MedMate

Many patients with long-term diagnoses struggle to remember the details of their day-to-day symptoms, which makes it difficult for doctors to make effective data-driven decisions when it comes to their medications or treatments. This issue is especially prevalent among children and the elderly as they find it difficult to keep track of their daily symptoms over time, often forgetting the details of their symptoms. MedMate’s solution is a mobile app that is powered by Machine Learning algorithms to equip individuals, caretakers and doctors with the most useful health information in order to make more informed decisions.

If scaled globally, this would empower anybody to have access to data about the progression and development of their symptoms and diagnoses, so they can accurately manage their treatments and medication. Personalised medical care is the future, so we believe in giving people the ability to

Researchers estimate that nearly half of all adults over 70 take regular prescription medication to treat chronic conditions. Furthermore, many of these patients suffer from memory loss or deterioration as they age, which leads to difficulty keeping track of the progression of their symptoms over time. When they have to speak with their caretakers or doctors about the progression of their symptoms, they often struggle to recall details or may even have incorrect recollections of their symptoms, which could lead to inefficient and ineffective treatments plans.

The phenomenon of a rapidly ageing society is an issue that many communities have to grapple with, which will only add to the demand for quality care for the elderly population. Another problem is that the elderly population are often neglected in technology usage, as they are deemed incapable of adapting to the usage of new technologies. This means that they have been largely left out of any healthcare solutions that incorporate new technologies, which has led to inaccessible healthcare solutions for the elderly.

Initially we are the elderly because we believe that they are most in need of our product. They often find it difficult to keep track of the progression of their symptoms and diagnoses over time, so it is vital for MedMate to help them better understand their health data.

By working with the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Institute of Ageing, interviews with members of the elderly community have taken place. This has provided deeper insight into their opinions and concerns. These interviews have validated the problems that MedMate had previously identified, including difficulty remembering symptoms over time and inefficient treatments due to a lack of data or information.

Therefore, MedMate aims to provide a seamless, intuitive method for these individuals to make sense of the progression of their symptoms. MedMate also hopes to act as a platform to share this information with relevant caretakers and doctors. This will ensure that the best possible treatment plans are created, as they can be adapted based on the data that MedMate provides.

MedMate's solution is a Machine Learning-powered mobile application that will be available for use to the general public, with the objective of improving individuals’ access to their health data in the medical field. People will be able to receive valuable information about their symptoms and conditions, as well as the effectiveness of the medications or treatments that they take. This will ultimately help users and doctors make better, more informed decisions that will lead to more efficient treatment plans.

This generates several key pieces of information that will help patients and their doctors monitor and produce better results over time:

1. Analyse long term trends:

Monitors significant positive or negative trend in their wellbeing or increasingly frequent symptom occurrences. This will provide insight into the general progression of the user’s condition.

2. Determine the effectiveness of a particular medication:

The algorithms will be able to detect correlation between symptoms and medications in order to determine which treatments or combinations of treatments are effective at treating certain conditions.

3. Keep track of medications and treatments that worked well/poorly:

By keeping a log of the user’s reaction to certain medications or treatments, the user will be able to base their future treatment decisions on their previous experiences with medications. This could include allergic reactions or simply whether their symptoms improved over time.

4. Identify useful patterns

By collating data over time, MedMate is able to analyse user symptoms and identify patterns over time, whether it be in terms of days, months or seasons. For example, conditions such as  seasonal allergies or morning sickness can be identified and further information can be extrapolated in order to determine the causes of the user’s symptoms and help the doctor find remedies quickly.

MedMate uses machine-learning powered algorithms, which are able to provide personalized data for each individual user in order to maximize the chances of creating the most efficient and effective treatment plans.

The elderly population has often been neglected when it comes to innovations, as they are deemed incapable of adapting to the usage of new technologies. However, MedMate hopes to change this by making the process of collating useful data as seamless and simple as possible. Users only have to input basic details about their current medications/treatments as well as their daily symptoms, while the machine learning algorithms process the vast amount of data and output useful and valuable information that can be easily understood by the elderly target market.

MedMate uses machine-learning algorithms to generate information that will help users and doctors make effective and efficient decision on treatments and medication usage. This includes pattern recognition based Machine Learning algorithms that process the data and identify trends or patterns, as well as multiple regression techniques that take into account the various factors and variables in order to generate conclusive information about the effectiveness of particular medications and treatments.

