CAELI - Breathe Freely

What it does

Caeli is an Anti-Pollution mask designed for Asthmatic and COPD patients living in poor air quality regions, it provides continuous flow of pure air and also includes a portable Drug-Nebulizer for patients to take medication on the go.

Your inspiration

Our team lives in Delhi, which is among the Top 3 poorest air quality cities in the world. We have witnessed days when people were confined to their houses just because the air was too harmful. Red alert for air pollution is common during "Diwali" (festival of lights and crackers) and although air pollution is affecting everybody's health equally but the one who suffers the most are the Respiratory Patients. On days when air quality drops too much, news of Asthma patients dying in hospitals is all over the TV. We wanted to build something for these patients to help them stay healthy in poor air quality and improving their quality of life

How it works

Caeli includes a 6 Layer filter (Particulate, Carbon, HEPA) and a centrifugal fan to provide continuous flow of pure air and keep cool inside. Using inbuilt AQI sensors it monitors air quality of the surroundings 24/7 and sends that data to a smartphone application via Bluetooth connection. The data is further pushed to the cloud for Machine Learning processing. This crowd sourced air quality data from all active devices is used to implement a bunch of features for the patients (Healthy Route, Pollution forecast, Live pollution) and can also be used by government and organizations fighting against air pollution to plan and find air pollution sources. Caeli also comes with a palm size drug nebulizer which can be directly connected to the mask by the user to take medication whenever required. The drug nebulizer is built on silent mesh technology and patients can schedule their medicine timings directly from the caeli app for automatic drug delivery.

Design process

Caeli was started as an University project and later we decided to build it for the asthmatic patients. Through the development cycle we focused on achieving 3 main goals - Low profile design, user friendly and drug delivery. We started out with an initial prototype by 3D print cases and off the shelf components. We researched heavily on reducing the size of drug nebulizer and finding better materials that can be used. To get the user feedback and expert opinions we also partnered with several hospitals around the city. The project went though 3 prototype iterations over the course of 6 months each with a slightly better design and functionality incorporating valuable suggestion from the user feedback. For the final product we have used medical grade 3D printing material, silent mesh technology and custom PCBs. We also brought in creative ideas to make anti-pollution mask a likable thing and increase it's usability with features never seen in an Ant-pollution mask. Throughout the design process of Caeli, user feedback and expert evaluation were given primary importance. Our primary focus during the entire development was to build a mask that can be used as a modern gadget and does not give the typical medical equipment feel.

How it is different

Caeli is the most advance anti-pollution mask ever built. It provides features that makes it stand out in the crowd 1) Caeli app uses cognitive services to scan user's face structures and find out the best fitment for them to ensure utmost comfort for all day use 2) Users can also invoke their favorite Virtual Assistant (Google, Siri, Alexa) from the caeli mask in a single tap to attend make calls without taking off the mask 3) With a 6 Layer filter and a centrifugal fan, it maintains continuous flow of pure air, filtering even the most dangerous 2.5pm particles with great efficiency 4) Caeli comes with the world's smallest nebulizer, patients can also schedule their medicine timings directly from the caeli app to get automatic drug delivery or haptic reminders 5) In order to increase popularity and adoption of an Anti-Pollution mask we have introduced grill customization for people to add personal touch to their devices

Future plans

The project was started back in August 2018 and since then there has been many developments and the project has been recognized by many organizations. Caeli is completed with the Development phase and has been submitted for consumer electronics and medical device certifications to the appropriate certification bodies . A provisional patent has also been taken for the project. We are in association with several leading hospital chains in India for research and sales. For the next step we are actively looking for funding opportunities to make it to the production so, that patients can be benefited with this device.

Awards

Microsoft Imagine Cup 2019 - World Championship 2nd Place Infosys Foundation Aarohan Awards 2019 - Silver Prize Winner Microsoft Imagine Cup 2019 - ASIA Regionals Winner