Ada Health

Ada Health GmbH is a company based in Berlin which produces Ada, a symptom checker app.

It was founded by Dr. Claire Novorol, a British pediatrician, Dr. Martin Hirsch and Daniel Nathrath. Nathrath is a graduate of the University of Houston Law Center. The company has raised $69.3 million since it was founded in 2011.

The app started out as a platform service for doctors and was adapted in 2016 to focus on the bits patients could understand. Reported symptoms, which can be tracked over time, are matched with those of similar age and gender and reports the statistical likelihood that the patient has a certain condition. The detailed report, compiled by Ada, can be sent to a doctor as a PDF.[1]

The app is available in English, German, Spanish and Portuguese.[2] In September 2018 it had been downloaded about five million times. It is free of charge and has the highest consumer ranks among similar apps.[3] It is to be made available in Swahili, and in Romanian thanks to funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Fondation Botnar.

It has been compared to WebMD, Babylon's GP at Hand app and Your.MD. In October 2017 when three apps were tested with symptoms from asthma, shingles, alcohol-related liver disease, and urinary tract infection it performed very well. It asked about the most important symptoms, and provided the best diagnoses. It produced diagrams showing which of the symptoms for each disease were present and the strength of the link, and a diagram of number of people out of ten or 100 likely to have that diagnosis.[4]

It is planned to customize the software for some countries by collecting data on the prevalence of diseases, like malaria, which may help to prevent epidemics.[5]

References

  1. ↑ "A free service lets you type in your illness symptoms and learn what's ailing you — and the startup behind it has raised $69 million". Business Insider. 5 September 2018. Retrieved 22 September 2018.
  2. ↑ "Ada health app launches in Spanish and Portuguese". Pharmaforum. 24 August 2018. Retrieved 22 September 2018.
  3. ↑ "Meet Ada, the multilingual 'doctor' in your pocket created by former Houston student". Houston Chronicle. 14 September 2018. Retrieved 22 September 2018.
  4. ↑ "Can you really trust the medical apps on your phone?". Wired. 1 October 2017. Retrieved 22 September 2018.
  5. ↑ "Gates Foundation Backs Self-Checkup App's Africa Expansion". Bloomberg. 10 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
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