By Barney Esiet.
For Mary-Brenda Akoda, winning the 2026 Nigeria Prize for Science and Innovation (NPSI) is not the destination. It is the beginning of a much bigger ambition, one that she hopes will see Nigeria among the first countries to benefit from the technology that earned her the prestigious award.
Akoda, whose artificial intelligence-powered MRI innovation, GenMRI, was recognised by the NPSI, wants to change the way patients access magnetic resonance imaging by dramatically reducing the time required for a scan.
She made this clear during an engagement with journalists in Lagos facilitated by Nigeria LNG Limited (NLNG), where she discussed the technology, its validation, plans for deployment and her vision for its impact on healthcare.
“We would want Nigeria to be a priority and not an afterthought,” Akoda said.
For her, the concern is not merely patriotic. It reflects a recurring problem in Nigeria’s innovation ecosystem: promising ideas are developed locally but often find their first major applications elsewhere.
“For too long that’s been the case where we build innovations and we think of elsewhere and then we think of Nigeria later on,” she said.
Akoda wants GenMRI to break that pattern.
From a personal concern to a global ambition
The story behind GenMRI is rooted in a broader concern about delayed diagnosis.
Akoda had previously led Nigeria’s first artificial intelligence research in diabetic retinopathy detection, working with ophthalmologists at the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital.
That experience, she explained, helped shape her interest in using AI to solve practical healthcare problems.
The loss of a loved one also became an important personal driver.
“I could have chosen to embark on any other research, but this particularly kept me up at night,” she said.
That concern eventually evolved into an attempt to tackle one of the bottlenecks in medical imaging: the amount of time patients spend undergoing MRI scans.
GenMRI is designed to reconstruct high-quality MRI images from substantially less scanning data, potentially cutting scan times by up to 90 per cent.
A brain scan that could ordinarily take about 20 minutes, for instance, could potentially be completed in around two minutes.
The significance goes beyond convenience.
In a healthcare system where MRI scanners are limited and expensive, reducing the time spent on each examination could allow existing machines to serve significantly more patients.
Testing the science
But an innovation that promises speed in medical diagnosis must first answer a more important question: does it remain reliable?
Akoda said GenMRI has undergone retrospective validation involving more than 8,800 MRI images, with the technology achieving up to 99.7 per cent similarity with conventional MRI images.
The team subsequently subjected the technology to an independent blinded assessment by a consultant radiologist in the United Kingdom.
The radiologist was presented with conventional MRI images and GenMRI-generated images without being told which was which.
According to Akoda, the radiologist rated the GenMRI images as diagnostically equivalent to the conventional MRI images in all the cases assessed.
For Akoda, that assessment was one of the most important moments in the development of the technology.
“I’ve done all this and you’re like, is this going to hold up to the experts?” she recalled.
The answer, she said, was reassuring.
But the scientist is careful to distinguish between validation and actual clinical deployment.
GenMRI has not yet been routinely deployed in live clinical settings.
The next stage involves prospective clinical pilots, in which the technology will be integrated into actual healthcare workflows, subject to the necessary regulatory approvals.
Nigeria as the testing ground
The transition from research to clinical use is already beginning to take shape.
Akoda said Asirpo Diagnostic Centre is among the Nigerian partners involved in the process, with its Chief Medical Director having previously engaged with her work and expressed interest in a clinical pilot.
She also disclosed that following the NPSI recognition, the Minister of Education had pledged to bring the Minister of Health into the initiative.
In addition, the Chairman of the Committee of Chief Medical Directors of Federal Tertiary Medical Institutions is issuing a letter of intent towards a national pilot.
For Akoda, these developments could provide the foundation for a Nigeria-first rollout.
But getting the technology into hospitals will require more than enthusiasm.
Because GenMRI is classified as software as a medical device, regulatory approval is required before widespread deployment.
Making existing machines work harder
Nigeria’s MRI challenge is not simply a question of technology. It is also a question of access.
High-quality MRI scanners are expensive, with individual machines costing millions of dollars, while the number of available scanners remains limited relative to the country’s population.
Akoda believes technology could provide another route.
Instead of focusing exclusively on buying more machines, she wants existing scanners to work harder.
If a scanner that previously handled a limited number of patients in a day can accommodate substantially more, the potential effect could extend beyond shorter waiting times.
It could mean fewer repeat scans, lower sedation requirements for patients who struggle to remain still, particularly children, and ultimately greater patient throughput.
The hope is that some of those efficiency gains could eventually be reflected in the cost of MRI examinations.
Akoda has a simple message for hospitals that eventually adopt the technology: pass the benefits on to patients.
“If you’re able to realise as much returns and revenue as the technology should enable, then MRI should become more affordable for patients,” she said.
Beyond the machine
The technology also reflects a broader ambition at GenScan AI, the company behind GenMRI.
Akoda does not see the MRI innovation as the final product, but as the beginning of a larger effort to reduce the time between when a patient is referred for investigation and when a diagnosis is reached.
“Our focus, our vision is that no one suffers or dies because of a delay that matters,” she said.
That vision places the technology within some of healthcare’s most time-sensitive conditions.
Stroke, cancer and traumatic brain injuries are among situations where delays in diagnosis can have serious consequences.
The argument is straightforward: if imaging can be done faster without compromising diagnostic quality, patients can potentially move more quickly through the healthcare system.
What happens next?
For now, the immediate priority is clinical validation in real-world settings, regulatory approval and gradual deployment.
Akoda expects the technology to begin with one or a few sites before expanding more widely.
Within a year of deployment, she hopes to see significantly more patients scanned per machine, reduced waiting times and fewer repeat scans.
Her longer-term ambition is considerably larger.
In five years, she wants millions of people around the world to benefit from GenScan AI’s technologies.
And while GenMRI is the innovation currently attracting attention, Akoda sees it as only the beginning.
The real measure of success, therefore, may not be the NPSI trophy or the prize money.
It will be whether a patient who once waited weeks for a scan, or spent hours inside an MRI machine, can get diagnosed sooner — and whether that extra time can ultimately mean the difference between delayed treatment and timely care.
For Akoda, that is what turning a scientific breakthrough into an innovation that matters really means.
Nigeria has already celebrated the invention. The next test is whether it can help make the country one of its first beneficiaries.
This angle gives you a more human, analytical and forward-looking feature, while carefully distinguishing the validated research from the prospective clinical deployment that is still to come.
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