Public Funding for Feebris Ltd

At Feebris, we are a transformation partner to health systems that powers safe and effective virtual healthcare. We develop AI-guided software solutions that create capacity for health systems by bringing healthcare to the home. Seven out of ten deaths are caused by chronic conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes, which can be entirely prevented or managed. People are increasingly adopting regular health checkups and proactive screening measures to discover many health conditions in their early stages and reduce severe consequences. In the UK, the NHS Health Checks programme covers everyone between 40-74 years and is focused on identifying chronic conditions early. However, it currently requires a GP to conduct the health check and with the chronic shortage of primary care clinicians, targets are unattainable. We will develop an AI-guided health check for heart and lung conditions that supports a full personalised assessment, guiding the capture of information, specific to the patient profile, and supporting non-clinical users to deliver this in any community and home setting. The innovation will enable patients, health assistants and pharmacists to conduct health checks at home or in the community and detect chronic conditions early. Our existing virtual care platform (FeebrisOS) supports clinical teams in managing high-risk patients in care homes or virtual wards to reduce the burden on hospitals. This project will be a natural extension that unlocks preventative care for a large proportion of the population. This will be the first of its kind solution that ensures personalised health assessments for heart and lung health can be delivered by non-clinicians, speeding up access to healthcare and reducing burden on GP services.

Elderly patients, especially with co-morbidities, are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, with reported mortality rates of 10-20% for those over 70 years. The pandemic is imposing a massive burden on NHS services. Hospital facilities and GP practices have become overloaded and dangerous places for vulnerable people, who are now discharged prematurely or never admitted into hospital. This increases the burden on Adult Social Care (ASC) providers. Telemedicine can help to bridge the gap between clinicians and vulnerable communities. However, it is very difficult for a doctor to make diagnostic decisions on a respiratory case with co-morbidities based on just a video interaction. The Feebris mobile platform enables non-medics to conduct health check-ups and a clinical team to conduct "remote ward rounds" in care/nursing homes. The platforms has specialist respiratory tools, including a digital stethoscope and AI for detecting & interpreting respiratory disease markers. This project will develop an AI toolbox for COVID-19 that, integrated with the base platform, will provide care teams with decision-support to identify COVID-19 cases remotely and facilitate clinical management. It will include specialist tools for: automated triage; disease progression monitoring; and communication of health status with clinicians and family, plus a digital user training module/programme to allow deployment at scale. Current remote monitoring solutions offer no decision support for carers, are not geared for complex respiratory conditions, and have no AI for advanced remote monitoring. We have deployed our base platform into care/nursing homes across London and with a national live-in care provider. This puts us in a unique position to capture essential data for the development of the COVID-19 AI and achieve fast development & impact. The impact of the COVID-19 toolbox in care homes is to standardise observation gathering, making carers more confident in making triage decisions and better equipped to provide essential information to remote clinicians. The pandemic requires urgent action and long-term restructuring of healthcare as long-term lung damage is expected in survivors. In the longer term, the technology will strengthen community management of COVID-19 and associated chronic issues, alleviating NHS pressure and ensuring high quality, proactive and personalised care.

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"Globally there is a health workforce crisis, with a shortage of 7.2m healthcare professionals. For the NHS this equates to a 50,000 health workforce gap. These shortages result in restricted access to care, lack of personalised and regular assessment, and delayed identification of diseases and exacerbations. The consequences are most severe for the most vulnerable such as the elderly. In the UK, more than 9m people over 65 years live with at least one chronic condition. Feebris is developing an AI-powered mobile health platform that enables non-medical users, such as carers and community health workers, to identify and monitor complex conditions in the community. This project will develop the geriatric application of the platform, focused on elderly people suffering from avoidable hospitalisations due to respiratory conditions, such as pneumonia, COPD and asthma. The Feebris platform will integrate rich & quantifiable health inputs, derived from diverse health sensors, to perform personalised evaluation of health risks. The AI-engine will process medical history and regular measurements to identify health trends (e.g. frailty) and combine multi-morbidity risk factors into prediction of complications. These advanced analytics will remove the need for a clinical taskforce to be continuously reviewing large volumes of data and instead focus resources on at-risk cases. Consequently, our innovation can both improve patient outcomes, as well as reduce pressures on health system resources. The development will involve constructing a geriatric measurement system (off-the-shelf sensors & appropriate mobile app) and a unique AI-engine for diagnosis & personalised monitoring of respiratory ACSCs, capable of identifying health issues early to prevent complications. Additionally, the project will also ensure the platform is compatible with existing IT systems for health and care delivery, and compliant with highest regulatory standards for security, clinical performance and efficacy. The project will be conducted in collaboration with clinical, engineering and business experts. Alongside the technical development of the platform, the project will also involve a clinical study; measurements collected during the study will ensure that the platform fits the needs of a variety of elderly people and can address their health challenges regardless of where they live."