This startup could revolutionize medical science and healthcare

[Not_Too_Open_Minded]

Due to SFN advertising policy I'm not allowed to list my company but I would greatly appreciate your thoughts and criticisms. 

______ is a mobile phone application that allows users to participate in medical studies regardless of proximity to lab or site. Think Yale's epic (a program that allows bulk data review under 1 single electronic health record format of millions of records for other research programs to use) except we farm the data through our mobile phone app directly from users and their primary care physician through diagnostics while not leaving them out of the financial benefits from data sales giving them more incentives to produce further data, still keeping a profile attributed with the data making it more authentic. 

 

Essentially research programs can request specifics in demographics, age, sex, race, disease history. Say a 35 year old Latino male's with a history of liver disease in Miami for instance. We send off alerts to every app user who fits this description. They can either sell their historical data, get diagnostics done to produce current data, or go do in site study participation, with the potential to get mailed trial medicines and participate abroad. 

We want to get our start helping universities and small research programs until we develop a large enough user base to operate as a data broker, paying people, their primary care, and insurance companys for their data. 

 

We want to partner with insurance company's and give them risk assessment in the form of our health score. On a range from 1-1000 This could fix a lot of issues where insurance company's don't know their risk and give everyone distributed premium rates. 750 score ranges and above indicate controllable health problems, giving higher premiums with a plan to lower their score for better premiums. 500 score ranges give optimal premiums for optimal health. 250 score ranges and below indicate non controllable health problems such as genetic diseases or aggressive cancers, giving people cost ceilings and safe from insurance discrimination. Our partner insurance company's will have to follow this premium pay range to stay partnered with us to receive a percentage of the data payout. 

Our application has a doctors version as well allowing them to have constant connection and oversight with their patient. This strengthens the doctor patient relationship and keeps doctors orders in the eyes of the patient on a daily basis. Automated reminders, daily picture updates of meals, etc. 

 

We will have other features for patients such as clinic finder with a review/rate feature. An ICE or in case of emergency feature that is decryptable by emergency room staff or first responders like EMT, showing the patients blood type, allergies, and disease history. IBM medical Watson platform (we will use the basic platform for cancer info until we have enough user base to update their systems as well into other diseases) showing patients new medicines and therapies being published everyday for their diseases. 

In the bigger picture this creates a more healthy ecosystem in healthcare. One that allows the true relationships necessary to thrive such as patients, doctors, and insurance providers. While eliminating the unnecessary middlemen of medical underwriters and data brokers. It allows the doctor/patient relationship to become more personal along with the insurance company, while giving incentives for them all to interact ethically. All while bringing the new age of technology in front of all 3 party's. People will be getting their regular health screenings, follow up on pharmaceutical medicines and the data behind them will grow tremendously, all around this will help medical science and healthcare. 

 

We're very close to launching the company and in startup phase now. We have a programming company already familiar with the project and ready to work. We have investors, one has been featured on Forbes multiple times and already started a company that disrupted an entire industry. We're currently reaching out to universities research and external affairs departments to secure a letter of intent. Once we have our letter of intent, our investors will release the funds to our programmers and market the application upon its delivery. 

Please give your thoughts, opinions, criticisms. We truly believe we can help healthcare! 

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2018 by Not_Too_Open_Minded

[Raider5678]

2 hours ago, Not_Too_Open_Minded said:

Due to SFN advertising policy I'm not allowed to list my company but I would greatly appreciate your thoughts and criticisms. 

______ is a mobile phone application that allows users to participate in medical studies regardless of proximity to lab or site. Think Yale's epic (a program that allows bulk data review under 1 single electronic health record format of millions of records for other research programs to use) except we farm the data through our mobile phone app directly from users and their primary care physician through diagnostics while not leaving them out of the financial benefits from data sales giving them more incentives to produce further data, still keeping a profile attributed with the data making it more authentic. 

 

Essentially research programs can request specifics in demographics, age, sex, race, disease history. Say a 35 year old Latino male's with a history of liver disease in Miami for instance. We send off alerts to every app user who fits this description. They can either sell their historical data, get diagnostics done to produce current data, or go do in site study participation, with the potential to get mailed trial medicines and participate abroad. 

