Arthur Zang, from Cameroon, has designed Africa’s first tablet for medical use which is called the CardioPad. The inventor graduated in computer engineering from ENSP (Ecole Nationale Supérieure Polytechnique) based in Yaoundé (Cameroon). He is now the Founder and CEO of Himore Medical Equipment, the company that designs and sells the CardioPad.

When the inventor noticed that there were not enough cardiologists in Cameroon, especially in remote areas outside the two main cities (Yaoundé and Douala), he decided to design and manufacture the CardioPad which works as follows: the patient is connected to electrodes placed on his heart, which are connected to a module called the CardioPad Acquisition Mobile (CAM), that will, from a bluetooth interface, transmit the heart signal to the CardioPad after the signal has been digitized. One can then read the heart-beats, heart-rates, and the intervals between each beat displayed on the Cardio Pad, etc. The data are then stored in a file and sent to the cardiologist’s CardioPad from a mobile telecommunication network.

The CardioPad is actually a real application of telemedicine that the inventor is offering to Africa and the world. This is why this invention did not go unnoticed. Indeed, Arthur Zang has received several awards, including the Young Laureate Rolex Award in 2014.

Key people to ensure the success of the CardioPad are Professor Samuel Kingué, a Cameroonian cardiologist who taught Arthur everything he needed to know about the basics of biomedical engineering in cardiology, his mother, who indebted herself to fund the first prototype, and the State of Cameroon which contributed about $37,000 for the manufacture of the first 30 CardioPads.