MIT Solve

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

Vitally

One-line solution summary:

Contactless screening of multiple vital signs Temperature- Heart Rate- Respiration Rate) to monitor, assess and predict the health status

Pitch your solution.

Millions of people can not afford health expenses. Additionally, hospitals’ capacity has shown major defects during the COVID-19 outbreak which led to many people not receiving adequate medical care.

Therefore, there is a persistent need for a tool that will enable everyone to receive healthcare infeasible but yet affordable manner.

We suggest using a tool we have developed that will help in monitoring, assessing, and follow up of individuals remotely to decrease the pressure on hospitals and limit the likelihood of infection.

What specific problem are you solving?

Up to date, more than 138 million confirmed cases and approximately 3 million deaths had been caused by the newly emerged Coronavirus (COVID-19), which has turned into a global crisis that threatens all aspects of life rather than the health sector alone and has also paid attention to how fragile our health systems can be against any outbreak.

While most of the efforts are directed towards finding a vaccine, these efforts have been made earlier since 2003 against SARS and MERS. Up to date, no vaccine has been developed against either of them. Additionally, COVID-19 has a negative impact on the economic status of countries and individuals.

Many businesses have stopped, and many people lost their jobs because of a lack of resources to periodically monitor the health status of the employees.

Moreover, Millions are suffering from the lack of adequate healthcare and shortage of hospitals. Lately, the cross-infection in India's hospitals ended the lives of many people early present with moderate symptoms.

Therefore, there's a persistent need for a tool that enables patients in receiving satisfying healthcare and follow up in an affordable manner.

What is your solution?

The core value we provide can be summarized in 3 main focal points: - Monitor - Assess - Followup We are developing a software that applies signal processing in monitoring and assessing the health status of individuals remotely through screening several vital signs in a contactless method including heart rate- respiratory rate and temperature. It will also help in the follow up of COVID-19 home-isolated patients and determine their release according to a symptoms-based strategy as suggested by the center of disease control "CD" Our method is expected to have a tangible impact in the field of remote health and to facilitate the health professions to monitor their patients’ status efficiently, remotely and rapidly.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

The impact of our system includes:

Society/ Health system

Reducing the cross-infection potentiality either in hospitals by reducing the pressure on them and prioritize the entrance to severe conditions or in crowded places by screening multiple vital signs as predictors of infection at the entrance of these places. Additionally, the contactless technique empowers the concept of the reduction of cross-infection.
Follow up mild and moderate cases which ensure they receive the appropriate health care and paying attention to any risks.
Providing real-time data about the general health status and the spreading of the disease.
It will enable the government to monitor the number of infected people and their status through the dashboard and visualized reports.

        2. Local Economy

As one in 10 young people lost their job due to COVID-19 and its frustrating economic impact and the need for employers to periodically check the health status of their employees to keep their business going. 

Our system will facilitate the screening process and minimizes the need to stop working because of the epidemic as each worker will be examined with the cameras in the entrance.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Strengthen disease surveillance, early warning predictive systems, and other data systems to detect, slow, or halt future disease outbreaks.

Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.

Overall, this challenge is tailored to the solution we provide as we have previously sensed the pain and the objective for which the challenge was created. Therefore we have constructed a system that is applicable for any pandemic, not only the COVID-19 outbreak.

As mentioned before, our core values include monitor, assess, follow up and finally predict as we use the data drained in building a prediction model that can help evaluate the health condition of each individual, detect early signs, predict future events. Furthermore, the entire data is then used to provide early alarms and indications about the general health status of the population.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Cairo, Egypt

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model.

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.

We have developed a prototype that measures the heart rate, respiratory rate, and temperature.

Our current model works on Dahua Camera; the system detects faces and displays the temperature, respiratory rate, and heart rate on an individual basis.
The system's accuracy is tested against the medical-grade patient monitor PHILIPS Efficia CM10
The system has been tested so far on about 76 employees from the Electronics Research Institute and the results were analyzed and can be viewed from this Link
The next stage is to test the system on infected patients within the settings of Theodor Billharz Institute after we have got the ethical committee's approval to start the testing.

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Kareem ElZeftawy