Tech & Digital Disruption for Purpose Talk @ General Assembly Melbourne

My talk from https://generalassemb.ly/education/tech-digital-disruption-for-purpose/melbourne/42259

Hi, I’m Nick from HITORI, we’re a web & mobile app development company based in South Melbourne that focus on developing apps for enterprise, health and startups.

HITORI was started about 6 years ago with a view to focus on enterprise productivity improvement apps; I wanted to make sure HITORI built apps that actually provided benefit to the people using them.

We have been quite lucky over the years to build on this goal as we have been approached by medical institutes, hospitals and non-profits who are working with people going through issues either due to poor health, old age or other hereditary problems passed down. Although it would obviously be better if these issues did not exist… it’s been good to be able to help by building apps that are working to improve these lives.

So I’ll briefly run you through a few projects we have developed that are currently in use.

The first app we built in the health space is CardiacMate. We were approached by a senior cardiologist from Austin Health who had an idea for mobilizing after patient care for heart attack patients. We started this project around 3 years ago and spent around a year developing, testing and releasing the app to market with trial groups of heart attack patients from St Vincent’s and Monash hospitals. The trial has run for close to 2 years now and the results have been very positive. The app has been featured at various medical industry seminars as a base case-study and has provided a good runway for other medical apps and roll-outs of mobile tech in hospitals locally and overseas.

Touching on CardiacMate app functionality, the app allows patient users to use our mobile app to monitor all of their vital data, which in turn calculates their ‘heart age’. It’s a little like the Nintendo Wii Fit game where you complete activities consistently over time and gradually improve your heart age, the goal being to be as close to your real age as possible. To do this in CardiacMate the user enters vitals regularly such as blood pressure, weight and cholesterol, after entered the user is provided a traffic light style rating for each data point which combined are used to calculate the patients heart age. In addition to these data-entry features the user is part of a collective group with other patients where they can communicate via a social feed for support and further private chat directly with their doctors and set medical appointments.

Another similar app we have built which in final testing and being released over the next few weeks is Pump app developed with The Alfred hospital. The overarching concept for Pump app is similar to CardiacMate. Patients enter data into the app and the app in turn tells them if they are on target or not, each patient has a plan they need to follow which has been provided by their cardiologist which includes their target weight range, daily fluid restriction and activity goals. Further and like CardiacMate, Pump app has a web based app in the back-end used by doctors for monitoring of all patient data, if patients go over or under a certain vital doctors are alerted of the issue so the patient can be followed up and booked into an appointment.

Pump app has been developed in a scalable approach, as it will be rolled out for other medical conditions also.

Another app in a similar space we have developed is BrainyApp. BrainyApp was developed with Alzheimer’s Australia (now Dementia Australia) and Bupa health foundation. It is targeted at dementia sufferers and aims to support them by providing a tailored activity plan and social support network for sufferers. BrainyApp allows users to use the app either via web or mobile and uses a gamified points style system that accumulate over time as the user completes certain activities they decide to do.

Activity plans are customized and created by a user within the app from a database of researched and recommended social and physical activities. So the app is not forcing users to stick to a fixed plan and gives them total control on what they will and can realistically do, i.e. walk 3 times a week for 1 hour, socialize once a week by going to the movies or out to dinner with friends.

These activities although they seem minor and simple are proven to provide alot of benefit to dementia sufferers and BrainyApp provides a simple step-by-step plan to help people ensure they are doing everything they can do lessen the onset of dementia and live an active life.

On the digital disruption side we have also recently launched our own HR automation app SnapMatch. SnapMatch allows employers to find and hire part-time retail and hospitality job seekers directly via our apps. As we all know more and more jobs are becoming casualised and it is becoming more difficult for people of all ages to find long-term secure employment. Instead of going on traditional job platforms or door knocking to hand out resumes our app allows job seekers to create a job seeker profile, add their availability and in turn allows employers direct access to matching job seekers; so we have in essence flipped the usual scenario of job seekers applying to employers to employers finding job seekers they want to hire from the get go. SnapMatch also has a range of complex functions such as automated matching algorithms, star ratings, reviews and shift reminders for both job seekers and employers.

In addition to these apps we’re also working with other non-profits and hospitals developing apps for brain tumor patients and also more complex drug and medicine related apps with Australian and US hospitals that will be used primarily by doctors to diagnose and improve issues such as allergic reactions to drugs based on big data sets and knowledge sharing, this app will be used by the wider medical community when issuing drugs so they can predict and in turn eliminate allergic reactions and conflicts with other medications.

We’re really excited to be working on these apps and its good to be building products that are providing a real benefit to people or changing the way people do business. I think we are a point where tech being used for good is really turning, people of all ages have accepted tech now and there is lots of opportunities where tech can be introduced for good.

Thanks, that’s it from me.