Froncort.AI Gets $2.3M From Google.org to Expand AI-Based Disease Screening in India

Froncort.AI, a Pune-based healthcare AI company, has received $2.3 million in funding from Google.org to expand its AI-based disease screening platform in India. The company said that it will also receive $200,000 in Google Cloud credits and pro bono technical expertise from Google.

“The world does not lack experts. It lacks their reach. AI-NETRA puts that expertise in the health worker's hands at the door: where to go, whom to screen, and when,” said Dr Ujjwal Rao, founder and CEO of Froncort.AI.

Froncort.AI is among 15 recipients selected for Google.org’s Impact Challenge: AI for Government Innovation. The latest support builds on Google’s previous backing for the company’s AI-NETRA validation study.

The funding will support the development of mAI-NETRA, a mobile version of AI-NETRA that will help frontline health workers identify areas at high risk of tuberculosis (TB) and other infectious diseases. The application will combine government health programme data with Google’s Earth AI models and local indicators such as settlement density, land use, rainfall and flooding.

According to Froncort.AI, the platform identifies high-risk areas within 300-metre zones and converts them into ranked work paths, household clusters and routes for frontline health workers. The mobile application is designed to work offline and in local languages, allowing workers to access screening plans on their phones. The company said government health programme data will remain stored and processed locally in India.

In a validation study conducted with Maharashtra’s state TB programme, AI-guided teams found a similar number of confirmed pulmonary TB cases while screening two-thirds fewer people than routine methods, Froncort.AI said.

The published Pune pilot report provides the underlying figures: AI-guided teams screened 66,095 people and identified 10 bacteriologically confirmed, NAAT-positive pulmonary TB cases. The standard screening campaign covered 1,77,322 people and identified nine cases under the same definition. This translated to 6,610 people screened per confirmed case in the AI-guided arm, compared with 19,702 under standard screening.

The company reported that the cost per confirmed case fell from approximately $29,000 to $10,000, while 92% of participating frontline workers reported a lower workload. 

The new funding will help extend the platform to six diseases: TB, leprosy, malaria, dengue, cholera and leptospirosis. Froncort.AI plans to deploy the application across up to eight high-burden districts in three Indian states, covering two to three million people.

The deployment will be independently monitored against five targets, including finding at least 20% more cases, reducing the number of people screened per case by more than 50%, faster sample transportation, lower government costs per case detected and higher performance-based earnings for frontline workers.

The company also plans to publish mAI-NETRA as an open-source blueprint so other governments can adopt and adapt the platform for their public health programmes.