R-Zero Technologies

We are committed to stopping the current pandemic and preventing future ones.

We are proposing the use of a new type of class II medical device combined with a new public healthcare strategy for stopping the spread of the virus in both the home and in the workplace.

Our goal is to provide last mile public health authorities with a cheap and effective solution that can help stop the spread of the virus whilst continuing to allow daily life to continue as normally as possible and avoid the use of lockdowns. 

Avoiding the use of lockdowns will help to minimize the socio-economic damage caused by pandemics which often impacts the most vulnerable members of society.

The specific problem we are working to solve is the continued spread of the airborne SARS-CoV-2 virus which often results in the use of lockdowns. 

The device that we have developed has numerous use cases in hospitals, long term care homes, food processing plants, ...etc.

That said, we believe that the device can have the most impact if it is deployed to low-income homes when a person reports being infected and is not able to properly isolate from the other members of their home.

The reason why it is so important to focus on low-income households is simply because these people often cannot afford to stay home from work or even risk losing their jobs if they choose to do so. If we can give the infected person a device that dramatically reduces the probability of the virus infecting other members of the family then it should be safe for them to continue to go to work, pay their rent and put food on the table.

This is obviously a global issue and all countries have experienced the same problem of virus breakouts occuring at facilities that employ low-income workers. This has led to a recurring cycle of surges which in turn has led to government imposed lockdowns in order to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. 

If we can stop the spread of the virus in the home then we believe that we can significantly reduce the use of lockdowns which is in everyone's best interest.

With possibly the exception of climate change the past year has shown that coming up with a solution to this problem is of the highest priority.

Our solution is both a device and a strategy that public health authorities can use to minimize the spread of the virus once it is detected in the local population.

DEVICE:

The device we have developed is a UV based respirator that can treat inhaled OR exhaled air.

STRATEGY:

The strategy that we are advocating is for public health authorities to start doing the following:

• Encourage the members of the public to immediately contact health authorities as soon as they suspect they have become infected with the virus.
• Once contacted the public authorities should then immediately send out a "rapid reaction kit" to the person who reports being sick.
• The kit will contain the UV respirator which will be configured to treat the exhaled air by the patient.
• The kit will also contain a pulse oximeter so that the patient can monitor their blood oxygen levels in order to better determine if/when they need to seek medical treatment.
• The patient is then told to continuously wear the device for 2 weeks or until they test negative for the virus (twice).
• By wearing the device in the home the patient will ensure that the other members of the household are not likely to become infected with the virus. This should allow the other members of the household to continue to freely leave the house and go to work/school. 
• After the patient recovers from the virus the public authorities will then arrange for the pick up of the equipment such that it can be re-used for the next patient.
• There is one additional advantage of this strategy that is not immediately apparent and that is that the device emits "neutralized virus" into the air inside the household. The neutralized virus still has the same structure as the active virus (spike protein intact) and can actually cause an immune response in the other members of the household such that they will naturally start to develop antibodies against the active version of the virus. Thus, the device makes it possible to effectively use the virus against itself.

In addition to the recommendations above the public authorities should also try to find out as much information as possible regarding the other members of the household such as:

• Number of people in the home
• Ages of the people in the home
• Size of the home - small or plenty of space to self-isolate?
• Availability of separate bathroom facilities?
• Economic status - can everyone afford to stay home from work?
• Do any of the residents have health problems such as diabetes, asthma, COPD, cancer, ...etc. that make them more likely to become infected as well as get seriously ill?
• Do any of the members of the residence go to school?
• Which schools?
• Contact details of the other members in the home such that they can participate in track & trace programs in case any of them become infected as well.

By collecting this information and maintaining a close watch on the movements of the other members of the household it should be much easier for the public health authorities to track and control outbreaks. 

This should provide much better datasets for decision makers such that they can better determine if, when and where it is necessary to implement lockdowns. 

Hopefully, this will result in the elimination of the use of lockdowns period.

We are generally aiming to help all members of society and in all countries of the world with this solution.

However, as mentioned earlier, this solution/strategy should really help those in lower economic classes who have been hardest hit by the pandemic. The poorest members of the population (in all countries) have definitely suffered the most since the beginning of the pandemic. 

The majority of our insights are based on observations from various news reports from all over the world for the past year. There have been numerous and repeat outbreaks at food processing plants that employ lower income workers. We wanted to understand why the outbreaks keep reoccuring even when additional PPE and other safe guards have been implemented at their places of work. This led us to believe that the virus is more likely to be spreading in the home which in turn leads to more outbreaks in the workplace.

