Leading connected healthcare innovator and social entrepreneur, Dr. Phillip Olla spoke at the Mobile Health Expo last month in Las Vegas, sharing his vision for the “MoLOC” – Mobile Lab on a Chip. The MoLOC is a micro-fluidic device that enables a healthcare worker, at the “point-of-care,” to send data based on saliva, serum or other fluids over a mobile network for remote diagnosis by a lab that can be hundreds of thousands of miles away.
The MoLOC is part of an ecosystem Dr. Olla has coined “MoDiSe” – for Mobile Diagnostic Services. “MoDiSe means Shepherd in Southern Africa,” Dr. Olla explained, “which is the perfect metaphor for this new platform as together, using local technology over global wireless networks, we can guide the course of care, saving lives and reducing overall cost through accurate, early detection and appropriate treatment.”
Dr. Olla, is out to improve healthcare in the developing world, taking on challenges many feel are impossible to address – through engaging many companies in a new ecosystem, and creating business models that are sustainable through the economics of mass production of these chips and the devices, and leveraging the increasing pervasiveness of mobile infrastructure being built as part of for-profit and non-profit initiatives.
This is no small task – Dr. Olla points out the broad fragmentation that exists in M-health systems today…access to pharmaceuticals but without proper diagnostic tools…duplication of efforts by researchers…and primarily no mature business models that are self-sustaining, vs. reliant on charity (at a time when donations are dwindling as a result of the economic collapse).
“I am on a mission to engage the private sector, biotechnology researchers and local entrepreneurs to encourage the development of products to prevent, diagnose and treat neglected diseases in the developing world,” Dr. Olla explained. “Once we create standards around Point-of-Care testing, agree on the best methodology around microfluidic devices like the MoLOC and integrate that with a robust Health Information Technology (HIT) Architecture we can then realize the promise of EMRs and the longer-term knowledge gain via the aggregation of data through this ecosystem approach.”
No small task, but Dr. Olla has never backed down from an important challenge. “We need to collaborate better as an industry – and blend the strengths of healthcare – science – and telecommunications – coordinating amongst all the participants, from the HIT/EMR platform providers to device manufacturers, chip makers, the research community, and the for-profit and non-profit investment world.” Dr. Olla’s ecosystem includes agencies like the African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDI), software companies (including Microsoft), cloud computing companies, mobile operators , microfluiditic chip makers, mobile device manufacturers (like Nokia (News - Alert)) and more.
Dr. Olla’s strategy employs the Android Operating System.
“We’ve developed the high-level architecture, and are now recruiting our board, raising capital, refining our sustainable business model, deepening the partner ecosystem, and will be completing our end-to-end architecture in detail by the middle of next year,” Dr. Olla explained. “We wish to launch the first pilots by the end of the third quarter with the first MoLOCs in the field for testing in the fourth quarter.”
A full roll-out of the initiative is expected in 2012.
“Microfluidic technology has been around over fifty years,” Dr. Olla said. “Research on fluid-sensitive chips began in earnest in the 1970’s, with steady evolution into the 1990’s with a big boost in research support from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), based on their interest in portable bio/chemical warfare agent detection systems.” The LOC – lab on a chip – entered the vernacular, and today with more and more nano-technologies and improvements in LOC fabrication through photolithography, the opportunity for precision in development (and economics through mass production of increasingly sensitive chips) puts Dr. Olla’s vision into practical reach.
One active area of LOC research involves ways to diagnose and manage HIV infections. Around 40 million people are infected with HIV in the world today, yet only 1.3 million of these people receive antiretroviral treatment. Around 90% of people with HIV have never been tested for the disease.
“There are so many basic applications for this system,” according to Dr. Olla. “We can detect diseases earlier, pin-point the appropriate treatment, monitor the effectiveness of different treatments, and provide important data associated with disease surveillance and control.”
“There is a huge addressable market here – TB, malaria, sleeping sickness and more kill more than 10 million people each year. With the emergence of new payer systems in India, China, Brazil, South Africa and other regions, the timing is perfect for not only new technology models, but new economic models as well that enable the private sector to contribute to eradicating these diseases while also delivering positive returns back to their shareholders. This opportunity inspires me to continue working on the ecosystem on all fronts,” Dr. Olla said. “With cooperation and a shared strategy for scaling this and other mobile health solutions forward, we can make an enormous difference in regions of our world which have been neglected far too long. And we can do so within a sustainable framework enabling socially enlightened companies and capital investors to prosper.”
Cynthina Artin is Managing Director at Auster Capital Partners. To read more of her articles on TMCnet, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Erin Monda