Disrupting Disease Surveillance
There is no effective affordable, rapid, and scalable infectious disease surveillance platform to rapidly identify and communicate infectious disease outbreaks globally. Once novel infectious disease transmission begins locally, it often takes months to develop laboratory based diagnostic tests and vast resources to scale and deploy globally. As we saw with COVID-19, by the time that laboratory tests have been developed it is often too late to prevent global disease spread. Once laboratory tests are developed they are often too expensive for small businesses or resource poor communities to obtain. Once sustained disease transmission occurs, there are no effective solutions to rapidly screen people for infectious diseases and organizations often resort to using ineffective health screening technologies like temperature checks and questionnaires to mitigate disease spread. This is highly problematic because most people that have an infectious disease do not have a fever. For example, fewer than 44% of people with COVID-19 experience a fever. This leaves humanity with few effective and scalable options to identify infectious diseases early, or to prevent sustained disease transmission in the community.
There is no effective affordable, rapid, and scalable infectious disease surveillance platform to rapidly identify and communicate infectious disease outbreaks globally. Once novel infectious disease transmission begins locally, it often takes months to develop laboratory based diagnostic tests and vast resources to scale and deploy globally. As we saw with COVID-19, by the time that laboratory tests have been developed it is often too late to prevent global disease spread. Once laboratory tests are developed they are often too expensive for small businesses or resource poor communities to obtain. Once sustained disease transmission occurs, there are no effective solutions to rapidly screen people for infectious diseases and organizations often resort to using ineffective health screening technologies like temperature checks and questionnaires to mitigate disease spread. This is highly problematic because most people that have an infectious disease do not have a fever. For example, fewer than 44% of people with COVID-19 experience a fever. This leaves humanity with few effective and scalable options to identify infectious diseases early, or to prevent sustained disease transmission in the community.
The K1 was designed to be highly flexible to meet any customer’s unique needs. Healthcare providers, government offices, retirement communities, factories, corporate offices, schools, universities, and public transportation are just a few examples of the types of organizations that use the MTRX K1. The MTRX K1 is a free standing, disability compliant, multi-language device. Using computer vision and object classification technology, the K1 can be used to determine if people are wearing masks. The K1 can also be programmed with mandatory screening questions which are required by law in some jurisdictions globally.
The K1 takes over 450,000 measurements per second of the heart, lungs, and multi-point temperature of the person being scanned. This is a significant advantage over any other technology on the market. The combination of millimeter wave scanners, time of flight sensors, and thermal sensors enables the system to measure the physiology (temperature, respiration rhythm, heart rhythm) in greater detail compared to any gold standard measuring device. Over a period of 9 seconds, the system analyzes over 4 million independent physiologic measurements to evaluate the person’s health. The K1 system then analyzes the combination of these measurements to determine whether or not a person is healthy or potentially has an infectious disease like COVID-19. The K1 also uses machine learning to help discern between different infectious diseases like the flu, the common cold, or COVID-19, or chronic conditions which cause people to have temperatures like cancer. Compared to other temperature taking or screening technology, this significantly reduces the amount of false positives and false negatives during health screening.
After several repeated measurements of the individual, the K1 compares the measurements of the person against their past measurements. This enables the K1 to determine when the person is not healthy compared to their own baseline and history of measurements. If the K1 determines that there is something abnormal with the person’s health (compared to their baseline), then the system notifies the individual that they should seek medical attention for professional medical evaluation. This is a significant and revolutionary change to how we evaluate a person's health, and is revolutionizing healthcare globally.
The MTRX KLD (cloud) provides advanced processing, analysis, and alerts of infectious disease events. The K1 transfers the results of each person’s scan to the KLD. The KLD analyzes de-identified scan result data and can detect when an abnormal amount of people are ill in a geographic area and triggers alerts to our users. These alerts occur in real time, and are significantly faster than other existing infectious disease outbreak detection methods.
The target audience of our technology is businesses, governments, and private organizations. As our technology advances, we are reducing the size of the K1 and reducing the cost of the K1 so that we deploy as many of these devices as we can globally. When our technology is deployed the information that we collect democratizes infectious disease surveillance and benefits the entire global population by preventing the spread of infectious diseases. We are meeting with leaders of private organizations and government bodies on a daily basis to determine how we can provide value to them. We have also been speaking with the people that use our technology at these organizations to perpetually improve the system. We financially incentivize current users of our products to provide us with feedback and our technical field staff routinely collects data and information from our users (employees, patients, and everyday people that visit locations with K1s). We are attempting to revolutionize the infectious disease surveillance and healthcare paradigms, and to successfully do this we have to provide value to the organization that purchases or funds the technology and to the person being scanned for COVID-19, and beyond.
