Looking out for gift options for a colleague’s baby, I somehow ended up on a website that displayed neoGuard, the invention of health care start-up Neopenda. Intrigued about the technology and underlying cause, I started to search about Neopenda on the web and upon research found several interesting things about Neopenda. Neonatal health as we all know, is the key to a healthy and thriving community and Neopenda has been working relentlessly to reduce the death rate of neonates in developing countries. Neopenda work with the motto to pioneer health-tech in emerging markets, bringing innovative needs based products to under-deserved populations in an impactful and sustainable way. They aim at creating innovative solutions to the world’s most urgent global health challenges through human-centered design.
Neopenda was founded by Sona Shah (CEO) and Teresa Cauvel(CTO) in 2015 as an enthusiastic start-up by graduate students in Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, after witnessing first hand in Uganda the massive opportunity to sustainably improve health outcomes for vulnerable patients. A team of 16 is dedicated to this cause while Dorothy Aanyu and Michael Adengo based in Kampala, Uganda, work on program activities and research activities, respectively.
The two co-founders were close friends at Columbia University. While on a trip to Uganda, they visited many local hospitals and saw commercial equipment that was inefficient and expensive to maintain as well.They also spent quite a lot of time in newborn wards, where a shortage of nurses caused some babies to die from causes that were preventable.Upon looking into the statistics, they found that annually, over 46 million newborns in developing countries around the world were in need of interventions for complications that happen during labour and to be precise, at a 600,000 count in Uganda alone.
Moved by this situation in Uganda, the girls began to develop a prototype for a device which is currently available as the neoGuard. Their wearable neonatal vitals monitor is designed to reduce the rate of newborn fatalities, an overwhelming reality in many parts of the world.The device continuously measures four different vital signs: pulse rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation and temperature. It then sends vitals data wirelessly over Bluetooth to a tablet that a nurse can monitor and alerts them if a child is in distress. Every Neopenda device has the potential to save the life of a newborn for less than $1 and all the devices are powered by a rechargeable, low-powered batteries, and their wireless function makes them suitable to be used in areas without consistent access to electricity.
“Our vision to success includes demonstrating the feasibility and impact of the technology in Ugandan NICUs, scaling deployment and sales in Uganda, and expanding to comparable regional and global markets over in the future. We are partnered with the Uganda Pediatric Association, who will be instrumental in helping us navigate the process of testing and deploying in Uganda. Ultimately, Neopenda is a social enterprise with a double bottom line approach that focuses on achieving social impact while maintaining financial sustainability” says Teresa.
Neopenda has managed to raise $1.04 million from New York-based Axel Johnson Inc. and SUNU Capital, an African-based venture capital firm.It was also featured in the 2018 cohort of Techstars Chicago, the annual accelerator that provides mentoring and resources to early-stage startups. Neopenda was also listed in Young Leaders in Health Care- 2018 by Business Insider.
