ugandans invent ‘smart jacket’ to diagnose pneumonia
Last Updated : GMT 05:17:37
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice
Last Updated : GMT 05:17:37
Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

Ugandans invent ‘smart jacket’ to diagnose pneumonia

Emiratesvoice, emirates voice

Emiratesvoice, emirates voice Ugandans invent ‘smart jacket’ to diagnose pneumonia

Telecommunications engineer Olivia Koburongo fits a child with the Mama-Ope kit at the
Kampala - Arab Today

A team of Ugandan engineers has invented a “smart jacket” that diagnoses pneumonia faster than a doctor, offering hope against a disease that kills more children worldwide than any other.

The idea came to Olivia Koburongo, 26, after her grandmother fell ill, and was moved from hospital to hospital before being properly diagnosed with pneumonia.

“It was now too late to save her,” said Koburongo.

“It was too hard to keep track of her vitals, of how she’s doing, and that is how I thought of a way to automate the whole process and keep track of her health.”

Koburongo took her idea to fellow telecommunications engineering graduate Brian Turyabagye, 24, and together with a team of doctors they came up with the “Mama-Ope” (Mother’s Hope) kit made up of a biomedical smart jacket and a mobile phone application which does the diagnosis.

Pneumonia — a severe lung infection — kills up to 24,000 Ugandan children under the age of five per year, many of whom are misdiagnosed as having malaria, according to the UN children’s agency Unicef.

A lack of access to laboratory testing and infrastructure in poor communities means health workers often have to rely on simple clinical examinations to make their diagnoses.

With the easy-to-use Mama-Ope kit, health workers merely have to slip the jacket onto the child, and its sensors will pick up sound patterns from the lungs, temperature and breathing rate.

“The processed information is sent to a mobile phone app [via Bluetooth] which analyses the information in comparison to known data so as to get an estimate of the strength of the disease,” Turyabagye said.

The jacket, which is still only a prototype, can diagnose pneumonia up to three times faster than a doctor and reduces human error, according to studies done by its inventors.

Traditionally doctors use a stethoscope to listen for abnormal crackling or bubbling sounds in the lungs, however if medics suspect malaria or tuberculosis — which also include respiratory distress — the time lost treating those rather than pneumonia could prove deadly for their patient.

“The problem we’re trying to solve is diagnosing pneumonia at an early stage before it gets severe and we’re also trying to solve the problem of not enough manpower in hospitals because currently we have a doctor to patient ratio which is one to 24,000 in the country,” Koburongo said.

Turyabagye said plans were underway to have the kit piloted in Uganda’s referral hospitals and then trickle down to remote health centres.

“Once you have this information captured on cloud storage, it means a doctor who is not even in the rural area, who is not on the ground, can access the same information from any patient and it helps in making an informed decision,” he added.

The team is also working on patenting the kit, which is shortlisted for the 2017 Royal Academy of Engineering Africa Prize.

“Once it is successful [in Uganda] we hope it is rolled out to other African countries and major parts of the world where pneumonia is killing thousands of children,” Koburongo said.

According to Unicef, most of the 900,000 annual deaths of children under five due to pneumonia occur in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

This is more than other causes of childhood death such as diarrhoea, malaria, meningitis or HIV/Aids

 

source : gulfnews

Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

ugandans invent ‘smart jacket’ to diagnose pneumonia ugandans invent ‘smart jacket’ to diagnose pneumonia

 



Name *

E-mail *

Comment Title*

Comment *

: Characters Left

Mandatory *

Terms of use

Publishing Terms: Not to offend the author, or to persons or sanctities or attacking religions or divine self. And stay away from sectarian and racial incitement and insults.

I agree with the Terms of Use

Security Code*

ugandans invent ‘smart jacket’ to diagnose pneumonia ugandans invent ‘smart jacket’ to diagnose pneumonia

 



GMT 10:31 2014 Tuesday ,23 December

Mirages of failure: Lebanon cannot wait

GMT 05:04 2024 Tuesday ,06 February

Skincare PR Performance Full Year 2017

GMT 05:17 2024 Wednesday ,07 February

Amazon to open first cashierless shop

GMT 10:08 2018 Wednesday ,24 January

Microsoft to open 4 data centres

GMT 16:02 2017 Sunday ,05 March

Stadium heavily

GMT 09:18 2017 Friday ,23 June

Zamalek’s chairperson says

GMT 07:04 2017 Wednesday ,08 November

Al Thawadi Stresses Qatar’s Keenness on World Cup

GMT 07:53 2017 Saturday ,16 September

British expats in UAE condemn London explosion

GMT 21:31 2017 Sunday ,30 July

Swede set to sprint at serious speed

GMT 16:38 2017 Monday ,11 September

Sharjah Narrative Forum joins Luxor

GMT 19:57 2018 Tuesday ,23 January

Farm-fresh from Kerala to the UAE, in just one day

GMT 06:46 2017 Saturday ,08 July

Alia wins silver for the UAE

GMT 05:42 2018 Friday ,12 January

French carmaker PSA uses Macron reforms

GMT 13:42 2016 Tuesday ,20 December

Science shines a light on anti-matter
 
 Emirates Voice Facebook,emirates voice facebook  Emirates Voice Twitter,emirates voice twitter Emirates Voice Rss,emirates voice rss  Emirates Voice Youtube,emirates voice youtube  Emirates Voice Youtube,emirates voice youtube

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©

emiratesvoieen emiratesvoiceen emiratesvoiceen emiratesvoiceen
emiratesvoice emiratesvoice emiratesvoice
emiratesvoice
بناية النخيل - رأس النبع _ خلف السفارة الفرنسية _بيروت - لبنان
emiratesvoice, Emiratesvoice, Emiratesvoice