MedCon (Medical Connection) Band
The pandemic primarily affected healthcare industries around the globe. The implications are:
1.Physical consultations became impossible especially to people in remote areas;
Limited testing kits for COVID-19;
Costly testing kits with limited usage;
Lack of continuous health monitoring of patients;
Our team is proposing a cheaper, accurate, and non-invasive way to monitor the health condition using a wearable piezoelectric sensor that detects the levels of specific antibodies in sweat. The sensor connects to a mobile application with AI that records and analyzes the data in real-time. The mobile application can connect the patients to healthcare practitioners for virtual consultations, and keep the records of each patient in a database.
If mass-produced, it can improve the lives of the 1.4 million Filipinos with no access to quality healthcare consultations and monitoring.
In the Philippines, COVID-19 will test only 2% of the population, therefore, active cases increase by hundreds daily due to asymptomatic Filipinos. Another implication of the pandemic is the limited physical consultations and monitoring of the health conditions of patients. Therefore our technology will try to address the following:
1. Costly and limited testing kits for COVID-19;
2. Accessibility to physical healthcare consultations and monitoring;
The expected impact of our technology are:
1. Improved detection of COVID-19 and other diseases;
2. Accessibility to quality healthcare consultations;
3. Continuous monitoring of health conditions;
4. Provide an alternative to invasive tests;
MedCon Band can help people in remote areas to monitor their health in real-time through the continuous detection of the levels of their antibodies. The benefits of the said technology are:
1. Virtual consultations with healthcare professionals;
Digital records that are accessible to the patient and their corresponding physician/s;
2. Continuous monitoring of health conditions will result in a more accurate diagnosis;
3. A cheaper alternative to COVID-19 test kits;
4. A non-invasive substitute in detecting and monitoring diseases such as diabetes;
The technology used in prototyping are:
1. Piezoelectric transducers
2. Mobile application development software: Python and Kivy
We designed this technology with Filipinos in our minds; we aim to remove barriers between the people and quality healthcare services.
The pandemic caused panic in the country, especially now that even asymptomatic people can go out and may infect others. The testing kits are costly and limited. There is no way of monitoring discharged patients if they can get re-infected by the virus. Therefore, our team designed a technology that will address those concerns.
- Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model
- A new application of an existing technology
COVID-19 swab kits include an antibody test if the test shows that you have antibodies or abnormal antibodies it indicates that you are likely to be infected in the past.
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay is a technique used to determine antibodies present. but it takes higher cost and more time for preparation
however, the MedCon band will use molecularly imprinted polymers with the antibodies present in COVID-19 which is non-invasive and also competitive in producing accurate results via the use of piezoelectric technology.
The main parts are the antibody template (MIPs) and a transducer that functions as the sensor. The detected signal will be sent to the mobile phone via the Bluetooth module paired into the device. The Mobile application will have an artificial intelligence-based system that would further interpret the results.
Boehm, K., Yun, J., Garner, C., Strohl, K., & Elmets, C. (1994, February). In situ detection of cytokine messenger RNAs in the eccrine sweat gland of normal human skin. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8186326.
Coomes, E., & Haghbayan, H. (2020, January 01). Interleukin-6 in COVID-19: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20048058v1.
Cortisol. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.hormone.org/your-health-and- hormones/glands-and-hormones-a-to-z/hormones/cortisol.
Defensin. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/defensin.
Draper, S., Draper, S., & Google. (2018, December 10). Sweat-Based Wearable Device to Measure Glucose. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://www.wearable- technologies.com/2018/12/south-korean-scientists-develop-sweat-based-wearable-device-to- measure-glucose/.
Hao, Z., Wang, Z., Li, Y., Zhu, Y., Wang, X., Moraes, C., . . . Lin, Q. (2018, October 26). Measurement of cytokine biomarkers using an aptamer-based affinity graphene nanosensor on a flexible substrate toward wearable applications. Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2018/nr/c8nr04315a.
Lalo, H., Ayela, C., Dague, E., Vieu, C., & Haupt, K. (2010). Nanopatterning molecularly imprinted polymers by soft lithography: A hierarchical approach. Lab on a Chip, 10(10), 1316. doi:10.1039/b924315a
Full Page Reload. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/sweat-sensors-will-change-how-wearables-track- your-health.
Health Monitoring Based on Wearable Sweat Sensors. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2020, from https://cdac.uchicago.edu/research/health-monitoring-based-on-wearable-sweat-sensors/.
Vasapollo, G., Sole, R., Mergola, L., Lazzoi, M., Scardino, A., Scorrano, S., & Mele, G. (2011). Molecularly imprinted polymers: Present and future prospective. Retrieved May 30, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3189760/
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Internet of Things
- Manufacturing Technology
- Materials Science
- Software and Mobile Applications
We believe that we can have health monitoring systems that cause lesser than the current system. We also think that these can help people .
- Women & Girls
- Pregnant Women
- LGBTQ+
- Infants
- Children & Adolescents
- Elderly
- Urban
- Low-Income
- Middle-Income
- Persons with Disabilities
- 3. Good Health and Well-Being
- Philippines
- Philippines
currently we are still working in prototype and app development
The next year given the right funding we are aiming to mass produce 100,000 MedCon Band .
The next 5 years we are aiming to reach our first million in production.
Our goal is to lessen the burden caused to people by the current system of healthcare monitoring. Hopefully within the next year we can accomplish our plan of mass producing the unit with the approval of the government. and in the next 5 years several people would improve their health care monitoring.
Mainly funding greatly affects the development of the product since we are working on nano technology some equipment are quite expensive.
We are currently searching for funding, potential manufacturing partners and researching for the cheaper way to build the product.
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
currently we are 5 researchers.
We are consist of Engineers and IT professionals which gains expertise in circuit design, manufacturing and production management, and accounting.
Currently we are working with Nexus laboratory at De LaSalle Lipa
Our first goal is to sold the created items to people with the notion and approval of the government and some healthcare partners. The next step is to build bigger connections with hospitals to help them collect data better. Each data of the patient retrieve is sold to the hospital selected by the patient.
- Organizations (B2B)
We can bring in money by selling our items to persons and organizations. While we build partnerships with hospitals we can secure more earnings from the partnership given as we give the data collected from the application.
SOLVE is a great platform for startups, in our case, we believe that the benefits of joining this are:
1. Mentorships will help us in improving our business model, and product development;
2. The opportunity of gaining visibility, will help us in finding the right investors and partners to help elevate our technology globally.
3. Funding will help us improve our research and development, and start the mass production of our wearable.
- Product/service distribution
- Funding and revenue model
- Monitoring and evaluation
Our partnership goal is to be able to build a well-rounded team with different areas of expertise in business and technology. Which will help our startup to gain traction from prototyping to being one of the major provider of healthcare technology in the country, and potentially - globally, which will help remove barriers for people with no access to quality healthcare.
We would like to partner with the government organization of the Philippines to easily spread the technology to people. We would like to have partnership with semiconductor manufacturing companies and other research companies that has research in wearable nanotechnologies.
We will use it for product development and strengthen the possibility that we can launch our product in the market as soon as possible.
We will use it for product development and strengthen the possibility that we can launch our product in the market as soon as possible.
We will use it for product development and strengthen the possibility that we can launch our product in the market as soon as possible.
We will use it for product development and strengthen the possibility that we can launch our product in the market as soon as possible.
We will use it for product development and strengthen the possibility that we can launch our product in the market as soon as possible.