LexLabz

***PROBLEM***

Language barriers cause complications for both patients and healthcare personnel, leading to high costs, medical errors and life-threatening risks.

Because of refugee crisis, the number of patients who don't speak the local language has increased dramatically in the past few years.

***NEED***

This has put high pressure on Primary Care & healthcare personnel.

So there is an urgent NEED for a low-cost & efficient solution to minimize the language barriers for eliminating inequality in the care provided to refugees.

***SOLUTION***

We have developed an innovative digital-platform that gives healthcare-providers the possibility to ask important questions, inform & instruct patients who don't speak their language.

Our innovation is called LexLabz. It’s a semi-automated multilingual medical translator platform which includes thousands of medically-correct & clinically-relevant phrases.

Being digital, makes LexLabz extremely easy-to-use and highly scalable at a low-cost which contributes to saving millions of lives when scaled to different geographical locations.

One of the very first problems of arriving to a new country (as a refugee, asylum seeker or immigrant) is about language barrier which put people in serious risks when it comes to healthcare.

In fact, communication is a key element in healthcare.

Language barriers cause complications for both patients and healthcare personnel. It leads to miscommunication and medical errors which puts patient’s life at risk, wastes doctor’s valuable time, increase the patient re-visits and imply huge costs for the healthcare.

***SCALE OF THE PROBLEM***

90% of diagnoses come from communication with the patient’s and her/his medical history, so the ability to communicate is critical.

On the other hand, professional interpreters are very expensive and there is a shortage of them, meaning that they may not available when the patient actually needs them.

Because of refugee crisis, the number of patients who don't speak the local language has increased dramatically in the past few years.

For example, more than 200,000 refugees came to Sweden in 2015 alone (this is equivalent to 2,5 % of the total country's population!) and many of these refugees don't speak Swedish or even English.

So there is an urgent NEED for a low-cost solution.

Our solution helps overcoming the language barriers between refugees and healthcare-professionals who serve them.

It will also help natives with disabilities such as deafness, mute or blindness.

***VALUE CREATION***

Our disruptive-solution:

+Strengthens local-communities through promoting equal communication

+Saves huge costs for the local-governments

+Increases patient-security

+Promotes local-culture by facilitation interaction

+Saves time

+Enables distant-communication

***SOCIAL VALUE PROPOSITION***

Our innovation minimizes the language barrier (value for refugee patients, doctors, nurses), reduces medical error risks (value for patients and doctor), saves time (value for patient and healthcare personnel) and saves huge costs for the payer (value for hospitals, clinics, governments, insurance-companies and society at large).

In addition, our solution can be used for Swedish-speaking persons with hearing, visual and speech disabilities such as blind, deaf and mute.

***SOCIAL INCLUSION***

LexLabz is an innovation applied to make a real impact.

To get the best possible outcome and develop the platform in a way that it actually solves the identified need, we have INVOLVED and ENGAGED refugee patients and local healthcare providers for development and testing of our platform.

***INNOVATIVE SOLUTION***

Over the past 1,5 years, we have collected more than 2000 Clinical Questions and Phrases and developed the concept together with healthcare personnel and patient. Our extensive database of clinical questions and phrases are UNIQUE, CORRECT and MEDICALLY-VALIDATED.

Our innovation is called LexLabz. It’s a semi-automated multilingual medical translator platform which includes thousands of medically-correct & clinically-relevant phrases.

***HOW IT WORKS***

LexLabz is highly scalable, because it is designed to run on different platforms.

See a short demo here:

***FEASIBILITY***

We have already built a working prototype which we have tested successfully and just finished a successful pilot.

***IMPACT***

Our first pliot testing shows that LexLabz reduces interpretation costs by up to 95%.

Our vision is to provide an innovative, digital and low-cost solution which directly promotes UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 3,10 & 16.

***POSITIVE SYSTEMATIC CHANGE***

The current system and work-flow is totally-dependent on human interpreters.

Our platform acts as a disruptive innovation which minimizes dependency on human-interpreters by automating the process, making it more affordable and accessible.

***LONG-TERM SUSTAINABILITY***

Because we’re saving huge-costs for the payer (healthcare-providers, local-governments) and improve the work condition for the healthcare personnel, our solution can be self-sustaining over time.

