MIT Solve

Solution Overview & Team Lead Details

Solution name.

Check Me

Provide a one-line summary of your solution.

Reducing breast cancer in Africa by providing the possibility of self-screening with AI from the comfort of your homes linking patients with qualified specialists and hospitals that diagnose and treat.

What specific problem are you trying to solve?

Problem statement and summary

Women need attention along the breast care pathway depending on their personal risk profile. Every female seven to ten days after menstruation is supposed to conduct a breast self-examination to look for abnormal nodules, redness, fluid coming from the nipples, and orange skin appearance on the breast to ensure she is not at risk or has developed breast cancer.

Breast cancer can be treated if noticed at an early stage. Most often, these symptoms are neglected by the victims and are left to escalate leading to more damage. Breast Cancer is the most diagnosed cancer in women, and has led to the death of many women. According to the latest WHO data published in 2018 Breast Cancer Deaths in Cameroon reached 1,400 or 0.67% of total deaths. The age-adjusted Death Rate is 20.15 per 100,000 population which ranks Cameroon number 45 globally. This has made breast cancer to be one of the causes of death in African women today both young and old. This problem is as a result of:-

Lack of proper medical facilities and infrastructure to diagnose and treat breast cancer. This leads to late diagnoses and then death.
The cost of diagnoses(screening) and treatment in the few hospitals having the equipment is high and can't be afforded by most people living in our community.
Inaccessibility to breast cancer specialists for follow and treatment is not possible.
The unawareness and ignorance of the risk associated with breast cancer, leads to late diagnoses and as a result increases untimely deaths.

Elevator pitch

What is your solution?

Innovative Solution

What the women need is software that can continuously sensitize them to the symptoms, causes, and treatment of breast cancer and alert them to go to a hospital when need be. This initiative we want to build would not only serve as a canary for everything that concerns breast cancer but will also act as a nudge for every woman and young girl to do a breast self-examination frequently. The Breast cancer app will be designed to allow individuals to self-monitor for early signs of breast cancer from the comfort of their homes with the help of artificial intelligence technology.

The application will help identify if further medical screening is required by providing monthly inputs on breast irregularities. Our goal is to make this app very accessible to all its users regardless of their age, the language of communication, and geographical location. We will create a network with doctors and hospitals in our community that screen and treat breast cancer. This way, users will find it easy to get to them and communicate directly via the application.

Who does your solution serve? In what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Cameroon and Africa as a whole have recorded so many deaths in women both young and old as a result of breast cancer.

This mobile application ensures early detection of breast abnormalities and better health-seeking behavior. Patients are experiencing better outcomes as a result of early diagnosis, state-of-the-art treatment options, and less extensive surgery. This does not imply a strictly negative perspective of women's health relative to this app.

A breast self-examination helps you understand the normal feel and look of your breast. There is no doubt that you panic when you notice an abnormality in your body parts, especially your breasts. Most of them would not be cancer, others would not even be an issue.

All this has been taken into consideration. To save your time and money and for total clarity, in the subsequent updates, you can talk to a doctor directly from this app. All this is done primarily in an attempt to curb breast cancer, but there is NO certainly without medical validation.

To ensure overall health and wellness, a period training system has been added to this application. It would help you understand your unique pattern, limiting unnecessary fear. Especially with monthly breast changes due to the menstrual cycle. It also has a lot to say about your individual sex drive. And as a bonus, helps you understand and manage your moods. The benefits go beyond reports as some cancers may never even happen if we take health in this domain seriously. We are always ready to respond to you, especially about the app relative to your health.

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

My team is made up of very diverse and dynamic young talents both male and female. We are a team of eight, three boys and five girls.

In my team, There are so many talents and skills. We have three medical students that do research to help the team with valid information for the development of the solution.

We have one community manager, who is in charge of all our social media platforms and making sure our social visibility is growing both online and onsite.

We have three software developers, who are in charge of developing and testing the application. Making sure all the requirements discussed by the team through user research are being met.

We have one UI/UX and a graphic designer who takes care of all our flyers and our software user interface designs.

With this team, we have been able to participate in tech competitions and emerged as second and third winners respectively. We have been able to organize and partake in seminars where we sensitize young girls and women on breast cancer and its effects and encourage them to make our solution their breast cancer guide.

It has been a tough journey but we are in it together and that is what makes us stronger, though diverse, and from different backgrounds, we all have a common goal, which is to fight against breast cancer in Cameroon and Africa. We have been working as a family and we don't leave anyone behind no matter the situation they may find themselves in. This has helped me understand the importance of teamwork and how it can impact a business.

What steps have you taken to understand the needs of the population you want to serve?

After losing a friend to breast cancer last year, I decided to work on a solution that could reduce this seeing that women both young and old are at risk. I brought together a team and we thought of a solution together. Before the app development, we carried out user research both online and onsite. Online we used google forms and got over 200+ responses 80% were women and everyone was waiting for the application completely.

After our user research has been done properly, we engaged in the development and for the past four months, we have been developing the app based on the user research we did and the medical studies also being done by the medics.

With our app still in development and prototyping mode, we have been able to create connections and partnerships that will assist us with man labor and also with a medical NGO that will provide us with the necessary content needed to feed the application since the application will have at least two new articles in our learn section of the app to educate our users.

Presently our MVP is on the Google play store and we have downloads and reviews from various users already. The iOS version of the app is on its way and will be released soon enough on the Apple Shop.

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

Improving healthcare access and health outcomes; and reducing and ultimately eliminating health disparities (Health)

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Pilot: An organization deploying a tested product, service, or business model in at least one community

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

Douala, Cameroon

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Yuyun Francis Berinyuy