The Haï Mask

Health problems related to lungs and cardio diseases keep growing as the pollution, malnutrition, and viral diseases rise in all developed and underdeveloped countries.

The world made the COVID-19, as the most urgent lung disease to cure for the next years for the sake of humanity. However, we do forget about other death factors rising exponentially through the last 40 years: obesity, which causes 5,02 million deaths in the world, air pollution causes 6,67 million deaths and smoking causing the most death with 7,69 million deaths in the world. All of these factors touch one essential vital organ: lungs. These elements lead to several lungs diseases as BPCO, hypoxia, asthma , dyspnea, sleep apnea, etc.

In order to track and prevent these bad health conditions, medical staff will prescribe to patients, a stress test to check the patient’s vital signals. This stress test is usually done in a lab or in hospital. It can be delivered through doctors to have lungs exploration or by ordering it for athletes to look into their sportives’ performances. It requires multiple people from the medical profession to follow this test to make a survey on the patient, and ensure the test goes well. Multiple equipment is required in order to run this test well, a computer, a hans rudoph mask , multiple cable linked between the mask and the computer to measure gas exchanges, a treadmill machine, and an electrocardiogram . This makes the room full of bulky machines and test cannot be run outside in real outdoor conditions.

Furthermore, this stress test might be difficult to get prescribed, like in underdeveloped countries. Because it requires a lot of expensive machines and multiple persons from medical staff so as to run it  in correct conditions. So it might be hard for these kinds of people to get a stress test and have  a lung exploration. As an example, in the article wrote by Dr Samuel Vergès in the review “Eveil et somnolence”, he describes the expedition he is currently having : Expedition 5300. His teammates and him, have journeyed  to the highest city in the world La Rinconada in Peru, aiming to have a medical survey on the local population. People who were born and living in this city, have actually adapted themselves to these rough living conditions. Even though they are adapted, they are facing some bodies’ dysfunctionalities due to the lack of oxygen. Dr Samuel Vergès and his teammates have to transport multiple machines to recreate a full laboratory in order to run tests on patients and have a survey on them. To recreate this environment in these kinds of conditions is difficult as shown as in the picture. 

But that’s not all, we also saw during the pandemic that  it was harder for patients to have these tests, because most of the time, hospitals were overburdened or  people couldn’t get into hospitals.

The stress test allows, to follow gas exchanges of O2 and CO2 and heart beat rate via ECG machines. It results in giving a specific measurement: VO2max.It corresponds to the maximum uptake of dioxygen concentration the body can use during an effort.  This measure is very important since it is directly linked to our health global status, to our training level and, furthermore, linked to our lifespan. Today, this measure isn’t well known by the public. Plus, globally, more than 39% of grown adults are now obese in the world. Even though sportive activities are recommended by WHO (World Health Organisation) a too large number of sedentary people are still inactive and this number keeps rising. Sedentary well known to be the cause of forementioned diseases.

In the other hand, we can also mention cognitive and discriminatory biases, occurring with certain patients during medical consultations. According to BMC Medical Ethics,  recent studies some patients might  receive a lower standard of care because of the ethnic group they belong to, their age or any other irrelevant characteristic ( FitzGerald, C., Hurst, S., 2017) . You can find these results in this study:

https://bmcmedethics.biomedcen... .

As a result, some people are thus losing their faith in the health systems since they might suffer from some stereotypes biases, because of their social status and the doctor’s position. Moreover, other cognitive biases do exist in the healthcare system, such as primacy and recency effects. The primacy/recency effect is the fact that one’s overall impression of someone or something is more influenced by the first piece/last piece  of information perceived, whether good or bad, than by subsequent ones. 

