Healthtech startup MFine has announced the launch of app-based SPO2 (blood oxygen saturation) monitoring tool, MFine Pulse, to help users keep track of their oxygen saturation levels using their smartphones.
According to the official statement, the startup will be leveraging artificial intelligence to measure oxygen saturation using the phone camera and flash.
Prasad Kompalli and Ashutosh Lawania, Co-founders of MFine [Image Credit: MFine]
The tool is in public beta for Android users and will soon be launched for iOS users. This development is a part of MFine to move beyond telemedicine consultations and also work on next-gen AI technologies to convert the smartphone into a diagnostics and vitals monitoring tool.
With this development, people with health conditions affecting their oxygen saturation level will be able to keep track without any additional device.
MFine reveals that it has built a proprietary algorithm that can measure oxygen saturation using a smartphone camera through the photoplethysmogram (PPG) signal, obtained from the user’s fingertip.
“The PPG can be used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. 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, SPO2 is calculated by a machine learning algorithm,” the startup said.
MFine claimed that the SPO2 measuring tool has achieved 80 percent accuracy and is currently working to get certifications for its algorithms.
“Use of smartphones as an access tool to digital health has started and its use as a medical device will see many more innovations in the next few years. With the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine and digital healthcare delivery have proven to be the norm and digital tools like MFine Pulse will play a major role in the way healthcare providers handle diagnostics, monitoring, and treatment plans, be it at a hospital or at home,” said Ajit Narayanan, CTO of MFine.
The startup also revealed that it will launch more vitals monitoring and diagnostics tools in the future to ensure the use of smartphones as the new examination tool for vitals tracking.
