Singapore-based biomedical start-up AEvice Health beat out over 680 start-ups from 18 countries in a pitching competition organised by Slush, Channel NewsAsia and Techventure as part of the Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology (SWITCH) 2016. AEvice Health’s CEO and founder, Adrian Ang, and Edmund Shao, Market Strategist and Co-Founder, tell us more about the inspiration behind their product. They also share some advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.

From left: Edmund Shao, Market Strategist & Co-Founder , Associate Professor Ser Wee, Co-Founder, Adrian Ang, CEO & Founder [Image: AEvice Health]
People who developed asthma at a young age know all about the potentially debilitating effects, the difficulty in describing their condition to physicians, and the endless amounts of medicine they need to take to keep their condition under control. For CEO and founder of AEvice Health, Adrian Ang, this condition is a particularly close one to his heart – he was an asthma patient as a child.
AEvice Health, a biomedical spin-off from Nanyang Technological University, uses artificial intelligence to help asthmatic patients to monitor and better control their condition. Adrian shares that most of the company’s pioneering members and co-founders are also asthmatic patients, which strengthens their mission to develop a medical device that can help to improve the lives of asthmatic children.

The BioAsthma is used to monitor patients’ heart rate, wheezing, breathing rate and coughing frequency [Image: Edmund Shao]
Their device, BioAsthma, can be placed comfortably on the chest of children to provide objective data measurements for doctors to track their condition and avoid the over-prescription of drugs, which could spark off other medical conditions such as heart problems and depression. BioAsthma can also alert a caregiver if a child is about to suffer an asthma attack. According to Adrian, the proprietary technology was invented by Professor Ser Wee from Nanyang Technological University back in 2009, and was later successfully patented in 2015. Professor Ser Wee is also the Co-Founder & Technical Consultant for AEvice Health today. Adrian says that the device is on track to be launched within a year.