NEO by PhysioQ

Millions of people across the world are currently being asked to socially distance and monitor their health from home, yet do not have access to affordable tools that can help them self-monitor for COVID-19 early warning signs. The problem is that many of its key biomarkers – such as blood oxygen levels– simply can’t be detected by an individual. 

Launched by nonprofit PhysioQ, NEO is a free platform that allows families to proactively monitor key vital signs for COVID-19 together, using affordable wearable devices. In providing people with the ability to have selected friends and family monitor their health status, we can help provide peace of mind to families who are feeling anxious, and worried about the health of their loved ones. In tandem, NEO users can choose to donate their anonymized data to what has now become one of the world’s largest COVID-19 Open Databanks to accelerate COVID-19 research.

Millions of people across the world are currently being asked to socially distance and monitor their health from home, yet do not have access to affordable tools that can help them self-monitor for COVID-19 early warning signs. The problem is that many of its key biomarkers – such as blood oxygen levels – simply can’t be detected by an individual. This has resulted in people becoming extremely worried about their own health and also the health of their loved ones.

As the world is struggling, we are all hoping that health researchers can quickly discover more about COVID-19 and come up with effective prevention and treatment plans. Unfortunately, a major problem in COVID-19 research is that data on COVID-19 cases outside of the hospital is generally lacking - not only in times prior to hospitalization and after discharge, but also for individuals who never presented to the hospital/clinic in the first place due to very mild-to-moderate symptoms.

Nonprofit PhysioQ has launched NEO, a FREE platform that allows families to proactively monitor key vital signs for COVID-19 together —such as SpO2, heart rate, body temperature, etc— using affordable wearable devices (ie. Garmin, Beurer, etc). In providing people with the ability to have selected friends and family monitor their health status, we can help provide peace of mind to families who are feeling anxious, and worried about the health of their loved ones. As opposed to other solutions/apps that rely on subjective symptom input, wearable devices give us real objective data. If it turns out you do need to see a doctor, NEO’s AI anomaly detection system can let you know-- sharing your health data to clinicians is just one click away.

In tandem, PhysioQ has also launched one of the largest open COVID-19 Databanks in the world, open to all health researchers to accelerate research into COVID-19. Everyone using NEO will have the option to donate their anonymized data to the Databank, providing researchers with access to thousands of research-quality, real-world datasets. Over 1000 researchers from across the world, from MIT to Oxford, have already committed to joining the efforts in analyzing this data.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, we’ve actively been working with clinicians, researchers, and public health experts from top academic institutions across the world, from Harvard Medical School to McGill University, to assess critical needs and prioritize our efforts.

NEO has been directly helping 2 groups - individuals/families affected by COVID-19, and health researchers. In providing a free platform that allows families to proactively monitor key vital signs for COVID-19 together using affordable wearable devices, NEO can help provide peace of mind to families who are feeling anxious and worried about the health of their loved ones. NEO launched across North America and APAC on June 15th [USA, Canada, Taiwan, Singapore, S.Korea] with over 10,000 users from its waitlist, and will be in over 10 countries (5 languages) by mid-July (expanding to India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines).

Along with helping individuals and families monitor their health, we are also helping health researchers in providing one of the world’s largest open COVID-19 databanks. This will provide researchers with access to thousands of research-quality, real-world physiological datasets. Over 1000 researchers from across the globe have already committed to joining the efforts in analyzing this data, ranging from physiologists, to psychologists, to epidemiologists, etc.

This challenge seeks innovations that can slow and track the spread of an emerging outbreak (ie. solutions for prevention, accurate detection, and rapid response.) 

Our solution is directly addressing these issues in providing families around the world the ability to proactively monitor key vital signs for COVID-19 together. Empowering people with the tools to better take control of their health, will not only help with early detection and better health outcomes, but will also significantly help ease the load on the currently overwhelmed primary healthcare system.

