By Editor
Nigerian robotics and embedded systems engineer, Kemisola Bolarinwa, has given the reason she invented a smart bra capable of diagnosing early-stages of breast cancer before symptoms develop.
Explaining the reason for this noble invention, she said she was moved to invent it after her frequent visits to the hospital where her aunt was before she died.
Bolarinwa made the invention known to the world in February 2022, by designing the prototype of the smart bra, which was spurred by the death of her loved one in 2017.
She said before the death of her aunt, she hardly paid any attention to breast cancer because it was just something she heard on the TV or radio.
Bolarinwa, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nextwear Technologies, the first wearable technology startup in Nigeria, said seeing other women battling breast cancer was painful, and her efforts to intensify research into the invention were increased.
She added that she spent a year and a half of intense research, before the smart bra came up in 2019.
Bolarinwa said the smart bra works to detect lumps in the breast, repurposes ultrasound technology into a small form factor, with the initiative to shrink down an ultrasound machine to a portable size where it becomes wearable.
According to Bolarinwa, this was possible with nanotechnology — a branch of science, technology, and engineering that deals with the manufacturing of tech in small sizes.
For more context, the inventor said the smart bra uses an ultrasound system called the Doppler that bounces high-frequency sound waves off the body to detect blood clots, heart defects, and blocked arteries.
She said this works differently from ultrasound machines that use sound waves to generate images of the scanned area.
She said there are still a lot of work to be achieved on the smart bra before it can be commercialized.
Bolarinwa said the smart bra still needs further development and extensive clinical trials and gave a time frame between the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 for mass production.
Bolarinwa called for more work on research for inventions to be effective in solving the problems they are designed for while lamenting there are not adequate research organisations to help.
According to her “In four months, a fintech platform will be built and be ready for the market. This is one of the reasons why few people play in the hardware or deep tech side of technology in Africa. There aren’t enough research institutes.”