Arqcare

The average person living with a rare disease endures a 5-year diagnostic odyssey. That often means unnecessary care visits, delayed treatments, and poor outcomes. Many people living with a rare disease will never get an accurate diagnosis in their lifetime. We’re working to shorten the time to diagnosis and improve outcomes for people living with rare diseases. There are over 7,000 known rare diseases. Most have a genetic basis and many share symptoms with more common disorders. This makes it almost impossible for any human to detect all rare diseases without help. 

Specialist referral is often delayed because GPs don’t suspect a rare disease. In many parts of the world, lack of access means people may never receive the rare disease diagnosis they desperately need for adequate care. Any disease that affects fewer than 5 in 10,000 people is considered rare in Europe. But with 300 million people worldwide living with a rare disease, rare is widespread.

At Arqcare we envision a world where every person with a rare disease has timely access to the healthcare they need. Our AI and commitment to modeling rare diseases can turn everyday devices in homes and clinics across the world into powerful tools for improving disease recognition, time to diagnosis, and access to care. By using AI to raise the suspicion of a rare disease early, we could speed up referral to specialist clinics for diagnosis. That could mean simplified rare disease journeys and a reduced burden on people living with a rare disease, doctors, and health systems.

There are more than 7000 rare diseases affecting approximately 350 million people worldwide. Eighty percent of rare diseases are genetic diseases. According to a report from Globalgenes [1], most clinicians have limited knowledge about these diseases, and 40% of general practitioners and 24% of specialist doctors do not have time to work on these diagnoses. All these factors lead to underdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis of rare diseases. Moreover, even if the patient is suspected of suffering from a rare disease, there is still a large possibility of misdiagnosis because of the overlapping spectrum of symptoms of many rare diseases [2]. In general, final diagnosis for most rare diseases is performed using a genetic test that tends to be focused on a small set of diseases.

In the European Union (EU), a disease is declared as “rare “if no more than 5 out of 10,000 people are affected [1]. It is estimated that about 7000 different rare diseases (RDs) exist. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 400 million people are affected [2]. Many RDs are severe, chronic and life-threatening [3, 4]. 80% of RDs are of genetic origin and pre-dominantly affect children [5,6,7,8,9]. For instance cystic fibrosis as a rare lung disease occurs in the first years of the childhood and is associated with an average life expectancy of 40 years [10]. Other RDs like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the central and peripheral nervous system, can occur later in life and lead to death within a few years [11]. A big challenge in the management of RDs is finding the right diagnosis. Patients with RDs are sometimes diagnosed too late or not at all. They report many years of a diagnosis odyssey [4].

Given all these constraints, a recent review concluded that rare disease diagnosis is still a challenging task [3].  Delayed diagnosis is frequent due to lack of knowledge of most clinicians and a small number of expert centers. Consequently, computerized diagnosis support systems have been developed to address these issues, with many relying on rare disease expertise and taking advantage of the increasing volume of generated and accessible health-related data.

Furthermore, the world is facing a severe global health challenge – Over 4 billion people lack access to basic health care services, leaving millions of people without the care that they need and deserve. This alarming situation is mainly attributed to major financial and geographical barriers. In developing countries, three out of four people live in rural areas (The World Bank, 2017), but healthcare resources are mostly concentrated in urban areas, resulting in limited access to appropriate care. The demand for affordable, effective and quality and accurate health disease diagnostic services is high, but cannot be met by the traditional, costly model of delivering healthcare solely through doctors and nurses, which are most often not accessible in rural settings. The massive shortage of more than 7 million health workers, urges us to think about new solutions that can be deployed quicker -. Rising smartphone penetration global even in hard-to-reach areas, provides the unique opportunity for mobile AI health applications to facilitate new access to healthcare for communities and fundamentally transform health care diagnosis and delivery.

Arqcare is an IA powered Clinical decision support platform for Rare Diseases that supports individuals and clinicians in the diagnosis of patients with Rare Diseases and other health emergencies to overcome health misdiagnosis challenges and bring life-saving, high quality care and an accurate decision support system to millions. By combining artificial intelligence and human doctors, health scientists Arqcare reduces the uncertainty and suffering that surrounds the rare disease community allowing patients to control their personal medical data while helping clinicians to know their patients better, synthesize the knowledge contained in the global health community, and transform that information into better results for their patients. Our core system connects medical knowledge with intelligent technology to help all people actively manage their health and medical professionals to deliver effective care.

Arqcare asks the user simple questions and, using powerful reasoning technology, compares the answers against thousands of conditions, millions of associated symptom combinations and similar cases to determine the most likely causes of their symptoms. This is supported by a growing medical library — which is continuously kept up-to-date with the latest human medical knowledge and science. Utilizing AI and machine learning, users are able to describe their symptoms to a technological “doctor” or consultant on the app. This data is then analysed and then enables users to be connected to a medical professional to discuss further if required.

