Ann: ResAppDx to be Formally Evaluated by Doctors Without Borders, page-110

You're absolutely right, this deal will only provide more informal data, and will have zero effect on FDA / commercialization this year. However IMO, informal data still builds value, given that RAP is not just a health company, but is a tech company, informal data is key to accumulative advantage in this space. To make kick ass, highly accurate algorithms, you need data, truckloads of data, every cough RAP can get their hands on will collectively over time provide data to fine tune & be able to further differentiate respiratory illnesses. To go from 95% accurate to 99% accurate requires larger and larger data sets, and a clinical trial is a very expensive way to gather that data. Your cost per cough with the FDA trial is enormous, vs this deal where the cost per cough is zero.

This deal gives RAP dibs on hundreds of thousands of coughs. RAP needed to position themselves to get the most data, these deals with third world parties are great from a building value / tactical perspective. For no cost to RAP they get a stream of data which will let them make a better product, which makes it harder for competitors to catch up, and the data will increase the value of RAP either to consumers down the line, or to a suitor with sufficiently deep pockets. The informal data has massive value, and RAP are getting to leverage a massive organization of doctors, across a wide variety of locations / races / ages, for zero cost. The way I look at it, this data pool (third world people coughing), has massive value, and RAP just got it, for free, and look like the good guys from a PR perspective.

Each cough is like each query in google, or each tag in shazam. Taken as an individual event, it's meaningless. But when you collate the data, patterns emerge, accuracy improves, and over time those billions of searches add up to a huge accumulative advantage. Those coughs, like the searches in the early days of google, have value. Google won because they took that data (the searches), inflected it back through the product, and made a better product. RAP started with needing a room with multiple microphones, now they can use the 20c generic mic in a mobile device. For them to get higher accuracy, they need more coughs, and this deal is a great way to move towards that goal.