Mysore/Mysuru: Unique among many medical solutions offered to combat COVID-19 is the new breathing monitor for Coronavirus patients developed by a Bengaluru-based start-up RayIoT and it is a matter of pride that a Kodagu-born and Mysuru-educated innovator is behind the device. 

She is Ammanichanda Sanchi Poovaya, a young but experienced engineer, innovator and entrepreneur. She co-founded healthcare start-up RayIoT Solutions Inc. and is the Chief Operating Officer of the start-up that has already made a mark in innovative healthcare products. 

Her start-up creates innovative healthcare and baby-tech products using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) technologies. Very recently, Sanchi Poovaya and her other two co-founders Aardra Kannan Ambili (Chief Technology Officer) and Ranjana Nair (Co-founder and CEO) built a remote respiration monitoring system for COVID-19 patients that allows doctors to remotely monitor less critical patients while seriously ill ones get more attention. (Top photo shows (from left) Sanchi Poovaya, Ranjana Nair and Aardra Kannan Ambili)

Connected workflow sends alerts to the doctor in case of any abnormal variations in the patient’s vitals. With the high effectiveness of using respiration rate as a predictive vital, early detection especially among at-risk caregivers is a possibility. 

“It is a non-contact, Wi-Fi enabled, affordable respiration rate monitor for Coronavirus patients that can run as mini ICU units. In its current form, RayIoT will work as a mini ICU monitoring unit. The algorithms of Artificial Intelligence will allow doctors and other health professionals to track the respiration rate of multiple patients through an app from anywhere in the world,” Sanchi Poovaya said. 

In a pandemic like COVID-19 where doctors are falling ill with excessive patient inflow, and the management of quarantined patients have become difficult, the device wirelessly tracks patient’s respiration rate, heart rate, blood pressure and temperature. 

Since all the devices can be connected to one central database, using RayIoT, healthcare professionals can monitor more than one lakh patients at a time continuously. By just tracking respiration rate, they will be able to intelligently categorise quarantined patients into mild, severe, and critical cases, she said. 

“The idea of a remote respiration monitoring system came to us when a celebrity, who was converting his 14-room sprawling bungalow into a quarantine facility, reached out to us. His problem was remote access to doctors, nurses and medical equipment to fully equip his quarantine facility.”

The team had to come up with a low-cost solution that could monitor the vitals of hundreds of patients at any given point of time and connect to doctors through video when the patients are moving into a severe or critical stage. “The solution also helped Government Task Forces who are monitoring huge swathes of population by providing them a single source of truth with our quarantine database,” Sanchi reveals. 

RayIoT has been created by same team that is behind Raybaby (the world’s first non-contact sleep and breathing monitor for babies. This product has won many awards and was mentioned in CNN as one of the must have home gadgets. 

Ammanichanda Sanchi Poovaya completed her schooling at Good Shepherd, Ammathi in Kodagu, and JSS Public School, Mysuru. She completed her Mechanical Engineering at the National Institute of Engineering (NIE), Mysuru and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, New York.

Sanchi Poovaya is the daughter of Ammanichanda Sunil Poovaya (ex-Merchant Navy) and Shiela Poovaya (Pattada, Betoli). They live in Hosur, Bengaluru.