We believe that we can only achieve this by empowering community health workers with Artificial Intelligence (AI) via mobile technology to enable better informed decisions, support accurate diagnosis and improve appropriate care navigation of patients. The platform will help individuals to understand and manage their health through a personalized health assessment, while providing earlier health information and decision support to doctors. With an approachable, user-friendly interface, anyone will enter their presenting complaints. With the warm, friendly tone of a doctor, the platform guides users through a series of questions related to their symptoms and provides them with a list of conditions that they are most likely to have – offering a secure platform for collecting patient data and providing guidance on possible conditions and next steps.

This sophisticated medical reasoning engine is being designed by a team of over 50 doctors, data scientists and engineers who are spending time to solve the puzzle of diagnosis once and for all. With over 20,000 diseases, an infinite number of potential symptom constellations, it is simply impossible for a human to be able to identify all of these possible combinations. Through the use of AI,Arqcare can solve this issue within minutes and support decision making in multiple languages.  We envision a world where every person with a rare disease has timely access to the healthcare accurate diagnostic information they need.  By deploying an AI driven platform and commitment to modeling rare diseases we can turn everyday devices in homes and clinics across the world into powerful tools for improving disease recognition, time to diagnosis, and access to care. By using AI to raise the suspicion of a rare disease early, we could speed up referral to specialist clinics for diagnosis. That could mean simplified rare disease journeys and a reduced burden on people living with a rare disease, doctors, and health systems.

Together, we can (i) empower patients and raise awareness, educate people with accurate information about possible diseases, provide immediate access to holistic guidance, resource, and care as well as connect and educate stakeholders to build advocacy; (ii) reduce the and burden of accurate detection of rear diseases by increasing diagnostic accuracy and referral efficiency, accelerate identification and decrease time to diagnosis, avoid costs from unnecessary tests and treatment; (iii) and facilitate collaboration and support clinical research by building a consolidated view of health by collating symptoms, observations, and risk factors, allow specialists to compare evidence with our platform suggestions using our intelligent assessment technology, and share anonymous cases for peer collaboration and modeling.

There are more than 7000 rare diseases affecting approximately 350 million people worldwide. Eighty percent of rare diseases are genetic diseases. According to a report from Globalgenes [1], most clinicians have limited knowledge about these diseases, and 40% of general practitioners and 24% of specialist doctors do not have time to work on these diagnoses. All these factors lead to underdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis of rare diseases. Moreover, even if the patient is suspected of suffering from a rare disease, there is still a large possibility of misdiagnosis because of the overlapping spectrum of symptoms of many rare diseases [2]. In general, final diagnosis for most rare diseases is performed using a genetic test that tends to be focused on a small set of diseases.

Globally, 4 billion people lack access to basic health services and with current population growth there will be an estimated 18 million shortfalls in health workers by 2030. This shortage of health workers has and will continue to have a severe impact on children and young people, especially in low- and middle-income countries. As the world grapples with a wide spread of rare diseases and pandemics people in low-and-middle-income countries are hit hardest by these challenges. East Africa is acutely affected by these issues, and many countries have fewer than one physician per 1,000 people. At the same time, East Africa also has some of the highest connectivity rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, and industries such as financial services are already experiencing technological innovation in the area.

Timely diagnosis is a critical factor for a patient’s future quality of
life but symptoms can present in many ways and be indicative of other
conditions. Worldwide, the delay to diagnosis averages about five years -
with women taking two years longer than men to be diagnosed.

Therefore there is a clear need to make healthcare diagnosis shorter and more accessible and digital technology can play an important role in achieving this. However, despite digital health solutions facing exponential growth in recent years, the majority of the solutions are not adopted to specific regions or languages, meaning the quality of health information and advice is poor, and the capacity gap only continues to increase. So, not only is there a demand for these kind of tools in the region, but there’s also an existing familiarity with, and infrastructure for, digital solutions, meaning such tools can really make a valuable impact.

As noted above, it is clearly seen that globally, healthcare is complicated, inaccessible and focuses on reactive versus proactive care, and Arqcare seeks to shift the healthcare model to put the patient first.

By complementing the strengths of human doctors with machine intelligence, we are building a comprehensive medical knowledge base covering hundreds and thousands of conditions and symptoms and cases using intelligence supported by a deep, curated medical knowledge base and artificial intelligence technology that is able to consider the patient’s full medical history, along with data from a broader range of sensors, devices and other sources, when making a health assessment.

In terms of usability, the platform has an approachable and conversational interface that encourages users to engage. Arqcare’s assessment is developed to work much like a good doctor would, determining the most relevant, helpful questions to ask, with intelligent algorithms enabling the platform to ‘get to know’ each individual better over time, providing a more comprehensive health picture and increasingly tailored guidance.

