Sanofi Launches AI-Powered AccelRare® Tool to Accelerate Rare Disease Diagnosis Across India

Bengaluru: Sanofi has unveiled AccelRare®, an AI-driven digital pre-diagnosis platform aimed at addressing one of healthcare's most pressing challenges in India—the years-long diagnostic delays that patients with rare diseases endure before receiving proper treatment.

The pharmaceutical company framed the launch as a pivotal step in its broader strategy to deploy artificial intelligence across the entire healthcare value chain, moving beyond laboratory and clinical research settings to directly support clinicians at the moment of patient care.

The Scope of the Challenge

India faces a paradoxical situation regarding rare diseases. While an estimated 72-96 million individuals—roughly 7% of the population—live with a rare condition, the Indian Organisation of Rare Diseases notes that 43% of Indian doctors have never treated a rare disease patient. This knowledge gap creates a critical vulnerability in the healthcare system.

The consequences are significant. Patients presenting with symptoms of rare conditions are frequently misdiagnosed or their cases dismissed. A child exhibiting thrombocytopenia, a hallmark indicator of Gaucher Disease, is more likely to be treated for dengue fever than referred for specialist evaluation. This diagnostic journey often spans years and can result in irreversible health complications before a correct diagnosis is finally established.

How AccelRare® Functions

The platform operates on a straightforward principle: healthcare professionals input patient symptoms, medical history, and available test results into the secure, anonymous web interface. Within 5-10 minutes, the system generates a differential diagnosis encompassing 310 rare diseases with a reliability rate exceeding 88%.

Beyond the diagnosis suggestions, AccelRare® provides comprehensive descriptions of each suspected condition, recommends additional diagnostic tests, and connects patients with government-recognized centres of excellence across India for specialist referral.

Developed and validated by 67 rare disease experts working across 13 rare disease networks, the platform is built on MedVir™, which holds Class I medical device certification in Europe. In India, it operates as an approved web-based pre-diagnostic tool and is classified as a Class A medical device. Critically, the platform is offered at no cost, requires no registration, maintains high security standards, and collects no patient identifying information.

Expert Perspectives

Dr. Mayur Shah, Head of Rare Diseases Business at Sanofi India, emphasised the urgency of early intervention. "An estimated 72-96 million people in India are living with a rare disease, and by the time many receive an accurate diagnosis, irreversible damage may already have occurred," he stated. "AccelRare® transforms compassion into concrete action by democratising rare disease expertise and placing the diagnostic intelligence of 50 world-class specialists into the hands of every doctor across India. When treatment begins on time, lives are transformed."

Dr. Milan Choksey, Medical Lead for Rare Diseases at Sanofi India, highlighted the practical clinical value. "AccelRare® provides a general paediatrician or primary care physician with a structured, evidence-based differential diagnosis covering 270 rare diseases in under ten minutes, with accuracy above 88%, validated by 50 rare disease experts," he explained. "For a busy practice seeing hundreds of children weekly, this represents a second opinion from the world's leading rare disease specialists, available at the precise moment clinical suspicion arises—before a child becomes lost to years of inconclusive testing."

Broader Context

Sanofi's commitment to the rare disease community in India extends beyond this launch. The company has maintained a presence in the country for nearly seven decades and operates India's longest-running humanitarian program providing free treatment for Lysosomal Storage Disorders through its India Charitable Access Program. The company also conducts clinical trials locally, operates a major manufacturing facility in Goa that serves markets across 24 countries, and hosts one of its global talent hubs in Hyderabad.