Beta thalassemia patient builds app to help manage anaemia

Robert has received a lot of blood transfusions since he was very young. When he was 16, he decided to focus his career on something that would help him and other patients with thalassemia improve their lives.

“Being in a hospital all the time growing up, and getting to know a lot of people with blood-related illnesses, I want to use my talents to help others. I have seen firsthand what medical innovation from diagnostics to therapy can do to improve the life of a patient. My ultimate goal is to use my degree and the skills I will attain in graduate school to become a biomedical engineer translating research into new diagnostics and therapies for blood diseases in an industry setting. I hope to focus on developing new tools to study haemoglobin diseases and to improve patient outcomes”, he explained.

As a biomedical researcher, the inventor has been designing devices that can detect iron overload indicators. He created a mobile to help diagnose anaemia, entitled “Noninvasive Inexpensive Smartphone App for Patient Self-Management of Anemia”, relies on smartphone photos of a patient’s fingernails for diagnosing anaemia. It can also facilitate self-management by patients with chronic anaemia, allowing the users to monitor their disease and to identify the times when they need to adjust their therapies or receive transfusions, possibly reducing side effects or complications of having transfusions too early or too late.

This project allowed Robert to win first place in the competition for the 2017 Student Technology Prize for Primary Healthcare, with a $100,000 prize money.

The initial clinical assessment of the app is now complete. A patent application has been filed for the app.

Adapted from: https://bit.ly/30lz1TE
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More info: https://go.nature.com/2AQZyww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0p1YndaZQI