Comments
Bengaluru, March 6
Moving beyond telemedicine consultations and healthcare services, digital health startup MFine has launched aHeart Rate Monitoring (HR) Tool on its app which enables users to keep track of their heart rate without needing an additional device or any other app.
Currently 700 people are said to be using the tool to monitor their heart rate everyday on MFine. The company is working on various next-gen AI technologies which turns the mobile phone into a rich diagnostics and vitals monitoring tool. MFine also plans to launch glucose monitoring and blood pressure measurement through its app by the end of 2022.
Ajit Narayanan, CTO, MFine said, “Globally, we are witnessing a massive transformation in the way people manage their health with an increased focus on preventive health and at-home screening for monitoring of chronic diseases. The combination of medical diagnostics with smartphones will greatly advance the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of critical health issues. By enabling vitals monitoring through smartphones, MFine is making assessments universal and free to access for millions of people in India who otherwise would have found this hard to do. Along with artificial intelligence, the overall health data can play an incredible role in estimation and early diagnosis of diseases. We are excited at MFine to lead this major transformation and contribute to the use of smartphones as a diagnostics tool.”
Proprietary algorithm
The health-tech startup has built a proprietary algorithm that measures the heart rate using the smartphone camera. The Heart Rate is measured by the photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal from the user’s fingertip which is obtained by detecting changes in blood volume below the skin’s surface. The PPG is an optically obtained plethysmogram that can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. Every time the heart beats, the amount of blood that reaches the capillaries in the fingers swells and then recedes. Because blood absorbs light, the MFine app is able to capture this ebb and flow using the flash of the phone’s camera.
The LED illuminates the skin and the smartphone camera measures the changes in light absorption. The signal is then broken down into Red, Blue and Green parts and using the difference in levels of light absorbed across these different wavelengths, heart rate is calculated by a machine learning algorithm. The variations in the light intensity are related to changes in the blood perfusion of the tissue, and based on these changes, heart-related information can be retrieved.
Currently, the Heart Rate measuring tool features90 per cent medical grade accuracy.The tool is in public beta for Android users and will soon be launched for iOS users. MFine is preparing for certifications of its algorithms, with data of hundreds of measurements to give medical grade accuracy and reliability to the algorithm.
In 2021, MFine launched a SPO2 monitoring tool on its app that has been used by over 600,000 users. The tool enables users to keep track of their oxygen saturation levels without needing an additional device.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.