Engineer Bolarinwa Kemisola works on the development of the smart bra device during the prototyping of the hardware. (Photo courtesy of Bolarinwa Kemisola)
Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer for women in sub-Saharan Africa, with 129,000 new cases diagnosed in 2020, according to the World Health Organization. In Nigeria, it is the leading cause of cancer death among women. In 2020, more than 28,000 Nigerian women were diagnosed with breast cancer, and more than 14,000 died from the disease. Contributing to the mortality rate is the staggering lack of health insurance among approximately 95 percent of the population. The country has fewer than 90 clinical oncologists to provide cancer treatment for more than 100,000 patients.
The paucity of cancer care corresponds to a broader lack of awareness in Nigerian culture about breast cancer. “Women rarely come out for screening, even on World Cancer Day when NGOs offer free screenings,” says Bolarinwa Kemisola, an Abuja-based robotics engineer and founder of the fashion technology company Next Wear Technology (NWT).
In February 2022, Kemisola developed a smart bra device to detect breast cancer in its early stages. Instead of visiting a clinic or hospital, women can wear the bra to run a mammogram test in the privacy of their own home.
“I thought that we need a wearable device that can help us address the issue of women not self-examining their breasts for a cancer lump and to reduce the cost, time, and energy it takes to schedule and get a mammogram,” Kemisola explains.
The smart bra must be worn for at least 30 minutes to complete a scan, which can determine if tumors are benign or malignant. People can use the device’s digital app to access their results and also, if necessary, to search for and schedule virtual or in-person appointments with nearby doctors.
Kemisola funded the research and development of the device with approximately $25,000 of her own money. She has also received financial support from Standard Chartered Bank and Nigeria’s Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, in addition to donations from oncology and pathology doctors.
The device—which will be named when it hits the commercial market—is still in the prototype stage and is one of the first of its kind in the world.
Kemisola and her NWT colleague Erinfolami Joseph, an AI and machine-learning robotics engineer, conducted a local trial of the device with 50 volunteers this spring. The device achieved 86 percent accuracy. Joseph says they are now working on boosting its accuracy to at least 95 percent before going to market.
The device “felt like a normal bra,” says Cynthia Agbo, a 26-year-old volunteer in the trial. “While I had it on, a wavelength-like display popped up on the laptop screen, and … the result came after 7 minutes.”
In November, NWT will conduct a larger clinical trial of 2,000 women-of-color volunteers. Kemisola believes the scope of the trial will build trust with the general public and specifically with this demographic—as women of color have a higher rate of breast cancer diagnosis and death than white women—and create visibility for the device and breast cancer.
Pending the trial’s results and additional funding, Kemisola plans to introduce the device to the market—where it will compete with the world’s first smart bra, the OMbra, created by Canadian startup OMsignal in 2016, in addition to similar devices designed by scientists in Switzerland and Mexico.
While Kemisola is reluctant to share the technology that distinguishes her device from others, she claims that it “utilize[s] technologies that have not been used anywhere in the world.”
Kemisola says NWT needs “$96,000 to finalize the functional prototype” and to “carry out clinical trials and complete [the device’s] operating system.”
NWT plans to have a minimum viable product ready for a target audience of women between the ages of 18 and 65, people with a genetic predisposition, and those already diagnosed with breast cancer, to monitor their condition. This will enable NWT to test the market—at the price of $75 per bra—to receive feedback before embarking on full production.
NWT intends to make the bra available for purchase online by early 2023. They will also partner with NGOs and governments to make the device accessible to “the average African woman, who lives on less than $5 per day.” The goal, she says, “is to get at least 50 units of the bra deployed to every health center [across Africa] where women who cannot afford it can have access to it and get screened.”
Read more stories by Valentine Benjamin.