Health Equity Powered by Quaefacta Health

Cardiovascular diseases such as Atrial Fibrillation continues to be the greatest cause of mortality among Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and is a major cause of persistently lower life expectancy compared with non-Aboriginal Australians. 

Globally, Indigenous people living in affluent countries, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, are highly diverse, yet they all share and suffer from a lack of health equity, demonstrated by poor health profiles, socioeconomic disadvantage, and considerably diminished life expectancy. An excessive burden of cardiovascular diseases can be seen at a younger age and predominates the gap in health outcomes. 

Atrial fibrillation (AF), is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia, is increasing in prevalence and incidence globally and affects 1-2% of the population worldwide. A 2021 research study,  Gwynn et al, ‘Atrial Fibrillation in Indigenous Australians: A Multisite Screening Study Using a Single-Lead ECG Device in Aboriginal Primary Health Settings’, indicates AF admission diagnosis was 1.4 times higher in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders compared to non-Aboriginal Australians, with a higher incidence of AF after age 20 years and a significantly higher prevalence among younger patients. AF is the most common cardiovascular disease disproportionately affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations and can lead to significant complications. Prevalence increases progressively with age, and is higher among men than women with serious complications, notably heart failure and thromboembolic sequelae such as stroke, with a five-fold increase in the risk of ischaemic stroke, particularly for those under 60 years of age. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have a higher burden of stroke than non-Aboriginal Australians and the presence of clinically evident or silent AF may be a significant contributor. 

Currently, individuals from vulnerable and disadvantaged communities including migrants, find it confusing and inconvenient to retrieve and communicate their health and chronic disease information, past medical history, allergies, pathology and radiology reports, and treatments. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients with cardiovascular disease, particularly symptomatic AF, have limited means to monitor and track AF, ensure treatment adherence and medication compliance, provide adequate diagnosis, treatment and scheduled follow ups.

Traditionally, health institutions, governments and companies managing patient health data execute decisions on behalf of the patient rather than in consultation. While these third parties access, analyze and monetize the data, the people who it pertains to and who thus have the biggest stake in it, are often not even aware of what is being done with their data nor do they have access to it. This complicated care paradigm places patients at a distant relationship with their health data and management, in contrast with more patient-centric approaches. This challenge is exacerbated by an emerging demand for allowing patients greater control and ownership over their medical records, and, in the case of underserved communities such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, by limited and unequal access to healthcare and socioeconomic disadvantages. Patients lack the ability to administer and transfer consent in managing and sharing their own health data. 

A 2022 study, Osborne et al, conducted a ‘Whole System Analysis of Access to Healthcare in One Remote Australian Community’ assessing the accessibility, availability and utilization of a comprehensive range of community-based healthcare services for Aboriginal people and describing contributing factors to providing effective healthcare services from the provider perspective. A critical component of the system is that it must be linked to existing community-led primary care services.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who visit multiple healthcare providers at different health clinic sites for their chronic diseases management all rely on disconnected systems and health services to record information with no easy way to port data from one place to another. Health data spread across these siloed systems and services is neither guaranteed secure or private, and is vulnerable to 'cybercrime' or data misuse. The risk of introducing errors and incompleteness of information as data is copied or transposed manually further worsens patient outcomes.

These factors create mistrust in health data storage and use, worry, and anxiety for the individual, and missing information and mismanagement of health data which may consequently lead to patient harm or fatalities.

Note: Terminology

There are ongoing discussions with our research team about appropriate terminology. We recognise that language use and meaning is constantly changing and, as such, our position on terminology is also dynamic. Our current practice is to use the term Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander when we refer to Indigenous Australian people or communities. We use the term Aboriginal when we refer to people in Australian states and territories, except Queensland where we use Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. We use the specific clan group on advice from local Elders. We use the term Indigenous when referring to First Nations peoples globally except where a more specific term is appropriate, such as Maori when referring to Indigenous people from New Zealand.

Adopting a patient-centric approach and consolidating health data empowers patients to own and access their health information in one complete, secure Patient Health Record (PHR), owned and controlled by the patient. This provides a single source of truth allowing consumers to use their data proactively to optimise their care and improve their health outcomes and wellbeing. 

Developing a Patient Health Record (PHR), puts individuals in control of their health data allowing them to protect it, control who has access to it, and decide what others can do with it. Giving access to individuals enables them to make more informed choices and play an active role in their healthcare.

