Icarus Core Aid (ICA)

It's been centuries since medicine has been evolving but even with all advancements, not much has focused on decentralisation (from hospitals) of early testing, detection, diagnosis and tracking of pressing everyday health-care nightmares like malaria, typhoid, diabetes, reproductive health, urinary tract infections, heart, lung diseases etc. 

Icarus Core Aid proposes to solve this with a multi-user low-cost hardware that will support health-care workers by autonomously working with any average-learned individual to carry out a variety of tests within the equipment and also provide a secure online database for global tracking/surveillance of its generated statistics of most third world diseases plaguing our world.

When scaled globally, Icarus Core Aid will help in:

• Early detection and treatment of diseases like kidney stones, diabetes, heart etc. 

• Providing a real-world statistics/report of what diseases/conditions need to be prioritised.
• Easing the strain on public health facilities by ensuring only true-positive cases are brought to hospitals.

According to the WHO, in 2019 alone, an estimated 1.5 million deaths were directly caused by diabetes. Another 2.2 million deaths were attributable to high blood glucose in 2012 alone. 

Most prevailing diseases in third world countries are so mostly because their symptoms are usually overlooked in their early stages and ignoring those symptoms for months or even a few weeks can result in coma or even death. Some infectious diseases, viruses and conditions can take over weeks ( e.g. SARS COV 2, Malaria ) before they start to visually weigh in on a patient's ability to function properly at which point, more resources will be needed to care for such a patient or those around them.

Icarus Core Aid intends to solve the problem of:

• Having to wait until a patient's health has physically declined before certain tests are done.
• And reducing the long waiting lines at local hospitals for performing simple tests like  Blood, Urinalysis, Heart, Lungs, Eye, Hearing, etc. and making sure only confirmatory/advanced tests are done by the professionals at the hospitals.
• Total dependence on human interference for diagnosis of conditions especially during pandemics and epidemics.

THE ICA MACHINE 

The Icarus Core Aid (ICA) Machine will work like a conventional point-of-sale unit, just like stepping up to a vending machine but instead of paying for snacks, you pay for a test (Blood, Urinalysis, Heart, Lungs, Eye, Hearing, etc.) and have your results sent to you in any of the available communication channels you choose while also logging obtained data for research purposes.

Sample collection containers (different types for different samples ) will be made available and a user after necessary documentation and registration submits required samples to the machine for analysis within the machine.

For other test that don't require sample collection, specially modified VR goggles, headsets and user input peripherals will be provided

THE TECHNOLOGY 

The machine will have at its core a processor and rely mostly on high-level programming algorithms for image recognition and other process definitions.

It will also be internet enabled and provide hardcopy printing technology embedded alongside hardware for payment services. 

It will be self sustained in terms of power as it will include alternative power sources. 

A World Bank and WHO group report in 2017 showed that Half the world population lacks access to essential health services and another 100 million others are still pushed into extreme poverty because of health expenses despite Goal 3 of the SDGs (Good Health and Wellbeing for All), including the aim of providing Universal Health Coverage (UHC) – i.e. ensuring everyone is able to access the health services they need, regardless of where they live or their ability to pay. 

Half the World is desperately in need of Low-Cost-High-Value health services and though one cannot at the moment provide for that, one place to start is to develop a low-cost, fast-acting and quality means of diagnosing diseases and ailments because in so doing, medical professionals can stick to providing solutions to eradicate them permanently. 

The Icarus Core Aid seeks to serve as an advisor to most low income earners  mostly in developing/third world countries who sacrifice perfect health for food on the family table. ICA will provide cost-effective medical check-up to them and since it'll always be standby, it also means regular check-up to them whenever they want.

In essence, ICA will be of great value to three main groups:

• Medical professionals who always have to be available to perform tests, diagnose patients and still treat them by helping out with testing and diagnosis so that the jobs left for the professionals at the hospitals will be direct treatment and other supervisory roles that the ICA Machine can't do.
• Low income earners who can't afford regular check-up and only have to wait until they can't function properly in their daily activities before visiting the health-care facilities. 
• Disease Surveillance organisations who need the generated data to make informed decisions. 

