Accurate diagnosis of breathing counts would support health workers in administering the antibiotics that children with pneumonia need, potentially preventing many of the deaths caused by pneumonia each year. Additionally, accurate diagnosis could help rationalize the use of antibiotics, by potentially reducing unnecessary costs and antibiotics overuse rates, which contributes to the rise of drug-resistant diseases.
“The Philips Children’s Automated Respiration Monitor will be a game changer in diagnosing and treating pneumonia,” said Salim Sadruddin, Senior Child Health Advisor at NGO, Save the Children. “If we can remove the subjectivity associated with health workers counting breaths, we can improve the quality of treatment and help improve patient outcomes.”
Global child health organizations like UNICEF have made pneumonia a key area of focus in their effort to reduce child mortality in underdeveloped countries throughout the world. UNICEF’s Supply Chain division’s product innovation project called ARIDA6, launched a call for technology to industry in 2011, with the aim to achieve innovation in this space, followed by the publication of a Target Product Profile (TPP)7 for automated respiration monitoring in November of 2014.
“As a leading health technology company, Philips’ vision is to improve people’s lives through meaningful innovation”, said JJ van Dongen, CEO Philips Africa. “Today, the population growth is highest in emerging markets like Africa and South East Asia, and innovation can help drive sustainable solutions that bridge the divide between the privileged and lesser privileged sections of society to improve the quality of life at all levels.“
The development of the Philips Children’s Automated Respiration Monitor has been a result of collaboration between the Philips Africa Innovation Hub located in Nairobi, Kenya, the Philips Research team in Eindhoven, The Netherlands and the Philips Innovation Campus in Bangalore, India. Field testing on the Children’s Automated Respiration Monitor was conducted in East Africa and India and improvements in design and technology incorporated on the basis of feedback from local community health workers and clinical officers in these low-resource settings.
The Philips Children’s Automated Respiration Monitor is pending CE-marking and is expected to become commercially available from the second quarter of 2016.