Fl@World

Difficulties in gathering and sharing data is a major impediment to pandemic mitigation. Local, national and global initiatives around the world are hampered by complex data engineering and data management constraints. Legacy data-interfaces significantly retard the development of data-driven initiatives.

Fl@World is a data sharing and integration platform that enables rapid integration of data from disparate sources and secure data sharing to permitted entities. Instances of Fl@World can be spun-up?? instantly via cloud services and learnt in a just few hours by developers with basic skills. Fl@World therefore enables greatly accelerated deployment of data-driven initiatives, innovations and interventions across the globe.

The earlier that pandemic-mitigating technologies and interventions can be deployed, the earlier that exponential disease transmissions can be curtailed.

Current data technologies form siloed systems, with data captured and locked into vendors and platforms, preventing effective collaboration. All of this greatly impedes preparedness for, and effective, rapid responses to, pandemics and other health security threats.

In the health sector in particular, losing time means lives lost.  At global, national and local levels, governments and organisations are severely impeded by the extreme difficulty and immense (time and money) costs involved in securely integrating disparate data, within and between stakeholders and their respective technologies and tools, as well as the exponential growth in structured and unstructured data. Additionally, major vendors in the landscape don’t adequately address current and emerging requirements such as compliance, coordinated interoperability and multi-jurisdictional data ownership. These constraints leave stakeholders unable to make realtime, data-based, next-best-action diagnostics and decisions; all imperative for interdisciplinary, rapid responses to emerging pandemics and health security threats.

Addressing the Covid-19 pandemic alone, at the time of writing, across 216 countries, there are +8M confirmed cases and +440K deaths.

Subsequent outbreaks are expected with no vaccine in sight.

Fl@World is a data sharing and integration platform. It enables rapid, secure, and effective collaboration between entities and organisations. It is delivered through horizontally scalable containerised Java services that are accessed through the Fl@World UI or via REST API. It is very easy to learn and deploy.

Fl@World serves solution providers focused on pandemic-mitigating technologies and initiatives. Our technology greatly accelerates their development cycle, so they can deliver solutions for all relevant stakeholders sooner. Fl@World has been designed to address B2B, B2C, G2G and G2C markets. 

Our primary value is technical enablement. We assist solution providers to share, link  and/or combine data without the need for specialised programmers and/or standardising on Enterprise tools, platforms or applications, while satisfying the demands of data security and compliance.

Our core team has significant expertise in the domain of data, security and systems integration. We know the problem space very well and have been developing this solution iteratively over 11 years. 

We are engaging solution providers and potential customers through a trial-user program and will continue to refine the technology based on user feedback and continuous performance analysis.

Fl@World reduces the time, cost and complexity of developing pandemic-mitigating solutions that use data. It streamlines integrations with existing systems and reduces the lead-time between ideation and solution deployment for solution providers.

Fl@World is potentially a scale-multiplier of innovation: accelerating the deployment of many critical applications across the globe; including, but not limited to: contract tracing, inter-agency collaboration, analysis and analytics, sensor and IoT integration, AI/ML applications and mobile applications.

Fl@World is a fundamental redesign of how data is securely shared, integrated and verified between legacy, modern and new technologies, in realtime, within and between entities and individuals. It is vendor-neutral, platform-agnostic, multi-lingual, and PII compliant.

Fl@World enables secure integration of data from multiple, decentralised and external sources in a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods. Fl@World’s ‘plug-and-play’, no-code interface, is easily deployed, cost-efficient and removes the requirement for expensive experts. Its unique architecture equates to massive time, cost, energy and capability efficiencies, which makes it extremely accessible to all companies and markets, including low-middle income countries with limited finances and expertise. 

Fl@World’s scale-on-demand service means that it only uses what energy is required at the time, unlike the majority of systems which are largely running at full speed, all the time - even if they’re not doing anything. Fl@World is designed to minimise bandwidth requirements and works in high latency environments making it applicable for satellite connections.

Being a permission-based data platform offers a unique level of control to data owners, increasing the levels of trust which currently restrain data sharing by individuals and organisations alike.

Fl@World is a data sharing and integration platform for distributed structured and unstructured data at scale. Fl@World’s data sharing and integration capability is delivered through its horizontally scalable, containerised, Java services that are accessed through the Fl@World UI or via REST API. 

