On the eve of the International Yoga Day, a less than five-year-old health tech start-up company, Dozee has introduced a meditation feature to its contactless health monitoring device. The company has developed the device under the ‘Make in India’ initiative and it is senior citizen-friendly as well. Pritish Gupta, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Business Officer, Dozee, talks about the significance of newly added feature with Usha Sharma
Tell us about Dozee’s contactless health monitoring device and its key features.
Once placed under the mattress, Dozee measures heart health, respiration, sleep quality, stress levels and other clinical parameters while all they have to do is just sleep on the bed normally. Every morning, users can see their data on the app (available free of cost for both iOS and Android) that gives rich insights about their health. Not only does the device track health parameters, but also provides personalised recommendations to improve further. With the newly launched Mindfulness feature, users can experience the power of meditation by following simple guided steps and will get the first-of-its-kind quantification on how meditation has impacted their vitals and stress levels. Dozee, built closely in collaboration with top doctors and institutions such as NIMHANS, Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Science and Research, has been proven to be 98.4 per cent accurate as compared to medical devices. Dozee has proved life-saving in many cases, helping individuals to catch early signs of health deterioration arising from conditions such as heart attack, sleep apnea and tuberculosis. It is being extensively used by individuals to monitor the health of their parents remotely from the app.
What is the learning so far from the data you have gathered since the launch of the sleep monitoring device?
We built Dozee with the aim of providing the easiest of monitoring for one’s health. Since the time of launch, we have seen multiple times that health deterioration is preceded by an individual’s heartbeat and respiration showing early signs of deviation from healthy range. This enables us to catch any illness before its symptoms are visible, and have been able to save multiple lives. Another insight we had is that there are conditions like sleep apnea, from which around 15 per cent Indian adults suffer. But the issue is it has very less detection rate and Indians have even lower awareness about its incidence. Apnea is a condition in which individuals have limited (or stop) breathing multiple times during sleep. But with Dozee, users have gotten to know about Sleep Apnea from the comfort of their bed.
Tell us about the benefits of Dozee Mindfulness and how cost-effective is it?
With Dozee Mindfulness, we aim to reach out to a larger number of people who want to opt for natural remedies to treat modern-day lifestyle diseases such as hypertension. Dozee’s Mindfulness not only helps to reduce a user’s stress levels through easy and simple breathing practices, but it also quantifies the efficacy of meditation by measuring its impact on heart rate, respiration rate and stress levels. With this feature, we aim to bring the power of meditation in everyone’s home by providing easy-to-follow instructions and evidence-based personalised recommendations.
Why is there a rise of chronic health-related issue in India and how can such device help to reduce it?
Our present healthcare system is reactive where we only react on detection of a disease or a medical condition. Plus, increasing stress levels and worsening sleep quality of individuals have led to an increase in lifestyle diseases. With Dozee, our endeavour is to change that paradigm to a preventive and proactive approach. We believe Dozee will continue to evolve in the coming years and revolutionise the way health tracking is done across the world. The core idea will always be to simplify healthcare. Healthcare need not be complex and the power should be within the reach of an individual to take charge of our health.
Population of the elder age group is growing faster than the young age group. In this scenario, how can your device address emerging issues in geriatric care?
Seniors are generally at high risk of having health complications. Monitoring their health on a regular basis is hence essential. But the challenge in existing solutions was that it was too difficult for seniors to adopt to technology, and more importantly having them to use it continuously. Seeing the challenge we faced with making our parents/ grandparents adhere to healthy habits, we created Dozee. Dozee has made health monitoring as easy as sleeping on the bed. Seniors don’t have to do anything at all and that is why we have been getting health data of even 85+ years old for the last six months, without even missing a day. This simplicity in usage is coupled with our caretaker feature, which enables their kids and doctors to monitor them from anywhere in the world. Our AI engine flags case of health deterioration even before they become serious, a feature which has not only saved their lives but have saved a lot of money.
u.sharma@expressindia.com