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Sweetch Develops AI Platform That Predicts Individual’s Risk For Developing A Metabolic Syndrome Related Disease

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Sweetch is an Artificial Intelligence-based platform aimed at reducing the risk and improving the outcomes of Metabolic Syndrome diseases – Diabetes, Pre-Diabetes, Hypertension, Pre-Hypertension, Obesity, and Hyperlipidemia.

Below is our interview with Dana Chanan CEO at Sweetch:

Dana Chanan sweetchQ: Tell us something more about your platform?

A: Due to its global prevalence and effect on global economics, we decided to initially focus on prevention of diabetes.
The platform is composed of two complementary, components:

1. Disease prediction/risk stratification -a proprietary machine-learning platform that predicts individual’s risk for developing a Metabolic Syndrome related disease in a defined time frame.

2. Personalized, yet, large-scale intervention – a fully automated, personalized, artificial intelligence-based mobile-health platform designed to promote adherence to physical activity, weight loss and nutritional guidelines for people with prediabetes.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Sweetch?

A: The problem is just too BIG to ignore!

84 million Americans, 63 million Europeans, 493 million Chinese have pre-diabetes. Pre-diabetes is actually diabetes in its early stage. Pre-diabetes puts you at an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

It has been proven, in large clinical trials conducted by the Diabetes Prevention Program Research group (DPP), that 150 min of physical activity per week and weight loss of 5%-7%, reduces the risk of diabetes by 58%.

Currently, there is no accurate and reliable method to predict who will develop type 2 diabetes and when. In addition, current Diabetes Prevention Programs (DPP) rely on human coaching which presents two significant hurdles scalability and cost.

Sweetch addresses and provides the solution for those two gaps in the market.

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Q: Tell us more about your behavioral analytics engine?

A: Every patient has its own life habits, motivations and behavioral-change progress pace which determines his personal journey towards a healthier life Sweetch developed a Behavioral Analytics Engine which automatically translates various raw smartphone data-streams into insights about the user’s life habits. Then, by using advanced algorithms, Sweetch presents the user with personalized, contextual, just-in-time, just-in-place, recommendations that guide the user towards achieving his desired activity and weight loss goals.

Same as in real-life, Sweetch doesn’t have rigid, pre-defined, daily/weekly goals charts. On the contrary, Sweetch’s technology optimizes the real-time messages each user gets to achieve best possible compliance. The personalized goals are continuously adapted based on the user’s past behavior and objectives to best fit user’s real-life capabilities.

This approach promises gradual progress, hyper-personalization and long-term adherence.

Sweetch just finished a clinical trial with Johns Hopkins Diabetes Research Unit and presented clinically significant outcomes on all three primary measures evaluated: weight loss, increase in physical activity and bottom-line reduction in HbA1C. This, purely based on AI, without human intervention, hence enabling true large-scale intervention in a significantly cost-effective way.

Q: What markets are you focusing on currently?

A: Essentially, we don’t have the scalability challenges that our human-based competitors are facing. That been said, personalization also refers to cultural differences, hence, different countries require a certain level of customization. The system has a learning curve – adapting the nature, tone-of-voice, specific use-cases etc. to the local environment and habits. We are currently focusing on US and Europe but eventually we will approach additional regions.

Q: Why is now the time for a technology solution like Sweetch?

A: Diabetes presents a global EMERGENCY. According to the International Diabetes Foundation (IDF), approximately 415 million people worldwide were estimated to have diabetes in 2015. If current trends persist, by 2040, 642 million people, or almost one adult in 10, will have diabetes.

In the U.S. there were approximately 29 million diabetics in 2012 according to the American Diabetes Association (ADA), or 9% of the population. As mentioned before, additional 84 million U.S. adults had pre-diabetes in 2012. It is estimated that the costs of diabetes complications account for between 5% and 10% of total healthcare spending in the world. In the United States, the ADA estimates that the total cost of diagnosed diabetes has risen from $174 billion in 2007 to $245 billion in 2012.

Existing diabetes prevention rely on human intervention. These, obviously, cannot deal with the magnitude of the diabetes epidemic.

Sweetch is essentially the first digital “vaccine” for the diabetes crisis. Our vision and mission statement are to create a healthier humanity.

Beyond the global diabetes trends, two additional factors are worth mentioning:
1. Users are now more than ever open to technologies that can seamlessly integrate into their lives and support them in their journey to healthier more fulfilling life.
2. In a macroeconomic level, technological advancements in the areas of machine learning, AI, etc. are helping us create personalization based on behaviors, preferences, likes/dislikes and tailor people’s goals and lifestyles. We think what we experience today is just the tip of the iceberg of the revolution digital therapeutics bring, and we are excited and by pioneering and paving new paths in the healthcare industry.

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Q: What are your plans for the future?

A: We are currently focusing on diabetes prevention, but our solution is aiming much broader populations – reducing the risk and improving the outcomes of Metabolic Syndrome diseases in general, and we are on our way there. We are leading a value-based and exciting journey, with potential effect on hundreds of million of people.

We are always interested in communicating with other organizations targeting similar objectives – payers, providers, self-insured companies and pharmaceuticals, so contact us if you find Sweetch relevant for you!

Q: What set’s you apart from the competition?

A: There are few great companies offering solutions targeting diabetes prevention. Most, if not all, face the challenge of human resources being at the core of their intervention. Even those who have a major technology component have a human coach behind the scenes. This possess two major hurdles – scalability and cost. Imagine deploy a human-based solution to 20,000 patients– this requires hiring and training of hundreds of coaches. Now think 1,000,000 patients. Now think 84,000,000… It is simply not feasible – operational and financial wise.. We believe in win-win and our pricing model of outcomes-based payment, upon patients achieving their goals, makes us work extra hard to create value for our customers and for our users. Our goal is to improve health outcomes cost-effectively. A win-win situation for everyone.

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