Barry Finette, M.D., Ph.D., has worked as a pediatrician for 25 years, but he’s thrilled to discover that health care workers without any medical experience can duplicate his diagnosis of sick children almost 90 percent of the time.
That’s because Finette has put his knowledge of treating children into a mobile software platform that guides community health workers and other non-medical caregivers when no doctors are available. After spending years in underdeveloped countries and witnessing a dire shortage of physicians in many of them, Finette created the MEDSINC app as a “triage tool” for unskilled users to determine how ill a child is and what treatment is needed.
Finette, a University of Vermont professor of pediatrics and microbiology and molecular genetics, presented his technology October 23, 2015 at the Vermont Tech Jam job fair and innovation expo at the Burlington Sheraton Hotel & Conference Center. Along with several other companies and creators, he described his startup of MEDSINC – which stands for Medical Evaluation and Diagnostic System for Infants, Children and Newborns. ThinkMD, the public benefit corporation that Finette formed to develop the technology, was among three finalists for the Innovation Award at the Tech Jam.
The software is downloaded onto a computer or smartphone. On the device’s screen, it runs through a checklist for the user to input symptoms, focusing on the most common problems for kids in these countries: Is the child in respiratory distress? Dehydrated? Malnourished? Based on the answers that the health worker inputs, Finette’s software algorithm calculates a likely diagnosis and suggests treatments.
In the four countries where he and his team have tested the technology – engaging inexperienced workers who take a half-hour or less to learn how to use the app – the outcomes correlated to a physician’s conclusions 85 to 90 percent of the time, Finette told Tech Jam attendees.
MEDSINC needs more testing, though, he adds. It needs to run through every possible scenario to give its owners and future users faith in its reliability. Another upcoming trial is scheduled with UNICEF in Burkina Faso, in West Africa.
“The more testing, the more accurate we can make it,” Finette says. “When I have 10,000 patients and tens of millions of data points, I’ll feel a lot better.”
Finette hopes the high accuracy rates will continue and hold promise for countries that have only one doctor for every 50,000 people. MEDSINC could improve that ratio, broadening the availability of care to one in 10 and saving some of the 16,000 children who die each day across the globe from preventable diseases and treatable ailments such as malnutrition and pneumonia.
“I’m watching children throughout the world dying in these poor countries just because they’re poor,” he says.
Even in the United States, a parent or school worker could use the software to avoid sending a child to the emergency room unnecessarily when he or she could safely go home, potentially reducing overall health care costs.
ThinkMD currently has a chief operating officer, shoestring staff and a goal of launching the product next year, Finette says. Right now, the technology targets care for children age 2 months to five years. Eventually, that could expand to newborns under 2 months, adolescents and ultimately adults, he says.
“If making me obsolete helps save a lot of kids, that’s OK with me,” says Finette.