Self-Care Medical Devices

About

Activ8rlives is a complete self-monitoring solution comprising of: medical devices, Apps and web-backend which together are designed to store and present information to patients, family carers living close or at a distance and to healthcare workers. We sell our current Generation #2 products direct to the consumer, have engaged with the NHS in clinical trials and have collaborations with the health charities such as the British Lung Foundation. The Technologies BuddyWOTCH and EyKos HealthHub represent a new generation of consumer-facing (cross-over), internet-connected medically-certified devices and services to work at the home of the patient. They make collecting and transmitting sensitive medical data simple yet secure. They are certified medical devices, yet designed to be consumer-level in operation and price point. They offer consumer Apps as well to increase desirability of purchase by the patient as well as prescription by healthcare providers. Encrypted data is transmitted securely by cellular and WiFi without the need for PCs, Smartphones and Tablets to perform this role. II. Provide each step on how you would use IoT to solve this problem. 1. Our target market: Our focus is respiratory disease which will kill 20% of us, but our technology can be applied to many other Long-Term Health Conditions. Our customer is the end-user (the consumer), and there are multiple routes to market, each different by country according to how healthcare provision is funded. Data accessibility and exchange with other data silos within healthcare is key, which means that data from devices used at home has to be transferred into Cloud-based storage, with APIs to connect to Middleware, for access by healthcare ecosystem and its entire route from home-device to doctor must be capable of being certified. What is the customer’s problem? We are living longer, but not healthier. As we age, we develop more health problems. 80% of healthcare services are used in the last 10% of our lives. For those with LTRCs such as COPD, Bronchiectasis and Asthma, the pathway from diagnosis to death is can be 20-30 years. Early intervention, quick treatment of exacerbations and lifestyle changes can “left-shift” or delay onset of severe symptoms and premature death. This will require self-monitoring to support community-based self-care programmes. A new generation of medical devices which operate like consumer devices is required. These need to be particularly inclusive of older people without being patronising. They must “just work” and connect to the Cloud without IT skills. Political barriers and disparate data storage systems in the NHS hold-back innovation and implementation. User “pull” is clear, as is the frustration, anger and desperation expressed by patient groups. What is their pain? Centralisation into hospitals means that 90% of funding is used to treat the very ill. 70% of hospital beds are occupied by 20% of patient population. Cost justification (Health Economics) for halting decline into severely ill states for patients newly diagnosed with LTRCs cannot be justified. The gap: diagnosed but not yet ill enough to get support. We forecast that policy will be to instruct newly diagnosed patients to purchase their own medical monitors so as to arrest further early decline into debilitating ill health. Monitoring equipment will only be available on prescription for the most desperately ill to reduce hospital admissions. Our current products and solutions are designed to fill this gap by being medically-certified, connected healthcare products, for consumers to self-manage and then share their patient-generated data with the plethora of healthcare workers they interact with (Fig.1). There are two fundamental needs: (A) Move burden of management to the patient and family (increases engagement, empowerment and education), and: (B) Make patient generated data available in certified solutions which healthcare professionals can trust, removing their threat of legal liability if they act on these data. Without solving these problems, patients and clinicians will remain locked into a downward spiral of every greater hospitalisation – and hospitals are already full, all year around. We are creating consumer medical devices which also run consumer functions to make them desirable for purchase by the decision maker for themselves or for other family members (eg their children and ageing parents), because the NHS cannot afford to prescribe these for everyone who ill. Unofficially, patients are already encouraged to buy their own equipment for home use by GPs. To make this investment acceptable to the patient when healthcare is supposed to be “free,” these medical devices must also perform other functions to confer additional benefit. The consumer-customisable functions (eg Skype, Amazon, GP appointments, email, social media etc) if added, must then be held away from critical medical functions which must be isolated from an ever changing consumer OS, stable and separately certified. BuddyWOTCH and EyKos HealthHub are our first implementations of this strategy and are designed to be inclusive for the most vulnerable in society. The BuddyWOTCH (2 patents applied for) itself have further innovations as being the wearable first pulse oximeter, heart rate and temperature monitor which can be worn while the patient is moving and performing everyday tasks without the loss of signal (very sensitive to movement artefacts) and creates a new index of the patient’s respiratory health (and life expectancy). How big is the problem? Healthcare providers Worldwide are in crisis. Rising expectations, ageing population and new expensive treatments. A person diagnosed with COPD or Bronchiectasis in their early 50s can expect to live another 25-30 years, consuming ever more healthcare services unless they become expert in managing their condition, self-managing their medication and learning when to take action - not presently easy. Our tools already in use are designed to support the consumer and their family in becoming “expert patients.” Simplicity, obviousness-of-use and connectivity are key for effectiveness. We leverage the display capabilities of PCs, Gaming Stations, Smartphones and Tablets. But their use as a way of transmitting health-critical information, as integral parts of a Class 1, 2 and in vitro diagnostic test platforms which may be used to change the treatment received by the patient as prescribed by the clinician, it is fraught with problems because of design instability and device supply stability. This problem is not limited to respiratory disease. It applies to all connected healthcare solutions present and future. It is a global challenge.