The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2022–2024
Iris's nodoca replaces the nasal swab with an AI throat camera — ACC 2024 double GP
Medtech startup Iris built nodoca, a camera that reads flu signs from a throat photo in seconds — it swept ACC 2024's Design and Innovation Grands Prix.
Aillis Inc. (Iris)
What it had to solve
Sho Okuyama, an emergency physician who had practiced on remote islands with little more than a stethoscope, saw that the throat holds enormous diagnostic information — yet examining it had barely changed in centuries. The standard influenza test required inserting a swab deep into the nose, causing real discomfort and often failing in the earliest days after symptoms appeared.
How it works
Iris (Aillis) is a Japanese medical AI startup founded in 2017 by Sho Okuyama, a former emergency physician who had treated patients on remote islands with little more than a stethoscope. His observation: the throat carries rich diagnostic information, yet the way doctors examined it — and the nasal swab used for flu tests — had hardly changed in centuries and was genuinely unpleasant.
The company's answer, nodoca, was a compact camera device plus AI that photographs the pharynx, combines the image with interview data, and returns an influenza assessment in about ten seconds — no swab deep in the nose, and usable earlier after symptoms begin. Because no AI training data for throats existed, Iris lent its cameras to about 100 medical institutions and spent roughly three years building one of the world's largest pharyngeal image libraries, more than 500,000 images collected with patient consent.
After five years of development and clinical validation, nodoca became the first AI-equipped medical device in Japan to be approved as a new medical device and covered by national health insurance; it launched in December 2022. Every clinical use since then feeds anonymized data back into the system, so accuracy compounds — a network effect that has kept competitors out of the field.
In October 2024, ACC TOKYO CREATIVITY AWARDS — Japan's largest creative award — gave nodoca the Grand Prix in both the Design and Creative Innovation categories, recognizing the device as a redesign of an everyday medical moment rather than just a piece of software.
Why it lands
- It replaced the most dreaded moment of a flu test — the deep nasal swab — with a camera scan, so the product's kindness was the idea, not an add-on.
- Iris built its own hardware because it understood that the real bottleneck in medical AI was data acquisition, not diagnosis.
- Lending cameras to clinics turned 100 medical institutions into co-developers, producing a training set no competitor could assemble later.
- Insurance coverage and regulatory approval made the device a practical clinic tool, so the design reached real patients instead of staying a concept.
- Each use improves the algorithm, creating a self-reinforcing lead in a field with no latecomers.
What it did
nodoca became the first AI-equipped medical device in Japan approved as a 'new medical device' with insurance coverage, and by late 2024 it was installed in about 1,200 clinics; by 2026 that had grown past 2,000 institutions and several million throat images. In October 2024 Japan's ACC TOKYO CREATIVITY AWARDS gave it the Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Award (Grand Prix) in both the Design and Creative Innovation categories, honoring a product that redesigned the experience of a routine examination.
What you can take
In medical AI the moat is the data pipeline, not the algorithm: Iris built the throat camera itself, collected images no one else had, and made a product that improves with every use.
Since then
nodoca kept compounding after its ACC double Grand Prix: in October 2025 it received approval for an additional Covid-19 detection function, and by 2026 it was in use at more than 2,000 medical institutions with several million throat images accumulated. Iris is researching whether the same images can reveal lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, and is preparing clinical trials in the United States — betting that the data and algorithms built in Japan transfer elsewhere because mucous membranes are highly consistent across populations.
Sources
- Iris wins Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Awards in two categories at ACC TOKYO CREATIVITY AWARDS
- A New Device Solves One of the Most Annoying Parts of Routine Physicals
- 2024 ACC Design category jury review — nodoca
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