In order to best serve these members of society we need to convince public health authorities of the benefits of using our device and strategy. 

That said, we have ony recently come up with this strategy and we are now in the process of reaching out to our local public health authorities in order to get their feedback. Unfortunately it takes time to find out who the relevant decision makers are as well as how to get access to them. 

There have recently been significant virus outbreaks in various parts of Norway. We believe that the problems caused by those outbreaks should help to convince the public health authorities that there is significant value in the solution we are proposing.

Our Challenge solution most closely addresses the dimension of:

"Equip last-mile primary healthcare providers with the necessary tools and knowledge to detect disease outbreaks quickly and respond to them effectively."

As described above our solution is a "general" public health solution that can be implemented in all countries around the world. The solution stands to benefit all members of society, however, it should really have the greatest impact on helping the members of the lower income classes. As we have seen, wide-scale lockdowns tend to hurt these members of society the most and with this solution we should be able to significantly reduce the likelihood of having to use lockdowns.

We have developed multiple prototypes and had them successfully tested with proxy viruses by an accredited laboratory in Ontario, Canada. 

We know that the technology works but we need to raise money to pay for the proper devolpment of the device in order to receive regulatory approval.

The image below shows the device connected to a commonly available oxygen mask:

In order to convince public health authorities to use the device we believe that it is necessary that they are properly tested and regulatory approved. 

This solution is innovative for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the device can be used to allow people to continue to function normally when they are infected with a virus without posing a hazard to others around them. UV light can neutralize any virus to a high degree.

Secondly, the device makes it safe for the other members of the household to continue to go to work and school with little risk to the rest of their community.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, the device emits "neutralized" viruses. The neutralized viruses are more or less intact BUT they have lost their ability to replicate themselves. They still have their spike proteins which can cause an immune response in the other members of the household and thus potentially give them immunity to the active virus. The device may actually negate the need to develop a vaccine. There is research to support this hypothesis:

https://academic.oup.com/intim...

It should be noted that to maximize the effectiveness of this solution it is recommended that the public authorities also send out complimentary techonologies such as pulse oximeters, rapid tests and smart phone Apps for Tracking & Tracing.

Using these other technologies will help to gather important data that can provide the public health authorities with valuable insights into where outbreaks are occuring, the status of the patients, the movements of the other members of the household, ...etc. If other members of the household test positive then it will be far easier to track trace their movements and warn others who they may have come in contact with. 

This should provide the public health authorities with sufficient data to gauge how effective their counter-measures are working and whether or not they need to implement stronger ones.

In the end, it gives the public health authorities much needed tools and data from which they can make more informed decisions which can only result in far fewer lockdowns.

The number of people we currently serve is zero.

The device needs regulatory approval before public authorities will be willing to use it.

In one year we will hopefully be serving thousands or tens of thousands of people. However, this depends on how quickly we can get through the regulatory process.

Within 5 years we should be serving millions of people.

Until now we have been mostly focused on proving that the device will work, reducing its size and identifying the initial beachhead market. Until we have a regulatory approved product in the market it is a bit hard to measure our progress towards our impact goals

That said, once the device is available in the market it should be relatively easy to track usage data and see its impact once it is deployed. Testing the spread of other members in the home to see if they develop antibodies to the virus will be a good way to measure whether or not exposing them to neutralized virus is having the effect that we have hypothesized.

Two people have been working part-time on this project for the past year. 

Stuart Squires, B. Eng. CEO

• linkedin.com/in/stuart-squires-ba17b42

Mark Malensek, Certified Machinist (partner)

• linkedin.com/in/mark-malensek-7b510a113

Richard Walton, CPA (retired), former mayor of North Vancouver

• linkedin.com/in/richard-walton-a7007a67

We have recently found some people who are also interested in helping with the project:

• Aleksandra Zydor, PhD (Chemistry) University of British Columbia

  linkedin.com/in/aleksandra-zydor-40157033

  
  

• Alex Kopacz, B. Eng., Gold Medal winner in Olympic Bob sleigh and recently recovered from Covid-19:
  • linkedin.com/in/alex-kopacz-54a50916
  • https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/alex-kopacz-covid-19-back-home-london-ontario-1.6003651

Stuart Squires has a degree in Civil Engineering and has been involved with the development of various high tech solutions in various markets for the past 25 years.

