About
A ray of light, taken literally
Partaw (پرتو) is Dari for a ray of light — which is what an X-ray is, and what a reading gives back.
partaw — a ray
- radio
- microwave
- infrared
- visible light — a quarter of one decade
- ultraviolet
- gamma
Light that reaches where specialists don’t
A radiograph is a beam of light passed through a body; a diagnosis is what a trained eye makes of it. In most of Afghanistan the first half of that sentence happens every day and the second half doesn’t. Partaw — the ray — is the promise that the reading travels to the film, rather than the patient traveling to the reader.
Founder
Yasin Yaqoobi
Afghan-American software engineer, Northern Virginia
Partaw began with a plain observation: Afghan clinics could take X-rays that nobody was in a position to read — and the machinery to fix that (a phone, a messaging app, a distant radiologist willing to look) already existed in everyone’s hands. He builds the platform; the clinical authority on every report belongs to the licensed radiologist who signs it.
Advisory board
Forming now, founding seats open
We are assembling an advisory board across three responsibilities. Founding advisors are named here as seats fill — with their permission, their affiliation, and their role.
- Clinical governance
- What a safe reading service refuses to do: escalation rules, scope limits, and the standard every signed report is held to.
- Open
- Research design
- What the studies must prove and how: endpoints, protocols, and the review pathway each partner institution requires.
- Open
- Data governance
- Who touches the corpus and on what terms: consent, de-identification, access agreements, and the line we do not cross.
- Open
Structure
Two arms, kept at arm’s length
Partaw Research is the research and public-good arm of Partaw. Formal nonprofit status is being established; we are seeking fiscal sponsorship in the meantime.
The teleradiology platform this mission runs on is built and operated by Partaw’s commercial arm, which serves paying clinics at partaw.com. The relationship is disclosed in protocols and publications, and any transaction between the two is kept at arm’s length and documented.