Smart intelligent oxygen delivery
Arthur Zang is about to explode on the world stage catapulted by his latest invention called Oxynnet TM. Arthur was just an engineering student when he learned that there were only 30 cardiologists for the entire population of his country Cameroon estimated at over 20 millions people. This problem was compounded by the fact that the few cardiologists were concentrated in a few cities leaving most of the country under-served. That’s when he decided to bridge this gap by creating a virtual bridge between heart disease patients and the doctors. His first invention called the CardioPad is connected to patients by a trained nurse. The heart signals are captured and sent over the cellular network for analysis and diagnosis by remote cardiologists
Arthur does it again
His invention caught the entire world by surprise. At a time when Android was still in its infancy at version 1.6 and iPhone was only at its 3rd version, cellular transmission design was not very popular and definitely not expected from places such as Cameroon. His device won awards such as the Rolex Award and was featured by Forbes and BBC.
In 2014, Arthur founded Himore Medical to produce and commercialize the Cardiopad. 6 year later, his company employs more than 50 people and they have deployed the Cardiopad in many healthcare facilities across Africa.
We are now in 2020 and the world has been shaken by the most dangerous pandemic in almost a century. The COVID-19 has infected more than 14 millions people globally of which more than half a million have died. Although the infection rate has been lower in Sub-Saharan Africa, the virus is spreading at an accelerated pace with the latest infection numbers in Africa topping 600,000 and more than 14,000 deaths despite recent shut-downs. Facing potential catastrophic impact to the economy, many of the countries have moved to re-open hoping to plow through. However, with an under-prepared healthcare system, this poses a great challenge. For example, one key element in the fight against the coronavirus is the availability of pure oxygen given the respiratory nature of the disease. However, most healthcare facilities do not have oxygen and those who have it cannot distribute in mass given that they are bottled and there are no oxygen lines to patient rooms.
As he did 10 years ago, Arthur set out to solve this problem locally. His goal was to create a system that would allow each hospital to produce and distribute its own medical oxygen. He called this solution OXYNNET for Oxygen National Network. The idea is to create a station that can extract the oxygen from ambient air (21%) and produce oxygen with 95% concentration continuously. These oxygen producing stations would then be interconnected. Each station can continuously provide oxygen to 10 patients without interruption. The stations are powered by a solar system which allows them to be deployed in rural areas. To make control easier, the system is connected to a phone app where they can be activated and adjusted for each patient.
This system demonstrates the potential that young African have in their ability to create solutions adapted to their environments. OXYNNET focused on the local problems and provided location solutions:
Problem: electricity is unreliable and often not available – Solution: leverage solar energy to power the system.
Problem: not all hospitals have the ability to procure liquid oxygen – Solution: extract oxygen from ambient air and produce 95% oxygen.
Problem: there are often no computer networks in hospital to manage distribution – Solution: create a mobile app from where healthcare providers can access and interact with the system
These are just a few of the locally adopted solutions. What is even more remarkable is that in the midst of all the challenges that tech start-up face in Africa, OXYNNET was developed in record time. The idea formed in February and by May, the prototype was in place. That’s less than 5 months. Similar effort with the Cardiopad took years.
Arthur is blazing the trail in so many ways but the most remarkable is his ability continually defy the odds by leveraging the local talent and resources to design and develop solutions that until then were expected to come from the west. Arthur represents hope for many young Africans who can now grow up believing that they can make a difference within their local communities.
You can learn more about OXYNNET on the product’s website: https://oxynnet.com/