As a girl who grew with Gunditjamara people in country Victoria and as a woman who lives among the Quandamooka and the Yugambeh people of Redlands QLD now, I recognise the deep connection to this land of all our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Nations. I acknowledge their thousands of years of knowledge of bush medicine and healing. I welcome and respect their knowledge from past, present and emerging elders. I thank them for their Millenia of care and custodianship of this land.

I extend the hand of friendship and welcome them personally to ConnectED.

Our Founder and Managing Director, Tracy Finnegan, began her career as an ICU RN in the early 90’s, going on to study science at the University of Queensland as a mature age student completing her degree in 2013. In early 2014 she suffered an acute partial spinal cord injury, following a spontaneous rupture of a vertebral disc. This left her with impaired motor function and a severe neuropathic syndrome. In 2018 she was diagnosed with Dysautonomia. It was only in May 2022, after a lifetime of ill-health, strange symptoms and varying levels of disability she was finally diagnosed with HSD/hEDS at age 53.

Then along came COVID ….twice (despite 3 vaccinations)! Like many with this condition, COVID significantly worsened her symptoms. In 2023 she was officially declared disabled due to out-of-control Dysautonomia, POTS and Long COVID.

It was during this time, she became aware that the journey of a person with a rare chronic disease, is lonely, difficult, fraught with medical bias and ignorance. Validated information regarding these conditions is not readily available nor easily accessible.

As a former RN she recognised that a significant barrier to accessing appropriate medical care for many, is the challenge of communicating to the doctors exactly what symptoms you have. Complex illness is difficult to articulate, and this is compounded by time constraints of doctor’s whom often do not have appropriate education and training in these conditions. It is concerningly common to hear reports of people in this patient cohort who have medical trauma.

Using her experience as an RN, Scientist and Entrepreneur she set about creating the ConnectED App with the hope that it assists others on their health journey. The App is a legitimate assessment tool, the Report it produces will form the basis of a discussion with your treating Doctor.

‍IT IS NOT A DIAGNOSTIC TOOL. Rather it is a logical report containing critical information about these conditions and your unique symptom clusters to assist your doctors in the diagnostic process. We hope that the report empowers you to advocate for the right diagnosis and clinical management, ultimately enabling you to manage your symptoms using the most up to date evidenced based practice.