This optimized and computerized disease model will aid differentiation of the signs and symptoms of conditions that may appear similar in nature. At the end of an assessment, users are offered a number of options to help them take the next steps. The platform helps individuals to understand and manage their health through a personalized health assessment, while providing earlier health information and decision support to doctors. With an approachable, user-friendly interface, anyone can enter their presenting complaints. With the warm, friendly tone of a doctor, and it guides users through a series of questions related to their symptoms and provides them with a list of conditions that they are most likely to have.

Arqcare is a free, symptom-checking app that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence that we believe will strongly support access to appropriate health care, thus improving health seeking behaviours. The health system of Uganda, East Africa and Africa generally is like a pyramid, on top of which the lower levels are overwhelmed with a significant number of patients and minimal resources. Accessibility, weak communication and not being able to pay are key contributors to the delay in seeking health care. Ensuring a functional health app in multiple languages will accelerate appropriate and timely health seeking behaviour, maximizing access to health care.

AI has huge potential to help improve the efficiency and quality of our healthcare systems through more personalized and predictive care; we believe it is vital that these benefits are available to everyone, globally. Arqcare app can make patients, especially young people, informed stakeholders in their own health; building digital health tools specifically for the demands and local requirements in low- and middle-income countries is therefore essential to achieving health equity.

In general, applications providing diagnostic support, such as Arqcare, certainly meets the clinical demands of the East African market. These demands are driven by a shortage of clinical professionals distributed relevant to populations.

Our artificial intelligence technology is to be trained using real-world medical cases and with insights from hundreds of expert doctors, scientists, and researchers to help you and your loved ones check symptoms and discover what might be causing them – day or night without an appointment. Whatever is bothering you, from stomach problems to headache, Arqcare’s free symptom checker can help you find answers and let you know if you should see a doctor.  

Once a user gets to the platform, they answer simple questions about their own or someone else’s health and symptoms. Arqcare’s AI assesses your answers against its medical dictionary of thousands of disorders and medical conditions. You receive a personalized assessment report that tells you what could be wrong and what to do next.

Users can be rest assured of;

- Data privacy and security – we apply the strictest data regulations to protect you and keep your information private.

- Smart results – our core system connects medical knowledge with intelligent technology.

- Personalized health information – your guidance is personal to your unique health profile.

- Assessments for loved ones – if you assess someone else, their information stays separate from your own.

- Health checks – your assessments include information that may be relevant and helpful to your doctor.

- 24/7 access – you can use the free symptom checker anytime, anywhere.

There are more than 7000 rare diseases affecting approximately 350 million people worldwide. Eighty percent of rare diseases are genetic diseases. According to a report from Globalgenes [1], most clinicians have limited knowledge about these diseases, and 40% of general practitioners and 24% of specialist doctors do not have time to work on these diagnoses. All these factors lead to underdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis of rare diseases.

Every year, billions of dollars are wasted around the world on inappropriate care provision. In the US, over 30 percent of misdiagnosis costs can be attributed to patients going to the wrong place at the first step of their care journey. Meanwhile, individuals are demanding more immediate answers and personalized solutions, with 80 percent of people seeking health information online. Online health information usually isn't written or checked by medical professionals and can lead to dangerous outcomes and additional burdens on care systems. The healthcare industry is responding by shifting toward more consumer-centric models and personalized care to meet the needs of their customers. Access to personalized information on next steps for care, whenever and wherever they need it, can save people time and give them greater peace of mind during their health journey. For health organizations, this can mean more engaged, healthier consumers; appropriate use of services; improved cost efficiencies; and insightful population-level data.  

Arqcare helps people for instance those with rare disease symptoms to proactively manage their health while supporting medical professionals. Arqcare takes the user through a comprehensive health assessment, starting with basic demographic information, risk factors, and the symptoms that are troubling them most. Arqcare's reasoning engine and medical knowledge database then determine the probability of various associated conditions and relevant care options based on the user's input. When working with partners, we map their care facilities, providers, digital services, and other care navigation options to our assessment. Together, this enables us to help the user navigate from their initial assessment to an appointment at the right facility with an appropriate medical professional.