Quaefacta Health (QFH) aims to further develop an early detection screening tool to monitor symptomatic AF with stroke prevention, a cornerstone of AF management. Facilitated with a handheld smartphone-based electrocardiograph (ECG) screening device, which records a single-lead ECG in 30 seconds. Handheld ECGs have been recommended internationally as the preferred screening tool for AF diagnosis and the iECG device has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and Therapeutic Goods Administration (ARTG Identifier 208100). 

QFH’s smartphone application can store and share ECG results, record chronic disease history, input data from wearable devices including Fitbit and track adherence to medications which are often used to treat symptomatic AF. This information will be valuable for demonstrating compliance, measuring and monitoring outcomes, managing chronic diseases and providing alerts for early disease detection and prevention. Tailoring of medications to treat AF can be managed remotely in near real time by healthcare providers administering treatments options and medical care. 

Functionalities including a chat forum and the generation of evidence based medical content, will encourage private and secure disease specific discussions and information sharing between patients and providers on medical conditions.  

We aim to leverage key technologies including iECG diagnosis, mobile applications, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI) to ensure the key features of data privacy by design/default are maintained, while embedding the strictest international data security standards to allow users to retain control and ownership of their health data. 

There also exists the future potential for individuals to be incentivised by monetising health data and earning reward tokens or cryptocurrencies for sharing de-identified personal health data for: (1) demonstrating healthy behaviours or adhering to medical treatments; and (2) contributing to medical research and/or public health initiatives, as in the case of Covid-19 contact tracing, vaccination information, or genomics data.

A study review conducted in 2017 found this iECG device to be well accepted within Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs) and adequate to use to screen for AF among Aboriginal people.

In Australia in 2019, 3.3% of the Australian population is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, with 19.3% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians living in poverty compared to 12.4% of other Australians.

There remains a large equality gap in Australia, which extends beyond socioeconomic factors and upward mobility into healthcare and health outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Research has shown that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people do not have an equal opportunity to be as healthy as non-Aboriginal Australians populations and the relative socioeconomic disadvantage experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people compared to non-Aboriginal people places them at greater risk of exposure to behavioural and environmental health risk factors. There is also a higher proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations that live in conditions that do not support good health and have limited access to healthcare facilities and staff. 

There is an inaccessibility of mainstream services and lower access to health services, including primary health care, and inadequate provision of health infrastructure in some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. 

With respect to AF, one third of all ischaemic strokes are related to Atrial Fibrillation (AF). Over the next 15 years, the number of AF-related strokes in Australia is likely to rise substantially because of the predicted rise in AF prevalence and estimated that by 2034 more than 600,000 people in Australia will suffer from AF, but these numbers do not take into account the higher prevalence of AF among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.  

There is still limited data available on the prevalence of AF in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. The largest community Aborignial based AF project in the 2021, the Gwynn et al research study, shows not only that AF diagnosis is 1.4 times higher in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients compared to non-Aborignal patients, however the estimated AF prevalence increased with age and was higher in those aged >55 years than the general population (7.2% compared with 5.4%). Slightly more men than women were diagnosed with AF. These hospital-specific figures possibly underestimate prevalence, however, as they do not include cases of AF detected in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander medical centres or general practices, or people with undiagnosed AF.

QFH aims to provide a smartphone-based digital health tool and technologies to improve access to primary health care services and easily accessible information for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients to learn and read more about their condition.

QFH plans to implement the first part of our PHR, to empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to manage and monitor their disease of atrial fibrillation and gives them the ability to record the results of the iECG and monitoring devices such as Fitbit, enables secure storage of this health data, and allows the patient to share results with their healthcare providers for diagnosis and treatment options, monitoring medication compliance, reporting side effects, and follow-ups. Providing a chat forum for individuals to discuss their AF and also provide accessible information for patients to learn and read more about their condition would be needed to provide a complete service to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients and reduce the current gap in health equity.

By placing privacy, security, and control of health data at the core of its patient-centric by default approach, QFH allows these vulnerable groups to take control of their health data.

This provides an opportunity to improve the sustainable health and wellbeing of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders by improving health literacy, digital inclusion, and equity of access to high-quality primary healthcare through digital health innovation.