In applying various existing technologies such as telemedicine and remote monitoring using connected devices, we have created a new solution/application focused on providing families with the ability to proactively monitor key vital signs for COVID-19 together. Not only does this help provide peace of mind to families who are feeling anxious and worried about the health of their loved ones, but this can also empower people to take control of their health outcomes. Such as the case in one of our initial users, he discovered anomalies in his data three days before developing the common symptoms that are easier to detect (cough, fever, etc) – that’s three days earlier that he could self-isolate to protect his family and take preemptive actions to improve his immune system.

As opposed to other apps that rely on subjective symptom input, wearable devices give us real objective data of key COVID-19 biomarkers that simply cannot be detected by an individual. NEO will also provide an AI anomaly detection system that can let a user know if they should go see a doctor, with the user able to seamlessly share that data with a clinician.

Differing from most institutional private research databanks, we are launching a COVID-19 Databank that will be open to all health researchers worldwide, to help accelerate research into COVID-19. This will provide researchers with access to thousands of research-quality, real-world physiological datasets. Over 1000 researchers, ranging from physiologists, to psychologists, to epidemiologists, have already registered for the databank.

Many factors enable us to be uniquely positioned to solve this problem. Firstly, the technology. Prior to launching NEO, our Nonprofit PhysioQ already had our LabFront platform that simplifies the data collection and management process for both researchers and participants, collecting real-world data through a variety of wearable devices.

Secondly, our partnerships with various large wearable companies such as Garmin. They’ve given us direct access to their devices, allowing us to increase the frequency of the data collected from their sensors to levels not available with other consumer wearables. We also get to leverage their marketing resources, enabling us to push our service through their distributor networks in all operating countries (very important for our Asia launch).

Thirdly, our partnerships with world-leading academic institutions, from Harvard Medical School to UC Berkeley, have enabled us to gain the credibility and trust of thousands of researchers across the globe to use our COVID-19 Databank.

Currently announced partners include: Garmin, Polar, Trend Micro, Kiipo, Techstars, Centre for Dynamical Biomarkers at Harvard Medical School/BIDMC, etc.

Over 20 more partners to be announced in end June!

NEO is a FREE COVID-19 monitoring platform for everyone in the world. Furthermore, the COVID-19 Open Databank has also been made freely accessible to all health researchers worldwide!

In order to be sustainable, we have a revenue-sharing deal with wearable companies (ie. Garmin) from their device sales. As we are a public service, we also qualify for government grants, and have also looked to organizations that believe in making large-scale impact for support.

Furthermore, PhysioQ itself already has a revenue-generating product in LabFront, a project management and data collection platform for health researchers. NEO was built on top of this platform as a free public service.

We view the MIT Solve Challenge as an amazing opportunity to work with mentors that we can learn from, help take our organization to another level, and most importantly - who also believe in doing good in the world with our skillsets. In mobilizing the massive MIT and Solve network, we can, together, expand NEO’s reach in communities around the world.

Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, our small nonprofit wanted to contribute by doing whatever we could to help. After talking to friends and advisors in the healthcare sector, many of whom are risking their lives fighting on the front lines, we realized that we were in a unique position to offer help and assistance to all those impacted. We immediately started working with clinicians, researchers, and public health experts from top academic institutions across the world to assess critical needs and prioritize our efforts. 

Following 3 months of gruelling work, our small team of under 10 people launched a FREE COVID-19 monitoring platform for all families across the world, while simultaneously accelerating COVID-19 research. It turns out what we created, was just what the world needed - in under a week, we had over 10,000 users sign up for NEO’s waitlist, and over 1000 researchers register for access to the COVID-19 Databank! We’ve now launched in over 5 countries across North America and APAC, and will be expanding to another 10 countries and 5 languages by mid-July! 

In early June we also won the Techstars Global COVID-19 Challenge (from over 70 countries, 16,000 entries), as one of the world’s Top 5 innovations for COVID-19! 

We would use the Elevate Prize to further expand our engineering team requirements as we expand to over 30 countries by the end of the year.