Utilizing AI and machine learning, Arqcare enables users to describe their symptoms to a technological “doctor” or consultant on the app. This data is then analyses and then enables users to be connected to a medical professional to discuss further if required. It helps individuals to understand and manage their health through a personalized health assessment, while providing earlier health information and decision support to doctors. With an approachable, user-friendly interface, anyone can enter their presenting complaints. With the warm, friendly tone of a doctor, the platform guides users through a series of questions related to their symptoms and provides them with a list of conditions that they are most likely to have. Arqcare asks the user simple questions and, using powerful reasoning technology, compares the answers against thousands of conditions, millions of associated symptom combinations and similar cases to determine the most likely causes of their symptoms. This is supported by a growing medical library — which is continuously kept up-to-date with the latest human medical knowledge and science. By complementing the strengths of human doctors with machine intelligence, we are building a comprehensive medical knowledge base covering hundreds and thousands of conditions and symptoms and cases using intelligence supported by a deep, curated medical knowledge base and artificial intelligence technology that is able to consider the patient’s full medical history, along with data from a broader range of sensors, devices and other sources, when making a health assessment. In terms of usability, the platform has an approachable and conversational interface that encourages users to engage. Arqcare’s assessment is developed to work much like a good doctor would, determining the most relevant, helpful questions to ask, with intelligent algorithms enabling the platform to ‘get to know’ each individual better over time, providing a more comprehensive health picture and increasingly tailored guidance.

Arqcare is still a Concept in the idea form which is being explored for its feasibility to build a product, service, or business model based on that idea. It doesn't yet exist but we are hopeful that by end of this year 2021, we shall have developed and tested a prototype which we shall refine and develop a final product that we shall eventually launch in the healthcare market.

Globally, healthcare is complicated, inaccessible and focuses on reactive versus proactive care, and Arqcare is shifting the healthcare model to put the patient first.

By complementing the strengths of human doctors with machine intelligence, we are building a comprehensive medical knowledge base covering hundreds and thousands of conditions and symptoms and cases using intelligence supported by a deep, curated medical knowledge base and artificial intelligence technology that is able to consider the patient’s full medical history, along with data from a broader range of sensors, devices and other sources, when making a health assessment.

In terms of usability, the platform has an approachable and conversational interface that encourages users to engage. Arqcare’s assessment is developed to work much like a good doctor would, determining the most relevant, helpful questions to ask, with intelligent algorithms enabling the platform to ‘get to know’ each individual better over time, providing a more comprehensive health picture and increasingly tailored guidance.    

Arqcare uses a probabilistic reasoning engine, combined with a deep medical knowledge base covering thousands of conditions, symptoms and findings. Arqcare takes all of the patient’s information into consideration and can be validated by GPs and university clinics. Via learning-mechanisms, Arqcare can keep improving as is in use. It is also in our plans to create a specialized version of Arqcare for clinicians and community health workers by setting up a toolbox which includes lab tests to expand diagnostic capabilities, and to integrate the respective treatment recommendation to enable prompt and quality care.    

Furthermore, Arqcare’s deep medical foundation and our approach is what makes us unique. Our AI platform is built based on several years of research and development, as well as the experience and expertise of the health scientists, doctors, partners etc. which enables us to refine our reasoning technology and build up a very robust medical knowledge base covering many thousands of real medical cases, conditions, symptoms and findings.

Medical Foundation: We are starting by designing the core of our technology to support medical specialists with diagnosis, ensuring that the platform’s reasoning and knowledge is intuitive and accurate, and we shall continue to build on that, eventually translating our core content, knowledge base and technology into a tool accessible to patients, culminating in the patient-facing personal guide available globally today. As such, Arqcare will be one of if not the only platform with the reasoning to support both patients and doctors. Doctors are playing a key role in Arqcare’s development and will continue to contribute to Arqcare’s learning.

Reasoning: Arqcare’s bespoke AI is able to review multiple pieces of data to output probabilities, which means that Arqcare can consider a variety of diseases to make a health assessment, to provide the most likely explanations for a user’s symptoms. Arqcare also doesn’t exclusively rely on information from one type of data source. We continue to update our medical knowledge base with the latest medical information, and we integrate machine learning techniques that enable Arqcare to learn from every interaction and it incorporates different data sources (i.e. medical history, sensors, lab tests, etc.), Arqcare once launched will become more intelligent, putting us ahead in the market.   

Patient-Centricity & Global Reach: Arqcare combines the best of AI with the insights of doctors, to help people understand and manage their health, simplifying the healthcare experience on a global scale- from assessing pressing mental and physical health concerns, to saving time at the doctor’s office, and helping individuals get to the appropriate next step in their care. Every part of Arqcare is designed to be intuitive and easy to use.

Arqcare is a personal health companion that uses ML & AI, combined with human intelligence, to radically improve access to healthcare information for both patients and doctors using a smartphone mobile chatbot app.

The A.I. Engine using bespoke probabilistic reasoning technology works a little like an Alexa for health. It has being developed by in-house experts with deep medical and AI expertise, culminating in an intelligent symptom-checker that will bring personalized healthcare to people around the globe. In addition to helping users decipher their ailments, the platform health management solution integrates with doctor-facing tools that allow physicians to use the platform’s technology to support their decision-making process. ArqCare’s aim is to improve access to healthcare globally, with the idea that in the future, AI starts the process of personalizing your healthcare until a doctor takes over and has access to a pre-diagnosis.

