Brian Turyabagye, a 24-year-old Engineering graduate, is all over African news and being praised for innovating a smart jacket to curb pneumonia misdiagnosis.
Dubbed the “Mamope/Mothers Hope”, it helps detect the symptoms of pneumonia through temperature, breathing rate and lung sound faster than a human doctor.
This safe jacket that’s connected to a mobile App is set to be a mile stone in reducing on the annual 27,000 pneumonia deaths of children under the age of 5.
The hope this Smart jacket brings is that it will help distinguish between malaria and pneumonia as the two share symptoms. More often, children in Ugandan villages die of pneumonia because of misdiagnosis.
The innovator himself got a hold of this idea after watching his Mother’s friend succumb to pneumonia because of misdiagnosis/human error. That’s how he embarked on changing the diagnosis history by innovating the Safe Jacket.
Turyabagye’s Mamope has been shortlisted in the 2017 Royal Academy of Engineering Africa Prize Awards and it also ranks number two amongst BBC’s African innovations to look out for in 2017.
This Safe Jacket is also set to undergo National medical examination for certification this month. If it goes through this examination, then more prototypes will be manufactured for distribution in all hospitals.
How it works
A stethoscope in put in a vest that’s linked to a mobile phone App. Audio recorded by the stethoscope from the patient’s chest detect lung crackles, breathing rates and lead to preliminary diagnosis of pneumonia.
This will surely bring a new twist to the treatment of pneumonia.
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