Sathya Elumalai was finding it hard to manage his mother's health after she was diagnosed with four chronic conditions. Rather than guess her health status for the day, he decided to co-found Aidar Health to get that information directly and reliably.

In founding Aidar, Elumalai also created and launched MouthLab, a device it claims tracks 10 key health parameters in under a minute. The company was part of the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022.

“For a car you have this check engine light that helps you to say, now it's time for you to take your car [to a] dealer or mechanic to get it fixed. Similarly, our device acts as a way to monitor your health every day, to provide a more holistic view of an individual's health,” Elumalai said. “So if there [are] any abnormalities, or any changes in that health from their baseline, the device can alert and inform the user about those changes, and what can they do to help manage their health. Or use the same data to communicate with their physician or caregivers to better assess the health condition or changes or deviations in health at the very early stage.”

Image Credits: Aidar Health

A user holds the iPhone-sized device and puts their mouth on the mouthpiece, breathes normally and positions their hands on the device as instructed. The company claims MouthLab will record temperature, respiration rate, pulse rate, blood pressure, respiration pattern, heart rate, heart rate variability, ECG, spirometry (i.e., lung function) and oxygen saturation. Data is collected from sensors across the device from saliva, breathing, hand pulse and lips to read the body’s parameters.

In a world where digital and remote care has become the new norm thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians have often had to go off what their patients say, which is a good starting point but not sufficient for long-term care. Although tests and labs are done eventually, there hasn’t been an efficient way to track a patient's vitals at home.