We want to get our start helping universities and small research programs until we develop a large enough user base to operate as a data broker, paying people, their primary care, and insurance companys for their data. 

 

We want to partner with insurance company's and give them risk assessment in the form of our health score. On a range from 1-1000 This could fix a lot of issues where insurance company's don't know their risk and give everyone distributed premium rates. 750 score ranges and above indicate controllable health problems, giving higher premiums with a plan to lower their score for better premiums. 500 score ranges give optimal premiums for optimal health. 250 score ranges and below indicate non controllable health problems such as genetic diseases or aggressive cancers, giving people cost ceilings and safe from insurance discrimination. Our partner insurance company's will have to follow this premium pay range to stay partnered with us to receive a percentage of the data payout. 

Our application has a doctors version as well allowing them to have constant connection and oversight with their patient. This strengthens the doctor patient relationship and keeps doctors orders in the eyes of the patient on a daily basis. Automated reminders, daily picture updates of meals, etc. 

 

We will have other features for patients such as clinic finder with a review/rate feature. An ICE or in case of emergency feature that is decryptable by emergency room staff or first responders like EMT, showing the patients blood type, allergies, and disease history. IBM medical Watson platform (we will use the basic platform for cancer info until we have enough user base to update their systems as well into other diseases) showing patients new medicines and therapies being published everyday for their diseases. 

In the bigger picture this creates a more healthy ecosystem in healthcare. One that allows the true relationships necessary to thrive such as patients, doctors, and insurance providers. While eliminating the unnecessary middlemen of medical underwriters and data brokers. It allows the doctor/patient relationship to become more personal along with the insurance company, while giving incentives for them all to interact ethically. All while bringing the new age of technology in front of all 3 party's. People will be getting their regular health screenings, follow up on pharmaceutical medicines and the data behind them will grow tremendously, all around this will help medical science and healthcare. 

 

We're very close to launching the company and in startup phase now. We have a programming company already familiar with the project and ready to work. We have investors, one has been featured on Forbes multiple times and already started a company that disrupted an entire industry. We're currently reaching out to universities research and external affairs departments to secure a letter of intent. Once we have our letter of intent, our investors will release the funds to our programmers and market the application upon its delivery. 

Please give your thoughts, opinions, criticisms. We truly believe we can help healthcare! 

15

As long as it's more accurate then WebMD.

According to them, I'm pregnant, and I'm suffering from advanced testicular cancer as well.

[StringJunky]

27 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

As long as it's more accurate then WebMD.

According to them, I'm pregnant, and I'm suffering from advanced testicular cancer as well.

You should use WebMD as a general medical resource not as a place for a diagnosis... it can only tell you the possibilities, if you use it that way.

[Not_Too_Open_Minded]

WebMD has the right goal in mind but lacks sufficient data and machine learning algorithms to properly function. 

 

IBM Medical Watson is doing a better job and still in its infancy. With the goals in mind of diagnosing people and introducing them to new medicine and therapies being published everyday. However it's mostly cancer related right now and isn't ready for diagnosis. 

[Raider5678]

5 hours ago, StringJunky said:

You should use WebMD as a general medical resource not as a place for a diagnosis... it can only tell you the possibilities, if you use it that way.

I don't even use it for that TBH.

[StringJunky]

15 minutes ago, Raider5678 said:

I don't even use it for that TBH.

I do. I use it a bit like wiki, which gives me  a general outline and it gives me ideas for pursuing things deeper elsewhere, if I need to. It''s not FOS anyway.

[CharonY]

It is hard to tell without having all the details, but from a researcher's point of view I see a couple of issues pertaining to consent. It seems that medical history information is extensively mined, and I am not sure how well informed the participants can be. This is especially problematic as there is potentially a very broad use of that information. That aside, I have to admit that the ability to simply request a patient cohort is kind of attractive (considering that it is the bottleneck for population studies). 

Overall, I am kind of curious, though I fear that there may be unforeseeable issues with that level of information sharing.

