Keyar- Monitoring the life to come
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India is a growing economy on its way to becoming a superpower. With its superb campaign “Make in India”, you see a lot of emerging start-ups accelerating their way to provide user-centric solutions.
Janitri aims to solve the problems found at the grassroots level and provide its users with an innovative way to save lives. We are a maternal and child healthcare MedTech firm whose objective is to provide life-saving solutions for low-resource healthcare settings. Our solution is to create a monitoring device which is available to all groups of people.
Fetal mortality is found to be higher in rural areas than in urban. There are various reasons why it is so. Improper infrastructure facilities, lack of skill in staff nurses, lack of availability of doctors and facilities, and improper monitoring and treatment are just a few of the many reasons.
Image of KEYAR device
The moment that “government hospital” is mentioned, it sends a chill across the spine. Everyone is reminded of the state of government hospitals which lack hygiene and protocol adherence. Hence, most people do not want to visit government hospitals.
The continuous monitoring of pregnant mothers during end-stage labour is essential. It is helpful for many factors, one of them being stillbirth. According to my study of many stillbirth cases across villages, it was observed that the patient’s perception and the doctor’s observations of the fetus were juxtaposed. The doctor’s assessment is many times based on presumptions and these presumptions can be dangerous. This is due to a lack of labour monitoring resources.
Today, the slightly more resourceful healthcare settings use CTG (cardiotocography) machines that are monitors with attached toco and foetal doppler probes. These probes fit in a belt that is wrapped around the patient’s body. CTG has its own shortcomings in that it is not patient-friendly and it requires a skilled healthcare worker to interpret the output. It renders the patient immobile because of the belt and in times of excruciating pain, causes extreme discomfort. Moreover, in cases of obese patients, the results can be highly inaccurate.
KEYAR Wall Mount Setup figure
Keyar comes with a disposable lightweight patch that is connected to a portable handheld device. It continuously and intelligently monitors the fetal heart rate and uterine contractions and has the ability to issue colour-coded alerts in case of fetal distress. Moreover, the monitoring of electrophysiological signals is more accurate than monitoring pressure. Keyar can be connected to our kiosk-based mobile application — Daksh — which ensures timely monitoring of labour parameters and can upload the data to the cloud.
From a designer’s point of view, the major challenge is to make the device and the patch more intuitive. During our initial trials, we took various cardboard-size references as well as printed display panels in 1:1 scale models for the nurses and the patients to check their comfort levels. The aim was to make the device more feminine, ergonomic and acceptable while fitting their needs.
One of the parts of the challenge was to choose the most friendly patch pattern. Not wanting to look like a bandage, we want it to appear as an integrated part of the device and also have innate designs to indicate the correct orientation.
KEYAR carry case figure
It was made sure that the device has only enough buttons as per the need. This ensured that it looked cluster free and clear. Looking at the use case of the device, which should be sturdy to be used in villages, we went along with tactile rubber buttons and a cover to make it water-resistant.
These are just a few of the many challenges faced in the development of the product. Many rounds of iteration of feedback and its implementation will take place. The journey has already begun here at Janitri but we have miles to go before we sleep. And we believe that at the end of it, Keyar will save lives at birth.
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