Babylon Health partners with UK’s NHS to replace telephone helpline with AI-powered chatbot  –Babylon Health, the U.K. startup that offers a digital healthcare app via a mixture of artificial intelligence (AI) and video and text consultations with doctors and specialists, has scored a potentially significant trial with the National Health Service (NHS).

According to the mHealth App Economics 2017 study, 61% of decision makers and experts of digital health see Artificial Intelligence as the most disruptive technology shaping the digital health sector. And although AI is still in infancy its capability to offer significant digital health personalized value with the right actionable insights by empowering a new generation of personal health companions and medical chatbots, telemedicine and the prominent IBM Watson for Oncology notably improves the quality of people’s lives and transforms the healthcare sphere. 

Artificial intelligence could revive the art of medicine– Doctors practice medicine to deliver care, not do data entry. Yet in the era of electronic medical records (EMRs), for every hour spent with a patient, physicians spend nearly two hours on paperwork. What if technology could take care of the paperwork for us? Record-keeping systems in health care were built for back-office functions, not bedside medicine. Most EMR vendors started out building products to collect payments and schedule appointments. When these vendors got around to building interfaces for doctors, they built EMRs that also primarily serve administrative purposes: they create a paper trail for billing audits, regulatory reporting, and medical malpractice suits. Imagine if technology could collect and organize data to satisfy those administrative requirements. Then doctors, instead of being data entry clerks, could focus on practicing medicine.

Digital solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence’s data driven nature and its ability to process unthinkable amount of data, identify the relevant insights to be matched with specific patient case and records, leads to unique user experience. Taking prompt actions to feel better and manage more effectively one’s everyday condition gives a sense of responsibility for one’s own health. In some rural areas around the world with no easy physical access to a doctor, AI based mHealth solutions could be a game changer for people with health conditions that are not-life threatening. AI and machine learning, chatbots, predictive diagnostics and telemedicine provide the support doctors need in the patient-centric journey.

At present, some medical chatbots that utilize advanced Artificial intelligence algorithm / self-learning AI technology can be used as a personal health assistant to: check symptoms and get a diagnosis, advise how to treat the sickness and whether one should see personally a doctor, book a consultation with a medical specialist, and allow for remote monitoring of a health status. What makes one medical chatbot stand out from the rest? The quality of the medical and scientific data that is behind the AI technology used, the ability to process more cases and insights, as well as the propensity to learn from real time smart conversations with the user and to build a personalized profile with every interaction make one chatbot a trustworthy partner in managing one’s health.

mHealth Economics 2017 – Current Status and Future Trends in Mobile Health The mHealth App Developer Economics 2017, is the seventh edition of the largest global study on mobile and digital health apps. This report is of one of several free reports. This first reports is focused on the current market trends and future market developments. The report results are based on answers of more than 2,400 mHealth app developers and healthcare professionals.

How do you trust technology in Healthcare – Technology surprises us with new things every day. Up until recently AI, robotics, 3D printing, Augmented or Virtual Reality were “restricted” to commercial/entertainment uses, with healthcare lagging behind in adopting them. This has changed quite dramatically the last 2 years. Technology in all its forms is taking healthcare by storm and is well on its way to becoming an integral part of all its aspects.

A new report from the Ada Lovelace Institute explores the datafication of health, how it manifests and the consequences for people and society. Health datafication, digital phenotyping and the ‘Internet of Health’ 

No longer science fiction, AI and robotics are transforming healthcare –AI is getting increasingly sophisticated at doing what humans do, but more efficiently, more quickly and at a lower cost. The potential for both AI and robotics in healthcare is vast. Just like in our every-day lives, AI and robotics are increasingly a part of our healthcare eco-system.9 Ways AI Will Disrupt Healthcare in the Next 5 Years –The technology could impact areas from stroke detection to mental health to access to specialized care.

The potential for artificial intelligence in healthcare–The complexity and rise of data in healthcare means that artificial intelligence (AI) will increasingly be applied within the field. Several types of AI are already being employed by payers and providers of care, and life sciences companies. The key categories of applications involve diagnosis and treatment recommendations, patient engagement and adherence, and administrative activities. Although there are many instances in which AI can perform healthcare tasks as well or better than humans, implementation factors will prevent large-scale automation of healthcare professional jobs for a considerable period. Ethical issues in the application of AI to healthcare are also discussed.

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Delivery –By Sandeep Reddy.

In recent years, there has been an amplified focus on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in various domains to resolve complex issues. Likewise, the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare is growing while radically changing the face of healthcare delivery.

In 2019, Montani and Striani [5] reviewed clinical decision support tools using artificial intelligence (AI). They considered two categories of AI: knowledge-based AI, using a “top-down” fashion based on human knowledge, and data-driven AI, using a “bottom-up” fashion to generate knowledge from a large amount of data. Knowledge-based AI aims to model expert knowledge with artifacts such as ontologies and rules and operationalize it in terms of software or algorithms for reasoning and solving problems, whereas in the case of data-driven systems, models allowing classification and prediction are derived from the processing of data provided to the system. Montani and Striani [5] identified 13 studies proposing decision support dealing with diagnosis.

