betaHealth

betaHealth an AI-based wearable device linked to our mobile application to check physiologic signs in other to get the pain score of Sickle-Cell-Anaemia patient to help offer palliative care treatment.

Can you imagine feeling excruciating pain that is so dull, stabbing, throbbing, and sharp, and seems to come out of nowhere. How severe it is and how long it lasts varies with different people and different crises. Some people have crises here and there, while others may have them every month.

I have watched friends deal with the pains of being a sickle cell patient, unbearable pain that I still can't fathom. In 2022, I lost 2 people to sickle cell anemia, and this was as a result of poor treatment, negligence and poor healthcare system in my community.

In Yala community today, a lot of people die of sickle cell anemia mostly due to negligence, stigmatization and the poor healthcare and health management system. The high death rate of this hereditary disease is prevalent among the poor due to illiteracy and poor awareness campaigns by the government. I have seen how this inherited disorder has affected my friends and how it has limited them to make certain career choices, attend work, reduce attendance in school, caused severe body and bone pains.

In the rural part of my community, these people face a lot of stigmatizations and there was concordance between cultural descriptions of malevolent ogbanje and symptoms as manifested in sickle cell patients. 

Sickle cell anemia is a form of inherited blood disorder, it changes your red blood cells shape, turning round flexible discs into stiff and sticky sickle cells that block blood flow, Research shows that sickle cell disease doesn’t have a regularized cure yet.

Sickle cell disease (SCD) poses a significant trait to the global health population. According to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO), 24 per cent of the Nigerian population are carriers of the mutant gene. About 50 million people are living with SCD globally and Nigeria is the epicenter zone with about 4-6 million people living with the disease (1 in every 4 Nigerians has a sickle cell trait). Annually, about 300,000 newly diagnosed SCD children are born worldwide. Sub-Saharan Africa contributes about 75% of the number. Nigeria accounts for 100,000-150,000 newborns living with SCD annually (33% of the global burden of SCD). Therefore, Nigeria occupies a strategic position in the epidemiology of SCD from the global perspective. The prevalence of SCD within the states in Nigeria ranges from 1%-3%. Hb-SS is the predominant ´hemoglobin variant found in Nigeria while Hb-SC occurs sporadically, especially in the south-western Nigeria. https://www.panafrican-med-journal

A total of 53% of patients felt that SCD limited them to certain careers, 44% reported that SCD has prevented them from attending work, and 46% reported that SCD reduced attendance at school. Fatigue, bone aches, and headaches were the 3 most commonly reported symptoms (41%, 38%, and 25%, respectively).

betaHealth is an AI based wearable device that is linked to our mobile app betaHealth App to check physiologic signs in other to get the pain score of Sickle Cell Anaemia patient to help offer palliative care treatment before, during and after crisis. This device also helps the patient contact a family member when in difficult situation.

The app also educates and enlightens people living with SCD on how to manage the disease and live a healthy comfortable life, it also guides intending couples to check for their compatibility by knowing their genotype and blood. 

The app is designed to enable users:

— facilitate conversations between families and the health care team.

— help parents identify what they need to know to safely care for their child at home.

— Panic button function, which will be used to notify previously selected contacts if a pain crisis is occurring.

—users will be notified of extreme weather conditions and can explore current sickle cell news through an internal RSS feed.

—If patients allow, all of this information will be sent to researchers to help further sickle cell research.

—Track Symptoms: Note symptoms and side effects. Automatically plot severity, date, and time in an easy-to-read line graph. Set reminders to log your symptoms.

—Record Questions: Track questions for your doctors and record their answers. Link questions to providers, medications, and symptoms.

—Log Medications: Take photos of medication labels and bottles. Input dosage, frequency, and prescribing provider. Set reminders and log when medications are taken. 

—Providers: Record health care providers' full contact information. Assign medications, questions, symptoms, and appointments to specific providers.

—Appointments: Enter appointments with health care providers, view upcoming appointments, history, and sync with device calendar.

Beta health is like having a SCD expert in your pocket. Not all healthcare professionals who work with sickle cell disease patients are specialists. Our app is harnessing the power of digital technologies and health innovation to attain an interactive resource that offers up-to-date guidelines and specialist accessibility for sickle cell patient care.

