Future Pandemic Prevention Modules(FPPM)

Our solution is aiming to solve the issue of pandemic and epidemic under preparation. We will be analyzing the novel coronavirus, also known as nCov-19 or COVID-19, and the recent Ebola outbreak. Currently, no government or society is prepared to deal with a pandemic. This solution is meant to prepare governments for the next pandemic, so that it will not have such a profound effect on the global economy. This solution will allow for fewer people to lose their jobs due to an economic shutdown from a pandemic, more people to be able to be tested and treated regardless of insurance coverage, and will mitigate the effects of an economic downturn.

Our solution is intended to solve the issue of governments being unprepared for a pandemic. This takes the form of the lack of economic safety nets, limited access of healthcare to people, the labor shortage of healthcare systems, and a technological solution to track individuals in order to create a contact tracing network.

 The solution proposes a package of economic safety nets such as emergency cash reserves, social welfare, and trade-decentralization, along with a public healthcare system that would allow for every citizen to be treated at a low cost relative to their respective income, and a contact tracing application. The contact tracing application allows for the user to add their symptoms and current health condition, and their medical history; the user can an NFC connection between their device and an NFC receiver to register their location to a greater database. That database would trace and track individuals who register at the same location if any user who registers has symptoms or has pre-existing conditions will prompt the application to advise the user and other users who have registered at the same location in the same time frame to stay at home and/or seek medical attention. The application would also provide resources from the CDC and other health organization, along with a map of testing sites, hospitals, and clinics. The application also allows for one to connect with their primary care provider in order to consult any concern, prescriptions can be sent to the patient through an autonomous and contactless delivery system.

The solution serves governments and individuals. The solutions allow governments to prepare for emergencies such as pandemics through strengthening their economic safety nets and their healthcare systems. The solution also allows for governments to track its citizens through NFC registrations and GPS in order to contact trace patients who may have had contact with others at a specific location. The app allows for individuals to assess their health, find safe locations with limited contact with people who may be infected, and the solution allows individuals to seek medical attention if needed.

Our problem of insufficient preparation for pandemics, and our solution for economic safety nets, public healthcare systems, and citizen tracking relate to the challenge due to its commitment to health security and pandemics through allowing a plethora of methods of community and world preparation, detection, and response. The various models of economic safety nets and healthcare system proposal allow for communities to prepare for a pandemic, the technological solution allows for early detection, which in turn allows for a method of response through contact tracing with data provided by NFC registrations and application user data.

This solution is innovative as it uses processes from modern advancements in technology. Thus, creating a variety of solutions and new practices for communities to employ to mitigate the cost and impact of a pandemic such as COVID-19. This solution uses NFC connections to register users of the application in a certain location, tracking them and others who register. From this, a secure database will be created which can be then used to contact trace. The solution will also be effective as many people in densely populated areas who are likely to contract the disease already use NFC in their daily activities. Thus, requiring minimal equipment and using current infrastructure, hence making this solution innovative and inexpensive to implement. A competitor of this solution such as Government applications used to contact trace, however, this solution is different as it uses infrastructure which is already in place and a trusted method of contact tracing. This solution is unique in its effectiveness to trace individuals who have come into contact with the disease and it a more reliable and trustworthy technique of mitigating the spread of future pandemics.

The technological component of this solution requires a mobile application, in which, the user can include their symptoms, contact their primary care provider through the telehealth function, order prescriptions to be delivered via autonomous and contactless delivery, and register themselves in a network database which is used for contact tracing. The network database registry is signaled through an NFC connection, which adds a row of data of the time, location, symptoms, and other registries in order to use artificial intelligence to ensure the safety of people. In the event of a user having symptoms of the infectious disease, the system will alert all who have registered in the same location within the same time frame that there has been a person with symptoms present in the same location. Thus they will be advised to stay home and promptly seek medical attention. Then, the all the users who have registered will be tracked, and using artificial intelligence, seamless and instantaneous contact tracing is possible, allowing for the quarantining of an individual community, rather than a whole region. The application will also include a chat function. In this, users can discuss their symptoms, current statistics of infection rates for their location with a bot. From this, it will be decided using artificial intelligence whether the user should see their primary healthcare provider. This function aims to stop the spread of misinformation via media and other news sites as well as prevent an accumulation of citizens needing to see medical professionals unnecessarily. 

