Creation of an AI-Powered Medical Application

Worldwide, depression affects 1 in 9 people at some point in their lifetime. Depression and anxiety levels worsened considerably during the recent pandemic, in Canada as well as in the US. Treatment for these mental illnesses, however, has not evolved much in decades. Medication selection is based on trial and error, which is seldom efficient.

Nearly 70% of patients feel no relief following their first treatment, and 30% of patients are deemed in therapy failure after the fourth unsuccessful treatment. Aifred’s mission is to significantly improve the treatment of depression by leveraging machine learning technology. The company’s efforts have already been recognized in the prestigious XPRIZE competition, winning first place in North America and second place worldwide.

To address the challenges related to treatment selection, their team of AI specialists developed an innovative machine learning model. Aiming to quickly put this technology in the hands of doctors and patients for clinical trials, Aifred turned to Spiria to help develop a cross-platform SaaS application integrating their AI technology.

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Spiria’s experts started out with an exhaustive audit of the existing code and helped the Aifred team define the type of minimum viable product (MVP) that could support the launch of the clinical trials and validate their methodology. They then laid the foundation of a cloud computing architecture and updated the user interface. During the development process, which took place in a classic Agile sprint cycle, the team faced the same regulatory challenges typical of any application dealing with medical data: personal data protection laws, requirements issued by Health Canada, the US Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and a number of ISO standards. In the end, the MVP went live on time, thanks to a sustained and ongoing collaboration between the Aifred and Spiria teams.

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Aifred now has the use of a reliable platform to launch its first large-scale clinical trial with ultimately up to 350 North-American patients. The application is fully functional on mobile devices (Android, iOS, iPadOS) and on all web browsers, which makes it more widely usable. Initial tests in actual settings showed encouraging results: 92% of patients found the tool easy to use, and 86% of doctors deemed it useful in making treatment decisions.
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Equipped with a robust and scalable software solution, Aifred can turn its complete focus back to the core of its business: perfecting an AI model that will bring significant improvement to the treatment of depression and alleviate the burden of patients and their loved ones.