Our solution is called The Haï Mask. It is a connected mask device, which will miniaturise all the bulky machines used in a lab for stress tests, into a portable, affordable mask. With the Haï Mask, the user will be able to measure his:

• Breath rate, allowing to know if the patients don’t suffer from some lungs failure
• Metabolic rate , allowing to know the patient’s caloric expenditure  through respiratory quotient
• VCO2, the volume of carbon dioxide rejected by the body, used in the metabolic rate
• VO2, the amount of oxygen used and rejected by the body, used to measure metabolic rate but also, to give the VO2 max
• VO2max , maximum dioxygen intake during effort, directly linked to our lifespan, health and training level
• Ventilatory threshold, the time when your breath rate accelerate and when your breath rate is higher than your O2 consumption, it differs from the VO2 max.

Hai mask will come with a smartphone application linked to the mask via Bluetooth. Users will have different graphics or measurement, showing patients’ health status summary, improvement, etc. The patient/user will be guided with explanations on each measure, their meaning, how to improve them, if they might be at risk for certain diseases. The aim isn’t to be doctors replacement, but to facilitate the access to these data and democratise them so that people are more likely to understand how important these values are. So, doctors’ advice will still be needed, to validate results and choosing the right solutions for the patient.

Hai mask will be an autonomous service, pre-authorising people’s conditions with their feelings and behaviour. The autonomous way will prevent the ethnic groups biases , preserve patients’ privacy and help them to rebuild trust and engagement into medicine. Our solution will have a positive impact on the trust relation of marginalised people who have lost faith in the health care system. Besides, it will also prevent the hospital to deploy a lot of ways such as health care  multiple personal equipment related to stress test and additionally gaining an enormous amount of time for everyone. This time and these means gained could be used by medical staff to focus on other tasks.

Hai mask will be more accessible for the people in need in underdeveloped country, with an accessible price for all social classes. And also, in poor countries, where getting the latest generation of machines isn’t possible because of money or space or even time. With Hai Mask goal to miniaturise all the bulky machines from the stress test, it would be the perfect device for these populations. 

Before applying to solve, we had two main targets:

• One in B2C, the confirmed sportive people and high-level athletes
• One in B2B, the professional clubs and  coaches

For the athletes, having stress test in a lab can be bothering. They have to make an appointment to the hospital or the lab and most of time, pay for it ( if it’s not delivered by a doctor), and this test isn’t run outdoor. Having this test for athletes is important, because it let them know multiple physiological aspects on how they are trained and how they can improve themselves via training.

For the coaches and professional clubs , stress test is important in order to follow their athletes’ performances and their good health conditions. It allows coaches to determine, what kind of workout and exercises they have to give to their athletes intending to have better physiological capacities.

Otherwise  the MIT solve challenge, allowed us to develop another view  of our business model  and gave us new targets,  when we realised that, we could respond to other needs.

With the world pandemic crisis, we have seen that, some populations, couldn’t have access to medical places or medical supplies. Since it was a lung disease, there was a great demand for stress tests in hospital to detect patients suffering from covid. With the Haï Mask solution, doctors would have been able to detect earlier any lungs dysfunction caused by inflammation induced by covid and determine earlier, what patients would need respiratory machine assists.

Even more, Haï Mask could help doctors on the field, like Médecins sans Frontières, who lack of supplies and medical technologies to make surveys on patients, given though  its compact size, easy and ready to use.

Also, as we  said previously, it has been proved that some people , were not being well taken in charge by medical staff because of  the presence of  cognitive biases . These people lost faith in the medical staff and do not have recurrent survey anymore. Hai Mask could come in this particular point, and being the bridge between patients and medical staff. Because of its autonomous function , patient data could be transmitted directly to the medical staff to have surveys on them without being threatened by any kind of racial,  body ,  social, stereotype neither primacy and recency effects. Patient‘s privacy would be kept and preserved. 

Currently, we are two persons working on the Hai mask project: Olivier Kaakeh and Maxime Menardo. We have started this project, during our last year of our biotechnology’s bachelor studies. Then, we kept the project growing, by working on it during our 2 years of our master’s degree in biotechnology. During those two years, we have joined a startup incubator in our home city Montpellier called :” i-Lab, l’incubateur de l’UM” but also with MUSE ( Montpellier University of Excellence) these two components are part of the same network of the University of Montpellier . Recently, we have joined AD’OCC sport . Being part of those structures helped us a lot for our project’s growth and have a larger network of relations. We have also benefited from this network by earning 10.000 € as financial funds to finance our market study. Market study that has been lunched a month ago with the group InExtenso based in Montpellier and will give us affirmations if we are going the right way with the Hai Mask’s solutions we want to propose.

