Millions of people have died as a result of contracting Covid, while over 2 billion people have contracted the disease. When we started working on this technology in April 2020, the world was in the early stages of the pandemic. The need of the hour was to be able to test suspected cases rapidly so that Covid-positive cases could be isolated and further transmission minimised. Testing capacity was still limited, and ramping it up was expensive and time consuming, particularly in rural and remote areas. It was crucial to devise a simple, non-invasive triaging method that allowed the most probable suspected cases to be prioritised for Covid testing. Our solution was developed to support health systems in isolating and treating infected patients effectively.

Many parts of the world lack adequate supplies. Testing for Covid is an expensive undertaking that requires additional infrastructure and trained medical professionals, both of which may not be available. To add to this, the gold standard Real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test has a long lead time. This has left the world’s population at risk, especially those with comorbidities. The effective utilisation of resources continues to be critical, with each new wave and Covid variant.