Hi Lucy, please tell us about your STEM journey.
“I’ve always been mathematically inclined, genetically blessed by my father, I think. At school I found maths boring until we started studying statistics, applied maths and mechanics and that’s when I got really interested. I did Maths and Physics along with two others at A Level and was fully committed to becoming an aeronautical engineer. I interned at British Aerospace and although it was everything I wanted it to be, I began to worry about the fact that I was only one of two women working in engineering on site. I’m sure it’s changed now, but it wouldn’t have been an easy road at the time. I switched at the last minute to read law.
“In 2016, I founded MySense. I was incredibly lucky along the way; I have worked with brilliant people who have satisfied my thirst for learning in this space.”
Why did you create MySense?
“Because I had to. I lost my sister at the age of 23 to a rare form of motor neurone disease and during her decline I always felt like we were on the back foot, never knowing what we needed to do next to allow her to maintain some level of control and dignity. And while I was in Surrey, I met frontline staff and residents who were in similar situations. When you’re at your most vulnerable, you need as much information as possible at your fingertips to make the right choices.”
How does it support vulnerable people?
“My Sense is a best-in-class product that predicts decline and decline in health.
“The prediction process starts in the home, before any disease or frailty manifests, and helps to understand the unique characteristics of aging in each individual. Our innovative system uses advanced algorithms and artificial intelligence to track and interpret collected data, enabling early detection of potential health risks and personalized disease management recommendations.
“Our aim is to prevent a problem, fall or hospital admission before it happens, which is better for the user, their families and the health service.”
Tell us about your ethical data collection.
“Our ethical approach is embodied in everything we do and we are committed to an ethical data policy – we are BCorp and a member of the Data For Good Foundation. We do not listen or observe the people we support, but simply learn about their daily activities and health indicators through passive sensing technologies. All the data we collect belongs to them, we cannot share or sell it. They must trust us to be good, and in return we will fiercely protect their privacy and dignity.
How do sensors work with data?
“We’ve had to build firmware for and manage the deployment of various sensor iterations over the past six years, and sensor technology has advanced significantly in that time. We are now working with – and soon to deploy – some really exciting IoT and WiFi sensor partners to allow us to worry less about data collection and therefore focus on the predictive capabilities of the platform. We currently collect around 20,000 data points per day per person we support, this comes from a health watch, a bed sensor and six passive sensors located in specific locations around the home.
“Our platform has multiple layers of algorithms and AI, all orchestrated in a complex dance to ensure we can get the best level of understanding about individuals’ activities and health. We then apply environmental and contextual attributes and then overlay disease models. This is critical in a home environment where many external factors come into play. It’s a masterpiece of data science and data engineering, but it needs to be constantly nurtured and refined to bring us ever closer to security with our personalized insights.”
How do you see the future of healthcare?
“We need to fundamentally reevaluate how we care for the people managing the conditions. Healthcare needs to be personalized and patients need more control over the care pathways they follow and when to engage clinicians. It goes back to the word “dignity” and the ability to make choices plays a big part in that.
“The most effective way to manage demand is for patients to go through a process that limits customization and choice. MySense helps doubly. First, it aims to reduce demand by preempting problems, reducing the need for emergency interventions. Second, it offers contextual health insights and reporting to allow the patient to choose when to engage and clinicians the ability to offer a personalized patient experience that meets the needs of the individual, not the system.”
What is a healthcare challenge you would like to solve?
“The above. But we’re not going to do it alone. We’re naturally collaborative as an organization, and we’ve worked with some great academic, technology and clinical partners. We actively seek academic impact validation for any implementation we undertake. Obviously, we’re quite protective of our intellectual proprietary, all of our data science is built in-house, but we’re always looking to find partners to work with for research purposes.”