THINKMD Expands Clinical Intelligence Platform to Cover Adults

Source: ThinkMD

by THINKMD Co-founder, Barry Finette, M.D., Ph.D.

VTTA member THINKMD has expanded its platform to include clinical risk assessments for the adult population. ThinkMD co-founder Barry Finette describes what it means.

THINKMD has expanded our clinical risk assessment capabilities to include adults – a significant milestone for us as we strive to provide a comprehensive clinical intelligence platform that offers healthcare solutions for all patients.

When we first started THINKMD, our goal was to use technology to improve healthcare access and quality to address key global health issues, in particular those leading to premature death and disability. We recognized that one of the reasons behind these significant global health challenges is lack of access to quality healthcare professionals in many areas – health professionals who have the clinical capacity to assess patients for how sick they are, what could be causing their illness and develop comprehensive care plans to treat their conditions when necessary. We wanted to develop a solution that could transfer physician-based knowledge and skill sets to empower non-medical professionals to assess and triage patients, especially in settings where there were no doctors or nurses available.

Over the years, our clinical risk assessment tool and data analytics platform has been used in over 10 countries as an easy-to-use solution that can be accessed on any smartphone or tablet to determine how sick a person is, what illnesses they may have and what appropriate next steps to take. Until now, our focus has been the accurate identification of clinical risk, triage, and the generation of treatment and care plan recommendations for children and mothers, as we have recognized the critical importance of early detection and intervention for these vulnerable populations. However, we always knew that there was a need for similar solutions for adults, especially where healthcare access is limited.

While primarily a pediatrician by training and practice, I am a physician first and the natural evolution of THINKMD is the inclusion of the adult population. The number one killer in the world is cardiovascular disease so if we are to make any progress in terms of the global burden of disease, this is a critical and much-needed expansion of our clinical risk assessment and data capabilities. To date, we have used the principles of working to eliminate premature death by diseases and conditions that are leading causes of global burden of diseases, in particular those that are easily treatable and identified. These are the same principles that we will apply to the adult population.

The challenge with this is which diseases and conditions to include in our range of clinical risks assessed for, as with an entire adult population, these are fairly extensive. The way that we are approaching this is to focus on those that most contribute to premature death and morbidity. However, this can look different depending on geographic region, so as a clinical team behind THINKMD’s platform, which has a global footprint, we are constantly asking ourselves for every disease and condition: what is the value proposition of this? We will continue to engage a range of clinical experts to address this.

I am incredibly proud of the work that our team has done to make this expansion possible. We are committed to strengthening primary healthcare delivery with clinical intelligence and data analytics that can be adopted and scaled globally to improve quality and access leading to sustainable impact.