Cataloging information on chronically ill patients, using artificial intelligence to learn which treatments work and which do not, detecting early symptoms or signals that predict the course of a disease. StuffThatWorks wants to do all this, and more.
The company was founded by entrepreneur Yael Elish, formerly head of product at Waze. One of her daughters suffered from a chronic medical condition that was getting worse. She found promising treatment on a blog post by another person suffering from the same condition, and within three weeks the girl's life returned to normal. After the Waze acquisition by Google, she continued locating treatments for herself and her family on the Internet. But not everyone can get this level of research. "There is no unified database that reviews and compares possible treatments for each and every disease, which amount to an average of 300 potential treatments," she says.
Mapping 10,000 diseases
StuffThatWorks’ website has 560 diseases currently cataloged, with the goal of eventually mapping about 10,000 - most of the world’s diseases. Meanwhile, there are about 2 million registered contributors, of which one million are participants who have contributed a great deal of information.
Each participant fills out a questionnaire about his or her illness. "It’s very important for us to start collecting information from scratch," emphasizes Yossi Synett, company co-founder and Chief Data Scientist, whose background is in data analysis and who was VP Research at Kenshoo. "The more data, the better it can be weighted for effectiveness. At first, we just make a list of all the interventions patients have tried. After we have 500 reports, we begin sorting them according to what is most effective. After 1,000 participants, we can begin identifying subgroups for which one treatment is more effective than others."
Making recommendations for medical care has complex regulatory constraints. The company emphasizes that its recommendations are not conclusive, but should be brought to a physician for consultation. In any case, they are not recommendations, only ratings. In addition, it offers the possibility of participating in online support communities.
Technology giants have been trying to develop data mining methods to understand which treatments are more effective - to date, without much success. "We’re the only company that collects the information directly from the consumer and returns it to the consumer," says Elish. "The medical system is very poor, whereas we’re a company that’s raised $35 million solely to build this database."
The most similar competitor, according to Elish, is PatientsLikeMe which emphasizes community-based information-sharing. Elish: "They had to be sold quickly to an insurance company because the US government in the Donald Trump era did not consent to having sensitive information about American citizens in the hands of companies with Chinese investors."
One question still open is the business model - who will pay. "It probably won’t be the consumer," says Elish. "Certainly not the pharma companies. Probably insurers or employers." The company currently has no revenue. "We are, first of all, building something significant here that will make a difference," she says.
StuffThatWorks
- Business: A crowdsourced platform for diagnosing chronic diseases.
- History: Founded in 2018 by Yael Elish (CEO) and Yossi Synett, (Chief Data Scientist)
- Stats: The company, with 44 employees in Tel Aviv, has raised $34 million, including from Bessemer Venture Partners, 83 North and 10D. Operations are at the pre-sales stage.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 7, 2021.
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2021.