#45 - Measuring oxygen with a smart earring - Shavini Fernando - OxiWear

Do you have to come close to death to invent a groundbreaking medical device?

That’s certainly not something we would wish upon every medtech entrepreneur.

But it is the story of Shavini Fernando and the connected earring OxiWear that she developed.

Shavini lives with Eisenmenger syndrome, a condition where the two ventricles of her heart communicate.

This condition dramatically increases the pressure in her pulmonary vasculature and severely limits the oxygen carried in her blood.

It’s a critical situation that has already caused her four cardiac arrests and three strokes, all of which she has survived.

Constantly reliant on supplemental oxygen to live, she dreamed of a way to measure her oxygen levels in real time while staying active.

This would allow her to anticipate sudden variations in the future and the life-threatening risks they bring.

And she made that dream come true by creating the first connected earring, FDA-certified, capable of measuring blood oxygen saturation in real time.

All in a discreet format, lighter than an AirPod, and designed for use during everyday activities, including sports.

In many ways, this innovation has transformed her own life, as well as those of hundreds of patients who have benefited from it so far.

In this episode, we revisit her story as a patient and survivor.

Shavini opens up about the immense challenges of living with Eisenmenger syndrome and developing OxiWear, sharing her vision for this technology and the potential it holds for the future of cardiorespiratory monitoring.

A touching and sincere conversation with a truly exceptional figure in the healthtech ecosystem!

You can find everything we talked about on the episode's show notes: https://www.impulsepodcast.com/episod...

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Timeline:
• 00:00:00 - Shavini’s story as a pulmonary hypertension patient surviving four cardiac arrests and three strokes
• 00:18:18 - Building the first smart earring to continuously measure oxygen levels while staying active
• 00:23:47 - The design behind OxiWear and the challenges to bring it to life
• 00:30:03 - The blessing of COVID to access funding and educate the general public about cardiorespiratory health
• 00:34:28 - Making OxiWear the ultimate cardiorespiratory device for remote patient monitoring
• 00:38:54 - The business model behind OxiWear from a medical and consumer perspective
• 00:42:15 - Overcoming the torture of creating a medical device from scratch

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Our team:
Host: Mathieu Chaffard
Digital Content Creator: Abderrahmane Ould Bay

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Website: https://www.impulsepodcast.com/