Core capabilities include:

• Loading/Exporting of structured (CSV, Json, XML) and unstructured (Excel, Word, PDF, PNG, JPEG, etc.) data. 
• Universal translator, which flattens and integrates high volumes of structured and unstructured data, creating its own metadata layer without changing your data.
• Provision of extremely fine grained (to individual record and field level if required) data sharing.
• A multi-lingual user interface that provides functionality without the need for any code to be written – specifically designed for non-technical users.
• A small/agile API with a small learning curve for the quick development of apps including ML/AI. 
• Powerful realtime data sharing functionality, enabling data owners to control who, what and how their data is being shared/used. 
• Sophisticated data search, linking/unification and tagging capabilities.
• Individual level authentication/authorisation for B2C and G2C models. 
• Realtime data access notifications.
• Data tools to create realtime, updatable, unified/linked data views (data owner permitting) and the potential re-sharing to additional participants.
• Realtime, immutable chain-of-evidence logging – enabling compliance reporting and participants to see all details around data ownership and data mutation (updates) to the data.
• Enterprise integration functionality.

We have successfully executed Proof-of-Concept with some companies and we have a fully operational instance in Amazon Web Services and a Sandbox ready for testing and deployment.

See the Healthcare 4.0 Enabled by Fl@World video for a short demonstration of Fl@World in action.  A full live demonstration is available upon request.

There are significant barriers blocking effective data sharing and integration and, therefore, successful project outcomes. 

A survey amongst 1400 executives, released by Progress indicates that the greatest data integration challenges are:

• Data spread across an increasing number of data sources   47% 
• Integrating cloud data with on-premises data   44% 
• Data veracity - data inconsistency, data uncertainty, ambiguous data, incomplete data etc.   36% 
• Data volume - big data, IoT, social media, enterprise data    35% 
• Data velocity - batch, near real-time, real-time, streaming etc.   32% 
• Data variety - structured, unstructured, semi-structured    31% 

Fl@World removes these barriers, enabling citizens, organisations and governments to collect and share data in realtime by providing a permission-based data sharing platform that securely integrates and verifies data from legacy, modern and new technologies. 

By facilitating trust in and realtime integration of data from all sources, Fl@World enables governments and organisations to analyse data, identify trends, issues and opportunities, and develop actions at a community and individual level, notifying and nudging citizens, health care professionals, government and organisation leaders of recommended behaviours, within a short space of time.

Armed with realtime data securely integrated from widely dispersed and disparate sources, communities around the world are able to prepare for, detect and respond to emerging pandemics and health security threats – with accuracy, speed and a high rate of compliance.

Through demonstration and trial, we can demonstrate how, through the use of Fl@World, complex data integration and administration problems are cost-effectively reduced, while control over how data is utilised is dramatically increased.

• Fl@World has been designed for solution providers with exponential scaling through Channel Partners.

• Our current goals for Channel Partner and direct-health-service-provisioning Enterprise Client engagement are:
  • Year end 2021: 15 Channel Partners and 25 Enterprise Clients
  • Year end 2024: 60 Channel Partners and 40 Enterprise Clients
  • Year end 2025: 150 Channel Partners and 100 Enterprise Clients
• Though we have only just commenced our trial phase, we have already been invited to be the sole technology provider to an international healthcare consultancy with whom we are working on a health information platform projected to be used by a South Saharan African government to better track, diagnose, monitor, and report TB management.

• The social impact of pandemic response is, in itself, impactful on a monumental scale. Current rates of Covid-19 infection are at +8M confirmed cases and +440K deaths. In addition, Malaria, TB and HIV kill 5 million people across the globe annually; our determination is to support any and all organisations and stakeholders provisioning to this sector. 

As well as focussing on becoming the ubiquitous platform technology supporting health 4.0 efforts in both the current communicable and non-communicable disease sector we look to empower far reaching remote diagnostics and clinical care provision to currently underserved communities and the next-stage neurological and neuropsychiatric disease research which are likely follow ups to the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Our purpose is to empower organisations and communities, regardless of size and locale, with transformative technology that builds trust in data, creating long-term value for all stakeholders.   

