Kolkata startup develops mobile app to monitor SpO2, pulse rate
With the second wave of the covid-19 pandemic, the bite sized devices called the oximeter or perhaps a wearable smartwatch, to monitor one’s vitals, slowly became a staple purchase. CareNow Healthcare, a healthtech startup based out of Kolkata, has developed a smartphone application ‘CarePlix Vital’s’ where all one needs to do is place a finger on the smartphone’s rear camera and flashlight and within seconds, the oxygen saturation (SpO2), pulse and respiration rates are diplayed on the device.
“People needed a pulse oximeter or similar wearables such as a smartwatch to get their vitals such as oxygen saturation and pulse rate. The underlying technology in all of this is photoplethysmography or PPG. We are achieving this through our smartphone’s rear camera and flashlight. If you see the wearables and oximeters have infrared light sensors in them but for the phone, we just have the flashlight. Once we cover the rear camera and flashlight with the finger and start the scan for around 40 seconds, we are doing nothing but calculating the difference of light intensity and based on the difference we plot the PPG graph. From the graph, the SpO2 and pulse rate is derived,” Subhabrata Paul, Co-Founder CareNow Healthcare.
CarePlix Vital’s is a registration based application. The application’s AI helps in determining the strength of finger placement that is, the stronger the finger placement, more accurate readings. In a matter of 40 seconds, the reading is displayed and with the help of an internet connection, the readings can be saved on cloud for record.
When asked about the idea behind CarePlix Vital’s, co-founder Monosij Sengupta explained that the idea stemmed from the known fact of cardiovascular deaths in the country. “My father is a doctor himself and the idea for such an application had been in the pipeline for a while. Our sister concern company under my brother Abhisek, Careplix Healthcare started in 2016 while we began our operations last year. Our team Ankit Saha from Operations and Clinical trial team, Pathikrit Sanyal and Chennai’s Swaroop Anand from Vitals Research and Development team were behind the research, several alterations and prototypes. By December, we completed phase one,” said Sengupta.
A clinical trial was conducted by the team in Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital Kolkata with 1200 individuals earlier this year. “With the doctors in the hospital, the trials were mainly conducted in the OPD. Comparisons were made to test the accuracy and it was found that CarePlix Vital was 96 percent accurate with heart beats while 98 percent accuracy in case of oxygen saturation” said Paul.