We will partner with a research group that has worked alongside Aboriginal communities to co-design translational health research for over a decade. The co-design approach developed by investigators: Rambaldini, Gwynne, Skinner and McCowen in oral health, cardiovascular disease and workforce development, has resulted in high impact, translational and sustainable research that delivered sustainable health outcomes for participating communities. The afore mentioned research group, which includes Aboriginal investigators and Aboriginal citizen scientists, will use Indigenous research methodologies to ensure the project goals and methodologies are culturally safe, acceptable and that the aims of the work are desired by the communities. 

The aims of the parallel study are to: engage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to use wearable technology to self-detect AF and initiate their own pathway within primary health care. Previous research conducted by this team, has demonstrated efficacy and acceptability for using a single lead iECG device to detect AF within a primary care setting. Their current research will investigate the efficacy and acceptability of user based technology for detecting and monitoring AF by the patient/participant. The technology we are proposing will ensure the participants can easily and securely store their AF related data on their phone app thereby avoiding the reliance on third party platforms whose data privacy and data ownership terms are not necessarily in line with the best interests of the patient. The app we intend to develop will ensure data privacy and ownership enabling participants to maintain control of when and how data is shared. This is particularly important in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities where data sovereignty has been compromised historically.

Quaefacta Health Team

• Lea Dias, Founder of Quaefacta Health. I was inspired to start Quaefacta in 2019 after working for 10 years in the field of clinical pharmacy medicine and 7 years as a Digital Health Strategist. Working as a Clinical Pharmacist on the wards, I witnessed first hand the health conditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients that were admitted to hospital from remote and regional hospitals and clinics. Many of these patients suffered from chronic diseases, ranging from diabetes, heart disease to sepsis. Often their conditions were poorly maintained and there remained challenges with monitoring, treatment and follow up. Sadly, during my clinical practice, I saw some patients develop secondary symptoms from poorly controlled heart disease that led to deteriorating health conditions with fatal consequences. I felt with my knowledge and expertise in clinical medicine and technology, I could help bring digital solutions and emerging technologies to assist these vulnerable and disadvantaged groups by providing greater access to the necessary information and support to better care for themselves and improve their chances of survival.  

• So, I began my path to entrepreneurship with the goal of bringing solutions to improve health outcomes for patients and creating a safer and more efficient environment for patients and clinicians. I started by advising companies and hospitals on their digital health strategy including interoperability and working with innovative technologies including blockchain, IoT, AI and robotics. In 2018, I commenced my start-up in Paris, France where I was accepted into Station F and Entrepreneurs First. 

• My name is Iris Depaz and I am Co-Founder of Quaefacta Health. About five years ago I received a devastating diagnosis that I had cancer. It was a difficult journey physically but having a doctorate in molecular biology and having worked in the pharmaceutical industry and in biomedical research for over twenty years, I was fortunate enough to have access to all of the information and expertise I needed, to ensure I understood everything that was happening to me and to play an active part in my health management. I am fortunate and grateful to be a cancer survivor and now I want to help others have access to the information and support they need to stay healthy and to play an active role in their healthcare.  Professionally speaking, I obtained my PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the University of Queensland, Australia where I also conducted postdoctoral research and was an Associate Lecturer. I joined the pharmaceutical industry in 2007 and have worked in a variety of medical and research roles at the local, regional and global levels of two large pharmaceutical companies. Currently, I am the Country Medical Lead for Sanofi ANZ and Head of Medical for Vaccines. My focus is on fostering scientific collaborations, elevating medical communication, and establishing strategic partnerships to optimize vaccines access and uptake. I am fluent in English, Spanish and French having been born in El Salvador, raised in Australia and worked for 8 years in France and Belgium.

• Together we are a women led and international team in the field of digital health innovation, leveraging some exciting technologies including blockchain and crypto! Don’t think bitcoin…. think healthy token rewards! We are strong patient advocates, who recognise the need to empower patients with health information and ownership of their health data to make better choices for healthier living. 