The UN Sustainable goals and Targets we impact:

9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation: Develop quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure to support economic development and human well-being, with focus on affordable and equitable access for all

3. Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all: Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks

17. Revitalise global partnerships for sustainable development: Facilitate open and timely data

Within 12 months:

• Create three, ‘in country’ pilot projects, 1x local and 2x international (SSA) where Fl@World is the data sharing platform that underpins efforts to effectively and economically reduce the spread of communicable diseases. (At time of writing, Covid-19 infection over 7 million and more than 400,000 confirmed deaths across 216 countries.)
• Minimal environmental impact – low energy consumption

Within 5 years:

• Expansion to local, regional and global projects that reduce the spread of communicable and non-communicable diseases
• Expand to incorporate entities working with Integrated Care Business Models / hub-and-spoke care systems.
• Broad and deep partnerships with governments, organisations, policy makers and channel partners through facilitation of timely, reliable and actionable data
• Deployment of technology innovations that expand capability
• Impacting the health and wellbeing of 8 billions citizens globally.

The overriding barrier to accomplishing our goals is the risk associated with adopting a new way of doing things (data first), a new technology infrastructure platform (impacting all internal and external data sources) and a new brand (unfamiliar/credibility). Once the initial hurdle is overcome, we need to manage growth to ensure consistent delivery and customer satisfaction, maximising customer life-time value and referrals/advocacy that influence the pipeline of new customers.

These barriers present as:

1. Startup Capital/Financial
   1. Sales & Marketing Investment – 
   2. Managing Rate of Growth  
   3. On-going Cash flow injection 
2. Customer Cost of Switching
3. Educating the Market
   1. Credibility of the technology, brand and business
   2. Proof of Concept – trial customers
4. Access to Distribution Channels
   1. Establishing the right Partnerships with other Tech Platforms
   2. Channels Partners
5. Government Regulations
   1. Privacy and other compliance government regulations drive the adoption 
6. Scale to Delivery
   1. Failure to deliver consistently
   2. Failure to sustain next generation technology position

To mitigate the risk for prospective customers in adopting a new ways of doing things, new infrastructure platform technology and new brand, we need: 

1. Startup Capital/Financial
   1. Sales & Marketing Investment – Generate awareness and trust in the technology, brand and business to gain trial customers to generate cash flow. VC firms in healthcare space and partnerships in Q 42.
   2. Managing Rate of Growth – Driven by CRM, Opportunity Management and Forecasting methodology.  Help from Partners
   3. Cash flow injection – Investors / partners
   4. e have a pay-for-use business model, which will constitute our primary revenue stream.
2. Customer Cost of Switching
   1. Relevant price point / pricing model
   2. Understand the cost for assisting clients to switch to Fl@World.
3. Educating the Market
   1. Credibility – team experience,“borrow”partner credibility, 
   2. Proof of Concept – Trial customers
4. Access to Distribution Channels
   1. Establishing the right Partnerships with other Tech Platforms
   2. Channels Partners – Piggyback off other Tech Platforms
5. Government Regulations
   1. Privacy, Compliance and other government regulations drive the adoption 
6. Scale to Delivery
   1. Managing the rate of growth to ensure consistent global delivery
   2. Continuous R&D programme

n/a

Two full time and five sweat equity.

Founder Micheal McDonald is the CTO and is the technical lead.

Founder Kim Chandler McDonald is CEO and is in charge of strategy direction and relationship/community building.

The Executive Team, as a whole, is involved with ensuring there is alignment of the technical architecture to the business architecture and business outcomes.

We collectively leverage 200 years+ of experience building transformational technology and transdisciplinary know how; driving organisational, digital strategy and transformational business growth; and creating a resilient, authentic global network of influencers.

We’ve been working together for many years and our significant experience means we know what needs to be done to drive results and achieve our vision, mission and purpose.

We are working with an international healthcare consultancy which is represented in China, Australia, USA, UK, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Ghana and Equatorial Guinea. Initially we created a joint proposal for an efficient, interoperable, cost saving, health information platform to be used by Government in the South Saharan Africa region to better track, diagnose, monitor, and report TB management. We are their sole, prime technology provider.

