Agnos: Your health companion that brings AI to diagnose symptoms

With these problems, an AI-powered diagnostic application called 'Agnos' was created by Paphonwit (Wit) Chaiwatanodom, CEO and co-founder of Agnos Health. This Thai health tech startup addresses patients’ pain points and solves the problems by using AI to help diagnose diseases. 

On Thailand GameChanger, we had the opportunity to interview Wit from Agnos about Thailand's current health tech and Covid-19 situation as well as the goal Agnos hopes to accomplish in the future.

Wit tells that Agnos was born because he saw the problem of the management system of doctors and patients. Due to the fact that the number of patients is larger than doctors, forcing patients to wait for a long time just to meet the doctor. Moreover, he noticed that more than 50% of Thai people do not have basic health literacy. Therefore, when they get a little sick, they immediately go to hospital without analyzing their symptoms well first.

Agnos co-founder and his team of doctors and partners started to develop a symptom checker AI system helping patients diagnose their conditions by themselves at the initial stage of their sickness. Agnos application is a health screening platform for people to help analyze their own symptoms before going to the hospital in severe cases or getting recommendations on medicines at an Agnos partner’s drugstore. Now Thailand is facing the Covid-19 crisis, the company has also developed a new feature for Covid-19 basic diagnosis and received positive feedback from users, with up to 60,000 visitors.

Agnos Health is a health tech startup which is related to the life and health of people. Therefore, they took more than a year to develop the system because of many steps working with doctors and teams. The challenge found in the process is the algorithm to manage the massive data that Agnos team has to make sure it is effective and secure for users.

Wit also mentioned that the big problem of Health Tech in Thailand is that the government tries to compete with private companies, resulting in inefficiency. This is a lose-lose situation. He suggests the government should use the data that it has in hand to help startups by fostering and regulating them instead of being competitors. In the end, the CEO of Agnos said that their goal is to be the center of the health tech ecosystem, being the health companion of every person to have a better life.

For those who are interested in using the platform to check their symptoms, Agnos application is available free on Google Play and Apple Store.

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Thailand GameChanger podcast is focused on the driving forces behind the startup ecosystem in Thailand and Southeast Asia, produced by True Digital Park and hosted by Michael Waitze.

See more episodes at http://thailandgamechanger.com/

True Digital Park—Southeast Asia's largest tech and startup hub located in the heart of Bangkok CyberTech District.