We are deeply involved in this project. Since we got graduated from our engineering master  in September 2021, we have been working on it with our full time. We deeply think Hai Mask could become a must-have product for medical practitioners, patients and athletes.

Thanks to our study, we were able to do scientific research and conclude on what sensors and technologies could be used in order to create the Haï Mask. We have made our first prototype a year ago, during a class with our engineering master. The prototype worked and we could determinate maximum breath rate, average breathing rate and respiratory threshold. This prototype was upstream on what we want the Hai Mask to be like. But it defined some aspects of the product and the limits we had to overcome to create our final wanted product.

Even though we followed the same studies and were in the same class, our different skills and personalities do complete themselves. Olivier is working more on the scientific/ research part and Maxime, on the company creation part. But also, this project is close to our hearts because of our personal stories.

Olivier is French-Syrian. He lived in Syria when he was younger, and lived the Syria conflict, through his family from Alep. War has been going on in Syria for the past 10 years , causing social crisis, economics and lately health crisis. Syrian’s living way has been torn apart. Access to healthcare is very difficult in war zones and Covid’s pandemic has overloaded hospitals’ access already in great difficulties. Economic crisis is also affecting people’s lives because the monetary value has dropped and ace to health technology is very hard. This why we want to have a strong engagement with our solution, to provide health solutions and facilitates access to respiratory diagnosis for the most disadvantaged

Maxime’s father is a pneumologist. It influenced a lot his living lifestyle on how we should take care of our own body to have a better lifestyle. Knowing via WHO that sport is one of the best medicine and discovering that our VO2 max, was directly linked to our lifespan, Maxime got really into sports. Following and keeping track on his own data via smartwatches and through a smartphone application. This is why we want to promote and democratize the VO2max, so everyone could know how this value is important to them.

This is why our complementary and engaged team wants to respond in the best way to democratize the importance of respiratory monitoring for all. 

Besides the fact that we are searching for external funding we are looking for other kinds of supports:

First of all,  we do know MIT notoriety isn’t negligible, so it is a great opportunity for us to benefit from their visibility. In fact, It will allow us to reach other countries and particularly other entrepreneurship organisations that might give us critics and feedbacks on the project from their foreign point of view.

Our project hasn’t been yet challenged by another country; we do not know yet how people with other cultures would react to the Haï Mask. It could help us to glimpse other aspects of the project that remain to be discovered yet, by us. Like to fit more to some certain target identified by people who are not involved in  the project.

In addition, we are struggling to get aid from laboratories to work with us. This visibility can potentially overcome this problem and lead us to establish partnerships with laboratories for example, given that we have needs in R&D.

Moreover we are two men working on the project; so we do lack of diversity. In fact, this project started in our last bachelor biotechnologies studies where we had the chance with Suzon PERRIN , a close female friend to both of us, but unfortunately, she left to continue her studies. We are aware that gender diversity start-ups are more inclined to succeed than non-diversity ones. In fact, we do think that woman of sciences should be more represented in the scientific world. Plus, this fits with our logic to respond to the sustainable development goals of UN (United Nations Organisation). 

From its characteristics, our solution is well suited to be a disruptive innovation. In fact, Hai mask’s solution is different compared to others existing solution in the market because, the mask is more accessible and affordable, which will lead to a larger amount of respiratory survey in the world. Moreover, VO2max is an unknown value, which is directly linked to our lifespan and our global health. In fact, a large amount of person isn't sensitive to the importance of maintaining or increasing this value. As matter of fact, we do hope, Hai Mask will have a catalytic effect on global health awareness.

