Tracery Technologies

The world is not prepared for the next epidemic.

The seasonal flu costs the US economy $10.4 billion each year, much of that coming out of the pockets of healthcare companies & employers. The coronavirus pandemic will dwarf that number. This isn't a problem we should be dealing with in the 21st century. 

The coronavirus pandemic is going to be a turning point in world history, and is going to open peoples eyes to the necessity of a public health revolution. Tracery's aim is to be at the center of this, becoming the operating system for public health.

Tracery will help mitigate the current crisis through the only truly private & anonymous contact tracing solution being developed right now. 

After the crisis is over, we will shift to a more convenient & automatic bluetooth based contact tracing system as a solution for healthcare providers to save money & prevent infectious diseases. This can decrease cost of healthcare & improve access for millions of people.

It all starts right on the edge of the coronavirus crisis becoming a crisis

Second week of march, cases in the US were just beginning to rise. My internship had gone remote, my planned trip to San Fransisco for my aerospace company had been postponed, everything was uncertain. That’s when I decided I needed to do something that would help prevent a crisis like the one we are living now.

An Idea forms

During the quarantine in New York, I read a headline saying that the State of New Jersey was asking bars to take attendance to contain and track the spread of coronavirus. The process seemed inefficient and slow and I knew that this could be made more efficient, private, at a larger scale and secure using technology. My idea was straightforward: an app and an API to track attendance. It could be used by individuals, healthcare providers and governmental agencies to track down, isolate and notify exposed individuals and locations. It can also calculate risk scores for exposed parties at higher degrees of separation (iterative contact tracing). This technology will reach a large network and to cover numerous locations at once, it will help to build a support system to slow down outbreaks and prevent future pandemics. And this is how I came up with the name, Tracery.

Planning

I knew timing would be of the utmost importance in this. At the same time, I didn’t want to sacrifice quality for speed. Fortunately, I've been able to balance both. I’ve developed a prototype of the app that will allow me to submit an application on time and hopefully get the funds we need to push this project forward and help save human lives. I started with wireframes and mockups to build the prototype and after that I built an MVP using Flutter, a cross platform native development kit used by Google.

Development

I've made web apps so many times that we were able to finish the API in the first 24 hours. I've also made a dynamic Flutter application before so we were able to quickly develop a prototype in 48 hours. 

Here's a screen recording of the prototype:

Note: In the first prototype of Tracery, users are identified with names and emails. However, it has since been removed.We value individuals privacy and we are building the app in the most secure possible way to protect users data.

Business development

We've also developed a business cycle. 

While the COVID-19 crisis is ongoing, our business will thrive through deals with governments and health organizations to implement contact tracing. However we will also need to plan to remain viable for after the crisis. 

Our vision is to become the global operating system for public health. Our leadership through this crisis will put us in an ideal position to become a market leader in secure & private healthcare technology and data. We can leverage our granular data on the spread of COVID-19 to license to researchers, construct ML models as aids to government & healthcare provider policy. Additionally, through partnership with wearables and other health-tech companies we can construct an early warning system to epidemics and advise pharmaceutical companies, insurance providers, and hospitals about incoming demand. We can also serve as a universal & private health database & first stop for people with symptoms looking for treatment.

Next steps

Over the past few weeks, I've been fixing bugs, adding features, contacting government officials, and applying for funding. I’ve contacted one of my partners and one of our Advisors from my Aerospace company to help me with this project because I believe they are a valuable addition to the team.

We are in the process of raising funds through different platforms, like Wefunder and YCombinator, and we have submitted our project to a National Science Foundation contest for consideration. We are currently in the last phase of the contest.

Our plan to scale is to launch a beta test in an urban area where press coverage is guaranteed. We would like to use media attention to aggressively push the product to more locations. At the same time, we are looking for partnerships with wearable devices, we believe that integration with hardware devices is a key component to be able to receive and capture the data. As people get more worried and anxious to safely leave the house, the product will become more and more attractive as an alternative operating system for public health.

Our plan for future viability is to integrate with healthcare providers. The US economy loses $10.4 Billion each year due to the flu alone. Preventing infectious diseases through contact tracing can save lives as well as money. Insurance providers can pass on savings to customers through rewards & deductions in premiums. We would trade some elements of privacy for convenience, implementing a bluetooth based contact tracing system since businesses scanning QR codes in non crisis times would be annoying for users.