Evaluation Of The Med Tech Start-Up

Clinic loud is a Melbourne-based Med Tech start-up whose primary product is a medical kit containing a digital stethoscope designed for home use and a non-contact thermometer which are both mobile-connected. The start-up was founded in 2012 by Dr. Hon Weng Chong and Dr. Andrew Lin, when the two physicians who have been friends since medical school prototyped the world-first mobile-connected stethoscope and won the Microsoft Imagine Cup grant. The non-contact thermometer was added later when they realised that temperature was an essential biometric data for diagnostic decisions as well. In 2016, CliniCloud partnered up with the United State telemedicine service – Doctor on Demand. That meant that patients owning a CliniCloud kit are able to use the devices to record, track and share medical information such as heart rate, temperature and respiratory sounds with a medical practitioner at the touch of a button within the CliniCloud app. Doctors can then use the shared information just like an in-person visit to make a more informed diagnosis. In an interview to Mashable Australia, Dr. Lin said: “Our whole goal as a company is to bring health care to the home”. CliniCloud’s income as of now is based on the sales of the kit which allows a way for people to do to remote medical diagnosis. Evaluation Of The Med Tech Start-Up

Customer and Employee Base

CliniCloud aims to provide affordable medical products to everyone, meaning there is no limit to whom their customer base may be. Although this is the case, the company has made a clear connection with present and future parents. The thermometer has proved to be very effective for babies as it doesn’t require skin contact and can thus be easily used even while they are asleep. This technology is as beneficial to anyone requiring constant health monitoring as well. Both the stethoscopes and thermometers do not emit any form of harmful radiation. CliniCloud provides a quick and accurate medical reading that is then recorded onto the downloaded application. This application stores the health data, gives you health tips, health walk-throughs and can connect the customer with a doctor. By providing these services to the customer base, they have the ability to keep up with health checks from home and check on whoever may be feeling sick with the ease of these devices. Evaluation Of The Med Tech Start-Up

Besides the business and development team members, who benefit the same as all customers – other potential employees include doctors and nurses. The products benefit them as it allows them to continue caring for patients even if one of the parties is not at the office. Data from the products can be privately shared with the nominated doctor/nurse, and recordings from the stethoscope are sent through and accessible on any device type. By making use of cloud technology, patient history is available at any time for viewing and updating. This makes it easier for the employees to find patient details and medical histories, and keep updated in case of any medical changes. Clinicloud has a workforce of around 20 employees of diverse background ranging from doctors to developers to designers (CliniCloud). The start-up is considered as a disruptive one as it is transforming medical devices that have barely changed for centuries and is turning the promise of telemedicine into reality. It is eliminating the needless doctor visits and allowing people to be treated quicker than they normally would.

Challenges and threats

There are existing medical device companies that use smartphone devices and wireless tools to record data but tend to all be different medical devices. With so many medical tools that can be updated for ease and faster accessibility to data, there has been a push for start-up companies to put forward what they’ve got. CliniCloud has a couple of challenges that are easily outcompeted by other companies, this includes it only having smartphone capabilities, and the language set to English only for the time being. Due to the nature of CliniCloud purpose, there is no doubt that it poses a threat to medical professionals as it may lead to a decrease in patient-doctor consultations eventually given that People are starting to engage more in the management of their own health and wellness. But to look at it from a different perspective, this is also going to result in a reduction of health care costs, hospital costs and clinical costs.

One of the biggest challenges of a start-up in medicine is the many legal implications to get through. With recent issues such as the Cambridge Analytica, the question remains whether the sensitive user information being stored on CliniCloud cloud system can be really considered as secure though they data are encrypted before being saved. By using CliniCloud devices, the user has no option but to agree to his data being saved on CliniCloud’s systems. The second issue that was identified was that CliniCloud software is only available in English. And as for the mobile apps, they can be used only through an Android or an iOS device. Evaluation Of The Med Tech Start-Up

Possible Solutions

To address the issue of data security, CliniCloud could introduce giving an option for users to choose whether or not they want to synchronize their recorded information on the cloud system as well. In the case of no, the data can still be saved on the user’s mobile phone. Users could then send over the information to the medical practitioner of their choice without having to save it on the cloud system. The second issue can be resolved by making CliniCloud multi-language compliant, hence also opening the market in other non-English speaking countries as well.

Enhancing the Business

There are many different AI techniques available that are able to solve a variety of medical problems. However, in spite of earlier optimism, medical AI technologies has not been embraced with enthusiasm. There is compelling evidence that medical AI can play a vital role in assisting the clinician to deliver health care efficiently in the 21st century. There is almost no doubt that these techniques will serve to improve and complement the ‘medical intelligence’ of future medical practitioners and eliminate the risk of the human-error factor. Our suggestion to improve CliniCloud business model is to add options for other digital medical devices such as blood pressure monitor and blood glucose and oxygen meter to the kit hence targeting patients with an increased range of health problems. And then, bring all the recorded data from the different devices together to be analyzed by the use of AI and data mining techniques. The idea is to transition from just a remote diagnosis solution to a self-diagnosis approach whereby when the data is sent to the medical practitioners, the system also indicates what most likely the diagnosis is, This will thus reduce the