fcuro Inc. develops software that harnesses AI’s powers to save lives and alleviate doctors’workload in the emergency medical scene, where every second matters. We spoke with Naoki Okada, fcuro’s CEO who also works as an emergency physician and a trauma surgeon.
Please tell us about fcuro’s services.
We develop AI software to support ER doctors. Our top priority is the development of ERATS, a system where AI assists physicians in their CT diagnostic imaging.
For example, severe trauma patients, their chances of survival severely diminish unless treatment begins within 15 minutes after arriving at hospitals. In many cases, the damage to internal organs is not visible from the patient’s external appearance. That is why we run total-body CT scans, which usually output about 300 images, sometimes up to 1,000. The ER physician who is resuscitating the patient also needs to interpret these hundreds of images. However, given the urgency, the physician may miss important lesions, especially during the night shift when staffing is low.
From copious amounts of total-body CT images, AI detects and extracts important lesions
In under ten seconds, ERATS can detect and extract lesions from total-body CT images. Physicians can focus only on these images, enabling them to accelerate their diagnoses and begin treatments much earlier. We are now in the process of implementing ERATS at Osaka General Medical Center, Shizuoka Saiseikai General Hospital, and other hospitals.
During the outbreak of COVID-19, as a Cabinet Secretariat project, we developed the most precise COVID-19 CT diagnostic imaging AI by applying this technology. The software was deployed in various emergency medical centers, and was recognized as having best-in-class accuracy.
( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-52135-y )
What is fcuro’s strength?
Our strength is that I see first-hand what technologies can make a difference right now through my daily work as an Emergency physician. I believe Remaining active on the Frontlines of ER is the only way to develop products that are sorely needed. Medical facilities that have implemented our products tell us they have confidence in us, especially because I am on the frontlines.
We currently have thirty employees. They are my teammates from the clinical field and engineers; Inoue, our CTO, is a childhood friend.
What’s next for fcuro?
Our next step is a Multimodal critical care AI system integrating imaging and clinical data (an AI system that can process consolidated diagnostic data and provide requested output) to bring a human-and-AI hybrid critical care. Further, the goal is to implement this hybrid emergency medicine overseas.
Disparity in medical care persists worldwide, and many countries lack the necessary infrastructure for emergency medical care. We want to deliver our technology to assist local physicians in saving as many lives as possible in these nations. When this happens I want to be there too, not as a business person but as another doctor to save lives using our technology.
At Kansai’s Start-up Incubation Program, Kidou, fcuro was selected from 173 companies.