Handling heart attacks A Goan company comes out with the smallest ECG heart monitor that run on mobiles Bharati Pawaskar / The Goan 20 July 2013 There is good news for heart patients in Goa. A Goan technology company, Kallows Engineering, has recently released two innovative products in the Indian medicine market – ‘ultra-portable heart monitors that run on mobiles or tablets. They will now be able to transmit their live ECG of to the cardiologist’s smartphone from anywhere in the world.
“We expect these products to revolutionise the portable ECG monitor market as they provide several key advances over current ECG monitors,” says Gajanan Nagarsekar, Managing Director of Kallows whose idea was to save lives by creating something ultra-portable and seamless in the practical world.Patents for Kallows products (a 3-lead ECG monitor called MobMon 3.0 and a 12-lead ECG monitor called MobMon 12.0) may be the world’s smallest ECG monitors of their kind and patents for them are covered for in India and USA. They fit in the palm of the hand and also have a pulse oximeter for measuring blood oxygen levels. 12-lead ECG with SpO2 (pulse Oximeter) – record, store, review and transfer all functions very seamlessly through an Android application. This has been designed by Kallows employees in Goa.“Our products do not require AC line power as they are battery operated, and do not require a special ECG strip printer or paper (as the ECG signals can be printed with any PC printer). However, the revolutionary feature is the ability to send the patient’s ECG to a remote physician by ringing his mobile and displaying a live feed thereon,” shares Kevin S Kreger, Director and Chief Technology Officer for Kallows, currently in Goa. The remote viewing of the patient’s ECG provides lifesaving minutes. In addition to giving a cardiologist, the convenience of viewing the patient’s ECG remotely, the MobMon alerts the doctor to the patient’s condition, such as if he is suffering a heart attack while the patient is still in the hands of the first responder. Typically, the patient may be visiting his general practitioner (GP), attended by an ambulance technician, or at hospital’s emergency room. In these situations there may not be a cardiologist available so the patient’s ECG can be immediately sent to a cardiologist for diagnosis. The cardiologist from any corner of the world can instruct whoever is attending the patient to administer treatment immediately, such as a clot busting agent or the like. “We expect this feature to be a key wherever a cardiologist is not immediately available, especially in rural areas. Thus, our lifesaving product could be widely used by GPs, ambulances, and emergency rooms,” says Kreger who has a BS (EE), MS (EE), Juris Doctorate (Patent Law) to his credit along with 25 years of experience working in the field of Digital Signal Processing applied to electronic hardware, firmware and software programming. “My American partner Kreger has worked with some prestigious names in the USA such as GE Medical Systems, Allen Bradley (now Rockwell Automation), Siemens and has mentored and consulted for several advanced engineering projects,” informs Nagarsekar who along with Kreger hail from GE Healthcare Technologies. “Kallows was founded in Goa in 2007. We began operations by providing consulting services for National Institute of Oceanography (NIO),” discloses Nagarsekar who himself is BE (E&TC), MTech (Biomedical) and MS (EE) with six years of experience in product and research. Nagarsekar has worked with Wipro GE Medical Systems (in India and USA), University of California at San Diego and University of Wisconsin at Miwaukee. Kallows team worked with local engineering college, to train a team of final year engineers in programming applications (‘apps’) for smartphones. As an early mover in mobile apps Kallows began planning for the expansion of the mobile medical app marketplace. These efforts were recognised at the Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Competition 2011 to bag the second place in the ‘Information Technology’ category for medical products in the US, which landed an early investment bid from a Goan investor in 2012. The pricing is Rs 15,000 which is utilised in saving a life and giving a lot less stress to a Cardiologist. The Goa government is in process to initiate a feasibility study on these user friendly products since April 2013. The company is seeking potential buyers in hospitals, ambulance companies, government for rural primary health centres and district hospital connect, doctors and chronic heart patients.“We are currently seeking more interested investors to raise money for marketing and sales of these products in India. We will soon move to USA once we receive regulatory approval from US FDA,” concludes Nagarsekar.