Our solution uses NFC connections in order to register users to a certain location and GPS and GIS systems in order to track those users. Currently, NFC is used in mobile payments, thus requiring minimal modifications to current infrastructure. The solution also uses autonomous delivery robots, which have been discussed by several companies such as Amazon to streamline the delivery process. In this solution, autonomous delivery robots are to be used for contactless delivery, thus reducing the risk of infections to and from delivery personnel. (See:https://www.starship.xyz/). Telehealth is also a major component of this solution, allowing for many people to receive medical attention for consultations remotely, thus reducing the risk of contracting a social infection, and allowing for many people to receive the proper medical attention regardless of insurance coverage or geography, allowing for more low socioeconomic and disadvantaged groups to receive equal access to treatment and prevention technologies. This will greater control the spread of a pandemic through the identification of illness with presented symptoms. (See: https://www1.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/e-health-telehealth). Many companies use chatbots and online chat services to answer and solve consumer problems. This has been seen to be effective in companies across the globe. So the implementation of a chat function in the application will help diagnose and mitigate further spread of a pandemic as well as the amount of misinformation on the disease.

The theory of change for this solution is to provide services for individuals that can be used for a greater relief effort in the event of a pandemic, thus allowing for economic and infection mitigation while keeping people safe and avoiding unnecessary contact. The solution follows the theory of change as the use of NFC infrastructure and autonomous and contactless delivery will then help to “flatten the curve” of infected individuals. The long term effects of this solution are the decreased risk of global pandemics and their severity as well as equal access to mitigation strategies for low socioeconomic and marginalized groups. This is through the use of NFC infrastructure which will cause minimal disruption to lives across the globe regardless of economic stability. Individuals will not be safe if their government is not prepared for a pandemic or economic slowdown, however, governments can not prepare themselves without input and information from and about their population. This shows the need for the use of NFC and location technologies by governments to further protect the population from an outbreak of a disease or pandemic. This solution allows for a symbiotic relationship between individuals and government and the flow-on effect of the need of a positive relationship between governments and citizens. 

Currently, this solution is a proposition and is not in service. This solution is still in development, however, with collaboration with governmental agencies, this solution can serve small communities (population within 50,000 People) in various regions of the world such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and EU during its testing phase. These locations have been chosen as they have the infrastructure that the solution requires and therefore it can be implemented with minimal disruption. These areas also have been affected by the pandemic of COVID-19 in different degrees and thus implementing the solution will in these counties determine the effectiveness of using this solution. However, if successful, it can be implemented across the world in the next 10 – 15 years post-trial phase.

The goal is to create a prototype that is ready for testing within a year. This will allow for sufficient time to create the prototype and determine its feasibility and effectiveness in mitigating the effects of a pandemic.  In the first year, the application has been created and is ready for testing among a small group of individuals. In the first year, the database will be created to determine the symptoms of a user and can be used to get live statistics on infection rates. Within the next five years, the plan is to start production and distribution of the solution for further testing in larger populations such as metropolitan areas and whole countries and regions. Autonomous and contactless delivery still in trial phases across the globe and will need to further meet ethics standards to be used in the solution over the next five years. In the next five years, the solution will be in production and begin to be used in larger areas to ensure that there is minimal disruption, and if there are any issues which need to be addressed. 

The current barriers of the solution are access to higher government agencies, team size, and skilled people specialized in computer programming, disaster relief, and public policy through undergraduate and graduate studies, along with professionals in computer science, disaster relief, and public policy. Ethically, this solution is questionable with its tracking service, as it would violate several privacy laws, including HIPAA laws for the telehealth module. Data could be misused by several governments, and data could be stolen in a data breach. The solution may have to be modified slightly to conform to countries and their ethical rules and regulations for location tracing via NFC infrastructure. There would have to be several safeguards put in place to ensure that a breach of personal information or misuse of location data does not occur. Another issue may be that rural or regional areas may not have the NCF infrastructure in place. This may cause issues with the tracking method as it relies on NFC. These areas may also have difficulty with the autonomous delivery service due to the rurality of the area. Market barriers may be that users will not want their location to be recorded, however, the use of the chatbot function is still fully operational to these users.

