Doctoral student draws on IST skills in startup for AI-driven diagnostic tool

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Funding is a key part of any type of start-up project and for Moichor's founders it's what put their business on the market. Led by an interdisciplinary group of Penn State alumni and students, including College of Information Sciences and Technology doctoral candidate Thanh Le, Moichor is a tech-centered animal diagnostics company that recently raised over $4 million in venture capital funding. The company’s mission is to help veterinarians lengthen the lives of their patients by applying deep learning to the diagnostics the veterinarians use daily.

“The more money we earn, the more exposure we receive,” said Le, who serves as the company’s chief technology officer. “This exposure allows us to bring ideas and present it to many different types of people. The most recent funding helped with further advancements in the project.”

Moichor’s artificial intelligence and machine learning software leverages data-driven image learning to classify cells, making manual complete blood counts less subjective. The approach could lead to more accurate and faster diagnostics, ultimately improving clinical outcomes and potentially saving animals’ lives.

“Veterinary medicine is still an old-school business, especially when it comes to diagnostics,” Le said. “Veterinarians are not used to seeing the most accurate and actionable results.”

He added, “We set out to change that by using AI to increase the resolution of diagnostic results and establish new standards in diagnostics to make sure people and their companions get the highest quality of care. We took steps to translate this new standard into actionable insights with the help of staff experts working alongside the clinicians.”

In 2018, through opportunities such as the Invent Penn State Summer Founders Program and Penn State Startup Week, then-undergraduates Shevy Karbasiafshar, class of 2019 in biology; Matthew Chen, class of 2019 in biology; and Le were a part of a team that launched an idea that ultimately led to Moichor. Their project at the time was inspired by chemotherapy patients, like Karbasiafshar’s grandfather, who found it difficult to regularly travel to outpatient centers to have complete blood counts done.

Their idea, called HemoGo solved the issue through a smartphone app combined with a proprietary test-strip reader that enabled a patient to take a complete blood count test at home and send the results electronically to their medical care team. After doing some additional research, Le and HemoGo’s co-founders decided to change paths that led to what Moichor is now.

“The idea of the project at the time was to use computer vision to do blood testing for human chemotherapy patients so that they didn’t have to go to the clinic every time that they need to monitor their levels,” said Le. “I am passionate about (the evolution to Moichor) because I have pets of my own whom I love dearly.”

He added, “Also, because animal diagnostics technology can use a lot of innovation and their technology is even less developed than for humans. We see that there is so much to be done; it was like a call-to-action.”

Strong IST foundation helps bring an idea to life

When the team first approached Le about their idea for HemoGo, he thought it was only going to involve smaller projects that wouldn’t develop into a large-scale program. They met on a regular basis and saw the idea take shape over the course of a year. In the summer of 2019, they moved to California to fully execute the idea and brought Moichor to fruition.

“The most rewarding part was this idea coming to life,” said Le. “When we first started out this project, it was an idea without any working parts, customer relations, business or technology. What we had at the time was a lot of ambition, but we were able to bring it to life with a product on the market that people actually use.”

As the CTO, Le is responsible for all technology-related issues with the software, from development to research — using skills he’s honed at the College of IST.

“At IST we are allowed to do our own research and in the process of that, you build up this new foundation of knowledge that there's no other way to get beside painstakingly going through this experience of searching,” he said. “I'm now able to break a problem down into different technical aspects, and then go and tackle them one by one. Without the expertise I have from IST, there would be no way to do that in an effective and successful manner.”

Le added that he’s found real-world projects in the tech industry rarely focus on a single problem or domain, and that the College of IST has prepared him to work in that type of environment.

" My adviser at IST, Dr. Honavar, had given me a lot of space to grow while finding my path,” he said.

Working across disciplines, Moichor’s other team members are responsible for business coordination and operation.

“We all come from very different backgrounds, and we all have a different way of thinking about things,” said Le. “It all comes back to commitment to the idea so we can work together really well to share and modify ideas and allow everybody to contribute.”

After the recent round of funding, Moichor has a full staff of expert engineers, scientists and clinical pathologists all collaborating to solve the problems they set out to achieve. They now have their first prototype for a portable point of care device which will make the company’s technology more accessible to as many clinics and pets as possible.

“I think at the end of the day, the impact that we are making for pets and the field of vet medicine is what motivates me the most,” he said. “With just the small amount of time I have worked at Moichor, we have changed the way many vet clinics and hospitals work today. We can confidently say that we are well on our way to becoming a gold-standard diagnostic in the first market we entered.”