Around 30 lakh (3 million) people died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in 2019, making it the third largest cause of mortality glob-
A significant portion of these cases also originate in undeveloped, isolated regions with poor access to medical treatment. Some of the causes for the prolonged time it takes to diagnose respiratory illnesses are mostly related to a lack of knowledge and societal barriers to seeing a doctor or other health professional. As pulmonary function tests cannot be performed at primary care level centres due to a lack of staff competence and lab resources, screening for respiratory disorders is an unmet need.
The gold standard for diagnosing COPD is spirometry. However, it is highly expensive and requires a trained technician to perform a test. As a result, there has been a gap in the market for doing a respiratory assessment in a primary health centre.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has given Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, and other institutions a research initiative to address this problem. One of the project consultants, Narayan Rao Sripada, met several doctors while working on it and came to understand the gravity of the issue.
The discussion between a professor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Salcit founder Narayana Rao Sripada five years ago laid the groundwork for this innovation. The necessity for real-time, non-invasive devices to check and evaluate lung health in the medical field became apparent to him at that point. He was motivated to consider creating Swaasa by it.
Venkat Yechuri, Narayana Rao Sripada, and Manmohan Jain founded Salcit Technologies in 2017 after realising the need for an AI-based sound analysis solution that primarily addresses lung health.
This inspired the team to concentrate on developing Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), which is totally independent of tools, skilled labour, consumables, etc. They understood that any technology or instrument that enabled screening and could determine whether the issue was caused by the lung parenchyma or pleura would be a highly valuable value proposition for the best course of action.
Swaasa contributes to closing the accessibility and symptom-ignorance gaps for the group that is most in need. To detect any underlying respiratory conditions such as TB, asthma, pneumonia, interstitial lung disease, and lung cancer, it employs cough as a biomarker. Even a cough that is forced can reveal these problems. A health worker’s anxiety about taking a sample in an area where the virus is more widespread is further diminished by its self-serve model, which allows users to complete assessments on their smartphones. Customers can also choose the SMS-based option, in which case they will receive an SMS with a web link. Customers simply need to click the link in their browser and record the sound of their cough.
he goal of Swaasa is to provide respiratory care that is not constrained by space, time, resources, or technicians. It incorporates spirometry functionality by analysing cough sounds using audiometric technology to determine danger levels.
Making portable and affordable spirometers, digital stethoscopes, etc. for lung assessment is not what Swaasa incrementally innovates. The fundamental component of the technology is an audiometric analysis of cough (and/or lung) sounds using a patented Machine Learning (ML) algorithm that is housed in the cloud-based Swaasa.AI engine.
With the aid of cough sounds, Swaasa is designed to conduct precise assessments of lung health. Through the use of Audiometric Analysis, Swaasa, a platform powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, decodes information gleaned from cough sounds and other crucial data to offer insights into the health of the lungs.
Since it can recognise distinctive coughing patterns, its mechanism is dependable and it can be integrated into clinical workflow, making it a disruptive breakthrough. By eliminating the need for any hardware (a spirometer), Swaasa reduces the capital from around one lakh rupees to zero. The reduction in operational expenses is even more abrupt, decreasing from around $1,000 per assessment (direct cost only) to $1 each assessment (at scale).
Salcit is dedicated to providing the best respiratory care possible to underprivileged populations all throughout the world, not only in India. Nearly 300,000 assessments have been completed using Swaasa to date. At the subcenter level, it has increased the rate of respiratory case detection.
Swaasa analyses cough sounds along with other data, such as temperature, oxygen saturation, and symptoms, to determine how well the lungs are functioning. Swaasa promises to replace spirometry and improve access to and costeffectiveness of pulmonary healthcare.
The solution is now being implemented through B2B and B2G partnerships. For a comprehensive evaluation of lung health, the Piramal Swasthya and Apollo hospitals use the Swaasa app. To implement the solution in Africa, the company has inked an MoU with Smart Africa, an association of 30 African nations with 70 crore (more than 700 million) people.
