INDIA – MFine, an Indian digital health startup, has updated its mobile health app with blood pressure and glucose monitoring tools.
The new vital measurement features are currently available on the MFine app for select Android phones and will soon be available on iOS devices.
After two years of development and clinical trials involving approximately 3,000 patients, the health tech startup released its latest vital measurement features for beta testing three weeks ago.
These health monitoring features, according to a press release, are built with MFine’s proprietary algorithm, which measures blood pressure and glucose levels by obtaining Photoplethysmography (PPG) signals from a user’s fingertip.
A smartphone camera and flash are used to measure the changes in the red and blue wavelengths of the PPG signals. The company claims that its BP-measuring algorithm is “close to 90% accurate.”
The new vital measurement features are currently available on the MFine app for select Android phones and will soon be available on iOS devices.
In India, over 200 million people with hypertension have poor access to BP monitoring tools for at-home and personal use while more than 80 million diabetic patients rely mainly on invasive and time-consuming blood tests to get their glucose reading.
While there is general availability of wearable health devices, smartphones are more common and more affordable for the population, MFine said.
Millions can now check their health vitals
By building these tools and using the power of both mobile sensors and AI, MFine is transforming every smartphone into a vitals measurement device so that millions of people can now check their critical health parameters regularly without any complication, losing time or additional cost.
“Smartphones are already ubiquitous in India and it will prove to be a gamechanger in preventive health and vitals monitoring.”
“Many people in India cannot afford expensive devices and wearables but own a smartphone which they can use now to monitor their health,” explained Dr Sreekanth Shetty, an interventional cardiologist at Sakra World Hospital.
MFine continues to leverage the power of mobile sensors and AI to transform smartphones into vital measurement tools to offer a cost-effective means for people to regularly monitor their health.
Its proprietary algorithm for measuring vital parameters has also been used in developing its blood oxygen saturation and heart rate monitoring tools which were released earlier on the MFine app.
In other news, popular wearable brands like Fitbit and Samsung have recently introduced vitals monitoring features on their smartwatches.
“It is essential for a large country like India to pioneer technologies and develop tools to ensure [that] quality care is delivered in a timely manner to all people… The preliminary demonstration of this tool appears to be encouraging and we look forward to more clinical experience and wider usage,” Dr B Hygriv Rao, a senior cardiologist at KIMS Hospitals said.
“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. You will see more such innovations from MFine in this area in the coming months,” MFine CTO Ajit Narayanan also said.
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