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This dropout student revolutionizes healthcare research by creating an all-in-one database, now being used by Harvard and MIT
With the collaboration with Garmin, Labfront offers a wide range of physiological data from wearables. The database has attracted prestigious institutes including Harvard University and MIT. Its co-founder Chris Peng, a dropout student, managed to join HTC to work on AI design for health projects and build the Emergency Medical Services system in Africa. Through his past experiences, he realized that health data for research is hard to acquire and lacks proper management, for which Labfront was founded to solve the pain point.
Solving problems with data, Labfront founders’ African experiences enlighten their medical career path
In 2014, Chris Peng and Jordan Masys were members of the Nordic Medical Centre (NMC). They were assigned a seemingly impossible mission: go to Ethiopia and build the first Emergency Medical Services (EMS), a system that provides emergency medical care. A country with a population of over 107 million people, Ethiopia did not have a 911-type centralized EMS dispatch center or the infrastructure in place to provide relatively quick emergency services. The street naming system was not completed, and unreliable infrastructure resulted in power outages, road closures, and poor data networks all the time. It was a tough task.
“We were like: ‘Sure, let’s do this!’”, said Masys, “we accepted the challenge and got to work in Africa right away.” Without hesitation, Peng and Masys set off to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Within a year, they built a cloud-based EMS system tailored to Ethiopia’s circumstances, which connects users, paramedics, and dispatchers by sharing exact locations in real-time. The system uses cloud-based location technology, enabling anyone with a mobile phone to be located even when the cellular data network is down, according to Peng. Their work was designed in a way specifically catering Ethiopian situation.
They integrated the EMS system into the hospital's internal patient management system. Spending one year and a half in Africa, Masys and Peng successfully launched the first EMS system in country and won critical acclaim from locals. That success totally went to their heads, thus the idea of tackling the world’s healthcare disparity sprouted, paving the way for the birth of Labfront.
Favored by Harvard and MIT, Labfront creates all-in-one database managing physiological data
In the fall of 2015, the two young men moved to Taiwan and founded Labfront, previously known as Kippo. They aim to leverage technological innovations by offering an all-in-one research solution for real-world data capture. The Labfront platform features improved data collection, easier adherence management, and fast analysis.
For data collection, Labfront aggregates high-resolution physiological data from wearables, survey responses, and participant task adherence records on their platform. The startup obtained a broad range of granular sensor data from wearables including sleep staging, movement tracking, oxygen saturation, and interbeat interval. Researchers and institutes could conduct a survey via the platform or use their data directly in their research. To assist with the survey, Labfront also develops an app for researchers to manage research participants, which allows real-time checks on research compliance.
Peng’s father Chung-Kang Peng is the Director of the Center for Dynamical Biomarkers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center / Harvard Medical School (BIDMC/HMS), who specializes in statistical physics and its application to the study of physiological measures. Having his father as an inspiration, Peng builds a strong team led by former members of Harvard’s world-leading Centre for Dynamical Biomarkers to process and analyze the overwhelming amount of physiological data.
Labfront’s analytics reports take care of the interpretation of participants’ physiological biomarkers, based on cited scientific research. That is to say, researchers could access a wide range of sophisticated data and view trends and insights with ease.
Teaming up with Garmin, Labfront set foot in international markets
“We are aiming for demographic diversity for the data,” said Peng, “cause healthcare shouldn’t be the same.” Labfront desires to reduce data bias by collecting data from all over the world, in a hope that the health ecosystem can fit the needs of all.
Labfront works closely with wearable technology giant Garmin. With over 19,000 associates in 34 countries around the world, Garmin has a solid base of international users, which is a huge boost for Labfront’s data collection. Integrating Labfront as part of its services, Garmin allows individual users can track their health status via Labfront’s app, while researchers can collect physiological data via wearable devices provided by Garmin.
With the comprehensive data collected and professionally analyzed, Labfront’s all-in-one research solution has earned recognition from prestigious institutions including Harvard University, UC Berkeley, MIT, and the University of Toronto. More labs, institutes, and universities approached them, as Labfront gained more international presence.
Moreover, Labfront was selected as one of 20 promising startups for the 500 Global Accelerator Taiwan with TTA 2022, joining a community of 2,600 startups from around the world. Grasping every opportunity on the way, Labfront has gained a foothold in the global market.
The article is supported by National Development Council
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