The Icarus Core Aid is a great attempt at providing a technology-based health security and pandemics surveillance solution focused mostly on low-income societies and third-world nations without sidelining the developed world of course.

The solution provides automation in disease testing right to the grassroots ensuring no health-care professionals has to go through risks of contacting infectious diseases during pandemics testing. 

This solution is a great fit in this challenge as it addresses a large population - low-income earners ( which is about half the world population who can't afford regular healthcare services ) for which the MIT SOLVE  is representing.

A prototype system of the Icarus Core Aid is currently being developed and advancements in the Artificial Intelligence learning for some basic conditions that can be tested using RDT strips like SARS, Malaria and basic urinalysis. Modules for blood pressure testing, heart rate monitoring, air quality etc. are underway for integration while a few other actuators are already prepared and ready to be put into the physical model. 

Currently, our unofficial partnership with the Nigeria CDC in Abuja is paying off when it comes to the use of their preserved samples for testing as required. 

The ICA device is a collection of simple micro sensors used in ways that only few have thought of using  and others have only used in other applications like agriculture but not in medical device manufacturing.

It encapsulates the use of digital/analogue sensors and high-definition imagery hardware together with decent processing power to control and analyse blood, nasal, urine, oral, sperm etc samples and give molecular testing diagnosis while following defined rules.

The introduction of this level of technology into the health-care system will significantly pull up the health-care ecosystem all around the world higher up the technology ladder by opening up new possibilities for the number of diseases that can be tested without need for the presence of a certified medical personnel while giving the world a self updating database of which diseases 

At this time, ICA is not launched to serve yet as it is still partially in development so it is currently serving no-one but with funding, we can start the first field testing of the device in at least these three major states in Nigeria ( Lagos, Cross River, and the FCT, Abuja ) and within a year, with our current projections of 200 tests a day coming from one device we will be serving about a minimum of 6,000 people per device every month which will increase exponentially as we revisit our hardware design within a five-year period of RND as well as gain the trust of the community we should be reaching over 8,000 people per device every month.

• We shall engage health facilities that are willing to help us track the number of patients that accepted and integrated our solution to help in their health upkeep and compare these data with those we gather from users of our devices. 
• Regular general community surveys will also help us understand how our solution is affecting our target users. 

• Three full-time
• Two consultants  

Within my team, we have a product design engineer,  A software developer, A medical researcher/virologist, an optometrist and a medical laboratory technician all of us with a shared goal: to make medical testing and diagnosis a breeze. 

Between us is over 30years of collective professional experiences in different relevant fields as it pertains to the delivery of this project. 

We have all been affected by the same underlying problem and although we know it is best practice to, we like so many Africans have also come to make some kind of peace that the idea of having a regular health check is something that only those with a stable income structure can afford but we are not totally like most people who have given up on having the best version of our health because we cannot afford it so over time we started to think of ways that we could solve this for ourselves and half the world population who are also facing this unfairness by developing a solution that is not only automated, fast, accessible and public but also acceptable, low-cost and easy to use by all concerned. 

Our team is diverse in all aspects of the word definition. Although we didn't get formed with diversity in mind, we can sure say we kept a free and open mind when it came to what we wanted and that's how we ended up with a team with talented young and older people with gender and tribe not being a hindrance to our common goals but the future of our solution as the guiding light for our path.

Mainly, our solution needs financial support to upscale our purchasing power since the current economic crisis in Nigeria has affected prices and most already available sensors and modules in the market are now at extreme prices when shipped to Nigeria and this has made our progress to lagg for the last couple of months. 

We are open to partner with any MIT initiatives that have useable tech solutions that fall in fields related to our solution apart from that, at this time we would love a partnership with Amazon AWS.

The ICA device has a large part of its functions run by Artificial Intelligence and most of these require use of high value hardware which is a great deal both in terms of finance as well as the quality of tests that can be carried out by the device. 

Support from the AI for humanity prize will go a long way in catering for our current needs of high-quality parts and modules as well as procuring proprietary technology if needed to speed up the process of product idea to market stage.