New player in digital diabetes management 

Diabetes app Smit.fit from India and Qatar-based digital therapeutics (DTx) company Droobi Health have announced their merger. 

The combined entity called DroobiSmit, headquartered in Singapore, aims to be a leading diabetes solution provider in the Middle East and South Asia regions. It will offer personalised solutions for people with pre-diabetes, diabetes, and hypertension, leveraging digital twin technology, predictive analytics, and advanced monitoring. 

Sujit Chakrabarty, founder of Smit.fit who will also be at the helm of DroobiSmit, mentioned that they will look to enter emerging markets, particularly Saudi Arabia. Former Qatari Minister of Telecommunications Dr Hessa Al Jaber is also set to join the company's board. 

Fitterfly launches empathetic AI chatbot 

Fitterfly, a DTx company from India, has harnessed AI technologies to develop an empathetic conversational chatbot that assists with health and fitness management. 

Dubbed JEDi, this chatbot on the Fitterfly Metabolic Health app offers customised advice and nudges based on user responses, health data, and preferences.

"The JEDi architecture is hybrid with rule-based [natural language processing] on an Expert system foundation complemented with large language models. It's connected to the Fitterfly knowledge base which powers our therapies," Ammar Jagirdar, head of X Labs at Fitterfly, said, explaining the chatbot architecture.

JEDi can also come as a plug-and-play solution or an add-on service for corporates, including insurance companies.

Nuvilab's new mobile solution features genAI, CGM tech

South Korean food AI company Nuvilab has come up with a new mobile solution for managing the nutrition of people with diabetes.

Without giving out many details on the new solution, the company shared that it is incorporating continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and generative AI to enhance its effectiveness. 

The launch of this new offering comes as Nuvilab is expanding its healthcare service targets to include people with Type 2 diabetes. 

Meanwhile, the company recently signed a formal contract to implement its AI food scanner in the inpatient care of Alexandra Hospital in Singapore, following a successful seven-week pilot. The scanner has a 95% average accuracy in recording and analysing meals of patients per bed. 

Qure.ai's latest FDA approval for AI CXR solution 

Indian medical imaging solutions provider Qure.ai has bagged another clearance from the United States Food and Drug Administration for its AI-based chest X-ray solution. 

qXR for Lung Nodule is reportedly the first FDA-approved solution for identifying and localising lung nodules using computer vision, intended for use by radiologists, pulmonologists, and ER physicians. The solution can detect and highlight regions with suspected pulmonary nodules that are 6-30 millimetres in size. 

It is the company's 13th FDA clearance and the sixth for its range of chest X-ray solutions.

Oncoshot to power clinical trials at Ablaze with advanced analytics 

Singaporean medical AI startup Oncoshot has partnered with clinical trial solutions provider Zhejiang Ablaze Medicine from China to optimise clinical trial infrastructure. 

Oncoshot will embed advanced analytics and automation to elevate Ablaze's trial design and planning. It will also deliver federated data infrastructure to support Ablaze and its partners. 

Their goal, according to Ablaze co-founder and director Marco Meng, is to "help predict optimal trial sites, enhance patient matching and retention, and enable a continuous cycle of trial design improvements powered by data and technology."