Moyeen Ahmad

Biography:

My close relative unexpectedly developed breathing difficulties while in hospital and it was difficult for me to identify when it was dangerous. I felt foolish and at fault, for not raising an alarm. I later learned there’s generally a lack of tools for measuring breathing and started to develop Vitacam, which is now a CE marked medical device.

Vitacam measures a patient’s vital physiological signs, from a video clip or live stream of the patient, through computer vision, motion analysis techniques and remote photoplethysmography (rPPG). Trends in these vital signs can give an early warning of deterioration.

But rPPG solutions are known to perform less reliably on dark skin and we put further effort for it to work.
We believe medical devices must work regardless of the amount of melanin or gender and be accessible. But diversity is often treated as a tickbox and this is reflected in the smaller participation of minorities in clinical studies.

To get round this, Vitacam is the product of a diverse team. This is important we want as many people as possible to identify deterioration and be monitored safely.
Our ambition is to measure more vital physiological parameters reliably and accurately and are now working on measuring oxygen saturation – where there are known challenges in some pulse oximeters.

Five years on from when we started, digital pathways are more commonplace. Vitacam can be easily integrated to a remote monitoring pathway or virtual ward, supporting early discharge from hospital.