- Strengthen disease surveillance, early warning predictive systems, and other data systems to detect, slow, or halt future disease outbreaks.
There is no effective affordable, rapid, and scalable infectious disease
surveillance platform to rapidly identify and communicate infectious
disease outbreaks globally. Once novel infectious disease transmission
begins locally, it often takes months to develop laboratory based
diagnostic tests and vast resources to scale and deploy globally. As we
saw with COVID-19, by the time that laboratory tests have been developed
it is often too late to prevent global disease spread. Once laboratory
tests are developed they are often too expensive for small businesses or
resource poor communities to obtain. Once sustained disease
transmission occurs, there are no effective solutions to rapidly screen
people for infectious diseases and organizations often resort to using
ineffective health screening technologies like temperature checks and
questionnaires to mitigate disease spread. This is highly problematic
because most people that have an infectious disease do not have a fever.
For example, fewer than 44% of people with COVID-19 experience a fever.
This leaves humanity with few effective and scalable options to
identify infectious diseases early, or to prevent sustained disease
transmission in the community.
- Growth: An organization with an established product, service, or business model rolled out in one or, ideally, several communities, which is poised for further growth.
Growth: We measure success and development stage by evaluating:
the amount of devices being used by location (50)
the amount of people using the devices (10,003)
the amount of scans per person per day (1.8)
the amount of alerts or notification generated (1 per 1,000)
the geographic distribution of the previously statistics (USA, North America, Canada, Europe)
MTRX technology was independently tested and validated by one of the largest healthcare providers in the United States. Then, Microsoft and Extreme Networks independently tested and validated our system with 10 large companies and government organizations in the United States, and their overwhelmingly positive feedback resulted in a formal partnership and dedication of resources from both companies. Extreme Networks and Microsoft has assigned resources consisting of business development, engineering, sales, product logistics, and marketing. Microsoft has accepted our product to their Co-Sell program which incentivizes 25,000 account executives to sell our products.
- A new technology
What makes our technology innovative and unique is that we were able to combine disparate sensors using a unique integrated circuit design and developed firmware to create the first touchless heart, lung, and thermal measuring device to evaluate health.
By law, we are not yet able to call the K1 a medical device as it has not been approved by the FDA. Although the device has not yet been approved by the FDA as a medical device, our bench testing and independent test results are similar to that of an EKG. An EKG only measures the heart (the K1 also measures the lungs), and typically costs around $9,000 for entry level models, has to be physically applied to a person, in a hospital or healthcare setting, by a medical professional. Our product can live anywhere with cell phone or Wi-Fi access and an electrical outlet, and can scan a different person every 9 seconds. We collect 4.5 million data points in seconds to evaluate a person's health.
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Audiovisual Media
- Behavioral Technology
- Big Data
- Blockchain
- GIS and Geospatial Technology
- Imaging and Sensor Technology
- Internet of Things
- Manufacturing Technology
- Materials Science
- Software and Mobile Applications
- Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality
- Women & Girls
- Pregnant Women
- LGBTQ+
- Infants
- Children & Adolescents
- Elderly
- Rural
- Peri-Urban
- Urban
- Poor
- Low-Income
- Middle-Income
- Refugees & Internally Displaced Persons
- Minorities & Previously Excluded Populations
- Persons with Disabilities
- 1. No Poverty
- 3. Good Health and Well-being
- 5. Gender Equality
- 7. Affordable and Clean Energy
- 8. Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- 10. Reduced Inequality
- 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
- 12. Responsible Consumption and Production
- 13. Climate Action
- 16. Peace and Justice Strong Institutions
- 17. Partnerships for the Goals
- Canada
- Japan
- Switzerland
- United States
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
Andrew Huff, data engineer & epidemiologist, MTRX
Brock Arnold, software engineer, MTRX
Chris Blauvelt, hardware & firmware engineer, MTRX, Fortinet
Steve Hawkins, security, MTRX, Clango
Robert Riehm, finance, MTRX, UnitedHealth Group
Luke Groth, operations & legal, MTRX
Ben Wheeler, supply chain, MTRX, RedBox
Chris Ward, software engineer, MTRX
Dwight Cody, accounting & ERP, MTRX, Cargill
Zach Brown, software engineer, MTRX, JPMorgan
Dan Capri, software engineer, MTRX
Nick Kemske, security engineer & DevOps, MTRX
Geno Basset, security architect, MTRX, Cargill
Jan Decker, firmware, MTRX
Andrew Duso, sales, MTRX
Steve Freedman, MTRX, Alunos, CEDES
Doug McDonald, Extreme Networks
Merrilee Ruben, Microsoft
Dr. Andrew Huff (US Army Combat Disabled Veteran), Co-Founder of MTRX, is 38 years old and he is the youngest person on the team. Everyone on the team are well seasoned professionals in their domain. We have expertise in security, finance, sales, marketing, operations, supply chain, logistics, hardware, software signals processing, manufacturing, system design and architecture, public health, epidemiology, biostatistics, and biosurveillance.