We serve the following people:

1. Intending Couples: we advocate genetic counselling by intending couples before marriage to determine the status of their genes, People should go for a genetic test in the same way they determine their HIV status before marriage as the most effective way to protect their children and curtail the disease.
2. Carriers of Sickle cell mutant:
3. People living with Sickle Cell Disease: Track daily symptoms and record important details around pain crises.
4. The General public - Through public sensitization and workshops and support groups.

we are a team of dedicated change makers united by our individual strengths to cope the fight against sickle cell anemia with the aid of technological application approach to better the lives of people living with sickle anemia to give them a voice and show that we, the world cares about their health, on our team is a software developer, hematopathologists, nurse and a  radiological scientist and volunteers each and every one of us with unique skills and experiences that is a representative of the community we serve

Saviour Uoyep - Our software developer who attain a bsc and experience in computer science and healthcare application, has worked with several organizations in healthcare development software including the university of Calabar teaching hospital, helped in making the operations of the sickle cell application more smooth and more efficient. offering useful tools appointment scheduling, virtual consulting with doctors, patient engagement, data management.  Healthcare software has become a need for today’s health organizations. The reason for this is the highly useful set of features it offers to humanity.

Dr. Chidebere: A highly trained hematopathologists healthcare provider who specialize in diseases of the blood and blood components. These include blood and bone marrow cells. Hematological tests can help diagnose anemia, infection, hemophilia, blood-clotting disorders, and leukemia.

Nurse Bena - Has worked in numerous hospitals by providing care for sickle cell patients to help manage their physical needs, treat health conditions and prevent illnesses. As highly trained member of the medical team, the nurse has a broad skill set and a wide range of responsibilities that can vary from one patient to the next, men, women and children living with sickle cell. 

we conducted user research and carried out one on one interviews with potential users in Yala Community, at our discovery face, we had series of field studies, diary studies, user interview, stake holder and requirements gathering. Usability test, prototype testing and design review which has a potential user on the team who selflessly volunteered to be a member of the team. we have volunteered and worked with several organizations like the sickle cell organizations in Nigeria.

After to qualified for the solve prototyping microgrant award, we were also able to use the funds to:

1. Create an initial prototype that can be tested with families and friends to gain more knowledge about the disease (which we are still building)

2. Help get rid of the myth that occurs amongst Nigerians about sickle cell patients through sensitization.

3. Understand sickle cell anemia and ways to manage crisis through online paid courses, studies and doing onsite research.

4. Create peer/focus groups and forums where sickle cell patients can network, share their stories, encourage others and serve as support system.

5. Enlighten the public and help sickle cell patients manage their health challenges better.

6. Understand how to use some design tools to create the User interface of my mobile application.

Before now, patients with Sickle cell anemia were thought to be witches in my community, there was a lot of myths and neglect flying around.

betaHealth App provides a new and more significant approach to this problem by offering palliative care treatment to sickle cell patients before, during and after crisis. 

The team used data from 46 adults and children with SCD over a combined total of 105 hospital stays, looking at the physiological data along with patient-reported pain scores to develop models that could deduce pain levels and detect changes in pain level through machine learning.

We believe that our innovative model will show the feasibility of using objective, physiologic measurements obtained from a wearable device during an acute pain crisis to predict patient-reported pain scores (in an app and to nursing staff) using machine learning techniques and this is a huge market gap that has the potential to save lives and help couples to medically marry right.

My impact goal for the next year and how I plan to achieve it includes:

FOR THE PATIENTS

• Reduce the mortality rate by at least one 1% before the end of our first year in operation.

• Sickle cell disease patients will be more opened to discuss their pain point and offer support to each order.

SICKLE CELL DISEASE AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS

• Create awareness on sickle cell disease in my community.

CREATE MORE SUPPORT GROUP AND STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP WITH NGOs

• Partner with NGOs involved in healthcare activities to reach a wider audience and organize free medical outreach for people to know their genotype. 

• To research on how I can leverage on technology to create a lasting solution that will help sickle cell patients.

• RECRUIT VOLUNTEERS SKILLED MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL AND INDUSTRY EXPERT TO SERVE AS A POINT OF CONTACT  

• Purchase educational materials and resources to help me understand this hereditary disease better.

