How did the idea of using a smartphone as a diagnostic tool emerge?
The pandemic has driven a huge shift in care-delivery, with the majority of us now having tried telehealth and reporting that we like it.
In addition, there is now data available that shows that telehealth helps reduce costs and improve outcomes, so virtual care is most certainly here to stay.
Parents of young children are particularly keen to use telehealth based on numerous surveys. The reason for that is parenting is tough, and challenges like putting a sick child into a car, last minute schedule shuffling to fit in an appointment, and managing other healthy children while visiting a germ-infested doctor office can prove insurmountable. But most children have a very hard time explaining what they feel, so paediatrics is, as of today, mostly locked out of telehealth. My kids, for example, no matter what they have, always claim a tummy ache, making virtual visits impossible.
At Wavely we believe that if we can provide the key physical exam findings for the main reasons children go to the doctor, we can unlock telehealth visits for kids. We are delivering these key physical exam findings using software only, via apps on our smartphones. We are starting with ear infections, providing the essential physical exam finding, which is middle ear fluid, using just an app. This means that instead of schlepping into the clinic, a family can have a virtual consult to evaluate and even treat an ear infection.
It all boils down to widening access to high quality care - no matter where somebody is. The phone is there when you need it without premeditation, so by taking a software approach, we are building a diagnostic that will be widely available to everyone.
You mentioned other paediatric conditions you would potentially like to help the doctor diagnose too; can you tell me what some of those are?
If you look at the main reasons why kids go to the doctor for acute primary care visits, nearly 70% boil down to ear, throat, lungs and skin conditions - so it is essentially those conditions that we will focus on. We are actively working on ear infections, the main driver of paediatric visits, and have seen early indicators that the others will be possible with a software-based approach as well.
How do you source talent from software developers to medical practitioners?
We are a SaMD – Software as a Medical Device – company, which means that we have to have a strong technical team, engineers divided between signal processing. machine learning, and software, as well as medical device experts to support our clinical work and regulatory compliance. That latter part is overseen by our full time Chief Medical Officer who is a Board-certified paediatrician.
A lot of the talent that we source comes through networking, so I would say that is definitely important. We also find people through platforms such as LinkedIn and Indeed. One thing that I am particularly proud of is that we have been able to hire quickly, which is the causal effect of being a mission-driven company. Our aim is to expand paediatric care to be in a parent’s pocket when they need it, and that resonates with a lot of people who want to spend their time on that mission.
What is Wavely’s preferred source of investment at this early stage?
We have two sources of financing for our work. The first is money from investors such as small funds and angel groups, and the second is SBIR grant funding . We recently received a Phase II grant from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under the premise that our approach can be revolutionary to reduce health disparities in rural communities and introduce quality care in remote locations. Looking forward, I think that once we hit key milestones with our current funding, we will pursue an additional round to allow us to scale commercially.