Otherwise, the innovation isn’t only found in our product but also, in our entrepreneurship mindset. Our business model isn’t closed to innovation given that we are constantly in an open innovation approach. On the one hand, we will have collaborative approaches  which means that we want to co-construct the mask with future users specially during tests phases, in order to get reviews from them and improve our solution with the aiming to best meet their expectations.

In the other hand, having an outside-in process allowed us to participate to a hackathon with the TBS (Toulouse Business School) students who worked on our project by giving smartphone application prototypes. In addition to that, we are aiming to follow this outside-in process by catching existing technologies in our external environment(for example by buying patent or business license related to sensors)  to reduce our cost in research and development and to gain more time to reach the market as soon as possible. 

For this approach, we inspired ourselves from the 17 sustainable goals given by UN, but not only:      

• Goal 3 : Good health and well being
  • Target 3.8 : Achieve universal health coverage, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and follow-up of pulmonary infectious diseases.
  • Target 3.9 : By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination
  • Target 3.d : Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks
  • Other target : Unload hospitals’ wards and health facilities.
  • Other target : Increase the physiological monitoring of the world's population and particularly of the marginalized population

With its affordable price, the Haï Mask could be delivered in multiple health care organizations.  By 2030, significantly reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals, pollution or even air contamination, water contamination and soil contamination. Haï mask could fit here, having a track on lungs hazardous gas or air contamination exposures.

Hai mask could also help countries to get early detection on lung diseases.

Finally, as said previously, one of our main objectives is to democratize the monitoring of respiratory systems for everyone and everywhere.

• Goal 5 : Achieve Gender Equality
  • Target 5.1 : End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
  • Target 5.2 : Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation

By positioning ourselves between patients and medical staff, our objective is to reduce discrimination, sexual harassment or cognitive biases against woman and girls in healthcare system.

• Goal 10 : Reduce inequalities
  • Target 10.3 : Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies and action in this regard

By positioning ourselves between patients and medical staff, our objective is to reduce racial discrimination, stereotypes, prejudices or body shame in healthcare system.

Impact goals and indicators

• Goal 3 : Good health and well being
  • Target 3.8 : Achieve universal health coverage, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and follow-up of pulmonary infectious diseases.
    • Indicator 3.8.1 : service capacity and access, among the general and the most disadvantaged population
    • Indicator 3.8.2 : Proportion of population with large household expenditures on health as a share of total household expenditure or income
    • Other indicator : Proportion of the population performing a stress test or medical monitoring of their respiratory system in the previous 12 months (with and without the Haï Mask).
  • Target 3.9 : By 2030, substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination
    • Indicator 3.9.1 : Mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution
  • Target 3.d : Strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks
    • Indicator : International Health Regulations (IHR) capacity and health emergency preparedness
    • Indicator : Percentage of lung infections due to selected antimicrobial resistant organisms
  • Other target : Unload hospitals’ wards and health facilities.
    • Indicator : Number of medical facilities equipped with our technology (compared year by year)
    • Indicator : Proportion of rooms equipped for stress testing / total care rooms.
  • Other target : Increase the physiological monitoring of the world's population and particularly of the marginalized population
    • Indicator : Proportion of the population followed physiologically by respiratory tests / total population
    • Indicator : Proportion of marginalized population monitored physiologically / proportion of global population monitored physiologically
• Goal 5 : Achieve Gender Equality
  • Target 5.1 : End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
    • Indicator : Proportion of women and girls aged 15 years and older subjected to any kind of discriminatory as stereotypes or prejudice in the previous 12 months, by form of bias and by age
  • Target 5.2 : Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
    • Indicator 5.2.2 : Proportion of women and girls aged 15 years and older subjected to physical, sexual or psychological violence by a medical professional in the previous 12 months, by form of violence and by age
• Goal 10 : Reduce inequalities
  • Target 10.3 : Ensure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies and action in this regard
    • Indicator 10.3.1 : Proportion of the population reporting having personally felt discriminated against or harassed within the previous 12 months on the basis of a ground of discrimination prohibited under international human rights law

First of all,  we do think with Hai Mask arrival on the market of medical monitoring objects, it could be a relief for overloaded hospitals  because of its small size and its accessibility. More space could be freed from the normally bulky machines used during stress test. It could free time to the medical staff, allowing them to have more times to work with patients in other ways needed. It will lead to a better access to hospitals and healthcare for patients.

