Life
Personal story leads Kinglsey Ndoh to launch a startup to improve cancer care in Africa and beyond
Seattle entrepreneur Kingsley Ndoh is driven by the memory of his aunt, who died too young of colon cancer.
A lot of things went wrong when she was sick more than 10 years ago in Nigeria, said Ndoh. The clinical guidelines at the time set age thresholds for screening based largely on data from white populations, which have lower relative risk of the disease. She was also misdiagnosed and finally learned she had a late-stage disease at age 50, then the recommended age at the first screening. She passed away 3 years later.
Since then, Nigeria-born Ndoh has been on a mission to improve cancer care. In 2021 he founded health tech startup Hurone AI to support cancer treatment in Africa and beyond with remote patient monitoring and tele-oncology designed for resource-poor settings.
“The vision of the company is very personal to me,” said Ndoh, who trained as a physician and is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington.
There is about one oncologist for every 294 patients in the U.S., whereas Sub-Saharan Africa has about one for every 3,000 cancer patients.