OmniVis Inc.

Why are you applying for The Elevate Prize?

The Elevate Prize is tailored toward social enterprise, creating a network of like-minded individuals who want to create groundbreaking and long-lasting, impactful solutions. I am applying for the Elevate Prize because:

• Elevating opportunities for all people: My work and life goals align with this Elevate Prize principle. I started making accessible disease diagnostics as a master's student and carried it through to my company because I personally saw how inaccessible healthcare can be for so many people. I want to enable equity in the health space. 
• Elevating issues and their solutions: I want people worldwide to understand the effort that is needed to eradicate diseases and build ecosystems needed to move toward disease elimination.
• Elevating understanding of and between people: At OmniVis we work on detecting diseases like cholera and monitoring HIV viral load that are not merely diseases, but can be seen as taboo. I want to break those barriers by making testing simple and easy and change feelings toward communities affected by different disease.

With Elevate's support of these efforts, I can be part of a network of people who want to drive fundamental change through their impactful efforts for continued inspiration to improve lives.

Tell us about YOU:

When I was 7 years old, my Uncle Don died from full blown AIDS. I watched him change from being incredibly healthy to being sick and on oxygen. It was in the moment he left us that I understood what disease was, or, at least what it could do to a person. It was because of my Uncle Don passing that I would tell people that when I grew up, "I would cure the world of all diseases" (which is absolutely normal for any 7 year old to say). 

While I did not quite cure the world of disease, I pursued my master's and PhD, after seeing how often disease diagnostics were stuck in a laboratory space. I believe diagnosing early can save a life. I used my PhD thesis work and started the company OmniVis, so I could build a company that would make diagnostics accessible on a global scale and not leave anyone behind.

Video Introduction

Pitch your organization.

Existing pathogen detection solutions heavily rely on polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based approaches, aptly described as the “gold-standard”, due to their ability to detect the genetic information of the pathogens, even in extremely small quantities. 

However, several days can elapse between requesting a test, receiving a result, and acting on the diagnosis, leaving a window in which infection may spread. In an outbreak or health emergency that warrants quick large-scale testing, PCR based tests can be too slow to contain the spread. 

Recent experiences from COVID-19 outbreak (2020-2021) and earlier cholera outbreaks in Yemen (2016-2021), Mozambique (2019), and Haiti (2010) suggest that in addition to reliable rapid-detection, faster dissemination of the test information is equally important to better identify, and respond, to global health emergencies.

At OmniVis, we provide a solution that addresses both these challenges simultaneously. We are developing handheld devices to perform on-site, rapid-pathogen-testing (under 30 minutes), and provide real-time aggregation of the test-results (over-the-web) for outbreak surveillance. 

We believe that our solution will enable public health professionals and government agencies to take a proactive, rather than reactive, approach for detecting environmental pathogens, and designing an evidence-driven response plan. 

Describe what makes your work innovative.

We performed 416 customer discovery interviews to determine product-market fit and customer value proposition. Our product provides value with solutions that are: 

• Rapid: outputs result within 30 minutes of data collection, which is significantly less for the >24-hour turnaround time found for most laboratory sample testing.
• Accurate: Accuracy of 95.3% at environmentally relevant bacterial concentrations in water and >90% for saliva samples.
• Cost effective: device costs $1,000 for the hardware (low start-up cost) and $10 per cholera test and $14 per COVID-19 test kit (~1/10th cost/test).
• Scalable: allows for detection of V. cholerae SARS-CoV-2 through viscosity measurements and has potential for use in other pathogen diagnostics (V. cholerae, S. aureus, K. pneumoniae, E. coli, malaria).
• Portable: the device is easily maneuverable and can fit in someone’s hand for testing at the point of care.
• Automated: removes the training needed to interpret test results.
• Location specific: automates record keeping and provides real-time data aggregation for outbreak surveillance and/or contact tracing.

How and why is your organization having an impact on humanity?

OmniVis initially focused on tailoring our device to be used by community health workers, NGO field workers, and water testing laboratories. Diseases like cholera currently take a week to detect in water, using laboratory techniques that require infrastructure and years of training. We made a portable device for a user to take to the water source to detect cholera in water in under 30 minutes.

Additionally, OmniVis translated the device for healthcare workers to detect COVID-19 in patient samples. With an affordable price point, portability, and rapid results, we can let patients know about COVID-19 in a single appointment time. We believe with our model that we will allow for more COVID-19 testing to be conducted, allowing patients to know about their results earlier and lower cases. 

OmniVis views scaling impact in the future in four major ways:

1. Provide more tests to organizations to diagnose more patients than they current can.
2. Reach more countries and communities with more devices and testing.
3. Enter new disease markets to diagnose more diseases early, particularly with diseases that exacerbate inequity (tuberculosis, cholera, COVID-19, malaria, HIV).
4. Use data driven approaches to begin predicting outbreaks.

Select the key characteristics of the community your organization is impacting.

• Women & Girls
• Rural
• Urban
• Poor
• Low-Income
• Middle-Income

Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your organization address?

• 3. Good Health and Well-being
• 6. Clean Water and Sanitation
• 17. Partnerships for the Goals

Which of the following categories best describes your work?

Health