[Not_Too_Open_Minded]

WebMD is cool and all you guys but uh... what do you think about being able to profit off your medical data, contribute to the development of medical science, participate in studies, and be under a application hub of healthcare services such as finally having a say in your insurance premiums based off how healthy you are? 

2 minutes ago, CharonY said:

It is hard to tell without having all the details, but from a researcher's point of view I see a couple of issues pertaining to consent. It seems that medical history information is extensively mined, and I am not sure how well informed the participants can be. This is especially problematic as there is potentially a very broad use of that information. That aside, I have to admit that the ability to simply request a patient cohort is kind of attractive (considering that it is the bottleneck for population studies). 

Overall, I am kind of curious, though I fear that there may be unforeseeable issues with that level of information sharing.

Consent is our number one priority. We won't sell people's data without their knowledge. They will have the options to either opt out of selling their information and select who buys it, or put it on autopilot to be sold at will. 

 

Our data will be far more credible and efficiently mined than current means. Primary care doctors will be the ones uploading the electronic medical records. Which isnt too far off from how it's currently done but where we differ is our application will request current diagnostics so the blood test you got ran 10 years ago isn't going to be what's listed. It's the blood test you got this year. 

[CharonY]

5 minutes ago, Not_Too_Open_Minded said:

Consent is our number one priority. We won't sell people's data without their knowledge.

So I am a bit involved in these things and one critical point is the informed part of informed consent. While you may be aware who you are selling it to, I am not sure that it is easy to predict what the ramifications are. In fact, I am kind of doubtful that anyone can, we are at a juncture where we provide unprecedented personal information (often freely) without really understand who and how it can be used (as we can see in recent events). 

[StringJunky]

41 minutes ago, CharonY said:

So I am a bit involved in these things and one critical point is the informed part of informed consent. While you may be aware who you are selling it to, I am not sure that it is easy to predict what the ramifications are. In fact, I am kind of doubtful that anyone can, we are at a juncture where we provide unprecedented personal information (often freely) without really understand who and how it can be used (as we can see in recent events). 

Given the current controversies over data retention and leakage, I think this idea is too early before the security methods and protocols are sorted and accepted to be reasonably secure.

55 minutes ago, Not_Too_Open_Minded said:

WebMD is cool and all you guys but uh... what do you think about being able to profit off your medical data, contribute to the development of medical science, participate in studies, and be under a application hub of healthcare services such as finally having a say in your insurance premiums based off how healthy you are? 

This won't work in a universal care system because everyone is treated the same. It's a recipe for discrimination on the part of the insurance suppliers.

[CharonY]

I always found that Gattaca would have been a better story if the story was more about getting health care or similar fundamental things denied based on genetic information rather than a trip to space.

[StringJunky]

43 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I always found that Gattaca would have been a better story if the story was more about getting health care or similar fundamental things denied based on genetic information rather than a trip to space.

You made me look that up. Yes, I suppose the OP is a step towards eugenics. I'm only comfortable with my medical data being used within a public health system  to improve its services for the benefit of those within that system and academically if its properly anonymised.

Edited March 26, 2018 by StringJunky

[Strange]

On 23/03/2018 at 8:41 PM, StringJunky said:

This won't work in a universal care system because everyone is treated the same. It's a recipe for discrimination on the part of the insurance suppliers.

Or a proper health care system, as I like to think of it. 

This also undermines the whole concept of insurance where risk is amortised over a population. In the end it becomes a savings scheme to pay for your healthcare. 

[CharonY]

2 hours ago, StringJunky said:

You made me look that up. Yes, I suppose the OP is a step towards eugenics. I'm only comfortable with my medical data being used within a public health system  to improve its services for the benefit of those within that system and academically if its properly anonymised.

While I I would love easy access to a patient cohort (it is the major challenge for population studies), I would be loathe to provide my own medical data to anything else other than research purposes, and even then under clear rules regarding their use.