• Originally a French national, Joel Berniac, Eng, PhD, MBA, has lived in the US for 28 years and is currently based in Boston/Cambridge, MA.  With a passion for entrepreneurship and over 23 years of experience in medicinal chemistry, drug discovery, and business development in the Pharma/Biotech/Diagnostics industry, Dr. Berniac founded and leads BioFuturis, LLC since 2020, a consulting firm focused on guiding and supporting early-stage Life Sciences companies who want to expand from all over the world (France, UK, Japan, Australia) into the renowned Boston Biotech Hub.  Dr. Berniac co-founded Akrivis Technologies, LLC in 2009, and InnoZoa, Inc. in 2018, both biopharmaceutical companies focused on oncology in human and veterinary health, respectively.  Prior to that, Dr. Berniac’s experience in the Pharma/Biotech industry included positions as Associate Director of Business Development at Paratek Pharmaceuticals (Boston, MA) in 2008, and as Senior and later Principal Scientist in Medicinal Chemistry at Paratek Pharmaceuticals and Bayer Pharmaceuticals (West Haven, CT) from 1999 to 2008.  Dr. Berniac earned a High-Tech M.B.A. from Northeastern University (Boston, MA) in 2005, a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, IN) in 1999, and an Engineering Degree in Chemistry from ESCIL (Ecole Supérieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon, now CPE Lyon), a French Engineering School in Lyon, France.  Dr. Berniac also mentors and coaches startups and entrepreneurs as a Conseiller du Commerce Extérieur de la France (CCEF, French Foreign Trade Advisor) and as a mentor to MIT’s VMS (Venture Mentoring System), Northeastern University’s VMN (Venture Mentoring Network), and JETRO (Japan External Trade Organization).  Dr. Berniac is fluent in English, French, Spanish, and French Creole.

The community can provide support by identifying partners with experience working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and/or patient centric health solutions. As this project is entering new territory in terms of health data policy, it would be invaluable to engage industry experts in ethics and data policy to ensure our team is able to design a robust, ethical and scalable model for incentivisation and enrich existing health data policies and frameworks. 

Support from a health economist would be beneficial to understand cost savings and key benefits of the pilot in order to scale the solution for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders beyond the study.

Additionally, support from developers and UX designers to help optimize the patient platform would greatly compliment our team’s healthcare experience.

Blockchain is a game-changing technology based on the combination of a product, service, and method, offering accessible disruptive technical innovation to a market of vital importance. Most existing blockchain solutions focus only on the financial aspects of transactions and so can be relatively lightweight. For the most part, they cannot be easily applied to the healthcare space. 

Our solution tracks relevant metadata, ensuring an efficient system that can be easily implemented, allowing the tracking and traceability of healthcare data, which is traditionally complex and fractal. Every aspect must be in rigorous agreement with clinical health standards, providing a reliable, auditable solution and we will design our privacy terms and policies to be compliant with HIPAA standards, and with Europe's GDPR standards, the most stringent privacy guidelines currently in existence.

QFH offers an innovative patient-centric approach that puts individuals in control of their health data, dismantling the exploitation and unauthorized and unethical use of patient health data particularly in vulnerable and underserved populations. 

Blockchain technology offers transformational opportunities in healthcare processes, including the ability for individuals’ to control their digital identity, retain full access to their own data, and seamlessly and securely share their health data. Using various encryption technologies ensures the privacy, security and integrity of data is retained.This partnered research initiative with RMIT University will enable both parties the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the use of blockchain technology to support the secure interoperable data exchange of personal health information (PHI).

In addition, QFH is leveraging blockchain technology further by developing a new innovative approach that assigns rewards and incentives to patients in exchange for the transparent and ethical sharing of their health data.  This feature will  provide further benefits to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, as they can use these incentives, cryptotokens, and monetary rewards to improve their health outcomes or support their financial needs, spending more on healthcare, education, and/or basic primary needs. 

Over the next year our impact goals are to: 

• Provide digital tools and applications to assist with chronic AF disease diagnosis, monitoring, and follow up.

• Make personal health data and information resources readily accessible to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients in Australia

Over the next five years our impact goals are to:

• Improve equity of access to high-quality primary healthcare through digital health innovation.

• Reduce timelines to accurate AF diagnosis thereby reducing disease burden and improving patient outcomes in Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

• Shift use of health data from diagnostic-only to disease prevention and management (including reporting and monitoring of medication side effects).

• Improve health literacy and digital inclusion for vulnerable and disadvantaged populations globally (including migrant and refugee communities, people living with disabilities, lower socioeconomic communities, and rural and regional communities).

• Provide access to real world data and real world evidence for public health research and drug development. 

• Increase scientific literacy of the general population and combat disinformation.

