Telehealth app developer ResApp breathes easy on relisting

The company behind an inventive telehealth app, ResApp, is relisting on the ASX today.

Cough once for asthma diagnosis

The company behind an inventive telehealth app ResApp, which allows doctors to diagnose a host of respiratory diseases through a smartphone, is relisting on the ASX today.

The technology, undergoing testing at Joondalup Hospital in Western Australia, allows doctors to diagnose respiratory diseases such as pneumonia, bronchitis and asthma through a cough into a smartphone.

Users cough into the phone’s microphone from up to two ­metres away, and ResApp’s algorithms analyse the sound of the cough using machine-learning technology licensed from the University of Queensland. The app looks for signatures in that cough and matches those signatures to respiratory diseases.

Currently, doctors use the sound signature via a stethoscope, but by enabling diagnoses through smartphones ResApp enables doctors to consult online or over the phone, or patients could even diagnose themselves. A worker could for example use the app at home in the morning before deciding whether to go to work.

CEO and managing director Tony Keating said the app, which has undergone extensive testing in Indonesia, had 96 per cent accuracy testing for pneumonia and 90 per cent testing for asthma.

“Our levels of accuracy are comparable not just to a doctor listening to a stethoscope but a doctor listening to a stethoscope then sending you off to an X-ray, looking at that those X-rays and even looking at the response to antibiotics for example to get a final clinical diagnosis,” he said.

“We skip the X-ray altogether; we’re breaking the model of health consultations.”

Mr Keating said the technology was developed at the University of Queensland with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. ResApp is looking at the US as its first market for commercialisation of the technology.

The firm’s listing today through a takeover of Narhex Life Sciences Limited follows an oversubscribed capital raise of $4 million, which Mr Keating said would enable to company to accelerate clinical trials and commercialisation. He’s currently the only employee but is hiring software developers as well as clinical trial specialists to help the company capitalise on global telehealth ­momentum.

“At the moment we’re looking at US telehealth companies to partner with,” Mr Keating said.

“We’ve seen a much faster uptake of telehealth in the US, and our plans are to get into the US market within 18 months.

“In Australia we’ve just seen Telstra announce ReadyCare about a week ago, and talking to Telstra is top of our list as well. The issue with Australia is telehealth is not reimbursed by insurance ­companies or Medicare, it’s a user-pays system and you pay $75 for a consultation. In the US most states reimburse you for telehealth.”

He called on Australia to follow suit and subsidise telehealth, with current regulations meaning Australians pay $75.90 per consultation as part of a user pays system.

In the Australian and US markets there are more than 6 million and 101 million, respectively, annual GP visits for respiratory diseases and no solution allowing patients to self-diagnose.

Mr Keating said advances in smartphone technology and widespread adoption meant a telehealth revolution was “inevitable.” “Just look at Uber, which is a driver on demand. There’s no reason why healthcare can’t be delivered in the same way.”