Berkeley Start-upsA Little Help for a Big Epidemic
by Tamra Teig
Smart Device Offers Pocket-sized Prevention
When a medical condition gets it own World Awareness Day AND May as Awarenes Month, you know it’s a major disease. Any guess which one? Here’s a hint: maybe you’ll breathe easier.
A team of Bay area medical professionals and engineers have teamed up to create an early warning system that can alert asthma sufferers of a possible attack, before they feel any symptoms.
If you consider that uncontrolled asthma attacks account for 2 million ER visits in the US each year, and kills thousands, you’d think people would make a greater effort to prevent attacks in the first place. But one in seven US children have asthma, of 25 million Americans; many don’t know what triggers their asthma, and nobody knows why asthma is increasing so dramatically.
A big problem is, the only way asthmatics can test their lung function is with a bulky piece of equipment that nobody wants to lug around. So Blowfish Health designed a pocket-sized meter that attaches to an asthmatic’s inhaler, the one item they’re sure to keep with them.
A 2-inch plastic cylinder measures the lung’s air flow and is linked to a gamified smartphone app via blue-tooth technology. The data is instantly displayed on the phone, triggering an alert if the level is low, and users can share the results with their healthcare providers.
While it’s always a challenge to get people to opt for that ounce of prevention, especially kids, Blowfish Health is hoping that their smaller, more high-tech solution will be a game-changer.
NOTE: Founders’ Berkeley connections: Elvina Kung is pursuing her MBA at Berkeley; Merwan Benhabib holds a PhD and an MS in Engineering from UC Berkeley; Henry Leung, holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Berkeley and is a Berkeley MBA candidate, and Jeffrey Yunes is a PhD Candidate in Bioengineering at UCSF and Berkeley.
Find out more at Blowfish Health
