Colombian Doctor Builds $30 Device to Detect Respiratory Crises Early
Colombian physician Maria Artunduaga developed a device designed to detect respiratory crises up to 15 days before doctors can diagnose them, with a projected manufacturing cost of just US$30. Artunduaga shared her story at GoFest, Colombia’s largest entrepreneurship festival, explaining how her grandmother’s death from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD, a lung condition that makes […]
A Colombian doctor, Maria Artunduaga, has created a cost-effective device to detect respiratory crises early, costing only US$30 to manufacture. The inspiration for this innovation came from her grandmother's death from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a progressive lung condition. Traditional COPD monitoring relies on subjective reports from patients, which can be unreliable.
This issue motivated Artunduaga to develop Samay, a company with 23 patents across 18 countries, including five in the United States. Her husband, an audio engineer, helped her convert common smartphone speakers and microphones into devices sensitive enough to analyze lung resonance. The resulting device, called Silvi, resembles headphones worn around the chest and sends sound waves into the lungs while detecting changes in resonance.
In pilot tests, Silvi detected distinctive acoustic signals 10 to 15 days before doctors could diagnose a respiratory crisis. The device's algorithms match the diagnostic performance of expensive plethysmography machines, with a production cost of approximately US$70. Samay has raised US$7 million in funding, aiming to launch commercially in Colombia by 2028 and gain FDA approval between 2029 and 2030.
The ultimate goal is to help one million people worldwide improve their breathing and overall health by 2030.
Written by urgent.news from Colombia One's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
