This medtech startup offers a simple waterproof strip to check the state of the heart

Aparna and Ravi Bhogu returned to India from the US in 2009. A graduate in Information Systems Management from Carnegie Mellon University, Aparna worked at California-based software company TIBCO while Ravi, an MBA graduate from Cornell University, was associated with Johnson & Johnson.

One morning, Ravi’s 95-year-old grandfather, a WWII veteran was brought home by strangers after he fainted during his daily walk.

After hours of tests at the hospital, the doctors came to the understanding that his heart had paused for more than three seconds, causing him to faint.

That day set the course for the couple’s entrepreneurial journey to help doctors comprehend such medical conditions better.

Although fainting and palpitations are common cases, especially among older people, they were bothered by the fact that there was no way of knowing what in a particular instance. 

“By the time patients reach a diagnostic centre to get their ECG done, there is no way for the doctors to understand the state of the heart when the person fainted or experienced unusual breathing problems. I have been experiencing these palpitations for quite some time since 2010,” Aparna tells HerStory.

Aparna says cases of unexplained fainting and palpitations may happen once in six months or a year, which most people tend to ignore and leave undiagnosed for a long time till it becomes frequent. Over time, the magnitude of the problem increases to an extent where it becomes life-threatening. 

In 2016, the duo launched Monitra Healthcare, a medtech startup that aims to find solutions for cardiac-related problems, mainly by monitoring cardiac activities.

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An eye on the heart

Based in Hyderabad, the startup’s flagship product is a water-proof monitoring device called upBeat. It is a non-invasive band-aid-like patch with biosensors that patients can wear on their chest and record their heart rhythms in real-time. The data is then recorded onto a cloud, run through analytics, and manually assessed by the startup’s technicians before a report is generated to the doctor or patients.

From a six-year-old child to a 96-year-old patient, the device has monitored more than 800 patients and recorded over 300 million-plus heartbeats in more than 70,000 hours of monitoring. 

Aparna vouches for its comfort and ease of use and says it has not interfered with young children’s active schedule nor with the skin texture of people in their 90s. It has signed a memorandum of understanding with a Silicon Valley-based venture, DuPont to source its materials and design for comfort.

Aparna shares an instance where a mother from Kolkata, who had undergone heart surgery in Hyderabad and was living with her daughter in the city, had fainted in the bathroom one morning.

Three days after being prescribed the device, she fainted again at 5 am. The team received a query, analysed it, and sent the data to the doctor, and identified that a wire on a pacemaker (a battery-operated device responsible to help the heartbeat) inserted in one of the heart's chambers, had become loose. 

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Navigating the market

As a medical device determining sensitive heart conditions, the team at Monitra Healthcare tested to make sure it performs accurately and at par with existing standards of diagnostic technologies like ECG. Establishing this has helped gain doctors and major hospitals on board. 

The startup operates on the dual model of B2B through signed contracts with hospitals as a unit, and B2B2C where individual doctors prescribe it to patients in need of monitoring and the startup charges them directly based on the duration of monitoring.

Doctors usually prescribe for a couple of days to a month or more depending on the patient’s present condition and history. Neurologists have shown interest in the product to understand cases of strokes better.

Incubated at T-Hub, the startup received a Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) and SPARSH grants from Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC). It also secured a grant from the United States–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) as well.