Case study · Venture · Fractional CPO
Kwelio
Verified adherence layer for chronic care
Flutter · Firebase · Firestore · Computer Vision
#1
of 9,754 entries: Dubai's App of the Year 2026
How Pop by Kwelio was made
Pop by Kwelio, from idea to product. The brief: log every dose in seconds; prove it was taken with a timestamped photo; score adherence for insurers; spot a missed week before it becomes a hospital visit; make the habit stick. Then a blank page becomes a pencil wireframe of the app's Today's Pops screen with notes to verify each dose with a photo, score adherence for insurers and make the habit stick. Real copy replaces the handwriting, Pop's lime brand arrives, the adherence score reaches 92%, the week fills in with one missed day, and the phone goes live. Live on the UAE App Store in six weeks. Dubai's App of the Year 2026.
Overview
Kwelio came to Strange Tech after Builder.ai collapsed mid-build. The codebase went with it, leaving the founders with a Figma file and a pitch date closing in. Strange Tech rebuilt the app from that design and shipped it to the UAE App Store in six weeks, live in time for MIT DesignX pitch day.
The engagement ran as a fractional CPO role alongside the build. Levi Strange owned the product roadmap and how the app works for patients, and ran the delivery plan and risk register for the rebuild. After pitch day he kept enhancing the app and supported the pitch, with the deck and rehearsals, through the Create Apps Championship. On 7 October 2026 Pop by Kwelio won it outright: Dubai's App of the Year, along with Longevity App of the Year, presented by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at Emirates Towers Boulevard. It was the last Dubai's App of the Year before the championship moved to AI agents.
Half of chronic patients worldwide don't take their medication consistently. In the UAE alone that's three million people, and roughly $7 billion of avoidable hospital costs picked up by insurers every year. Adherence is invisible until it becomes a claim.
Kwelio makes adherence visible: a verified data layer connecting patients, their daily habits and their insurers. One Kwelix dashboard reads anonymised scores from many Pop apps: one insurer, thousands of patients, a single live view of risk that flags the drop-off before it becomes a hospitalisation.
The Problem
“The most expensive pill is the one we never took.”
Insurers pay for outcomes. Providers prescribe treatments. Patients live their lives. Nobody owns the middle, the daily discipline of actually taking the medication, and the whole system quietly haemorrhages money.
Existing adherence tools rely on self-report. Kwelio's bet: build the verified layer, make the score portable, and give every stakeholder a reason to trust it.
Fractional CPO: product roadmap and how the app works for patients
Delivery plan and risk register for the rebuild
Pitch deck and pitch rehearsal through every round of the Create Apps Championship, from quarter-finals to the final
Pop by Kwelio, the member app, rebuilt from a Figma file and shipped to the App Store. Photo-verified, timestamped dose logs
AI dose verification: each logged dose is checked against the prescription, so adherence is evidence rather than self-report
Kwelio Adherence Score (KAS): verified consistency from tamper-resistant dose logs
Kwelio Intervention Score (KIS): a predictive model that flags likely non-adherence weeks before it becomes a hospitalisation
Lio Points: a rewards layer that turns daily discipline into real-world rewards
Kwelix, the insurer dashboard: anonymised, consent-gated KAS and KIS scores in one live view, so payers can reach their highest-risk members
Scannable Beads sachets and the refillable LioBox dispenser. Every dose is tracked and tamper-evident, ready for branded insurer distribution
Consent-gated data sharing between patient, provider and payer. Scores flow to insurers; raw data never does
Results
- AUROC, Adherence Model Validation
- 0.88
- De-duplicated Claims Records
- 2.1M
- Products: Pop and Kwelix
- 2
- HealthTech on F6S, May 2026
- #7
“It took Builder.ai over seven months to get where you got us in six weeks.”
Rebuilt from a Figma file and shipped to the UAE App Store in six weeks, live for MIT DesignX pitch day
Dubai's App of the Year 2026, the top honour at the Create Apps Championship (#CreateAppsInDubai), from 9,754 entries
Longevity App of the Year 2026
#1 Health & Wellness Startup of the Year 2025
#7 HealthTech on F6S, May 2026
Featured on Shark Tank UAE
Press: The National, Entrepreneur Middle East, Dubai Media Office
Adherence model validated at 0.88 AUROC on 2.1M de-duplicated claims records
Larger insurers now in conversation to deploy Pop to their highest-risk members
Tech Stack
- Flutter
- Firebase
- Firestore
- Computer Vision
Idea to product
Drag to see where it started.
Strange Tech rebuilt Kwelio from a Figma file and shipped it to the UAE App Store in six weeks. That rescue carried the founders onto Shark Tank UAE and to Dubai's App of the Year.
Building in a regulated space?
We've shipped in health-tech and enterprise SaaS.