Growing up in a rural area of a developing country like Cameroon, Arthur Zang saw how difficult it was for people to get access to medical care. At just 26, Arthur, who belongs to the tech generation, is using his IT background to improve medical reach in villages in his country — which has just 50 cardiologists for a population of 22 million — with his invention of the Cardio Pad, a first-of-its-kind portable electrocardiograph machine that can share the readings using a mobile phone connection.
On watching a television programme about how an electrocardiogram (ECG) is taken, he approached Cardiologist Professor Samuel Kingué from Yaoundé’s main hospital, who became a mentor, teaching Arthur about the type of software needed for a portable ECG device and about how to process the data that comes from the signal. Arthur even went on to do his Master’s in information technology mainly to gain the necessary expertise to build the Cardio Pad. As the chief IT engineer of the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaounde, Arthur works on the medical tablet on his own time.
“Money is an issue for projects in Africa,” says Arthur, adding, “I went to the banks but they wanted all sorts of guarantees.” The natural next step for a techie was to seek assistance on social media. He posted a video of his project on Facebook and the Cameroon Government took note, assisting him with a $20,000 (approx Rs1.2 crore) grant to get him started. Arthur produced 20 tablets, two of which are now being tested in hospitals. With about 30 per cent of Cameroonians suffering from high blood pressure, a key contributing factor to heart disease, and the rural areas receiving virtually no medical care, Arthur’s touchscreen Cardio Pad is set to make a huge difference.
The tablet’s kit consists of a wireless set of four electrodes and a sensor that attaches to the patient and transmits signals via Bluetooth to the Cardio Pad. It works in a simple and effective manner: a healthcare worker uses the kit to take a digitised ECG reading of a patient and transmits it to a national data centre; a cardiologist then makes a diagnosis and sends it back to the centre to be relayed to the healthcare worker, along with prescription instructions for the specific patient.
The Cardio Pad, which costs $2,000 (approx Rs 1.2 lakh) — less than half the price of less portable systems — has the potential to be expanded into a complete telemedicine tool, allowing measurement and transmission of various parameters of a patient’s health.
Arthur is also working on a variety of medical technologies like a simple ultrasound machine that can be used in rural areas. With the Rolex funds, Arthur will produce 100 Cardio Pads, 10 for each of Cameroon’s provinces. He hopes to be able to scale up production and provide at least 500 to Cameroon, and export it to other countries.