AI-driven app wins 2019 AIMed Shark Tank Innovator Award

Global AI clinician movement AIMed Australia has announced Theratrak as the winner of the AIMed Shark Tank Innovator Award.

Presented at AIMed Australia’s inaugural summit in Sydney on 12–13 November, the AI-driven app reflects AIMed’s mission to excel AI adoption in health care to change lives. The award was presented by Dr Anthony Chang, cardiologist at CHOC Children’s Hospital and founder of AIMed, who is spearheading the AI global movement designed by clinicians for clinicians.

“Theratrak was founded in early 2018 and launched the first version of the app later that year,” Theratrak CEO and founder Laura Simmons explained.

“The digital platform supports allied health clinicians to work collaboratively to create, monitor and track custom therapy programs for their clients.

“To receive this coveted award less than a year after Theratrak’s launch marks a great milestone in our journey — at AIMed we pitched our innovation to experts in the field of AI in medicine. We are delighted to be in the company of other AI innovators who are using AI to enable better-value health care,” she said.

“We will continue to work harder to change patient’s lives and remove the administrative burden of clinicians.”

Dr Ian Oppermann, one of the AIMed Shark Tank judges and Chief Data Scientist and CEO of the NSW Data Analytics Centre, acknowledged how important digital innovation is to the Australian healthcare industry.

Transforming clinician workflow burden and getting the most out of treatment sessions for clients

Laura Simmons is a passionate paediatric occupational therapist, helping families and working with children living with range of disabilities. She has worked in the private health sector in Australia for over seven years, and in this time has noticed a distinct lack of innovative technology solutions targeting the ongoing care of clients outside of direct therapy and how this is impacting the client’s overall treatment. Simmons identified a problem on both the clinician and client side.

For clients, she identified research suggesting that the minute a client leaves a medical practitioner they forget 40–80% of what they’ve been told, which reduces the ability to get the most out of every treatment session. The solution? Theratrak captures visual information and therapist’s notes and sends this directly to the client to enable them to easily complete their program at home.

For clinicians, Simmons identified that clinicians are significantly time poor, treat clients with significant care needs and have increasing medicolegal requirements. The solution? Theratrak works with the therapist to create custom home programs that are sent to the client within a therapy session. Theratrak’s platform also enables clinicians to track their clients’ progress from a distance.

AI for predictive treatment strategies

Theratrak is being used by a range of allied health therapists across Australia including occupational therapists, speech therapists and physiotherapists. The intelligence gathered will set the foundation for predictive treatment strategies using AI.

Powered by AI, Theratrak will:

• save clinicians’ time working with unfamiliar clients
• create avenues for professional development in rural and remote communities
• improve access in countries where allied health may not be prevalent
• facilitate cognitive computing for medical note and report writing
• create medical notes from images taken in session by therapists for more efficient and accurate reporting.
   

Changing lives

The patient is at the forefront of Theratrak’s design.

“AIMed Shark Tank attracted many AI innovations hoping to win the AIMed Shark Tank award; however, Theratrak was a clear winner in the category Enabling Better Value Healthcare,” said AIMed Content Director Luli Adeyemo from Best Case Scenario.

“This award is about letting clinicians, innovators and the public know that AI in Australia is fuelling better patient outcomes now and not just in the future.”

Image caption: Theratrak CEO Laura Simmons’ award was presented by Dr Anthony Chang, AIMed founder.