 "Ajit Narayanan")
India is currently experiencing a massive increase in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and bears a higher burden than most nations, particularly in cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, hypertension and diabetes. There are more than 200 million diagnosed hypertension patients in the country who have limited access to BP (blood pressure) measuring tools for use at home. Similarly, there are over 80 million diabetes patients and 200 million pre-diabetic people in India who primarily monitor their glucose levels by using invasive and time-consuming blood tests.
It is this problem that Bengaluru-based health tech firm platform MFine is addressing. The firm has built an innovation by bringing Blood Pressure (BP) and Glucose Monitoring on a smartphone. In an industry-first breakthrough, MFine added BP and Glucose monitoring to the suite of self-check health tools available on its app, eliminating the need of any external devices to measure and track these health vitals.
Launched three weeks ago in beta, the BP-monitoring tool has already been used by more than 10,000 users and is clocking over thousands of readings every day by users from across the country. With a focus on building an integrated care experience for its users, MFine is working on various next-gen AI (artificial intelligence) technologies that convert any smartphone into a rich diagnostics and vitals monitoring device. MFine is currently doing trial runs with leading hospitals for the glucose monitoring tool which is expected to go live in the coming weeks. The company is preparing for certifications of its algorithms, with data of thousands of measurements to improve the accuracy and reliability of the measurements.
While wearables cater to only a certain section of society, smartphones are more ubiquitous and affordable in India. Ajit Narayanan, chief technology officer, MFine said that advances in the areas of big data, artificial intelligence and mobile technology have opened new opportunities for monitoring health, detecting and preventing diseases using smartphones.
“By enabling vitals monitoring through smartphones, MFine aims to make basic health assessments universal, easy and free to use for millions of people in India,” says Narayanan, chief technology officer, MFine. “You will see more such innovations from MFine in this area in the coming months. We are excited at MFine to lead this major transformation in healthcare through the usage of smartphones as a vitals monitoring device. This innovation is a step towards that ambitious goal.”
The MFine vitals’ measurement feature has been in development for two years with deep AI research conducted in partnership with leading hospitals and successful trials conducted with more than 3000 patients. MFine has built a proprietary algorithm that measures Blood Pressure using a smartphone by obtaining a PhotoPlethysmoGram (PPG) signal from the user’s fingertip when it is placed on the smartphone camera. By observing subtle changes in colour across red and blue wavelengths of the PPG signal, a prediction of BP and Glucose is made. MFine said its machine learning algorithm, trained with thousands of patients’ data makes the prediction accurate. The algorithm is able to measure BP with close to 90 per cent accuracy. This feature is available on MFine App for Android users in selected mobile models and will soon be launched for most mobile devices including iPhones.
Dr Sreekanth Shetty, Interventional Cardiologist, Sakra World Hospital in Bengaluru said that Hypertension and Diabetes is rising in India at a phenomenal rate and it is important for people to monitor their health effectively and in a timely manner.
“Smartphones are already ubiquitous in India and it will prove to be a gamechanger in preventive health and vitals monitoring,” says Shetty.
He adds that many people in India cannot afford expensive devices and wearables but own a smartphone which they can use now to monitor their health.
“We are excited about the developments at MFine and how the company is using AI to augment and enable quality healthcare delivery in every nook and corner of the country,” says Shetty. “BP and Glucose monitoring on smartphones will be truly transformational and we are excited about its endless possibilities and impact.”
By building these tools and using the power of both mobile sensors and AI, MFine said that it is transforming every smartphone into a vitals measurement device. This way millions of people can now check their critical health parameters regularly without any complication, losing time or additional cost. MFine is already used by millions of people for teleconsultations from across the country. Bringing vitals measurement and monitoring to smartphones drastically changes the quality of care people will receive from healthcare practitioners. Doctors can now get important data about the patients’ health and are able to increase the accuracy of diagnosis in telemedicine scenarios. Through these features, people can easily monitor their vitals, get timely intervention and also get continuous care particularly in chronic conditions.
Dr B Hygriv Rao, Senior Cardiologist, KIMS Hospitals, Hyderabad, said that it is essential for a large country like India to pioneer technologies and develop tools that are developed to ensure quality care is delivered in a timely manner to all people.
“This product (MFine’s tools) allows monitoring BP and Glucose to be done by anyone with a smartphone and makes it easier for everyone to track their health without needing any other device,” says Rao. “The preliminary demonstration of this tool appears to be encouraging and we look forward to more clinical experience and wider usage.”
MFine was founded in December 2017 by Ashutosh Lawania and Prasad Kompalli who were later joined by Ajit Narayanan and Arjun Choudhary. It is an AI-driven, on-demand healthcare platform that provides its users access to virtual consultations and connected care programmes from the country’s top hospitals. MFine, founding member and chief business officer, Arjun Choudhary said that it was during Covid-19 pandemic, the company launched a free SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) tracker on its app, after seeing that many patients were finding it difficult to have access to oximeters. The tool can give the same results with medical-grade accuracy without using an oximeter or any other device.
“At the core, we want to be a digital hospital,” says Choudhary. “We are now at the stage where the core services are set. We really want to take it to the next level and where consumers can track their health and monitor their vitals. We'll be launching a lot of stuff in this line. I think glucose and blood pressure (monitoring tools) are the two big ones, as most of the chronic diseases revolve around them.”
Choudhary said there is a huge potential of the mobile as a technology to disrupt the way health monitoring is done using various devices. “We would be looking at how to use your facial expressions to identify your stress levels,” says Choudhary. “Mobiles are becoming very sophisticated with their cameras and technologies and these are not high-end smartphones.”
India is at the cusp of a ‘digital health’ revolution and new digital tools and technologies are already starting to make an impact across the healthcare system in the country. They hold great promise to transform the delivery of health services in the near future by improving efficiency and bettering patient care. The government is also pushing the adoption of digital health through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) which aims to develop the backbone necessary to support the integrated digital health infrastructure of the country. Enabling monitoring of vital health parameters through smartphones can collect data in real-time, which will help with rapid diagnosis, timely and proper treatment at an early stage, eliminating travel and wait times for diagnosis. It will also increase operational efficiencies for doctors and empower patients with improved support and feedback.
MFine is focussed on delivering an AI-driven, on-demand healthcare service across India. It aims to be one of the largest virtual hospitals in the world with services across primary care, secondary care and chronic care management in collaboration with its trusted partners. Over 3 million users have used MFine services with the platform clocking over 300,000 monthly transactions that include doctor consultations, diagnostic tests, e-pharmacy and in-patient procedures. More than 6000 doctors, including some of India’s top doctors from over 700 reputed hospitals practice across 35 specialities on MFine and serve millions in more than 1,000 towns across India.
