Eureka is mission-driven at its core. We’ve seen first hand how broken the medical system is, and how much work lies ahead to create a medical system that is effective and accessible to all. We’re starting by focusing on patients, striving to empower patients to make better treatment decisions and take an active role in their care. Someday, by scaling to all treatments, diseases, and all types of people, we hope that Eureka can help everyone understand whether a given treatment is safe and effective for people like them.
An open question you might be wondering is how we plan on making this a sustainable business. We’re a for-profit company, because we believe that this is the best structure for having global impact. It’s going to take a lot of researchers, product designers, and engineers to realize Eureka’s full potential, and the best way to get those people on board, develop a great product, and benefit the largest number of people, is to build a sustainable business.
I wanted to share with you how we’re thinking about this question, so we can start a conversation and make sure it feels right. Here are our two guiding principles:
- Patients come first. We need to work every day to earn and keep your trust, respect your privacy and digital rights, and put you at the center of every decision. We want to empower you to make better decisions and take control of your health.
- Stay focused on our mission: to accelerate the discovery of new treatments and cures. This could mean working outside of the system, enabling patients to generate and test new hypotheses. This also means working with the “establishment”: how might we trial more promising treatments, make trials run faster, and get more effective drugs to market sooner?
Considering these, there are two clear, value-aligned strategies we plan to pursue (likely in this order):
- Give Eureka users the opportunity to share their consented, de-identified data with researchers. Academic researchers, doctors, regulators, and pharmaceutical companies all want a better view into how treatments are working “in the wild”, outside of the controlled setting of a clinical trial. How do drugs work for people of different ages, genders and ethnicities? Will a drug be just as safe and effective if you’re immunocompromised? How are drugs performing in off-label indications? We think that these insights are valuable and needed, and by sharing this value with patients, it's a win-win for everyone involved.
- Facilitate participation in research. Patients are a critical component of research studies, clinical trials, and product development, and it’s a constant (and expensive) struggle for researchers to find, enroll, and learn from patients. If you stopped taking a certain drug, you might get a quick survey asking why, and what you’d value in a new, improved drug. If you’re eligible for a genetics study or clinical trial in your area, you could be invited to participate. This will help amplify the patient voice and help accelerate research.
How might we pursue these business models in a way that’s as transparent and ethical as possible?
- Transparency: you should have clear information on how your data is being used, and who has access to it.
- Control: You should have the ability to choose if you want to share data with the community or research partners or be contacted for participation in research, and have the ability to access, delete, or transfer your data if you wish.
- Security: Health data should be protected against unauthorized access, loss, or misuse, using the highest standards of encryption and security.
- Benefit sharing: Patients should benefit from the economic value they’re generating.
This is just our current working hypothesis for how to make Eureka into an enduring company that can someday help billions around the world. If you have thoughts or feedback, please don’t hesitate to email us at [email protected], we’d love to hear from you.
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