Some of the threats and how we mitigate them may include though not limited to;

Threat #1: Data compromise/misuse

Our mission is to make healthcare more personalized and more accessible for everyone. To achieve this, we shall always ensure data security and data privacy is a fundamental part of our business and services.  As a digital health company based in Uganda, we take data privacy and security extremely seriously and we treat all information shared with us with the utmost care. We will therefore comply with the world’s strictest data protection laws, policies, and regulations including (but not limited to) GDPR in the EEA and HIPAA as well the Uganda’s Data act. We never share users’ individual information with any third party without each user’s explicit consent. No personal or medical data will be sold to third parties or shared for any commercial purpose.

Furthermore, the very structure of our services and apps is specifically designed to protect our users. Our architecture follows the security-by-design principle: our users’ health data is completely anonymized and stored completely separately from their personal data (such as name, email address) and can only be linked back to personal data using a unique key. Arqcare encrypts all personal data and health information transferred and stored, utilizing secured cloud-based servers for these purposes.

As is common and necessary to operate apps and digital services, the Arqcare app will communicate with a number of service providers in storing and processing data to make the service itself function. We shall carefully select all the service providers to ensure our data policies and practices are never compromised. We shall sign stringent data processing agreements with every service provider we work with to ensure no personal or individual medical data is used for commercial gain directly or indirectly.

Threat #2: How Personal information is stored

All personal information is encrypted for both transfer and storage, and is kept securely on cloud-based servers run by Amazon Web Services. Personal data (such as name and email address) is stored separately from medical data (such as information entered during a symptom assessment). Medical data is anonymized and can only be linked back to personal data using a unique key. Our information architecture follows the security-by-design principle, implementing strict data separation and encryption of moving data and data at rest.

Threat #3: Clients’ data sharing with third parties/data security

Arqcare does not share your data with anyone unless you explicitly tell us to do so.

We take privacy and security of personal data very seriously. As we outline in our privacy policy. we will not share clients’ information with any third party without your explicit consent. An example of when someone may explicitly consent to sharing their information with a third party is when sending their Arqcare assessment report to their doctor. We shall integrate our software with Facebook to make creating an account faster and easier. User’s may choose to use their Facebook account to create a Arqcare account. Arqcare will only take their email address, name and age from the Facebook account, but this does not enable Facebook to access the data they share with Arqcare. Users’ will still create a Arqcare account via email without integrating with your Facebook account.

Threat #4: Concerns about deleted data

Clients’ information will be stored for as long as you have an active account with Arqcare. When they delete their account, all their personal information will be deleted too.

Information security

We shall develop our technology to be as private and secure as possible. Personal health information shared with Arqcare will be confidential and encrypted. It's never shared without explicit consent. We're committed to increasing transparency and understanding about how we manage security at Arqcare.

Our security processes

-We follow ‘security by design.’ That means Arqcare is designed to be secure from the beginning and throughout the product lifecycle.

We shall always separate user details from health information. Each type of data will be stored separately in servers within the areas of operation.

Through a Global Compliance & Ethics Department helps employees understand and fulfill their security responsibilities.We shall manage the physical security of our offices to control access to data.

-We shall regularly attempt to breach our own security to spot and fix any weak points.

External authorities and internal teams shall regularly audit Arqcare to ensure we comply with industry regulations and standards
We shall fully comply with the highest regulatory standards

• EU-GDPR compliant European Union General Data Protection Regulation
• CE Mark
  
• HIPAA
• ISO 27001 Certification with the quality standard for information security
• ISO 13485 Certification with quality management system
• Uganda’s Data act 

Arqcare being in its concept phase, it doesn’t serve anybody as yet. Within the next 12 months, we seek to develop and test the Arqcare Chatbot among a small amount of 2000 Community Health Workers, 2500 drugshop dispensaries and over 1000 health facilities. We intend to start with roughly 150.000 people to be served by the above-mentioned stakeholders. We will have gained first insights and set up an infrastructure, which will allow us to modify and further adapt the Arqcare to improve decision making and referrals. In five years, we will have validated the model and rolled out the Arqcare chatbot app to hundreds of thousands of CHWs and drugshop dispensaries, serving over 10millions of people in Uganda, East Africa and Africa at large.

Our goal is to provide increasingly personalized support and guidance. In the future, Arqcare will also become much more of an ongoing health companion, helping patients and doctors to intelligently monitor health data over the long term to enable predictive and proactive care. We shall be working on several exciting new product features and partnerships, and continue exploring additional ways we can integrate a broader range of sensors, devices and other sources.