Mark Malensek owns and operates a custom fabrication facility (CNC/Welding/3D printing...etc.). Mark has also been involved with many different types of projects requiring the development of machined parts and assemblies for the past 35 years.

Richard Walton has a strong background in Accounting (CPA) and has invaluable experience in politics as well as a wealth of connections.

Bartosz Smolczynski is a business development advisor based in Oslo and he also has a wealth of experience in startups and network connections.

Aleksandra Zydor has a strong background in Chemistry and has a wealth of experience in both academia and industry as well as good network of connections.

Alex Kopacz has a degree in Mechanical engineering and Physics as well as had a life threatening experience after contracting Covid in early 2021:

• https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/alex-kopacz-covid-19-back-home-london-ontario-1.6003651

So far, we have been mostly concerned with focusing on the development of the technology for this project but we do see the importance of building a diverse, equitable and inclusive leadership team. In order to have the most impact we think that we will likely have to either partner with or exit to a larger, established player in the medical device industry. If that is the case then we currently don't see that our team will need to grow too much in the future but this could of course change if we need to take the product all the way to market ourselves.

We are applying to Solve for a number of reasons.

Firstly, we fully support what the Solve initiative is trying to achieve. There are huge problems facing our world and the solutions to those problems could come from anyone. Therefore, it is essential to have a platform such as SOLVE to ensure that those ideas and proposed solutions have the best chance possible of receiving the help that they need to become reality.

Secondly, we believe that our product/strategy for dealing with the current and future pandemic fits extremely well into the underlying goals of SOLVE. We definitely would appreciate the access to funding, mentoring, networking, media exposure, and in-kind resources that winning the competition would provide.

We have been in dialogue with one company which develops medical devices and can handle the entire development / regulatory approval process. They also have small scale production capabilities. 

Where we immediately need help is in raising funds to pay for the device development and regulatory approval process. 

In order to raise the funds we also need help with getting feedback from our beachhead target market(s) that we've identified. Unfortunately, this is proving to be very challenging due to the bureaucratic nature of the organizations we've identified as our beachhead market. That said, we need help with pretty much everything which is why all the boxes above were checked off.

We would like to partner with the WHO as well as other NGO's who we think would see the most value in our product/strategy and have the resources and networks to get the devices out into the field once they have been properly designed and regulatory approved.

The solution we are working on is likely to either directly or indirectly benefit the lower-income members of society the most. This group of people quite often includes imigrants and refugees.

Unfortunately, these people are often sharing small households with large numbers of people which almost guarantees that the virus will spread amongst them when one person gets infected.

We believe that our solution can dramatically decrease the probability of   other members of the household contracting the virus when a fellow member of their household is infected. This should in turn allow the uninfected members of the household to continue to go to work/school without putting the rest of their community at risk. Only one member of the family will have to isolate and suffer the loss of income as opposed to all the family members.

Immigrants and refugees have enough challenges facing them during normal times let alone during a pandemic. Minimizing the economic and social/educational impacts created by the pandemic can only be viewed as a positive thing for these members of society.

We would use the AI for Humanity prize to partner with other companies developing complementary products that could work well with our devices (such as Apps or "smart" pusle oximeters). Our solution will work best in conjunction with other solutions that gather data and send that data back to the public health authorities. For instance, the person wearing our device should be fitted with a pulse oximeter that can relay its data in real-time back to the health authorities so that they can respond faster if the patient needs emergency medical attention. Our device can also be equipped with sensors and send back its own performance data such that we will know if it is malfunctioning, its location, how long it has been running, ...etc. All this data should be monitored by an AI solution such that the human resources required by the public authorities are kept to a minimum. The AI also has a much better ability to spot important trends in the data that can help to show where more focus is needed or if/when a lockdown is necessary. 

Our devices are meant to be a "mobile" temporary solution whereby they are sent out to households that have reported cases of infections.

Once the patient (or patients) recovers then the device needs to somehow be returned back to the local public health authorities such that it can be used by someone else.

That said, there will need to be a web based system to track the locations of these devices, what their statuses are, service history, when they should be returned after use and when they need to be overhauled. This data will all need to be continuously fed into the overall supply chain management system and should be carefully considered in advance. We would use the money from the Global Fund Prize to fund the necessary research and development required to ensure that our product will work with the most relevant supply chain management systems that our customers are likely to be using.