Timeline The digital transformation of healthcare in India

Yusuf HENRIQUES Founder and CEO IndyGeneUS AI

IndyGeneUS AI is a genomics company that is creating the world’s largest blockchain-encrypted repository of indigenous and diasporic African clinical data, aimed at disease prevention and detection, and drug discovery.

Yusuf Henriques decided to form the company after seeing the health disparities between white and Black populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a background in science, public health and technology, he was approached by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create a "hackathon" to address racism in healthcare. At the event IndyGeneUS AI was born, which he currently runs alongside Chief Operating Officer Wilmot Allen and Chief Scientific Officer Bradford Wilson.

The company has established a subsidiary in Kenya, where it is sequencing 18,000 samples from Black people with HIV, with the aim of supplying useful data to pharma companies developing vaccines for HIV. There are also plans to build facilities in other African countries to tackle the lack of sequencing and drug development capacity on the continent.