Our goal is to design a Health app that will give better information than you'd get from Google results. Users open the free app, enter their age and gender, and type in a symptom like pain or a cough. Then a bot powered by machine learning asks several basic questions, such as how long the symptom has persisted, what makes it worse, and whether or not any related symptoms have popped up.

We firmly believe that the future of healthcare lies in a much more
patient-centric model, where individuals have actionable insights at
their fingertips, and doctors and artificial intelligence work together
to support patients throughout their healthcare journey. AI platforms
like Arqcare's only goal is to facilitate more universal cross-sharing of
resources and knowledge which will break down inefficiencies and
barriers to universal healthcare access, with a lot of health management
being able to be done remotely.

As the smartphone becomes more ubiquitous, we believe Arqcare can really empower patients, health workers and doctors in less developed parts of the world, enabling someone in Africa to access the same world class medical knowledge and care as someone in Germany or New York.

Arqcare seeks to:

• Develop prototypes of the Arqcare tool for use among different types of semi-skilled health workers
• Introduce an effective referral system across stakeholders within primary healthcare
• Form partnerships with relevant stakeholders, such as local governments and the private sector, to implement Ada tools on the ground in Africa    

To reach the goals mentioned above, Arqcare seeks to form partnerships that will:

• Enable users to be directed to specific providers in the continuum of care
• Empower frontline health workers to deliver primary care in low-resource settings

In order to achieve our goal will require us partnering with relevant health worker organizations in Uganda, East Africa, Africa and in other parts of the world. We believe in the power of our technology to create long-lasting impact. Establishing partnerships and developing a network of strong supporters is crucial to achieving our mission. Our solution to build and test the platform will only succeed by forming relevant partnerships with NGOs and foundations, in order to start implementation.

Our impact measurement indicators shall include though not necessarily limited to:

• The number of subscribers and users on the platform as well as how many times the app is downloaded and used.
• We shall also assess impact based on the number of symptom assessments completed on the platform.
• By allowing users to rate the app and its services as well as allowing users to share their experience using the platform, we will be able to measure impact.
• Knowing that English is not a common language everywhere, our ability to translate the platform into multiple languages to meet the needs of users in different communities and locations who are able to effective use the platform will also act as a powerful indicator for us.
• The platform’s ability to effectively, and accurately provide digital assessment to its users that can be correctly verified and approved by clinicians and other medical experts and scientists across regions will be key in our impact measurement.
• The number of our own in-house medical experts will also surely help us know how much of our impact can be measured.
• Other impact measurement indicators shall also include; number of partner NGOs, government Ministries of Health created, funding raised and awards won by the company/initiative, as well as the ability to scale the initiative beyond Uganda into other East African, African, and the global markets.

Full-time:

-5 Doctors

-2 Data scientists

-2 ICT Specialists

-2 Business development experts and consultants

Part time:

-10 doctors and clinicians

-Ministry of Health

-5 ICT consultants

-1 Business incubation hub

-5 clinicians

2-Software engineers

Our team is comprised of a diverse and complementary group of experts in clinical care, public health, health informatics, ML &AI, and human-centered design that provides expert viewpoints from a wide array of fields. Our Ugandan leadership has expertise in rare disease research, rural health needs and national health requirements, while our Executive Director’s extensive experience as an end-user of electronic health records in the East Africa allows our team to draw upon the successes and failures of US-based digital health records. The Project works closely with the Ugandan Ministry of Health to guide or national scale strategy.

Belonging to a medical background our founder has faced the socio-cultural barriers of not being able to have a supportive environment to fulfil his ambitions of serving my Hippocratic oath of serving his fellow community of people with rare diseases while realizing the dearth of health resources. He along with the entire team are well equipped to design, develop and deploy telehealth and mobile health solutions that are cost effective and easy-to-use, thereby creating convenient, accessible and remote health care options for our beneficiaries.

As a Managing Director, he is an experienced Social Entrepreneur with a proven track record of leading an international, award-winning social enterprise, building strong partnerships with NGOs, foundations and government but he is also a victim of rare disease misdiagnosis. 

He is a highly dedicated professional working round the clock to bring about the desired outcomes and results expected from my organization. he has a democratic leadership style in the organization that allows for constant feedback and flow of ideas among team members that further improves the likelihood of project success. For 5+ years he has been successfully leading a multidisciplinary team with diverse backgrounds that assesses our beneficiaries’ needs to see what their barriers to care may be and helps to address them by implementing and continually improving our services. 

Our Tech Leads have built healthcare and telecommunications solutions. Our Operations Lead has a track record of streamlining operational processes. Our Sales Lead’s pharmaceutical sales background won us 25% of Uganda’s healthcare market in 2 years. Our Finance Lead’s financial management expertise ensures we make sense of the business. Our Community Lead’s experience building communities for startups in Uganda enhances our recruiting efforts, and our Partnerships Lead’s international experience managing startup client relations helps us form partnerships that enhance our business.

