Neopenda

Neopenda is a Chicago-based medical technology company that designs affordable medical equipment for resource-limited healthcare settings. Its flagship product, neoGuard, is a wearable vital signs monitor that continuously tracks pulse rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen saturation and temperature in critically ill newborns and streams the data wirelessly from multiple infants to a single tablet. The company was founded by biomedical engineers Sona Shah and Teresa Cauvel, who met as graduate students at Columbia University, and has deployed and studied the device in hospitals in East Africa.

Rather than adapting conventional hospital monitors, Neopenda engineers its devices around the constraints of low-resource facilities — unstable power, limited internet, tight space and scarce spare parts — at a price point those hospitals can afford.