[Not_Too_Open_Minded]

In regards to your discressions with selling your medical data. Regardless of whether you like it or not, your data is already being sold. Anonymity doesn't count for anything when your records are easily cross referenced back to you. Which is regular practice for authenticating the data and accessing marketing for many companies. My company will allow you total transparency and control over who buys your data, take it or leave it continuing the trend of underwriters and brokers profiting from your data. 

 

As far as insurance discrimination goes, we combat this by only giving insurance company's risk assessment and a percentage of our users and their patients data sales if they uphold the integrity of our guidelines for the patients. Our entire system is founded and focused on creating a more fair insurance system. Non controllable health problemed patients with aggressive cancers and genetic diseases will get cost ceilings based off their income and the insurance company gets a larger percentage of data sales than controllable score ranges. Controllable score ranges discern between optimal health and controllable health problemed patients. The only people who will be discriminated on are those who aren't taking care of themselves. They will only receive discrimination in the form of higher premiums with health goals to reach lower premiums. 

 

Not to mention we won't be trying to implement our health score for years. We will have to accumulate mass data and thoroughly engage with out users before we ever try to implement the score in insurance. 

 

Sorry for the late reply, had a long weekend with my food concession business. 

[CharonY]

1 hour ago, Not_Too_Open_Minded said:

In regards to your discressions with selling your medical data. Regardless of whether you like it or not, your data is already being sold. Anonymity doesn't count for anything when your records are easily cross referenced back to you.

That is a fair point, and an increasing problem outside of medical data, too. Different countries have various levels of enforcement of privacy laws, but I can only see that the issues will increase, especially with improved abilities to precision-mine data.

[Not_Too_Open_Minded]

7 hours ago, CharonY said:

That is a fair point, and an increasing problem outside of medical data, too. Different countries have various levels of enforcement of privacy laws, but I can only see that the issues will increase, especially with improved abilities to precision-mine data.

I don't see where producing more viable data that only sold on terms of the owning patient, can lead to anything bad or worse than the current state of medical data and electronic health record market. 

 

The only issues we consider risks are our data systems security breaches. 

[Prometheus]

Are you just a repository of data to sell onto interested parties or will you being running any algorithms?

Are there any constraints upon who you sell the data to? Once the data is sold you own that data - not the participant?

What do you mean by historical data? Data collected by past healthcare providers? Who do you think owns that data now? How do you intend to collect and collate that sort of data - it's most likely splattered across several clinics, ERs and dusty filing cabinets in research archives, written in different units, maybe even languages, etc...

Where would they get diagnostics done - at your company or one of your participating 3rd parties?

If i'm looking for data to train a machine learning algorithm (who will probably be the most likely to approach such a health data repository) you will need to provide quite a lot of assurances to the accuracy of the data as well the broached ethical concerns.

[Not_Too_Open_Minded]

On 3/29/2018 at 1:19 PM, Prometheus said:

Are you just a repository of data to sell onto interested parties or will you being running any algorithms?

Are there any constraints upon who you sell the data to? Once the data is sold you own that data - not the participant?

What do you mean by historical data? Data collected by past healthcare providers? Who do you think owns that data now? How do you intend to collect and collate that sort of data - it's most likely splattered across several clinics, ERs and dusty filing cabinets in research archives, written in different units, maybe even languages, etc...

Where would they get diagnostics done - at your company or one of your participating 3rd parties?

If i'm looking for data to train a machine learning algorithm (who will probably be the most likely to approach such a health data repository) you will need to provide quite a lot of assurances to the accuracy of the data as well the broached ethical concerns.

Yes so we will be using algorithms to discern between controllable and non controllable health concerns. There are no constraints, patients have total control over who buys their data. Yes historical data in that sense and it will be gathered by the patients. They can get diagnostics done anywhere, but were going to focus on with their primary cares orders. The data will be authenticated by a physician. 

Here's an article about us by a respected author and editor in the healthcare IT world - https://www.emrandhipaa.com/andy/2018/06/25/how-the-young-unity-health-score-company-handles-the-dilemmas-of-health-it-adoption/

We've just been nominated for the upcoming Forbes tech council! 

 

Here is a 1 Million Cups presentation I did -