MD

Post-pitch story

Dr. Therese Canares is a pediatric emergency doctor who wanted a faster way to tell whether a sore throat is strep. CurieDx, which she developed with Johns Hopkins computer scientist Mathias Unberath starting in 2021, is a smartphone app that takes a photo of the back of your throat and uses AI to screen for strep. Early data from the team suggested the app caught 94% of strep cases, compared with 64% for doctors looking at the throat themselves. Those figures were reported by Johns Hopkins and are early, so we're treating them as promising, not proven. CurieDx has been building steadily on grants and small investments. It raised $445,000 through the Johns Hopkins Hexcite accelerator and won support from the National Science Foundation, the Bisciotti Foundation and the Maryland Innovation Initiative. In August 2025, TEDCO, Maryland's state-backed investor, put in $100,000, followed by another $200,000 in July 2026. Medical apps need regulators and doctors on board before they reach families, and that's the road ahead. If CurieDx gets there, a parent could one day check for strep without a trip to urgent care. We couldn't confirm CurieDx's episode details on The Pitch's website, so we've left the episode out here.