• Carry out surveys to test the public’s knowledge and risk management of sickle cell anemia.

• Transportation to communities with volunteers to talk to rural dwellers and organize free medical checkups.

betaHealth is an AI based wearable device that is linked to our mobile app betaHealth App to check physiologic signs in other to get the pain score of Sickle Cell Anaemia patient to help offer palliative care treatment before, during and after crisis. This device also helps the patient contact a family member when in difficult situation.

The app is designed to enable users:

— facilitate conversations between families and the health care team.

— help parents identify what they need to know to safely care for their child at home.

— Panic button function, which will be used to notify previously selected contacts if a pain crisis is occurring.

—users will be notified of extreme weather conditions and can explore current sickle cell news through an internal RSS feed.

—If patients allow, all of this information will be sent to researchers to help further sickle cell research.

—Track Symptoms: Note symptoms and side effects. Automatically plot severity, date, and time in an easy-to-read line graph. Set reminders to log your symptoms.

—Record Questions: Track questions for your doctors and record their answers. Link questions to providers, medications, and symptoms.

—Log Medications: Take photos of medication labels and bottles. Input dosage, frequency, and prescribing provider. Set reminders and log when medications are taken. 

—Providers: Record health care providers' full contact information. Assign medications, questions, symptoms, and appointments to specific providers.

—Appointments: Enter appointments with health care providers, view upcoming appointments, history, and sync with device calendar.

betaHealth is currently in its prototyping phase and we have not recorded our first active users:

However, we plan to serve at least 3,000 people (which includes children, patients, young adult and adults affected by SCD or being carriers) before the end of our first year in business and the following people:

Intending Couples: So, they can know their genotype and blood group in order to ascertain if they are medically fit to marriage. (This has proven to be the first line of action is curtailing sickle cell disease).

Children who are sickle cell patients: By providing palliative care methods to manage crisis in order to reduce mortality rate.

Parents of Sickle Cell Patients: By teaching management processes and tips on how to handle difficult situations when their wards are having crisis.

The general public:

Financial Barrier: Our core technology still requires a lot of money and time to build, develop, test and eventually launch. Due to lack of financial support, they may be a delay in the development process as this may take longer time to go to the market than expected.

Legal: Government policies and health care bodies may pose difficult to allow us to enter their community due to fear of us taking their jobs away or becoming a top contender in the healthcare sector.

Market barriers: some of our target audience live far from cities and oftentime they do not have access to digital platforms, as a result, they will not be able to use the digital platform we have created for this purpose thereby making us loose a great number of our potential market.

Cultural:  Before now, culture demanded the killing of children who fell ill regularly and looked too skinny. There was and still is a lot of cultural bias as these people face a lot of stigmatizations and there was concordance between cultural descriptions of malevolent ogbanje and symptoms as manifested in sickle cell patients as a result, some parents may hide their children or be too ashamed to sick the right medical care for their affected child(ren).

Currently, there are no strong Sickle Cell Disease support group, so we started a group here in Calabar and Yala community to help sickle cell disease patients feel comfortable to share their stories, offer advice and reassuring words to the patients.

However, when looking at for partners, betaHealth will consider the following as benchmark for making strategic partnerships.

• Consultation with technical developers to bring beta product to market.
• Consultation with designers to improve product’s usability.
• Mentorship from Sickle Cell Disease experts/ medical doctors and professionals.

Our business model:

1. We will make money from selling our wristwatch which works effectively with the mobile application for easy management and treatment.
2. Subscription based platform for patients to have more private and consultation services with licensed medical doctors.

There are a few ways that Beta could potentially make money through a health website:

1. Advertising: The more  significant amount of traffic beta health website attracts, it will be able to monetize through advertising. display ads earn money based on the number of impressions or clicks the ads receive.
2. Affiliate marketing: Recommend products or services on beta health, it will be able to earn a commission through affiliate marketing. This could involve promoting products such as supplements, fitness equipment, or health-related books and earning a commission for each sale that results from your referral.
3. Selling products or services: Skill or expertise that can be offered to others, it will be able to make money by selling products or services related to health on your website. This could include selling ebooks, courses, or consulting services.
4. Sponsored content: Having a large and engaged audience, it will be able to earn money by creating sponsored content for companies or organizations that are interested in promoting their products or services to our audience.