Brock Arnold (Native American), MTRX Co-founder, have successfully designed, built, and deployed biosurveillance tools and platforms for the Department of Defense, Center for Disease Control, World Health Organization, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the United States Department of Agriculture.
From 12 years experience, we learned what the critical gaps are in biosurveillance and were inspired to develop a new solution to address the gaps. After we identified the problem Brock and I contacted all the best people we knew professionally to see if they wanted to help. Collectively, many of the people on the team grew up in poor communities and know what it is like to not have access to resources. So this makes it easy for us to quickly determine what design choices work best for disadvantaged people during the design process.
MTRX honors human rights and intellectual freedom, celebrates diverse
cultures, fosters a climate of mutual respect, and promotes an inclusive
environment that affirms the value of all persons. Dimensions of
diversity can include sex, race, age, national origin, immigration
status, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, intellectual and
physical ability, sexual orientation, income, faith and non-faith
perspectives, socioeconomic class, political ideology, education,
primary language, family status, military experience, cognitive style,
disability, and communication style. In a multi-perspective
intellectual space, challenges to our beliefs and ideas are part of the
learning process and can provide opportunities for growth. Reasoning,
thoughtfulness, and open dialogues that honor the dignity of everyone is
expected at MTRX.
We hire the best qualified person for the job and do not discriminate in any shape or form. 3/5 senior leaders are members of protected groups under United States law:
Dr. Andrew Huff - Co-Founder - Disabled
Mr. Brock Arnold - Co-Founder - Native American / Mohawk
Mr. Chris Blauvelt - Head of Engineering - Disabled
- Organizations (B2B)
The biggest barrier to accomplishing our goals is educating the consumers and end users on our product. Since our technology is so revolutionary, it is very difficult to have someone understand how it works. Since the majority of the population is conditioned to believe that the only way to measure physiology is with a physical device attached to someone's body, many people have a very difficult time understanding or believing that physiology can be measured with electromagnetic energy. To overcome this barrier, we continually have to educate the customers and users of our product.
Another barrier, is the cost of the current version of our product. The current cost is $10,000 per K1. While the cost per person scan is fractions of a cent for the lifetime of the device, this initial cost is too much to bear for some customers. To help our customers with the cost we have created financing programs with JP Morgan Chase and have leasing options available. Ideally, we want to improve our design and engineering to reduce our costs and pass these savings on to the customer so that our system will have maximum market penetration globally.
- Legal or Regulatory Matters
- Public Relations (e.g. branding/marketing strategy, social and global media)
- Product / Service Distribution (e.g. expanding client base)
We are happy to share this information once a mutual non-disclosure agreement is in place.
We would like to partner with many of your organizations.
Here is a list of who and why:
Aviva - the data that we collect can reduce health insurance costs and will help us grow in their market
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - can help bring our solution to poor nations and under-served populationsBrunswick - can help our company navigate complex multi-organizational partnerships and data sharing agreements
Discovery - the data that we collect can reduce health insurance costs and will help us enter a new market
Optum - the data that we collect can reduce health insurance costs and help their patients identify an illness before it becomes a clinical visit
Patrick McGovern - we could potentially collaborate on refining our health scanning ML algorithms
Internews - can help communicate our products availability and value to end users in resource poor locations globally
Reckitt - we can provide technology to help them with their re-entry hygiene solutions
Tencent - Can help us market and communicate our technology in Asian markets
How did you find out about The Trinity Challenge?
- Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
- No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
- No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
- No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
- No
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Co-Founder, CEO