This device uses Photoplethysmography technology that has revolutionized the way we interact with body vitals and enable their continuous monitoring through portable devices.
Eka Care, a connected healthcare platform, founded by former Co-Founders of Goibibo, has launched a scientific mobile-based feature on the app through which users can track their pulse rate, a basic, yet very important body vital. Tracking the vitality can assist users to understand when they need to seek medical advice. It can also help doctors to understand their patients better and offer better healthcare. Eka Care has launched the Heart Rate Monitor in collaboration with Father Muller (FM) Medical College and Hospital. This feature is completely free for the user.
This device uses Photoplethysmography technology that has revolutionized the way we interact with body vitals and enable their continuous monitoring through portable devices.
Dr. Sankalp Gulati, PhD, Information Retrieval, Machine Learning, and Signal Processing, Eka Care said, “At Eka Care, we strongly believe that technology is the answer to some of the biggest challenges in healthcare. A reliable and affordable solution to monitor and manage one’s health is critical to better health outcomes. With nearly a million vitals already secured on the Eka Care app by our users, the HeartRate monitor will further complement these health records. Users can cross-sectionally view the Heart health data along with their other longitudinal records. This feature as of now is available on Android and will be soon rolled out on iOS devices.”
The Eka Heart Rate Monitor (EHRM) uses the reflective mode principle for obtaining PPG signals to compute pulse rate. This feature can be accessed through Eka Care’s android mobile application. To demonstrate the accuracy and reliability of EPRM, Eka Care has built a diverse validation dataset of PPG comprising 10,000 patients in OPD and ICU settings, in collaboration with the Father Muller (FM) Medical College and Hospital. So far, Eka Care has collected data of 5,700+ patients from 5 different centers of FM Hospital across its rural and urban centers.
Eka Care’s dataset is rich in terms of gender and age distribution, wherein they procure data of patients with ages ranging from 12 to 90 years. They were successful in gathering information about the comorbidities present in these patients. Eka Care’s dataset has a significant number of patients suffering from Hypertension, Diabetes Mellitus, and Thyroid disorder.
Dr. Neelesh Kapoor, MBBS, MD, Eka Care said, “‘Pay Attention to your Resting Heart Rate. The Higher the rate, The Higher the Risk of Mortality.’ This old adage has stood the test of time, and still today the heart rate or the Pulse Rate remains one of the most important monitored and tracked vital parameters in the majority of individuals. Access to health services, awareness of health issues, affordability, and the absence of skilled human resources remain key challenges in the country’s healthcare ecosystem. The capability to track one’s pulse rate using a mobile camera and that too as free of cost is a much-needed feature in this context for the majority of citizens of Bharat.”
Eka Care is the first private healthcare platform to allow the creation of Health ID under Ayushman Bharat Digital Health Mission (ABDM). The creation of Health IDs will standardize the process of identifying an individual across healthcare providers. The aim is to ensure that the medical records which get created are issued to the right individual or get accessed by health information users through the individual’s appropriate consent. In order to issue a Health ID to an individual, Eka Care will require basic demography and contact details and pass it on to the ABDM system. The ID will be used for uniquely identifying persons, authenticating them and maintaining their own and family’s health records across multiple systems and stakeholders.
Founded in December 2020, Eka Care intends to build a digitally-enabled and connected healthcare ecosystem between doctors and patients for better health outcomes.
The platform which is available in 12 languages enables every Indian family to create multiple health profiles, store health records such as vaccination charts for kids, developmental milestones, prescriptions, lab reports, scans. Eka Care, which already has over 1 million downloads, allows users to share records with healthcare providers. Symptoms Checker, a unique feature, enables doctors to efficiently and effectively diagnose underlying medical conditions while enhancing reporting capabilities for patients.
Source: Business World
