinic, a nurse takes a picture of his or her eye, uploads the image to the cloud, and receives an artificial intelligence conclusion about whether there are signs of a disease.
The technology analyzes changes in the blood vessels and compares them with signs of various diseases. CheckEye can detect about 50 diseases that affect blood vessels, including diabetes, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease.
"We won the international EIT Health InnoStars Awards and received the status of a startup supported by EIT Health. This opened up access to funding from the European Commission. We are now applying for a grant to expand our screening for cardiovascular disease. This way we will be able to identify conditions that lead to stroke and heart attack," says CEO Kyrylo Honcharuk.
In 2024, the company received support from the Seed of Bravery, Ukraine Startup Fund, and NIS Enterprise Fund, although the main source of funding was previously the founders' money. Now they are attracting investments and are valued at $6 million.
In Ukraine, startups usually work with the primary healthcare sector: primary healthcare centers, outpatient clinics, and family medicine centers. However, the technology is also used in the Zakarpattya Endocrinology Clinic and the Zakarpattya Vision Center.
An Austrian pharmacy has also invested in the business, so CheckEye focuses on Austria and Germany abroad. Pilot projects are being tested in several other countries. Access to the technology is sold by subscription. For one screening point, it costs 250 euros per month with no limit on the number of tests.
Apixmed
Apixmed focuses on B2B and cooperates with healthcare institutions and laboratories, of which there are currently ten. Their product is a virtual doctor's assistant that integrates into the medical information system.
The service analyzes patient data, previous medical history, evaluates the treatment plan, and gives a report on how it can be optimized. After that, the doctor can make the necessary decision: prescribe additional tests, change the dosage of the drug, etc.
Apixmed uses more than a thousand resources with medical information. Artificial intelligence was used to collect them and convert this data into a knowledge-base-friendly format.
"Since 2023, the company has analyzed the data of more than 8,000 people," says co-founder Maryna Korshevniuk. The product was developed in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation and the American Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Information from customers is stored in encrypted form on several servers to keep it safe.
A clinic or laboratory pays a fixed monthly fee, which depends on the number of services it uses. It can start at around 20,000 hryvnias ($477). Additionally, they pay for the report: about 1,300 hryvnias ($31) if it uses human genetic information, and about 300 hryvnias ($7) if it does not.
In addition to money from customers, Apixmed has received grants, including from Seeds Of Bravery, EIT Health InnoStars, and Microsoft. The latter gave the startup access to cloud storage, where it stores data. The average monthly revenue is up to 10,000 euros. The business makes a profit, and this money is enough for reinvestment. However, to enter the US market, the founders want to raise additional funds.
CardioAI
The product from XOresearch helps doctors with functional diagnostics. It was launched in Ukraine in 2021. CardioAI displays data from an electrocardiogram and provides various tools for analyzing it, such as highlighting cardiac events and showing their chronology.
The company says that a cardiogram can be obtained from any legal device. Doctors upload data from them to the CardioAI online platform, where AI interprets it into a report. The functional diagnostics doctor can review it and send it to the one who is managing the patient. CardioAI can also be integrated into an electronic medical record system to store ECG results in the patient's history.
The startup sells both access to the software and a full package of services, which includes the service, biosensors, customization, and cardiogram processing. The price for use is not disclosed, and it depends on the client's request.
The product works in Ukraine, there are pilot projects in the United States, and the startup is also registering medical devices in Europe. CardioAI is mostly used in private clinics, including Dobrobut, Odrex, and Adonis. The team includes developers and several diagnosticians. The co-founders also invest in the startup.
"We're trying to get to the point where we get enough money from our work to finance the development of the next versions," explained founder Maksym Diachenko.