***SCALABILITY***

Since our platform automates the process and is totally-digital, it’s extremely easy and cheap to implement, extend and scale it to different geographical locations.

*** INNOVATIVE APPROACH & COMPETETIVE ADVATNAGES ***

The most typically used-solution today is sadly Google Translate!

But it is not efficient and it can actually put the patient’s life at risk.

We have done an extensive market research and we found only one relevant startup. However, their solution has several problems including:

-They’re trying to sell “iPads” with a pre-installed application. This makes their solution very expensive and hard to implement/scale.

-They don't have any clinical phrases.

-It’s not inter-operatable meaning that their solution can’t be integrated in the current work-flow of clinics

-They don’t include any connection with human-interpreters, but our concept has a built-in function so doctor/nurse can call a human-interpreter when they need it.

The only "substitute" for our solution are human interpreters which are expensive and hard to get hold of.

+++LexLabz competitive advantages include:

• Covers more than 100 languages!
• Is much cheaper than the competitors
• Is totally digital and doesn’t need any hardware (making it easy to scale and implement in any location at any time)
• Reduces costs for the hospitals, clinics
• Saves hugs expenses for the payer
• Increases patient security
• Saves time
• Minimizes the risk
• Increases care efficiency
• Enables distant communication

Covers specifically customized sections for primary care, emergency medicine, dentistry, child care,… making it easily adaptable to be used in different departments from refugee camps to a small clinic or even a large-hospital

In addition to our proprietary core engine, we use NLP and AI

Because we have a "need-driven" innovation development approach. This means that we have developed LexLabz based on an actual NEED from a actual problem. 

As a concrete evidence, our first pliot testing shows that LexLabz reduces interpretation costs by up to 95%.

The current number of people served: 117 

The number will be serving in one year:  7200

The number you’ll be serving in five years: 1700000

Goals within the next year:

• Complete database translation 
• Larger Pilot testing
• Data collection W
• Launching in the selected location

Goals within the next five years:

• Find the best operating model
• Hire new team members
• Scale to at least 40 new countries
• Open-source our technology
• Replicate our application and expand to other sectors (beyond healthcare)

Funding

Human resources

***Please note that we have a working service, but due to ease-of being copied, we are running closed pilot operation right now. That is why we can not provide a public access link. Hope this will not affect your selection decision*** 

Attract impact-driven investors

Establish strategic partnerships

4

Our committed team has the skills and experience to ensure the successful implementation of this project.

Our social-enterprise is based in Sweden and its co-founders are remarkable social-entrepreneurs who have been selected by Forbes-magazine as one of the most influential innovators and featured on the prestigious Forbes 30under30 list.

The team has been working in digital-health industry during the past 6 years and has extensive educational background from renowned universities such as Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Sweden, Vrije University in the Netherlands, KIT in Germany and Stanford University in USA.

BUSINESS MODEL

We have a business-to-business (B2B) model by offering the LexLabz service to hospitals and clinics as well as local governments.

REVENUE MODEL

Our revenue model is based on charging a licencing fee depending as well as selling to private clinics and Tele-medicine providers.

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS

The customer segments includes both public and private sector.

Because our platform covers primary care, emergency medicine, dentistry, child care,… our customers range vary from small private clinics as well as large hospitals.

We have already received letters of support from potential customers indicating their WILLINGNESS TO PAY for our solution. (Letters of available upon request)

LONG-TERM FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY

Because we are saving a lot of costs for the payer and improve the work condition for the healthcare personnel, our solution can be self-sustaining by generating revenue and support itself over time.

LexLabz has an "impact-first" focus which makes it harder to implement in a world that the usual approach is about "money-first"!

We belive Solve can help us overcome our current barriers and help us making our innovation accessible for everyone, regardless of their location and financial situation

Organizations with a wide reach, distribution channels and/or capacity to ensure successful implementation 

Humanitarian organizations are also an important category.

We will utilize the prize to advance our solution by adding an AI-driven diagnostic tool to our platform 

The GM Prize on Community-Driven Innovation will help us to launch our service in 2 countries and make it ready for internationalization.

The GM Prize on Community-Driven Innovation will help us to launch our service in 2 countries and make it ready for internationalization.