Five Minute Insights Into Chronic Illness Management With Ubiqi Health

We live in a golden age of mobile apps, and one which really intrigues me is Ubiqi Health. Spending time with Jacqueline Thong, CoFounder and CEO of UbiqiHealth, I learned about their unique solutions. The app offers mobile and web-based tools for patients with chronic illness to better track and monitor their conditions. The platform aims to empower patients suffering from chronic illnesses, and Jacquiline shared some exciting insights about their ongoing process of development and upgrading to reform chronic illness management. 

Brief Overview of Ubiqi 

Ubiqi currently has one product in closed Alpha test with 40 migraine sufferers, who have been tasked to actively record their experience. The plan is to prove the hypothesis that patients will actually use mobile applications to track their conditions on a day to day basis. Thereafter, the company plans to roll out new applications geared toward other chronic illnesses. Sounds like the beginnings of a platform play. Think Facebook game platform meets 21st century medicine in the form of a symptom tracker in your pocket. Just slap on a new skin and viola - you are tracking painful joints caused by arthritis rather than painful migraines. 

The concept behind the app is that chronic illnesses, such as those discussed, need the identification of patterns of occurrence, triggers that lead to the onset of the issue, as well as the progression of the illness. Through this app, Ubiqi aspires to create a centralized panel which offers patients to benefit from simple chronic illness management capabilities, keeping a record of the illness, its symptoms, medications, and other details. Patients can even log in details like lifestyle habits which they might feel are triggers or which help soothe the condition. 

Apart from helping patients feel more empowered and in control of their ailment, this also stands to benefit healthcare service providers who can get an idea about the severity of the patient’s condition, their experiences, and more, thereby gaining insight into what needs to be done to improve their condition. 

The Core Team’s Plans For Expansion

With a 4 person virtual team that originally met in business school in France and is now inconveniently located in LA, Minnesota, London, and Boston, Jacqueline told me that Ubiqi is self funded with enough runway until next spring. 

They are doing side projects to bring in cash to lengthen their runway, but their big bet is being placed on the numerous business plan competitions that they have entered. Ubiqi was a finalist in North Bridge's seed funding competition, and is currently a finalist in both the Cartier Women's Initiative, and in Mass Challenge. 

Regarding plans for future revenue, Jacqueline told me that the team is confident that patients would pay for access to the app, as a result of surveys and market research. But, Ubiqi also plans to sell aggregated, anonymized data to drug makers and other interested parties, which will further boost the impact of the application, increase revenue streams, and also help in maintaining information privacy and client confidentiality.

As for the app itself, the company plans on expanding in the future to cater to a wider audience base. In order to achieve this goal, the team plans to incorporate a wider range of chronic illnesses in the next few years, by identifying conditions which need consistent monitoring. By creating a platform which can record details about every type of chronic illness which a patient may be afflicted with, the company’s aspiration is to offer a one-stop solution, without the need to redevelop the the app a lot, or create new applications every time (although they could if they wanted), allowing more time to focus on core features. 

Learning

From Ubiqi Health, we learn a new pathway to success in the healthcare sector. The app is allowing patients of chronic illness to effectively manage their conditions through active monitoring. This goes to show how when used correctly, technology holds the power to resolve critical challenges for all audience segments.