In 2018, Oulu University Hospital ran a competition internally for clinical staff to identify unmet clinical needs. Out of hundreds of submissions one, faced by triage nurses in the Emergency Department, stood out. The problem was obtaining and recording accurate measurements of respiratory rate and being able to ensure the safety of unmonitored attendees in the waiting room.

In early 2019, a challenge was opened to solve this problem. Funded by the European Union as part of the inDemand program, companies were invited to compete to build a Respiratory Rate Monitor using computer vision. Relying on our previous experience in computer vision at NE Device SW, we entered and were subsequently selected as the winner. Since then we have been working in co-creation mode with clinicians and specialists, running trials in the Oulu University Hospital testbed. The collaboration culminated in Vitacam being piloted in the Oulu University Hospital Emergency Department since June 2020.

In the beginning of 2021, SGS Fimko Ltd. audited and certified the Quality Management System for Vitacam, according to the ISO 13485:2016 standard. The certification was granted for design, development, testing, production and distribution of standalone medical software for measuring vital signs. The QMS also incorporates key features from other relevant international standards including ISO 14971, IEC 62304 and IEC 62366. Full announcement on our blog here.

Soon to follow was our CE mark in May 2021 as a class IIa device, enabling Vitacam to be used for the purpose of monitoring vital signs for clinical purposes. Read more here.

In the fourth quarter of 2021, first pilot of a Vitacam mobile application was launched in an assisted living facility in Taivalkoski, Finland. The case showed promise and has been summarized in a study on our website.

In 2022, researchers from the University of Plymouth started a scientific investigation of Vitacam’s performance and accuracy against gold standard measuring devices, and a usability study of the Vitacam smartphone application, with a group of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients. The results will be published shortly.

In late 2021, Vitacam opened its UK office in beautiful Cornwall, and shortly after in November, we were accepted into Propel accelerator hosted by Yorkshire & Humber Academic Health Science Network, to support Vitacam’s entry to the UK market.

In the time since, global interest in Vitacam has grown and many new projects are in the works or ongoing. Most recently, in late 2022 and early 2023, Vitacam has teamed up with organizations such as Faizan Global Relief Fund, a leading non-profit, and Sehat Kahani, an innovative telehealth provider, to pilot Vitacam among the underprivileged, hard-to-reach communities of Pakistan.

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