AfyaZima Blood Pressure mCuff

CATEGORY: Health

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The BPmCuff is a low-cost device which allows ease of blood pressure measurement and transmission via a mobile device thus allowing early diagnosis of hypertension worldwide, especially in low-resource settings

Standings & Awards

86 out of 86 in Europe
284 out of 284 in Health
935 out of 935 in Design
1066 out of 1066 in Blended
4003 out of 4003 Overall

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VOTES

Afyazima Africa

Increased low-cost access to blood pressure monitoring, thus reducing expensive progression of hypertension

Overview

The AfyaZima Blood Pressure mCuff (BPmCuff ) helps healthcare professionals and patients in hospital and home healthcare settings to measure blood pressure with an award-winning, low cost, connected device, specifically built for the needs of developing regions at less than one sixth of the cost of the cheapest existing devices. The BpMcuff is a device which can directly integrate to the infrastructure in the home and clinic, as well as support data transmission via cellular networks to a centralised Electronic Health Record system to give valuable statistics on disease prevalence.

Problem
Globally, hypertension is a major chronic disease and it is considered by the WHO to be a leading cause of death and disability with 75% of the 1 billion people affected living in developing countries.That translates to about 1 out of every 4 adults being afflicted with hypertension. Untreated, uncontrolled, and unmonitored hypertension increases the risk of damage to the arteries, heart attack, stroke, and other cardiac illnesses.

Barriers to the treatment of hypertension in low-resource settings include limited access to low cost accurate BP monitors, lack of detailed data on variation of BP readings over time, and lack of training on how/when to take reliable BP readings. Expensive devices are more likely to have had their accuracy validated, but it is hard to find a correctly validated low-cost device.

Our Solution-BPmCuff
Costing less than $15, the BPmCuff uses the mobile phone, a low-cost standard arm cuff and low-cost electronics to process high quality blood pressure measurements which are then transmitted via USB to the phone, where they are analysed, stored and sent to a physician or to central medical records. This will help healthcare workers in developing countries accurately track medical information over long periods of time to address epidemic chronic problems such as hypertension (high blood pressure). The device is targeted first at the primary care environment, especially hypertension clinics, but will be equally applicable in mobile clinics and for home monitoring.

Through increased access to monitoring, the BPmCuff will address the three key reasons for the rise in hypertension-related mortality rates in rural communities - late detection,misdiagnosis and lack of accurate epidemiological data.

Sponsors, Investors, and Supporters

FIVE PROJECT QUESTIONS Required (60 - 90 minutes)

1. What is your innovation?

In replacing the high-cost manometer of the sphygmomanometer with a low cost automatic pressure sensor attached to the manometer tube, we eliminate the need for a trained person to identify Korotkoff sounds by connecting the pressure sensor to a cell phone that processes the pressure signal using the oscillometric method, provides feedback to the user on cuff placement and data quality and finally displays the blood pressure measurement.

2. Who gains the most?

The 1.5 billion people in the developing world at the risk of hypertension who will be enabled to accurately manage their medical information over long periods of time through our platform gain the most. The governmental and private health organizations would benefit from the valuable epidemiological data within remote regions and rural communities in order to better manage disease paradigms and shape their health care policy and budgets, study determinants and improve resource allocation.

4. What is your success?

Our success lies in providing low cost, early detection of hypertension, reducing misdiagnosis, and providing accurate epidemiological data. Through the widespread distribution of our automatic easy-to-use system, we expect an increase in the hypertension awareness rates in developing nations which ultimately improves their healthcare system thus allowing the tailoring of hypertension thresholds to specific population subgroups, enhancing quality of life in the population.