Engagement with resources and with the platform, as well as downloads and retention rates, satisfaction ratings (this is for the impact goals in 1st year - these would suggest that users see value in owning their own data and be like a proof of concept):

• Compare timelines to accurate AF diagnosis in context where the platform is used versus those that manage with standard of care.

• Measurement of the reduction in disease burden in patients who use platform versus standard of care (this could only be done after a number of years of utilisation and thousands of users).

• Monitor HCP (Health Care Providers) behaviour and how they use health data from the platform in chronic disease prevention and management.

• Survey knowledge of platform users versus those that do not to determine impact on scientific literacy.

• Conduct user surveys and focus groups to collect user feedback and suggestions.

1. Current paradigm: Standard of care for AF diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring is inadequate in Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities resulting in unmet clinical needs:

a. Limited to non-existent access to AF screening and detection, resulting in AF being diagnosed too late or not at all;

b. Insufficient and inefficient treatment of AF, sometimes undetected and untreated;

c. Limited to non-existent access to AF follow-up visits and disease monitoring;

d. Limited to non-existent access to proper recording, storage, and administration of personal health data;

e. Limited to non-existent access to health information and low community engagement on the issue prevalence of AF in Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

2. Product features and pilot programs followed by large scale deployment

a. QFH App includes modules that: (1) Connect to the iECG device in order to collect each patient’s diagnostic data; (2) Securely store, protect, and manage health data in a standardized PHR folder under the patient’s control; (3) Connect with and transmit identifiable health data to authorized users such as doctors, healthcare staff, etc, and de-identified data to government, community-based, and non-profit healthcare organizations, Pharma companies, etc; (4) Monitor and manage follow-up visits, side effects reporting, and medication compliance for disease monitoring; (5) Provide a social media-type platform to disseminate lifestyle and health information throughout the community and incentivize users/patients to share experiences and proactively participate in improved lifestyles and healthy living both at the individual and community level; and (6) Provide a platform to reward users/patients for their individual and community engagement via tokenized rewards;

b. Product features will be rolled out in phases, first features 1-4 at the individual level, and then features 5-6 at the community level;

c. Product features will be rolled out in phases, first at the pilot scale (<50 individuals) in various sites, and then, after a period of customer reviews for feedback and suggestions and of design improvements, at a larger scale in entire communities;

d. The performance and impact of QFH’s product features will be measured and evaluated by: (1) Collecting the number subscribers to the QFH App; (2) Collecting the number of AF diagnosis performed by the QFH-connected iECG device; (3) Collecting statistical data in the community such as positive versus negative diagnoses, progression to therapeutic intervention, disease monitoring and progression, etc; (4) Collecting the number of patients reporting side effects and medication compliance; (5) Collecting the number of users/patients engaged in QFH’s social media-type platform; and (6) Evaluate the interest of government, community-based, non-profit healthcare organizations, and Pharma companies for the aggregate, de-identified, shareable data (as controlled by the patient) health data collected by QFH.

3. New paradigm: Significantly improved AF diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring, broadened access to health information, and proactive community engagement in Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities as measured by:

a. Higher rate of routine AF screening with QHF-connected iECG device;
b. Higher rate of lifestyle and/or therapeutic intervention for AF remediation;
c. Higher rate of follow up visits and adequate disease monitoring, including side effects reporting and medication compliance;
d. Widely used PHR platform that securely stores a patient’s health data with stringent guidelines modeled after HIPAA and GDPR standards, and that allows patient to fully control the sharing of his/her health data and information;
e. Widely used social media-type platform that disseminates lifestyle and health information, incentivizes users/patients to share information and proactively being engaged in the community’s general health, and rewards users/patients for doing so via crypto-tokens.

By providing patients with information and support to help them take a more active role in their own disease management and supporting greater exchange between patients and healthcare professionals in between face to face visits, this will lead to greater compliance of patients in following health management recommendations, treatment plans and positive health behaviour. Through this patients will achieve better health outcomes. 

QFH aims to introduce emerging technology including mobile app technology, blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI). QFH recognises that work in the field of blockchain in healthcare is still in its early stages, relying on findings of partially funded pilot projects. 

Co-creating this solution using citizen scientists methodologies will ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways for thinking, learning and doing science are prioritised. Moreover the co-design process will ‘re-awaken’ and integrate time-tested long-standing Ancestral Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scientific philosophy, culture and practices with western health research and health care practices.  

