Valuable contribution to research: Symptoma founder Jama Nateqi is 'Austrian of the Year'

Jama Nateqi, founder and CEO of Symptoma, is the "Austrian of the Year" in the category "Research"! The handover of the trophy a few days ago was just as extraordinary as his achievements for science: on a boat in the Attersee at 5°C outdoor temperature. Jama thus became the first award winner in the history of the Austria Awards to accept the trophy wearing a wetsuit. At yesterday's award ceremony at the ORF Radiokulturhaus, it was a bit warmer after all.

The annual Austria Award of the daily newspaper "Die Presse" honors outstanding achievements in areas of science, economy and humanity. Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Rainer Nowak and ORF III Editor-in-Chief Ingrid Thurnher hosted the award ceremony on 22 October. Due to the pandemic, the event had to take place on a smaller scale than the years before. Of course, the corona crisis has been a frequent topic among the award-winning projects. As in previous years, the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG, and several others were present. The recorded event can be rewatched in the ORF media library.

With the establishment of the world’s first chatbot solution for screening COVID-19 and 20,000 other diseases, Jama Nateqi deservedly won the award. The innovative tool is online at www.symptoma.com. It is a digital health assistant that helps both doctors and patients clarify symptoms.

By entering symptoms, the system checks a huge database to calculate the probability of a particular disease. The solution is based on countless medical publications, patient records, and medical reports, and has the highest diagnostic accuracy among comparable tools. What's special about it is that the use of artificial intelligence makes it possible to analyze even free text or questions. Under "tiramisu," the system suggests "salmonella," under "Elon Musk" you end up with bipolar disorder.

Symptoma has already been awarded several times, for example as "the best and promising eHealth solution" by the European Commission and the Dutch Ministry of Health in 2016. In 2018, the project received funding from the European Commission to address the global problem of misdiagnosis. In 2020, Symptoma eventually supported companies, hospitals, and governments in identifying COVID-19 clusters and people at risk.

Jama Nateqi is exceptional in many ways: not everyone goes swimming in the Attersee every day at 5° C - even fewer are presented with the trophy for the 'Austrian of the Year'. However, the German-born athlete's ambition became apparent even earlier: Jama already wanted to become a doctor at the age of six. Ten years later, at only 16, he founded matheboard.de with his friend Thomas Lutz. The platform for math tutoring is still popular today, with about 100 volunteers contributing to the project. The idea of using the internet to set up and share social projects developed further while he was studying medicine in Salzburg. It bothered him that many medical questions remained unanswered despite internet research. So without further ado, he looked for his own solution to the problem: soon the digital health assistant Symptoma was launched. Together with Thomas Lutz, he set up the project in 2006, which has been growing steadily ever since. Since January of this year, thanks to the chatbot, more than 40 million people have received a warning that they are probably infected with the coronavirus. An essential contribution in times of the pandemic that definitely deserves the award.

Image: DiePresse/Symptoma.com