 The team can grow to include more than two individuals which will help with getting the solution to a higher degree of feasibility. By having more than two members, the solution can be implemented across the world and its implementation can be more effective. The current team can also reach out to Universities and recognized initiations to attain access to highly skilled and specialized individuals who can assist in developing and producing the solution. Collaboration with government agencies can allow for the testing and spread of the solution. This will allow for the solution to be trusted by users as it will be government certified and thus this will allow for the solution to be applied to countries immediately.   The solution can be designed to prevent data breaches with the collaboration of security companies to gain knowledge on ideas that can be used in the solution such as firewalls or not keeping the location data for more than 21 days to prevent the misuse of the data. Partnership with health professionals and lawyers with a specialty in medical law will allow for a legal proofing of the solution to prevent misuse of data and allow for legal compliance.

Currently, this solution is a team of two from the United States and Australia.

Our team is well positioned to deliver this solution, as our vision and perseverance allow us to contact useful people to collaborate on this project in order to ensure its feasibility. Despite our long distance, we are able to communicate and collaborate effectively on this solution, thus, we are able to work through any issue that is to come with this solution. Our team has also worked on a different challenge by the New York Academy of Science, our current team from the US and Australia also included members from Nepal, Malaysia, and Ireland, due to our experience in multi-national collaboration, we will be able to effectively produce a solution.

We currently are not partnered with any organization, however, we plan to collaborate with universities and government agencies in order to effectively create a feasible product from our proposition.

Our business model is non-profit, and any profits earned will be used to continue the development of the solution in order to ensure its maximum potential and effectiveness in communities, any other funds are to be used for humanitarian causes. This solution can be developed as an application, which can be distributed to government agencies and larger organization which can distribute them to their effective population. Through the use of the application, data can be used to provide the user with needed services, and the app can use that data to continue to develop itself to fulfill its potential. Governments would want and need this solution, as it allows for public health agencies to contact trace the population seamlessly, effectively stop a pandemic from spreading without the closure of a whole region or country, provide services to their population, and mitigate the economic effect of such a disaster. The user would use this application in order to record their symptoms, pre-existing conditions, and seek medical attention remotely. If a user has been in a location where there was someone registered with the disease, then tat user along with other users would be notified to seek medical attention and quarantine themselves immediately, thus saving their life and other's as well.

Funds would be provided through investments, government funds, and grants in order to develop the product. Any funds that are attained outside of the development stage would be used to continue to improve the application based on user data and input. Funds that are not used for the continuation of development of the application would be used for humanitarian causes.

We are applying to Solve in order to gain access to valuable partnerships which can help with the development and distribution of the solution and application. Solve allows us to build connections in order to grow our team to involve several other great minds in this solution so that it can be distributed to many to prevent and mitigate the effects of a natural disaster such as a pandemic.

Our partnership goals are to include various minds from various skill sets in order to help develop and distribute the solution. With such partnerships, the product will be able to become used by government agencies in their disaster relief responses, and users will be able to prevent themselves form spreading or contracting a disease.

We would like to partner with several universities in order to collaborate with professors, students, and research groups to act as mentors to our team during the development process of this application. We would like to partner with government agencies such as FEMA in order to ensure that the product works and can be used in disaster relief.

Our solution is qualified for The Elevate Prize for Health Security, as our solution puts the safety of others front and center. Without the solution being designed to satisfy the needs of users, such as medical attention provided remotely by the telehealth module, but it allows for the user to stay safe through a pandemic through a notification that they were in a location where they might have had contact with another user who has the disease, thus prompting the user to seek immediate medical attention and quarantine. This solution uses modern technologies such as robotics in order to mitigate the chance of infection through the delivery of a package and the receiving of medication, as prescriptions can be delivered autonomously and without contact.

This solution uses AI through the contact tracing module which requires users to register their location using NFC. The previously input data about the user, such as current symptoms and pre-existing conditions, will be stored in the registry database. That data is compared with all users who have registered in that same registry in the similar time frame. Artificial intelligence would compare that data with the symptoms of the disease, promptly notifying all users who have registered at that time and location to seek medical attention and to quarantine. Artificial intelligence would also be used in the chatroom module of the application, where the user can chat with a bot, and that bot would be able to do a rough diagnosis based on the presented symptoms, thus allowing access to medical attention while differentiating  between cases that need the attention of a medical professional or just homeopathy.

Our team will use The People's Prize to advance our solution in development and testing of the application while conforming to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Once the application is developed and tested, it will be able to help all humans to ensure their safety and to provide the user with optimal medical attention through telehealth.