MedShr Insights and Early Warning System

Clinical insights from the MedShr global network using medical NLP and AI for an early warning system for disease outbreaks

Dr Asif Qasim 

Founder and CEO MedShr

MedShr Insights and Early Warning System (EWS) aim to improve the understanding of infectious diseases and identify outbreaks and potential future pandemics.

The COVID-19 pandemic with >130m cases and >2,840,000 deaths has shown the rapid spread and global impact of a new human virus. Between 2014-2016 there were over 28,000 Ebola virus infection sin Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea with >11,000 deaths. In 2017 there were 100m Dengue infections causing 40,000 deaths. Outbreaks of malaria and tuberculosis continue to cause substantial morbidity and mortality.

These challenging outbreaks span our understanding of the natural history, pathophysiology and treatment of these diseases. MedShr is uniquely placed to both identify and respond to these challenges.

It is often hard to find timely information to identify outbreaks of these diseases in low and middle income countries which often have fragile health infrastructure and very limited resources. MedShr has increasing membership in such countries, especially across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. This enables doctors and healthcare professionals (HCPs) to engage with one another locally, globally and with educational content to improve their practice; and in the process they provide real world data that underpins MedShr Insights and EWS.

MedShr users include doctors and other HCPs, and our clients and partners are from a wide range of academic and commercial organisations as indicated in the attached PDF. We provide a trusted, secure platform for clinical learning, case discussion and medical education.

MedShr Insights clients include:

Healthcare providers, health ministries, medical societies and colleges, academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, communications and marketing agencies, financial services companies. We provide insights on real world medicine and clinical practice, with temporal and geographical variation with context from health metrics and medical publications.

MedShr Early Warning System clients include:

Public health bodies, health ministries, academic institutions, NGOs and research organisations on a not-for-profit basis. We provide data and insights on outbreaks of infectious diseases and potential future pandemics to support healthcare planning, research and public health policy

We use performance metrics, user feedback, engagement workshops, client and partner meetings as well as in-house and published research to understand our member and client needs. There is a widespread ongoing program of multi-channel engagement to extend this consultation. As we develop MedShr Insights recent meetings with potential clients and partners such as IHME, McKinsey and Dr Evidence have included product profiling and prototype demonstrations.

From the outset the “Why” for MedShr has been to improve healthcare and save lives, and the “How” through peer-to-peer learning and shared knowledge. MedShr case discussion enables doctors and healthcare professionals to improve their practice and achieve better outcomes for their patients. The platform is free to use and available globally as an app or on web.

This approach to lifelong learning through collaboration has been extended through new features and the MedShr Learning platform. The system is now also used as part of formal medical education, for example we are currently supporting 40 free programs for a range of doctors, dentists and HCPs in collaboration with Health Education England.

The public good is clear: better clinical practice means better outcomes for patients.

These principles also apply to MedShr Insights and our commitment to public good and global health impact can be seen through providing the Early Warning System on a not-for-profit basis with the ambition of this being with no fees for partners in low and middle income countries.

The purpose of MedShr Insights and EWS aligns with the core mission of MedShr: to improve healthcare to reduce patient morbidity and mortality. In that regard the tangible impact is one of global public good, and the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that novel infectious diseases can have worldwide impact.  

MedShr delivers its impact by helping doctors to share knowledge and skills to improve their clinical practice. This may have a direct effect in providing a diagnosis or the right treatment for an individual patient, however the real impact of MedShr is in the systematic improvement, using best practice and peer to peer learning, in the quality of care that clinicians provide.

MedShr Insights will have an impact by improving the accuracy and quality of work of our clients and partners, whether that be healthcare providers, academics or the pharmaceutical industry.  The EWS will provide clients and partners with signals that will allow them and the global healthcare community to response rapidly to disease outbreaks and potential novel diseases. This is particularly important in countries with limited healthcare resources, where real world data is usually scarce, without electronic patient records, and limited public health services.

This scale of the MedShr network, with over 1,500,000 doctors and HCPs engaged in learning and education, has a major impact on millions of patients around the world. Increasing MedShr membership and activity is important to enrich the data and predictive value of MedShr Insights and EWS. Currently over 30,000 new members register with MedShr every month, and the projected membership will exceed 2 million by the end of 2022.

There are a number of mechanisms to increase activity, both in product development and on platform communications, as well as social media promotion. MedShr Learning provides a new content channel that will increased the number of partnerships and active members.

The timeline in the section below indicates the planned milestones for MedShr Insights and EWS and in terms of scale. Most of year one is in product development, with the initial release of subscription reports to clients. The MedShr Commercial Team will support client engagement and partnerships, with initial meetings for Insights with our current pharma clients and society partners.

We routinely monitor a wide range of member, activity and engagement metrics in relation to the MedShr platform and case discussion. The MedShr Insights technology is being developed and the initial goals relate to product development, quality testing and release of the first iteration.

Whilst it is not possible to directly measure the effects of MedShr on patient care or mortality, there are a number of measures that can indicate the reach and impact of the platform and MedShr Insights:

1.    Scale of MedShr membership, activity and engagement

2.    MedShr polls and surveys around learning and improvements in practice

3.    MedShr Insights number of reports and subscribers

4.    Number and scale of MedShr Insights custom research

5.    Outputs from MedShr EWS and predictive capability

6.    Expert and partner reviews of MedShr Insights and EWS

The development work is in progress for MedShr Insights and at present there are no major barriers, although we may encounter technical challenges, especially when we move to using live data from the MedShr platform. 

There are a number of options to work around this temporarily until resolved, including using an offline replica of the live MedShr dataset that could be refreshed every 12-24 hours. 

We plan to develop and operate the EWS as a not for profit basis and are seeking funding to support this development. Delays or limits to funding will make product development slower as we limit the size of the team, and use short term contract staff for specific elements. 

The future options to also ingest a number of other datasets such as scientific publications may require additional funding and new collaborations. 

MedShr works in partnership with over 200 medical societies and providers e..g. NHS Trusts, Health Education England, American Board of Family Medicine, Cardiovascular Research Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy Association. please see attached PDF for further information.  We work with pharmaceutical and device companies. Please see attached PDF for further information. 

MedShr is a fast growing, early stage technology company with a relatively small team. Whilst we have demonstrated our ability to effectively build a global community and establish partnerships with global organisations and corporations, we do not have the resources to develop the MedShr Early Warning System element of our Trinity Challenge entry without additional financial support.

We are also interested in working with TTC Founding Partners and Partners with expertise in medical NLP and healthcare AI to accelerate the ability to extract insights, trends and value from the complex data acquired and aggregated by MedShr. 

The MedShr team were already in discussion with IHME and McKinsey about potential partnerships. Through the Trinity Challenge we requested support from both organisations and this led to further meetings. Whilst neither organisation has provided support for the MedShr Pandemic Response and Early Warning System, both are interested in working together on a commercial basis with MedShr and specifically our MedShr Insights and Data Services products.

We also requested support from Dr Evidence and have had several positive meetings between our respective senior and technical teams. Discussions are now in progress regarding a potential commercial joint venture.

The MedShr team were already in discussion with IHME and McKinsey about potential partnerships. Through the Trinity Challenge we requested support from both organisations and this led to further meetings. Whilst neither organisation has provided support for the MedShr Pandemic Response and Early Warning System, both are interested in working together on a commercial basis with MedShr and specifically our MedShr Insights and Data Services products.

We also requested support from Dr Evidence and have had several positive meetings between our respective senior and technical teams. Discussions are now in progress regarding a potential commercial joint venture although this is not directly connected to the MedShr Pandemic Response and Early Warning System.