It does appear that the worst of COVID19 is behind us, although we’re not entirely out of the woods yet. National vaccination rates are steadily rising, and on more than one occasion, India managed to vaccinate more than a crore people on a given day. Currently, nearly 11% of India is fully vaccinated and the government continues to procure more doses to inoculate its citizens.

However, with the Delta variant surging in other countries, there is always the impending fear of a third wave. Earlier this year, India was caught unawares as the second wave hit with ferocity, killing thousands and impacting many more. One of the most striking symptoms of the Delta variant seen ravaging India in early 2021 was the precipitous drop in SpO2 levels of patients. Doctors advised COVID19-positive patients to continuously monitor their blood oxygen levels, lest their condition took a turn for the worse and they couldn’t get timely help.

This resulted in a beeline for buying oximeters. Pharmacies and hospitals were running low on stock as demand clearly outweighed supply. This got Abhi Sengupta thinking – would it be possible to give every Indian an oximeter in his hands? Sengupta runs a startup called Careplix Health Care with the vision to make healthcare accessible to all. Initially what began as a telemedicine company soo became a mobile app tracking body vitals without wearables and devices. “People have a notion that telemedicine is a glorified version of Facetime or WhatsApp. The big gap with tele-health solutions is a video consultation doesn’t augment that touch and feeling of a doctor patient relationship,” explains Sengupta, who is based in Chicago, Illinois.

This contactless measurement is made possible through proprietary technology. In just 30 seconds using a conventional video camera, Careplix uses light and the translucency of human skin to capture changes in blood flow. Using machine learning algorithms, Careplix then extracts information on blood flow from the recording to model and detect the desired psychological, physical, and physiological indexes. This research is science-based, backed by global clinical research studies with partners like John Hopkins and Mayo Clinic among others. The team has collective experience in big data, analytics, signal processing, machine, and deep learning with a strong medical advisory board across the globe. They are a HIPAA-compliant medical service provider leveraging serverless technology stack within AWS and a certified technology partner with AWS. All data is encrypted end to end and stored in a HIPAA-compliant DC.

When the COVID crisis began unravelling in India, Sengupta who hails from Kolkata, felt there had to be a way to bring this technology to the country. “What we had slowly begun to overcome in the USA, was happening in India,” says Sengupta recalling the summer past in India, when the country witnessed among the highest caseload and death toll due to COVID19 in the world. Careplix Vitals was launched in India to augment the need of a vitals monitoring solution where people cannot afford a smartwatch or a Fitbit of the world. Many apps and wearable companies expect users upload readings from Apple Watch. FitBits, Garmins and other wearable trackers. But, a sizeable population cannot afford these expensive devices. Moreover, the rising cost of oximeters and lack of availability were reasons to bring this tech to India. “To date, considering the average cost of an Oximeter is 25$, we have saved over 50M USD in people's money just by measuring these vitals for free,” he says.

With a specific demograhic in mind, Sengupta’s team conducted clinical studies at SSKM hospital with the support of the West Bengal government. The trials were conducted in the cardiology & pulmonary department and the ENT department with over 1,200 studies for age groups ranging from 18 to 88. Patients were monitored using the app and a Gold Standard FDA approved medical device simultaneously. The accuracy of the readings were considered Medical Grade with accuracy over 97% as compared to predicate devices.

Careplix made the app free for users in May 2021, and since have steadily clocked over 2M + users globally, who are using this platform as a substitute of a pulse oximeter. 78% of those users are from India and across all parts of India mostly Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India. The team has helped perform over 7.5 million scans in 3 months and currently average over 50-80K scans per day. This app will soon be available in Hindi and then later introduced in local languages in India and other languages in other countries.

For enterprise use, Careplix™ offers a variety of solutions to the digital health, insurance, and corporate wellness industries. The app's technology can be obtainable through a Software Development Kit (SDK) and white-labeled and integrated into enterprise solutions. Eventually, the team plans to monitor other kinds of vitals like blood Pressure, Type-2 diabetes , cholesterol risk factors and haemoglobin count – all of which can be derived from a 35 second-scan. Currently, the team is doing pilots with major Fortune 50 companies across India, USA and South Africa. Sengupta says the team is in the process of raising Series A and have initiated talks with VC firms and angel investors. In addition, they’re also working on getting FDA approvals and CE mark to integrate with more players in geographies.