Two young entrepreneurs are receiving international recognition for mHealth products that aim to improve healthcare delivery in Third World countries.
The two are among five winners of the 2014 Rolex Awards for Enterprise by London's Royal Society. Named "Young Laureates," they were chosen by an international jury from more than 1,800 nominees – all under 30 years of age – for "their leadership qualities and in their ability to harness technology in an original way to improve the well-being of the community and the environment, as well as to advance scientific knowledge."
The two winners illustrate the innovation on display in parts of the world where access to healthcare isn't a given, and where mHealth can make a profound impact.
Neeti Kailas, 29, of India, is developing a portable device that screen babies for hearing loss in her native country, where some 100,000 hearing-impaired babies are born every year. The battery-operated, non-invasive device uses electrodes placed on the baby's head to measure auditory brainstem response, determining whether the child can hear.
“(One) of the device’s major advantages over other testing systems is our patented, in-built algorithm that filters out ambient noise from the test signal," Kailas says in a profile on the Rolex Awards site. "This was really important for us because, if you’ve ever been to health clinics in India, you’ll know how incredibly crowded and noisy they are."
Kailas and her husband, Nitin Sisodia, have launched the Sohum Innovation Lab, and plan to start clinical trials later this year and launch in 2016. Her goal is to have every child tested in India, and to develop a screening program in the future to test for impaired vision in newborns.
“To me, design is about problem solving, and thinking about how I can have maximum impact on society," says Kailas, who made a name for herself at India's National Institute of Design by redesigning the bedpan for India's crowded public hospitals. "In a country like India, that’s never going to happen by designing the next lemon squeezer.”
Arthur Kang, 26, of Cameroon, has invented the Cardio Pad, believed to be Africa's first handheld medical tablet computer. The device is designed to enable rural healthcare workers to conduct cardiac tests and send them instantly back to specialists via a smartphone connection.
According to Cameroon's Society of Cardiologists, 30 percent of the nation's 22 million people have high blood pressure, yet the country as a whole only contains 50 heart specialists, most based in either Douala or Yaounde. Through his company, Himore Medical, Zang hopes to sell the Cardio Pad as part of a complete diagnostic kit for about $2,000, or half the cost of most systems.
Zang said he wants to have 500 Cardio Pads used across Cameroon, then export the device to other regions of Africa and India. He also wants to shift production of the Cardio Pad from China back to his native Cameroon, and has dreams of setting up what he calls "Cardioglob," an integrated national network of hospitals and cadriologists. He also hopes to develop other portable medical instruments, such as simple ultrasound equipment for rural areas.
The Rolex Awards for Enterprise were launched in 1976 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Oyster chronometer, billed as the world's first waterproof watch. The awards recognize entrepreneurs in five categories – science and health, applied technology, the environment, exploration and discovery and cultural heritage. In 2010, the awards were reconfigured to recognize Young Laureates, who each receive a cash prize of 50,000 Swiss francs and international media recognition, among other benefits.
