How it began
Arthur Zang, a Cameroonian engineer, conceived the device at the age of 24 and created it in 2010. He described it as the first fully touch-screen medical tablet made in Cameroon and in Africa. In 2011 he filed a patent for its combination of hardware and software with the African Intellectual Property Organization. The government of Cameroon supported him with a grant of 30,000 euros, and he founded the company Himore Medical to bring it to market.
Before it existed
Fewer than 50 cardiologists served a population of more than 23 million in Cameroon, most of them in the cities of Douala and Yaounde. Patients in remote areas faced long, costly journeys for a heart examination, which cost about 40 dollars in a region where most people lived on less than 5 dollars a day.
How it works
The system works in pairs. A nurse in a village or at a home attaches wireless electrodes that record the heart signals and transmit them to a tablet. The data is then sent to the tablet of a cardiologist, who reads the electrocardiogram and makes a diagnosis at a distance. The device was designed to resist humidity and to be easy to read and handle.
What changed first
Himore Medical set out to price a kit at about 2,200 euros, a fraction of the cost of less portable commercial equipment. Remote diagnosis spared patients the trip to the city and let each cardiologist serve more people, while creating digital records.
Where it stands today
Zang won the 2016 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation from the Royal Academy of Engineering in the United Kingdom. Himore Medical has applied the same core technology to further products, including ultrasound devices for scanning and radiology. Zang has said he hopes the work will give rise to a medical diagnostics cluster in Cameroon.
