It was a school competition to build a radio that set Kemisola Bolarinwa on her path to becoming the inventor of a bra that can detect cancer. “My physics teacher brought the idea of coming up with a radio transmitter and a receiver. I started working on it with one of my classmates,” she says.
“We went for the competition, and we came second out of the many competitors from other schools. That was when I discovered myself to be an innovator – that was how the passion started.”
Now a robotics entrepreneur, Bolarinwa set up Nextwear Technology in the Nigerian capital, Abuja. The company will soon launch what is believed to be the first trial of a wearable, battery-operated device to detect breast cancer – the Smart Bra.
The human toll of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is huge and rising. These illnesses end the lives of approximately 41 million of the 56 million people who die every year – and three quarters of them are in the developing world.
NCDs are simply that; unlike, say, a virus, you can’t catch them. Instead, they are caused by a combination of genetic, physiological, environmental and behavioural factors. The main types are cancers, chronic respiratory illnesses, diabetes and cardiovascular disease – heart attacks and stroke. Approximately 80% are preventable, and all are on the rise, spreading inexorably around the world as ageing populations and lifestyles pushed by economic growth and urbanisation make being unhealthy a global phenomenon.
NCDs, once seen as illnesses of the wealthy, now have a grip on the poor. Disease, disability and death are perfectly designed to create and widen inequality – and being poor makes it less likely you will be diagnosed accurately or treated.
Investment in tackling these common and chronic conditions that kill 71% of us is incredibly low, while the cost to families, economies and communities is staggeringly high.
In low-income countries NCDs – typically slow and debilitating illnesses – are seeing a fraction of the money needed being invested or donated. Attention remains focused on the threats from communicable diseases, yet cancer death rates have long sped past the death toll from malaria, TB and HIV/Aids combined.
'A common condition' is a Guardian series reporting on NCDs in the developing world: their prevalence, the solutions, the causes and consequences, telling the stories of people living with these illnesses.
Tracy McVeigh, editor
Bolarinwa has also developed a GPS necklace that helps track the wearer’s location – launched in 2020 when there were “overwhelming cases of kidnapping across Nigeria” – and a watch that monitors body temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar and oxygen, heart and breathing rate.
Sexism in the sector was obvious from her days studying electrical engineering at the University of Ado-Ekiti, she says.
“I noticed the bias back in college during practical workshops, where male students would ask female students in their group to just sit down and take records while they do the main work,” she says.
“We were not allowed even to do electrical connections,” she says. “But I insisted, and participated, and this helped me find my bearings and break into the male-dominated sector.”
Bolarinwa launched her company in 2019, the year her aunt died of breast cancer, which “triggered palpable fear” in her and inspired the Smart Bra.
An oncologist told Bolarinwa that if it had been detected earlier, her aunt could have survived.
“When I ventured into wearable technology in 2019, the first thing I had in mind was to develop a device that could detect breast cancer in its early stage,” she says.
Her prototype, which uses ultrasound to detect possible tumours in 30 minutes, will undergo a large-scale trial in Nigeria this year. Similar technology is being developed in Switzerland and Mexico.
Women can wear the device at home and get the results through an app on their phone. The device can transmit the results to a doctor if follow-up treatment is required.
Breast cancer is the most common type of the disease in Nigeria, and also has the highest number of deaths. More than 28,000 Nigerian women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020 and more than half died from the disease. In a country of more than 223 million people, Nigeria has fewer than 90 oncologists for every 100,000 cancer patients.
For those who get a diagnosis, the costs of radiotherapy and chemotherapy can be prohibitive. Each round costs between 600,000 and 1.5m naira (£600-£1,500) – and at least three sessions are usually required for early-stage breast cancer. Cancer drugs can cost about 300,000 naira a month – 10 times the minimum monthly wage in Nigeria.
Bolarinwa, who is also president of Women in ICT, a not-for-profit organisation trying to increase female representation in tech industries, says: “I strongly believe that this device would be a revolutionary approach to the prevention of breast cancer globally, not only in Nigeria, because of the technology my team and I are bringing in.
“The aim is to reduce the number of women dying from breast cancer by 80%, in line with the 2030 sustainable development agenda, using our wearable device,” she adds.
The project has received funding from the Nigerian government and Standard Chartered bank. Bolarinwa would like to see the product on sale and also made available for free to women who cannot afford to buy one.
Dr Adamu Alhassan Umar, president of the Nigerian Cancer Society, hopes Bolarinwa’s design gets “the attention that it deserves, especially among policymakers. Most of the sophisticated screening equipment is in the urban centres, while the rural areas are left to suffer. So, as a result, most of these cancers will not be discovered at an early stage.”
Bolarinwa wants her work to inspire younger women, who made up an estimated 22% of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) graduates in Nigeria last year. “There’s a need for me to go into advocacy for young women and girls because we need inclusion of women in [the] tech space and Stem-related fields,” she says.