Moreover, with the Hai Mask autonomous characteristic, marginalized patients could be followed when they are at home or in their daily life routine. Granting them good medical survey from doctors, even though they don’t want to get to hospitals or have contact with medical staff or because, they could suffer from some stereotype’s biases from medical staff. In that case, Hai Mask would be the bridge between patients and doctors. We hope this will induce a trust back in the healthcare system and an increase of followed patients.

It would also revolutionized, diagnosis on difficult fields, like in poor countries or even in hard times like Ukraine is facing right now with war: Doctors on these locations, could have immediate diagnosis on the fields and take right decisions for the patient.

Since we want to create an affordable and easy to use device, Hai Mask could change how people take care of themselves and put them actively back into sports and live with a better lifestyle. Plus, sports drive good vibes to people, like gender equity and equality. By promoting sports and good health, we want people to realize that sport isn’t a chore but a part of their lifestyle to achieve happiness and healthiness. It will help to solve the obesity and sedentary problem in the world. As aforementioned before, we used to have only sportive targets before MIT solve challenge, so we have undertaken a market study focused on this market targets. From what we got so far from this study, all the 12 interviewed coaches were all enthusiastic about the idea to use Hai Mask. They said it would help them a lot in their work , to have a good follow-up on athletes.

Applying to MIT solve challenge, permit us to perceive more the importance of global issues ,opened our minds and that’s why we are even more engaged to reach the same enthusiastic state among all human beings. 

The Hai Mask conception will be portable and connected device allowing to take measurements of breath and gas exchange of a patient during effort or while resting. The product will also be an autonomous device as light as possible and  also non-invasive . It will measure different physiological measures like, metabolic rate, breath rate, respiratory threshold, and the VO2max.

The mask will be composed of and electronic part, containing different sensors to measure physiological respiratory constants. And also a connectivity part, allowing to send direct data measured to a smartphone application or a software. The application will be user friendly thanks to the design of data and processing algorithms, making fundamental values of breathing accessible to everyone. 

Hai Mask is a solution with strong values and a strong vision. 

Firstly, we are engaged in an equitable approach given that, we are positioning  ourselves as a way to democratize and deliver high-quality health systems that serve everyone, everywhere. 

Moreover , we have the chance to have a multi-cultural team  specially with Olivier who is native Syrian and could add, from what he lived back there, more sensitivity and more comprehension on potential needs related to our solution.

Finally, we do support the values of inclusiveness that are naturally present within sport and to which we strongly adhere. As a matter of fact, we strongly think our solution could democratize  sport practices. Furthermore, one of our main objective is to create the healthcare system as an environnement where all people are welcomed, respected and cared and supported in the same way.

We used the classic business model canvas: 

Hai Mask main revenues will come from different sources:

• From direct sales, sold units in retails vendors, specialized shops
• By rentals, to professional clubs or coaches
• Selling it to the hospitals or rent it
• Renting network servers for hospitals, since they will have a lot of precious and private data from patients, those data must be kept in safe servers
• From subscriptions, with a freemium/premium model subscriptions within the smartphone application, for professionals, amateurs, patients and doctors

We will look forward to other challenges in France and other countries and apply to it in order to get financial funds to help us create the start-up. Like the French Tech group in France from Bpi France, that can gives us to 90k € to selected start-ups . Since we just got graduated, we don’t really have own financial money that we can put in our project. But, we can count in our respective families to get love money from them and maybe rise enough funds to get started. 

The product is still in development. So we haven't sold any units yet.

During a pitch contest that occurred in June 2021, we've won a price and earned 10 000€ as subvention to finance our market study. It was during the BIM ( Innovation Booster Montpellier) a two days entrepreneur seminary themed on health innovation in Montpellier.