Fl@World is a recurring-revenue, user-pays, business model. Fl@World will be sold via channel partners, an e-commerce platform and a direct enterprise sales team. Income will be generated from Recurring Software Subscriptions, Enterprise Consulting, Services, Premium Technical Support Contracts and optional Hosting Services (resale of AWS Azure, etc).

Financial sustainability is driven by the technology itself. As an infrastructure platform that captures all data within and between data owners, Fl@World is a long-term solution and investment for our customers. As such, we have invested significant time in developing a robust technology that solves the big data problems of today and the future:

• Ready for next generation technologies, analytics, AI and machine learning
• Agile and scalable to adapt to changes in the micro and macro environment
• Cost, resource and energy efficient for all sizes and locale of organisation.

It cannot be easily reverse engineered.

We will bring in money to fund the work through:

1. Selling the platform - the business model is a recurring revenue, user-pays subscription model
2. Selling high value strategic data and technology consulting services
3. Raising capital through investors
4. Partnerships - seeking partners with aligned purpose and goals 
5. Joint ventures in new business models

For data to fuel effective change in the world, it has to be trusted and accessible by citizens, organisations and governments, with data owner control over what is shared. The technology platform that facilitates this process has to be easy to adopt and use. 

Fl@World is a transformative technology that has been engineered to remove technical barriers to adoption:

1. Integrates with all systems, technologies and applications without coding
2. Simplifies data sharing, integration and verification processes to deliver real-time data
3. Built in security, privacy and compliance controls
4. Data is shared, collected and accessible at individual (citizen, customer) and group (organisation, cohort, community) levels
5. Easy to use interface
6. Cost efficient
7. Resource efficient – not requiring senior IT expertise
8. Energy efficient – low energy consumption
9. Easy and quick to implement and scale

That leaves the final barrier to Fl@World adoption being the perceived risk associated with adopting a new way of doing things. We believe that being a successful Solve solution will greatly reduce, if not remove, that barrier; leading to, through the use of Fl@World, millions of lives and multi-millions of dollars being saved.

Product/service distribution:  

Partnering with solution providers who gather/analyse and manage:

- Electronic health data

• Mobile health solutions 
• Health insurance
• Supply chains
• Integrated and hub-and-spoke healthcare 

All of which can be supported, through increased efficiencies provided by Fl@World.

Funding and revenue model

• Introductions to decision makers
• Assistance with grant applications
• Introductions to finances
• Advice on capital raising in different markets

Board members or advisors

• a globally respected board member/advisor who has experience in both public and private sectors heath policy and practice (particularly if he/she is versed in health 4.0).

Legal or regulatory matters

- Looking to scale globally, we must ensure that we are across all international compliance and regulatory requirements.

Monitoring and evaluation

- Access to tools enabling market research, economic modelling and impact analysis.

Marketing, media, and exposure

• Investment in marketing, public relations, awareness through to purchase.
• Adding credibility to an unknown brand (Fl@World).

As we embark on the next phase of our startup we are extremely interested in introductions to viable customers open to creating potentially referential Proof of Concept projects. It is critical that our partners are:

• Facing the challenges of relentless Data. 
• Passionate about Data being a fundamental foundation of their business. 

We believe the following partnerships would help accelerate our impact:

1. VC firms in the healthcare sector – e.g. Dreamit Ventures, which connects Potential customers and startups. 
2. Startups associated with MIT and the MIT Solve Marketplace, submitted solutions and initiatives such as Solution-Covid-19, Lutte Contra Covid-19, Covid-19 Mitigating Technology and MediCapt.
3. Data Analytics firms  
4. The WHO (who, along with the Costa Rican government, have championed a proposal to create a pool of rights to tests, medicines and vaccines, with free access or licensing on reasonable and affordable terms for all countries).
5. Healthcare Companies working on Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and testing.
6. Influencers/Organizations like The Global Fund partnership committed to accelerating the end of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria as epidemics; The George Institute for Global Health; the CDC and EMA; the Health Sector Coordinating Council; The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM); the Barcelona Heath Hub; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCPT); the EU/EC, UN and OECD, all of whom require efficient technology to empower their multi-jurisdictional, joint monitoring requirements and frameworks (e.g. The European Health Information Gateway and Global noncommunicable disease network).