JioVio Uses Tech For Good Health

Senthilkumar Murugesan had the passion and determination to bring his company focused on providing healthier pregnancies through new technology to fruition, but he needed to get the word out about his product. Enter Yale’s Sustainable Health Initiative.

“I applied as soon as I saw the SHI opportunity,” said Murugesan. “The program was not only going to offer us a global platform on which to tell our story but also would provide us with a better understanding of how to work with different cultures and adjust our approach to different markets.”

Murugesan is the co-founder and CEO of JioVio HealthCare, a Singapore-based MedTech international company focused on providing a healthy pregnancy, infant care, and parenting experience through innovation in technology. The company created Savemom, a jewelry-inspired battery-run wearable device that collects various physiological signals from the expectant mother such as blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate, and glucose. The device also tracks sleep and has a weighing scale integrated with the application to monitor the steady rise in weight throughout the pregnancy.

Murugesan said he was inspired to create JioVio when he saw how many health departments in his native India are short-staffed and how workers are overextended, resulting in rural women being nearly three times as likely to die from complications during pregnancy or childbirth as women in more urban areas. Many of these women are wary of the health care system and cannot afford to make frequent visits to far-off hospitals. With the Savemom device, all the data collected is uploaded in the cloud for doctors to view remotely and quickly become aware if any woman’s risk assessment is negative, so that preventive measures may be taken at the right time.

Murugesan credits the mentors at Yale School of Public Health for helping the JioVio team get its product in front of the right audiences and guiding them on how to present their story.

“The SHI program taught us how to organize and share our ideas,” he said. “We needed to learn how to present our story at a global level which meant learning different cultures and what type of technology communities would use.”

“Gaining a better understanding of our audience helped us create a product of value to them, one they would want to use,” he added.

Through collaborations with local government agencies, hospitals, and non-governmental organizations, Savemom has successfully helped more than 3,600 mothers across India have healthy pregnancies and babies by ensuring that collected vital information is sent to doctors in real time for feedback.