Pulse oximeters are playing a vital role in all our lives these days. In fact, it will not be wrong to say that oximeters have become even more important than smartphones these days. Unfortunately, due to surge in demand, manufacturers have hiked prices of this vital health device. Hence, if you want to purchase a good oximeter these days, be assured to spend at least Rs 2,000 and more on it. If you can’t do that, a Kolkata based health startup has developed a mobile app to replace oximeter. Take a look.

The health startup has developed a mobile app called CarePlix Vital’s that can monitor your blood oxygen level, pulse and respiration rates. To use the mobile application, “all one needs to do is place a finger on the smartphone’s rear camera and flashlight and within seconds, the oxygen saturation (SpO2), pulse and respiration rates are displayed on the device,” reports Indian Express.

Subhabrata Paul, Co-Founder CareNow Healthcare told the publication, “People needed a pulse oximeter or similar wearables such as a smartwatch to get their vitals such as oxygen saturation and pulse rate. The underlying technology in all of this is photoplethysmography or PPG.”

“We are achieving this through our smartphone’s rear camera and flashlight. If you see the wearables and oximeters have infrared light sensors in them but for the phone, we just have the flashlight. Once we cover the rear camera and flashlight with the finger and start the scan for around 40 seconds, we are doing nothing but calculating the difference of light intensity and based on the difference we plot the PPG graph. From the graph, the SpO2 and pulse rate is derived,” he added.

The CarePlix Vital’s app is a registration based application. It is said, “application’s AI helps in determining the strength of finger placement that is, the stronger the finger placement, more accurate readings.” “In a matter of 40 seconds, the reading is displayed and with the help of an internet connection, the readings can be saved on cloud for record,” the report adds.

Talking about the idea behind CarePlix Vital’s, co-founder Monosij Sengupta notes, “the idea stemmed from the known fact of cardiovascular deaths in the country.” The clinical trial for the device was conducted earlier this year by the team in Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital Kolkata with 1200 individuals.

Paul highlights, “With the doctors in the hospital, the trials were mainly conducted in the OPD. Comparisons were made to test the accuracy and it was found that CarePlix Vital was 96 percent accurate with heart beats while 98 percent accuracy in case of oxygen saturation.”