Great Potential.... Risks to Consider?, page-12

Hey dylanh
It’s a noble idea - The app they’re reviewing is a newer version of a respiratory rate counter which have been used as a standard practice support aid for pneumonia diagnosis since the 90’s – especially in low resource areas. The app helps overcome some of the challenges that traditional RR Counters have – and while useful in a low resource setting, still has some significant limitations.
This is a good article to check out: http://www.unicef.org/supply/files/Pneumonia_Diagnostics_Aid_Devices_and_Perspective.pdf
One of the novel diagnostic tools mentioned in the article is another Australian pioneered tech – Stethocloud has since become Clinicloud. https://clinicloud.com/en/about and raised $5mil in seed funding from Chinese investment and securing a US retail distribution partnership- but needs additional hardware (and therefore has associated cost, manufacturing requirements and added difficulty in sourcing product).
ResApp is disruptive because the clinical evidence shows it can differentially diagnose between respiratory disease. – ie Bronchiolitis v Croup v Pneumonia whereas the RR counter only measures relative rate of breathing. http://www.resapphealth.com.au/further-positive-preliminary-results-from-clinical-study/and more recently – accurately detecting patients with lower respiratory tract disease that was initially cleared by experienced clinicians using stethoscopes. http://www.resapphealth.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/1532014.pdf

ResApp are aiming to be a ‘Gold Standard’ diagnostic test for respiratory disease. They’ll have a huge positive impact across the developing world – but equally, management’s focus is across 3 other massive market segments with multiple revenue streams.