TIME100 AI 2024: Chris Mansi

Credit - Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source: Courtesy of Chris Mansi)

When someone is having a stroke, they lose 2 million brain cells every minute. It’s a leading cause of disability and death globally. Chris Mansi, a neurosurgeon turned co-founder of Viz.AI, wants to help people get the care they need much faster.

The company’s algorithms, which analyze a patient’s various tests and scans to help diagnose stroke and other emergencies, can already shave off 66 minutes of the time it takes for stroke patients to receive specialized care. “That is equivalent to reducing disability by one year,” Mansi says. The algorithm’s success has led to Viz.ai deploying it in over 1,600 hospitals.

The company’s platform also facilitates communication with specialists at different hospitals, helping ensure those in rural areas or underserved communities with very few medical providers, can get to the right specialists in time. Mansi explains: “We’re not just detecting the stroke, but we're sending an alert to the neurosurgeon in that specialist hospital,” empowering doctors to decide much faster whether transferring the patient is required.

Mansi co-founded Viz.ai in 2016 while in the Stanford MBA program. Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, who was also his professor, decided to seed-fund the company. In 2018, Viz.ai’s stroke algorithm became the first of its kind to receive FDA approval. Since then, the company has continued to grow the types of data and list of conditions it can detect, boasting a total of 13 FDA-approved algorithms that can help triage a range of heart, lung and brain conditions.

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