MyFiziq Limited (ASX: MYQ) is pleased to inform its shareholders that the company has signed a binding term sheet with Nexus-Vita Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based health monitoring and management technology company.

The deal will give MYQ annual recurring revenue of US$3.58M (AU$4.99M).

Nexus-Vita has developed a medical health and wellness platform that is the bridge between an individual’s medical health and wellness management with the aim of reducing health costs for individuals, governments and the healthcare and insurance systems across the globe.

Nexus has created an application for individuals to track and manage all facets of their health and health records.

The platform is using state of the art record-keeping protocols in a singular digital platform where an individual can save their records and share them with their doctor, personal trainer or lifestyle advisor.

Nexus can drastically improve lifetime health, reduce the need for medical interventions, and save cost and resources for the user and health systems through its partnership with MyFiziq and the use of its CompleteScan technology.

Enabling health surveillance and monitoring

The goal of Nexus is to bring together leading global technologies into a single environment for an individual or organisation to then manage user care and understand their health on an individual basis.

Nexus stores and maintains these records for the individual or organisation, allowing easy access to enable health surveillance and monitoring with the goal being the identification of early health indicators and aggressive pre-emptive care enforcement.

The pre-emptive health platform is to monitor, improve and engage with a user for better quality of life, while also reducing user spending on medical treatment, and tempering interactions with the medical system.

With medical facilities and personnel stretched to their limits globally and further compounded by significant worldwide economic downturn and job losses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nexus’s solution is designed to improve health outcomes, saving individuals, insurers and government’s substantial costs while also helping to reduce the burden on the global medical facilities and supply chains.

Initial integration planned for January 2021

Nexus and MyFiziq will collaborate to integrate MyFiziq’s body tracking application into all of Nexus’s verticals, commencing with an initial integration into Nexus’s pre-emptive health platform by January 2021.

Under the binding terms sheet, the parties will work together to deliver a market-ready integration into the Nexus platform by the March quarter of 2021.

In parallel with this, the parties have agreed to conclude all formal agreements within 60 days of signing the binding terms sheet.

Under the terms of the agreement, Nexus has undertaken to deliver a minimum of 100,000 active users within the first 12 months of launch.

Nexus and MyFiziq noted recent comments in relation to real-time analysis and data storage by Dr Mussaad M. Al-Razouki in HealthCare’s Cutting Edge.

In part, he said, “People have become increasingly comfortable wearing fitness trackers, glucose monitors, smartwatches, and other health-monitoring wearables.

‘’But to truly capture the benefit of the massive amounts of data being collected, real-time analysis may be necessary, and while many wearable devices connect to the cloud directly, others can operate offline.

‘’Some wearable health monitors can locally analyse pulse data or sleep patterns without connecting to the cloud.

‘’Doctors can then evaluate patients on the spot and provide on-demand feedback about their health.

‘’Experts say collecting data from smart wearable devices may prove highly useful in cases of a pandemic, where faster data processing near the source has the potential to be lifesaving.

‘’GE, for example, uses NVIDIA’s chips in their medical devices to improve data processing at the edge, particularly for artificial intelligence applications.

‘’But the potential for edge computing in healthcare goes far beyond wearables.’’

Numerous benefits for use in hospitals and medical centres

Significant benefits can be achieved through the generation of speedy data processing for remote patient monitoring, inpatient care, and healthcare management for hospitals and clinics.

Doctors and clinicians would be able to offer faster, better care to patients while also adding an additional layer of security to the patient-generated health data (PDHD).

The average hospital bed has upwards of 20 connected devices, generating a considerable amount of data.

Instead of sending confidential data to the cloud where it could be improperly accessed, it would happen closer to the edge.

Edge computing can also assist in using big data, along with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to predict patterns in the spread of deadly diseases.

For example, US-based BlueDot is a geo-fencing software company that is using data from social media, text messages, and other online communications to predict the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Localised data processing prevents a widespread cloud or network failure from impacting data processing and storage.

Even in the event of cloud operations being disrupted, hospitals that have independently operated sensors could maintain functionality.

MyFiziq to provide Nexus with cost-effective convenient solution

Commenting on the significant benefits of incorporating MyFiziq’s technologies into its existing platform, Nexus chief executive Dr Stephen Newman said, “A key part of our behavioural change programs, and early intervention strategy involves having the capability to easily understand users and patients risks of chronic disease through body composition changes in a way that is both cost-effective and non-invasive to the user/patient.

"Nexus currently uses in-facility body scanning machines, which adds additional cost to data capture, and requires users to travel to a facility.

"Body scanning is an instrumental part of our solution and assists Nexus in not only understanding a patient, but also allowing a patient to understand their own health on an individual basis.

"Bringing patients into our facilities with a body scanner on a regular basis to capture and track body composition information is inconvenient and time-consuming.

"Through integrating MyFiziq’s technology into our platform, we now have the capability to more regularly and cost-effectively understand user and patient body composition information as well as their risks of chronic disease in real time, capturing their body scans from the privacy of their own home, significantly broadening our B2B and B2C customer reach.”

MyFiziq chief executive Vlado Bosanac endorsed comments made by Newman, and he also noted recent corporate activity in the burgeoning m-Health, telehealth and virtual care industry in saying, “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has experienced a surge in m-Health, telehealth, virtual care and preventative health investment.

"This week alone, we saw Teledoc acquire Livongo for US$18.5 billion.

"Nexus’s behavioural-based program targets smaller interventions prior to current preventative healthcare solutions, which is unique and innovative in this urgently needed market segment.

"With medical facilities and supply chains strained worldwide as a result of the current pandemic, Nexus has identified, developed and entered the market with a dynamic and well-resourced offering.

"I am pleased to be working with Nathaniel and the Nexus team to provide an urgently needed, unique behavioural-based, pre-emptive health solution that focuses on reducing costs at all levels of the health, wellness and medical supply chain from the user/patient through to the medical provider, insurer and even at government levels.”