1) What do you do and how did you get started?

Abs and I were talking about how he is finding his start as a full-time doctor at the Galway University Hospital. He started mentioning a lot of bottlenecks in the workflows and how manual a lot of the document processes were. A second, more alarming factor, came from academic research experience of how hospital data quality becomes a bottleneck when trying to implement the latest technologies to healthcare domains. The data is usually either manually created or does not exist at all. This significantly inhibits innovation and improvement in the industry.

This concerned us about the future of Irish Healthcare. A nail in the coffin was figuring out that Ireland has been consistently falling in the rankings of the EuroHealth Consumer Index, currently being 22nd out of 36 countries. Worst of all, it’s the lowest of all countries in accessibility, and doing bad in several other metrics, including Patient rights and information. So we decided to combine our disciplinary knowledge (Computer Science and Medicine) to find ways of streamlining workflows for multidisciplinary teams in healthcare, all while maintaining data interoperability, reconciliation and security.

Our solution aims to provide healthcare professionals with an online platform to access, publish and collaborate on Multidisciplinary Medical Documents.

These medical records are persisted into a knowledge graph. This interconnected data allows healthcare professionals to gain further insights that they were not able to extrapolate before. Within the rampant age of big data, a solution to aid in the fundamentals of Organic Intelligence is critical, and we strongly believe that solution is MediTree. Our initial phase seeks to streamline the phlebotomist’s workflow. Meditree allows surgeons to set a recurring order for patients in need of regular blood tests. Blood test results are key in monitoring a patient’s recovery post-surgery. Meditree would then enable such requests to be sent directly to Phlebotomists, cutting out the lengthy, manual request process entirely, all while keeping a record for reconciliation and enhancing of analysis for future patients undergoing similar surgeries, e.g. Giving options of the most reasonable tests to give the current patient. Making the Records an ever-learning model.

2) Tell us about the team:

Uzair Qureshi – Masters student in TCD in Computer and Electronic Engineering. Uzair has worked at the ADAPT Research Centre as a Research Intern working on Linked Data Quality Assessment. He also worked at Mastercard Dublin as a Software Engineer, where he won their regional hackathon, the intern hackathon and filed a patent with them. He has also won JCIs Top Outstanding Young Persons 2018 and won an Innovation award from Engineers Ireland & ARUP. He has a great interest in Research and looking for domains of application for the latest advancements in technology.

Abd-Al Rehman Tahir –He finished his Doctorate from TCD Medicine, and has a breadth of knowledge in medical practices, having done rotations in several different hospitals for 3 years and now working full time as a Student Doctor at the Galway University Hospital. Mohammed Elsayed – Is a third year student at TCD Medicine with great experience in Medicine and a keen interest in Medicinal practice and research.

3) How far along your business plan are you now?

We are starting off with our research phase where we establish credibility in our solution and knowledge of the problem. This is being done through writing short articles highlighting the current plight of healthcare management and how we aim to solve it. We are currently working on writing a white paper on Data Interoperability Issues in Multidisciplinary Teams within Irish Healthcare.

4) Plans for the future?

We hope to become a trusted academic and research entity that would be working in unison with the Government Sector (using data to highlight and optimize usage of healthcare resources) , Hospitals (Helping healthcare professionals streamline their workflow by cutting manual processes and enhancing organic intelligence) and Academic Institutes (mediating the data for purposes of academic research which aims to enhance healthcare for the future ). Potential challenges run into HSE, and how to manage the integration process efficiently, we are learning more and more with how other programs are being initiated into hospitals.