Seeing the possibilities with MONA: “They share our startup mindset”

MONA is a Belgian healthcare AI startup transforming the early detection of diabetes-related eye conditions such as diabetic retinopathy (DR), the #1 cause of blindness for working-age adults. Their mission: to help patients protect their vision by making early detection of retinal diseases more comfortable, fast and affordable. CTO Stef Rommes chatted with us about how Dashdot helped harness the power of their AI-driven solution with a user-friendly web portal.

Sharing the startup mindset

“We use AI to analyze eye photos and collect data,” says Stef. “The AI itself is not really user-friendly, so we needed to create a web portal.” MONA went on the hunt for a third party for development and UX. “Dashdot was able to do both so they had the edge there.” MONA reached out to different companies all over the world. “We asked for estimates all over the place,” said Stef. “Dashdot offered a reasonable price. The other companies had given us an idea of their approach, but Dashdot quickly put together wireframes and gave a clear idea of what it could look like.”

From their initial conversations with Dashdot co-founder Maarten Jansen, it quickly became clear that Dashdot shared MONA’s startup mindset. “A lot of other companies were thinking from within their own corner,” says Stef. “Maarten really thought along with us, and the tech they proposed was good. He asked lots of critical questions, and our communication was very efficient. We were also immediately welcomed at their office, the vibe was very informal.”

Flexible and user-friendly

MONA had the AI and the know-how, says Stef, “but AI has to be packaged nicely before you can just start selling it.” MONA’s customers are hospitals and ophthalmologists’ offices, but they are screening patients, so the direct users are a B2C public. “User-friendliness is key,” says Stef. “Especially because there’s a lot of hesitancy around AI.”

Dashdot built a platform where doctors can log in, create a profile for the patient, and create a screening for patients where the needed photos can be uploaded, all in a user-friendly way. “Technically speaking there is a good flow between the different components,” says Stef. “Lots of companies want to stick with Amazon or a fixed supplier. With Dashdot it was the opposite. One thing I noticed is that they were cloud-agnostic. There is very little vendor lock-in. They gave us their preferences and advice, but the final choice was ours. That gave us maximum freedom.”

Aiming for future growth

MONA wanted to create a tool with scalability in mind, but that was budget-friendly at the same time. “We have an implementation that works for us, which didn’t take too long to build/develop” explains Stef. “We’re good for the coming years, because the solution can grow with us.”

While Stef is the technical head of the company, he clarifies, “my expertise is mainly within AI, and less in web development. Dashdot was really a central pillar in this as experts based on the web platform.” A lot of communication was needed to create the platform, but “Dashdot was involved and engaged, without asking too much time from us,” says Stef. “They were concrete, efficient, and focused on a good end result.”

MONA later hired a developer with Dashdot’s help. “They helped with the job post, application and screening, and also the training. We didn’t have the detailed internal knowledge at the time to ask the right technological questions about that profile. Dashdot really helped us there, and that’s how we found a profile that’s a great match.”