PM Narendra Modi praised MEDxAI Innovations, a VIT Chennai-incubated startup building AI tools for cancer screening and drug discovery.

What happened

Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised the work of MEDxAI Innovations, a healthcare deep-tech startup incubated at VIT Chennai, DT Next reported. He spoke with the company's CEO, Dr Sheena C Pravin, during the inauguration of the Porur Metro Rail project in Chennai. Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay was also present.

The report does not say what the Prime Minister said. It describes his appreciation as encouragement for the startup as it tries to turn its research into products for healthcare and drug companies.

The two products

Cervilens is an AI tool for cervical cancer pre-screening. The company says it is meant to make screening easier to reach and to help find the disease early.

Quantum PharmX is an AI platform for in-silico, or computer-based, drug discovery. It covers molecular analysis and genomic profiling. The company calls its work "quantum computational intelligence", but the report does not explain what the quantum part involves.

The people behind it

According to her VIT Chennai faculty page, Dr Sheena Christabel Pravin is an Assistant Professor in the School of Electronics Engineering. She earned a PhD from Anna University in 2021 in speech signal processing, hybrid deep learning and generative AI. The page lists MEDxAI Innovations (P) Ltd as a startup she co-founded.

The company thanked VIT founder and chancellor G Viswanathan and VIT Vice President GV Selvam for supporting research and entrepreneurship.

What is not known

The report gives no funding, user numbers, accuracy results, regulatory approvals or launch dates for either product. Its descriptions of the products come from the company and were not tested independently.