Female startup: a project that helps identify serious disease

As part of the Female Startup edition, we continue to acquaint subscribers with female startups. This time we invited Tomiris Ydyrysbayeva from Kazakhstan to be IT Park’s guest. She is the founder and co-owner of the DermaMarker project.

Tomiris is 17 years old. She is studying in the 11th grade at the Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Astana. Despite her young age, Tomiris, together with her friend Arai, founded a startup DermaMarker that is useful for society.

The girls were inspired to create such a project by their interest in dermatology and medicine.

“Skin cancer is one of the most common diseases in Kazakhstan. Most patients, unfortunately, come for medical help already with advanced cases. For this reason, the prevention and prevention of skin cancer is the key to a healthy nation.”

The sad statistics inspired the girls to create a platform for the timely detection of dangerous skin diseases using artificial intelligence.

This is how the DermaMarker platform was created, which scans pigmented skin lesions on the body, analyzes them using artificial intelligence and identifies 9 dermatological diseases.

How does the project help society?

The mission of DermaMarker, says Tomiris, is to inform and carry out timely diagnosis of pigmented formations, thereby preventing deaths from skin cancer.

“The success of any state depends on people. A country can achieve development only if the inhabitants of the country are healthy. Our startup helps prevent dangerous skin diseases and improve the health of society. We are confident that this is a huge contribution to the future of the republic.”

There are currently 6 people on the project team:

• Sherkhan Bakdaulet - website developer;

• Aru Kudasova — UI designer;

• Amir Zhaksylyk - developer of a neural network;

• Janelle Mamyrbek — data-research;

• and the founders: Tomiris Ydyrysbaeva - CEO, co-founder and Arai Kamalieva - COO, co-founder.

How do you plan to develop a startup?

According to Tomiris, she and his team have not yet received funding for the project, but plan to do so in the near future to promote.

“During the initial stages, we had difficulty planning our startup. We were limited in knowledge and did not know many of the nuances of managing and developing startups. The most difficult part of the project was the MVP development stage, as it was necessary to train the neural network so that it could recognize diseases. But thanks to the incubation program, we have made great strides in two months. At the moment, we are at the MVP stage testing and improving it.”

As the guest notes, the startup industry in Kazakhstan is actively developing: various IT hubs, incubation and acceleration programs, startup societies are being founded.

In addition, the girl notes the advantage of a startup - flexibility and the ability to adapt.

“Startups move based on the feedback they get. This is what allows them to develop in the right direction and improve the idea in the development process. We are very grateful to the Tumaris.Tech program, where we received a lot of support, the knowledge shared by Tumaris.Tech mentors and partners allowed us to move from an idea to an MVP and conduct CustDev. In addition to the main sessions, Tumaris.Tech holds sessions on financial literacy, where our team learns how to profitably allocate finances and plan the budget effectively.”

Tomiris advised novice startups to be bold, believe in their idea and in the values ​​that their startup creates.