There is an increasing body of evidence that diverse teams of varying racial and ethnic makeup produce better results. They perform better financially, gain a competitive edge when recruiting top talent, experience less employee turnover, and offer greater benefits for those they serve. This is true in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Therefore we strive to respect and work with all human races regardless of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, ancestry, or national or ethnic origin etc. We provide mutual and equal ground of employment opportunities for all those who qualify to work with us. Whether white or black, we might be of different color but we are still one people.

For instance, our co-founder is a male, black and Mugwere by tribe. The project's second co-founder is a white female American. The team's business development specialist is an albino and a female. This is just a sample that we are strongly committed to observing and promoting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion not just in words but also in our actions, vision, and mission.

YES: Joseph Mulabbi is a victim of a rare disease misdiagnosis.

In 2019, he developed a severe rush around his private parts that almost caused him to loose his manhood parts. At the infancy stage of the rush, he didn't take it serious thinking it was a normal bacterial infection. He went to hospital and indeed the doctor confirmed it was merely a bacterial infection and prescribed medicine for him which he gladly bought and starting swallowing. After a month, nothing changed apart from the rush increasing allover his private parts, he became shy about it and never went back to hospital believe that since he had taken medication eventually it would go away.

When the situation became severe, he moved to different clinics and medical centers which gave him different diagnosis for the situation and prescribed different medicine. Had he not been taken to India for further checkups and be told he had Testicular Cancer, he would be among the dead today.

Since then, he committed to designing an accessible platform for anyone, anywhere to be able to quickly assess their health and get accurate recommendations for further actions. And that is what gave birth to this project.

We believe in the power of our technology to create long-lasting impact. Establishing partnerships and developing a network of strong supporters is crucial to achieving our mission. The Horizon Prize would tremendously advance our work, allowing us to connect with relevant organizations in global health. In addition, mentoring and guidance by the respective experts within The Horizon Prize and MIT Solve network, would be also of great support. Through The Horizon Prize we could increase our visibility and raise more awareness for our work within a broader audience. We also feel that the Prize can help us emerge as better leaders for our company as well as support our collective vision of making sure everyone, everywhere can access free quality and accurate health information and assistance just by their figure tips through e-health and m-health solutions. To reach this global vision of health for all, we require partners, mentors and advisors. We want to reflect on our experiences and share our knowledge to cross learn and grow. In addition, receiving mentorship from experts will enable us to expand our solution sustainably while improving utilization uptake of our beneficiaries. The resources from the prize will also enable us to have the needed technical manpower, human resource, software and technology such as ML & AI, chatbot and automated algorithms that will enable us to predict health patterns of our target beneficiaries which is extremely pivotal for us to understand and analyze especially healthcare needs of our users. The funds will be used to commence our operations while continuing to build the skills and capacity of health practitioners to utilize and integrate our services and products in their practices. 

Our partnership goals are focused on:

• Private and public companies and NGO partnerships to help us develop prototypes of the platform tool adapted for use among different locations and types of semi-skilled health workers
• Partnerships that can help us introduce an effective referral system across stakeholders within primary healthcare
• Form partnerships with relevant stakeholders, such as local governments and the private sector, to implement our tools on the ground in sub-Saharan Africa.

• Strategic Development: We are actively seeking support to improvise the business development strategies.
• Technological Support: We are looking for synergies that help us go well with the use of machine learning and AI to develop our tool while improving our interface for better user experience and engagement. 
• Human Resource management – We are looking for a network of healthcare researchers, doctors and specialists across the globe that will be interested to utilize our solution to continue their medical practice but also as consultants and mentors.
• Scale Up – We aspire to build consortium at National and international level to build synergies for sustainable development. We are looking for partners who can match their resources with ours to eventually scale our solution, gain new active users and maximize utilization of our services to a greater number of beneficiaries that may be beyond our reach at the moment.

We aim to develop partnerships with MIT to connect with mentors, experts and advisors to build and expand our AI tool thereby gaining consumer insights, integrating predictive algorithms and supporting our research processes.

We also aspire to expand our partnerships with mobile operators across Africa such as MTN, Airter and Mobilink to broaden its reach by gaining low-cost customer acquisition and market insights, access to mass communication channels including API access for SMS and IVR, access to mass payment channels for easy payment collection processes, access to retail customer touchpoints, access to technical and commercial support and gain visibility and credibility 

In addition, we aspire to build partnerships with tech giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook to access cloud computing, Telemonitoring through wearables, customer data acquisition and artificial intelligence resources,

We are also actively seeking large organizations and corporations such as Philip, GE healthcare, Nestle and Samsung to adapt our solution either for their employees directly or utilize it for their clients as a white label solution. This will enable us to expand our reach and customer base.