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- We are a medical device startup based out of India.
- [Catherine] Yeah.
- We are on a mission to cut down infant mortality
and morbidity in the developing world.
- The NemoCare, the censor, what does it detect?
What does it monitor?
- Sure, so the device is a wearable device that goes on
the foot of the baby.
So this is a device that tracks close
to six vital parameters of the newborn.
It goes on the foot of the newborn,
and tracks these vitals, these other vitals
that the doctor really looks at,
when he wants to know the health of the baby.
And these get relayed on to a central monitoring station.
So it's an IoT enabled system, and we have
all our processing and all the intelligence
back in the cloud.
So this is very lightweight, in the sense that
very minimal technology just to track
the health of the newborn.
And the rest of this is a algorithm
that will run in the background to
ensure that the baby is fine.
- What organizations are you partnering with
for the clinical studies?
And where are they taking place?
- So to start off, this work was funded
by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
through the Grand Challenge Exploration program.
And it was followed up with funding from
the Government of India BIRAC,
which supported us develop the prototype
and go forward towards studies.
We're working with the leading hospital in South India,
and one government set up,
which is powered by UNICEF, which is more,
it's called Specialized Newborn Care Unit.
The two of them, in the state of Hyderabad,
in the state of Telangana.
And we have 2 hospitals down south in Bangalore,
which we use.
- The NemoCare monitor, like,
what's the current monitoring situation like?
And how does it improve on that?
- So even in the best of set ups that we have,
so, monitoring in only available in an ICU, neonatal ICU,
where this prevents the baby from being brought
to the mothers side for interventions like
Kangaroo Mother Care or breastfeeding.
And it's only available in the top corporate hospitals
and not even continuous monitoring.
What we've done is, make it baby friendly,
designed for the baby, keeping it at the center of focus,
and designed it in such a way that it can be stepped on
for ICU grade monitoring at the bedside.
So, that's what we've brought about, and our USBs also,
in the number of parameters we monitor
from a single site, noninvasively.
So that's the key factors that we are differentiating:
monitoring, and also, making it accessible
and affordable using our innovative business models.
- So you said like, that one of the key differences
is that right now, babies who need that
kind of monitoring, they can't be held or
do skin-to-skin, but this enables that?
- Yeah, because it's completely wireless, portable,
and provides a high quality grade of monitoring.
- Yeah.
- It can be used across the hospital setting today.
That's where the focus is.
And because we were targeting bottom of the pyramid,
and prematurity is one of the causes,
these are very important interventions.
Skin-to-skin contact is very important,
but today it's not possible,
because these babies need to be monitored for criticality.
And the mother wouldn't even know if
something happened to the baby.
So, with our device we're trying
to even track the progressing,
give indicators to the mother saying, this helped.
The babies vitals became better.
So that's how we're bringing about positive
behavioral change for such interventions.
- So, I know you mentioned the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, but yeah, I just wanted to know
who are your other investors and backers happened?
- Sure, we started off with the Grand Challenge
and Exploration grant, from the Gates Foundation,
and that was $100,000 and then we went on
to raise funds from a grant in aid from
the Government of India initiative called BIRAC,
which supports life science startups in India,
and they've supported us over 2 years,
with different initiatives, helping us scale,
with, not just giving us financial aid,
but also supporting us in terms of an ecosystem
in terms of regulating and IP.
And others have been
the Center for Healthcare Entrepreneurship
from IOD Hyderabad, where the founders were fellows from.
So we raised money from these sources,
and all of, most of it, is being in terms of grant.
And now we're looking to raise private equity
to scale up the manufacturing more on the commercial side.
And, another reason why we were able to give this device
at an affordable price, is we developed it
completely using grant and aid money.
So that makes the cost of the device zero development
at the time when we start shipping.
So it's per unit cost that we have to recover
when we are trying to be operationally profitable.
- Okay.
Okay, thank you so much for joining us, thank you.