On World Pneumonia Day, Royal Philips of Netherlands announced the release of a Children’s Automated Respiration Monitor, aimed to help improve the diagnosis and treatment of pneumonia in low-resource countries, potentially preventing many of the 935,000 childhood deaths caused by pneumonia each year reports FierceMedicalDevices.
This chest strap monitor converts movements that are detected by accelerometers into an accurate breath count using specific algorithms. While the device will enable caregivers to decide which patients are in immediate need of medical intervention for pneumonia, it will not be able to detect the specific pathogen causing the disease.
The Philips monitor was developed as part of collaboration between its corporate Innovation Hubs around the world including Nairobi, Kenya; Eindhoven, the Netherlands; and Bangalore, India.
