Imagine you’re in a terrible auto accident—and first responders know how badly you’re injured within seconds. That’s the premise behind Israeli startup MDGo, which uses vehicle data to measure the physical forces exerted upon occupants during a car crash and then runs that data through artificial intelligence algorithms to predict the severity of injuries in real time.
Within nine seconds of a crash, the company claims it can send medical reports to hospitals and insurance companies. Such information can help first responders decide what sort of ambulance to dispatch or which trauma centers should be considered.
“The problem in medicine is that when you don’t know what you are looking for, you don’t find it,” Dr. Itay Bengad, founder of MDGo, told Automotive News, a sister publication of Modern Healthcare. “So our job here is to allow the vehicle to speak my language, a physician’s language.”
Once a patient arrives at the hospital, data can detail the crash’s severity and relay info on injuries sustained in similar crashes. That may help catch injuries that are tricky to diagnose without an indicator to look for them.
Bowel perforations, for example, are difficult to detect via CT scans, according to Bengad. But too often, physicians don’t know to look for them until hours later, when patients are suffering from sepsis and near death.
MDGo is running a pilot in Israel using data from 270,000 vehicles. It has completed a proof of concept with an insurance company that had an accuracy rate of 87%, and is working with two automakers on similar proofs of concept and says it has finalized a strategic investment from one.