MedMate hopes to create an easy, intuitive method for the elderly to input information regarding their health, which will ultimately help their doctors and caretakers keep track of the progression of their symptoms and identify whether the treatments or medications are effective. This data will enable doctors and caretakers to make better, more informed decision by adapting the treatments based on the insights generated by MedMate’s machine learning algorithms. Through interviews with members of the elderly community conducted in partnership with the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Institute of Ageing, many have voiced support for this project because they feel that MedMate will be able to play an important and potentially life changing in elderly healthcare. This will ultimately lead to improved access to healthcare data for the elderly, which will lead to better and more efficient treatments.

MedMate is currently in the prototyping and development stage, so only certain groups of the elderly community have been consulted in order to receive feedback and refine the product. Once the product has been fully developed, MedMate aims to serve the thousands of elderly in Hong Kong who are taking regular medication. In five years time, MedMate aims to expand to the wider elderly population in China, as well as other large overseas markets such as the US and the UK. MedMate aims to impact the millions of elderly who take medications on a regular basis.

MedMate aims to continue to refine the product within the next year and release the application to people in need soon afterwards - first making the application available in the Hong Kong and China region (the Greater Bay Area in particular), then expanding to other large markets including the US and the UK within the next five years. Due to the software-based nature of the product, it is relatively easy to scale and reach many people quickly. MedMate hopes to reach more people through referrals from doctors or caretakers, as well as through users sharing the product with others around them. This will increase MedMate’s ability to impact as many people as possible.

MedMate needs to refine the technology that the product utilizes before the product is ready to hit the market, particularly the machine learning aspect of the application. MedMate also has some financial barriers due to the costs associated with development before the product can be economically sustainable in the long run. Furthermore, MedMate also struggles to drive the initial adoption of its product, particularly since this may be an unfamiliar product to many potential users. 

MedMate will continue to improve its product and seek out feedback from different stakeholders such as doctors, caretakers and users throughout the development process. MedMate will also seek expertise from machine learning experts in order to fully utilize the power of machine learning in producing this solution. This will be done by participating in competitions such as the MIT Solve, as well as other events and learning opportunities to better develop our product and create contacts that could help increase the adoption of the MedMate product. MedMate also hopes to gain some funding through such opportunities, in order to help with the development process. Furthermore, MedMate hopes to partner with doctors and caretakers in order to drive the adoption of the product and raise awareness in order to impact as many people as possible. 

Due to its early stage of development, MedMate is currently being developed by its founder, with support from members of the Hong Kong Chinese University Institute of Ageing. 

MedMate’s founder is incredibly passionate about this issue, driven by various medical experiences that he has witnessed in the people around him. He has experience in developing Machine Learning applications and is willing to dedicate himself to the development and refinement of MedMate. The support from Hong Kong’s Chinese University Institute of Ageing means that valuable insight into the needs of the user is taken into account through close interaction with members of the elderly community. This ensures that the product provides the maximum benefit to the users. 

MedMate has worked with the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Institute of Ageing, interviewing members of the target market and gaining valuable feedback that will help MedMate continuously refine and develop its product. 

Once launched to the public, MedMate hopes to provide the application on a subscription basis in order to generate a sustainable long term business model. MedMate also hopes to provide the service at a discounted or free rate for those who are unable to afford the product yet still have a necessity for it.

Once the initial development and refinement process is complete, MedMate hopes to a financial model that is sustainable in the long run through a subscription basis to use the product. However, this can only be done after the upfront costs of development are invested into the product.

Medmate is applying to Solve with the hopes of gaining feedback from different members of the community in order to further refine its product, as well as establishing connections that may help increase the adoption of MedMate. MedMate also hope to gain some funding to help the development process.

MedMate would like to partner with relevant organizations that work in the field of medicine and healthcare, as well as organizations that have experience with machine learning algorithms. MedMate would appreciate if other organizations could help in the development and refinement process as well as increasing adoption of the product. 

Artificial Intelligence is at the core of MedMate’s product, which harnesses the power of machine learning in order to generate the most useful medical feedback to users. With the prize, MedMate hopes to invest more into the development better algorithms that product more accurate, reliable and efficient predictions that will hopefully provide users with the most useful health information. MedMate also hopes to use the funds to create market-ready prototypes that can be ready to be tested by potential users.