Arthur Zang

Arthur Zang studied computer engineering at the National Advanced School of Posts, Telecommunications and Information and Communication Technologies in Yaounde, Cameroon. During his final year he was struck by the story of a colleague whose father had died from a heart condition that went undiagnosed simply because there was no cardiologist near where the family lived. Cameroon, like much of the region, had only a handful of heart specialists, nearly all based in the capital, while most patients lived hours or days away by road.

Zang designed the Cardiopad, a touchscreen tablet built to run electrocardiogram tests in a village clinic and transmit the results over the mobile phone network to a cardiologist in a city, who could read the trace and send back a diagnosis. It meant a nurse with basic training, rather than a specialist, could gather the data that mattered, cutting out journeys that many rural patients simply could not afford to make.

He struggled for years to raise the money to manufacture the device at scale, eventually getting government backing after international recognition, including Africa's top engineering prize in 2014. Cardiopads have since been distributed to hospitals across Cameroon and neighbouring countries, and Zang has continued developing lower-cost medical devices aimed specifically at health systems with too few specialists and too much distance between patients and care.