They dared to imagine and invented a baby health solution

If anyone asked them, the four Kenyan students who recently won the 2021 Microsoft Imagine Cup would quickly say that before meeting at the university, they had nothing in common except their passion for computer technology which led them to the undergraduate course in Applied Computer Technology, at the United States International University, Africa (USIU) in Nairobi.

This is true to some extent as Khushi Gupta, 20, is a dancer, Jeet Gohil, 22, is a jack-of-all-trade, who flows with the vibe of the moment while Dharmik Karania, 22 and Abdihamid Ali, 20, are “just too obsessed” with IT to a point where they spend their free time surfing the net.

But after sitting down with them to discuss their recent win, it turns out that despite their different backgrounds and upbringing, all of them confessed to being reserved introverts; with different hobbies outside academic work.

They first interacted at USIU during class group discussions, and with the sharing of classes and frequently bumping into each other, they slowly gravitated towards each other’s passions for IT, that eventually led to their collaboration.

The four young innovators have developed an infant monitoring solution, that analyses infant parameters remotely in a post-natal screening and serves as an early warning intervention system for health workers. For their effort, they scooped the 2021 Microsoft’s annual global student technology challenge, and bagged $75,000, which comes with mentoring sessions with Microsoft and another $50,000 Microsoft Azure Grant. They beat competition from 163 countries across the globe.

Not a mean achievement at all, coming at a time when the world has turned to the Internet of Things (IoT)and Artificial Intelligence to improve existing services and introduce new ways of solving old problems in all fields.

When the quartet agreed to work together, they each brought in their personal qualities, interests and specialisation to form “one large pull of resource.”

Khushi, a self-confessed introvert, is the group leader. “Our passions have tremendously refined,” she says. “And now, Abdi is highly resourceful in cyber forensics. Karania is super fascinated by the IoT. Gohil is passionate about automation of machine while I do most of the talking and handy work for the team.”

Back in 2019, in their second year, the course work demanded that they stretch their interactions beyond the walls of the lecture halls to the nearby community. They ended up at a local hospital. But even during their community service, it did not occur to them that an award-winning health idea would be borne out of their “extended interaction.”

Every evening, the four peer-reviewed how their days panned out. It is from that, that they found out that women who did casual daily wage work had to sacrifice their jobs, for the long distance walks to have post-natal medical check-ups for their babies. The students also observed that the mothers also had to endure long queues “that greatly inconvenienced them” economically and some even skipped their clinic appointments.

This prompted the quartet to think of a solution. And that was the birth of the Remote Well Baby or Reweba. Its ideation, Khushi said, was actualised following months of trial and error at the university hardware laboratory, with the help of mentors.

The device can be used to monitor a baby’s heart rate, skin condition, height, weight, and temperature remotely. And going to the hospital, the four envisioned, will only be necessary if it is absolutely necessary to.

Remote Baby Wellness, the founders say, is an exclusively IoT gadget that detects and captures vital infant measurements remotely. In an ideal world, such measurements are taken periodically during post-natal clinic appointments in health facilities.

But there lied the challenge the group hoped to solve. In informal set-ups, there is likely to be interruptions – the long distances and sometimes mothers having to make the tough decision of choosing work over the welfare of their babies. As such, babies would miss out on critical medical attention in their crucial development stage.

The device analyses data against the World Health Organisation (WHO) set standards. The backend configurations allow an assigned paediatrician to view the results.

“The system is configured such that, say, if a baby is six months old, it will be able to show the temperature they should have, their height, the recommended weigh based on the WHO threshold values,” says Karania.

“Our system then generates a conclusive report that highlighting the issues the baby may be having. This report is then shared with a doctor.”

The report would either indicate normal, or fair, or critical, depending on the severity of the baby’s condition. The report ranges from normal, to fair and then critical in order of severity of the condition. “

“The child’s mother will receive the message on their phone (weather feature or smartphone), notifying them whether their baby needs medical attention or their health is okay,” Ali explains. The operating system of the Reweba gadget is artificial intelligence-enabled, Gohil says, making it compatible with all skin tones.

“We're using Microsoft Azure as our system which has cognitive recognition services. We are planning to use that cognitive services module from Azure to translate English to other languages that a mother is comfortable with. Later, we will incorporate text to speech feature services for visually impaired mothers,” Gohil explains.

“The device also has contactless sensors used in measuring the various parameters,” he added.

Reweba weighs about a kilogramme. A feature that makes it portable. The four students also say it can be used by several people as deemed convenient. It can be used to monitor babies from infancy to up to five years old. And this, the four believe, reduces the number of hospital visits and helps in the decongestion of hospitals. This winning invention also hopes to solve the data gap that hinders research and making of informed decisions in the health sector, especially by analysing the prevalence of diseases.

“However, the data collected on patient information is only seen by the doctor, and is not open to third parties,” Khushi says. The data encryption, she says, is in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation – a Europe-based legal regulator that ensures data privacy is adhered to.

Once the device passes government scrutiny and licensed for use locally, they intend it to be used to also solve the endemic patient-doctor ratio problem. “Because, one device can be used by several patients,” Khushi says.

“The machine cost about $300 to build because of the material used, but we plan to bring the cost down by mass production. In the meantime, we encourage cost-sharing and communal use. Like an entire village can just use one device,” she advised.

In about a year or so, the quartet will be complete their undergraduate studies. But they are not done yet with their innovation journey; “We hope to continue working together in future endeavours. Even our current Reweba project is far from over,” said Khushi.

“Our goal is not just winning and pocketing the money. We will harness the money from the award to advance the device. To further spruce the gadget and make it user-friendly and more usable even in rough terrain. We hope to have Reweba registered as an initial public offering when we become directors and lifelong business partners hopefully,” Khushi added.

“But before we get there, we hope to integrate our system with Kenya’s District Health Information System, an information system that gathers health data and is currently being used by more than 272 countries globally,” she said adding that the Reweba system is not a “standalone system.”

The challenge of working together, Khushi says, has been commitment and working in Covid times where in-person meetings are discouraged. Yet they needed to meet “frequently.” The award has granted “more exposure to the IT world” something the team is very grateful for. “The mentoring sessions have helped us groom ideas.” Their chemistry is such from when they first realised they could work as a team, they have participated in various local and regional competitions with no hitches.

“So we do many projects together. But this was our first lucky, grand moment,” Khushi says on their win. “Working as a team, learning how to balance your school life and the project on the side is one experience that I will never forget in my life,” Ali said. The quartet’s research paper has also featured in technology journals like the Association for Computer Machinery and the J-Global site for science and technology information.