Smartphone app reads blood oxygen levels to hospital standards

Grand Challenges Canada, Toronto
9-Mar-2014

Scale-up of LGTmedical’s Phone Oximeter™ capitalized with $2 million Canadian private-public investment; device could save lives of women and children in low-resource countries

The Phone Oximeter - phone and sensorPrivate and public investors are injecting $2 million into a Canadian mobile health innovation that offers hope of preventing thousands of deaths and improving the health of expectant mothers, newborns and children throughout the developing world.

LionsGate Technologies (LGTmedical), a Vancouver-based social enterprise, has secured its first major financial backers to scale up development of the Phone Oximeter, an app and medical sensor that turns a non-specialist, community-level health worker’s smartphone, tablet computer or laptop into an affordable and simple but sophisticated medical-grade diagnostic tool typically available in the developing world only in some hospitals.

Mr. Irfhan Rajani, CEO of Vancouver-based Coleco Investments, leads a $1 million angel investment in the device, to be matched with a $1 million grant from Grand Challenges Canada — the first such investment under a new $10 million strategic partnership between Grand Challenges Canada and the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada (DFATD).

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