The technology includes Blockchain, SQL Server, FHIR Standards, openEHR,  PBS standards, Smart Contracts to support safe data access, encrypted database features, data management and data interoperability for the specific healthcare domain, text mining and statistical analysis software technology, artificial intelligence (AI), standards based reporting, audit trails and consent protocols and mainstream business intelligence and data visualization tools.

In addition, it is important to emphasize that blockchain technology enables and supports several key features in the QFH platform: (1) data security and privacy; (2) data control and sharing; and (3) incentives, rewards, and tokens, which enables individuals to be rewarded for sharing data for public health initiatives, drug development and research and health behaviour rewards.

We are currently working with academic partners, RMIT University in Australia to establish the technical feasibility of our solutions. Combining the healthcare and technology expertise of the QFH team and RMIT University, we are able to jointly provide a high-quality contribution to the Next Generation Emerging Technologies Graduates Program.

Gender diversity

• We are a women-led health technology startup. 

Expertise diversity

• Our mixed skill set includes pharmacy health practitioner, pharma, IT, digital health, and Pharma/Biotech business development. 

Cultural diversity 

• We are a culturally diverse team of varied backgrounds: Australian, Indian, El Salvador, French Caribbean (Martinique), and US.

 Our team has experience across many different countries and also global roles. 

Beyond the team’s diversity, QFH’ solutions are informed first and foremost by the users through interviews to understand needs and ethnography to observe.

 For this project, we have identified the critical need to engage “Citizen Scientists” as well as  cultural and community leaders not only to collaborate and collect their feedback and suggestions, but also to get their buy-in and benefit from their influence in their communities.

Our business model is B2C and B2B, with QFH consumers on a Freemium model. 

Our SaaS model and revenue streams include:

1. Consumer freemium subscription product

2. Healthcare provider subscription product

3. Payer, Pharma, Provider, Patients, Policymakers subscription fees and transaction fees to access QFH research/incentives program portal.

4. Consulting fees on introducing digital health solutions into the healthcare market.

1. Consumer free subscription model for the use of our Patient Health Record.

i) Free content includes:

• vaccination information: 

• disease monitoring;

• medication information; 

• chronic diseases management;

• basic chat forum.

ii) Premium subscription model for PHR aims to provide an AI tool subsidized by the payer (eg government, insurers). Premium content includes:

• premium health content;

• medical information services;

• telehealth services;

• disease-specific information and support;

• AI driven disease detection, prevention and treatment recommendations;

• patient research portal for incentives, reward vouchers, cryptocurrencies and monetary reward.

2. Healthcare Provider (HCP) product includes: monthly subscription fees and product licensing costs. This is available for Healthcare Providers including General Practitioners, hospitals, health clinics, pharmacies, laboratories, pathology. Included in this application is:

• prescribing module 

• medical history recording 

• appointment and scheduling module 

• telehealth module

• chronic disease management module

• real time remote disease monitoring of health conditions 

• billing and reporting mechanism for Medicare   

• AI detection, screening and prevention tools 

• follow up and management 

• precision and tailored medicine 

3. Payer, Pharma, Provider, Patients, Policymakers portal is for the various healthcare providers and includes monthly subscription fees and transaction fees on research/incentives programs portal. 

This includes fees for:

• real world evidence generation

• medical information service

• public health data 

• incentives program including health behaviours vouchers, tokens, cryptocurrencies or monetary rewards.

• incentives program for patient research receiving tokens, cryptocurrencies or monetary rewards.

Currently we are applying for government grants through the Australian Research Council (ARC) together with RMIT University, Melbourne, Medical Research Future Fund, and for grants specifically pertaining to digital health solutions including National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

We have a subscription model for sales of our “naked app”, however we can whitelist or greylist our product for use in other markets outside of Australia. We charge transaction fees on token, cryptocurrency and monetary exchange across our Quaefacta Health platform. We also offer consultancy services for implementing blockchain-based digital health solutions.

We plan to raise funding for further development of our product through crowdfunding, donors and investments from social impact investors.

To date, we have raised AUS$47,000 from Australian sophisticated investors. Quaefacta Health’s core team also contributed AUS$10,000 in capital and over 5,000 hours of in-kind contribution.

Through an entrepreneurial program, Entrepreneurs First, we raised €15,000 in 2020.