Nigeria: Kemisola Bolarinwa wants to improve breast cancer

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Developed in 2019, Smart Bra has the potential to save the lives of millions of women across Africa. Kemisola Bolarinwa, the young Nigerian who developed the app, wants to spare other families the sad experience she had.  Nigerian tech firm Nextwear Technology is set to release a smart bra in J
Developed in 2019, Smart Bra has the potential to save the lives of millions of women across Africa. Kemisola Bolarinwa, the young Nigerian who developed the app, wants to spare other families the sad experience she had. Nigerian tech firm Nextwear Technology is set to release a smart bra in July 2022. Developed by robotics engineer Kemisola Bolarinwa (photo), the smart bra is aimed at helping fight breast cancer by improving early diagnosis. The bra is equipped with small, battery-powered ultrasound sensors. It scans the user’s breasts, synchronizes the result with a mobile app, and sends the data to a doctor for interpretation. Dubbed “Smart Bra,” the technological tool is the result of four years of research. It’s an idea that Bolarinwa came up with, in 2017, after her mother passed from breast cancer, at the University College Hospital in Ibadan. The young engineer believes the tragedy could have been prevented if the cancer was diagnosed earlier. "In her ward at the hospital, I saw women of different age groups, even teenagers, groaning in the pain of breast cancer," she said. “The smart bra must be worn on the breasts for a maximum of 30 minutes for the result to show,” she explains. For the robotics engineer, women can screen for breast cancer from the comfort of their homes. The technology can also be used by health centers–which lack the funds needed to acquire radiology and mammography equipment–or by poor communities. “We have conducted a local trial and got about 70 percent accuracy. We are working towards 95-97 percent accuracy,” Kemisola Bolarinwa informs. With 129,000 new cases diagnosed in 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that breast cancer is currently the most common type of cancer among women in sub-Saharan Africa. In the region, less than 50% of the affected survive five years after they are diagnosed, according to the WHO. Ruben Tchounyabe