She Iys 18 Years Old And Designed The Best Method To Detect Breast Cancer

Breast cancer, which attacked her mother, inspired Julián to create an infallible method to detect this disease that claims the lives of 6,000 Mexicans a year. Know your story

The second time that Julian's mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, she knew she had to do something to save her. That same night, the 13-year-old boy investigated this condition to find out what the chances were that his mother would survive.

At that time he did not imagine that, at age 17, he would create the most effective method to detect this cancer from a wearable (wearable device), and that went on sale this month at a cost of $ 120, approximately two thousand 250 pesos.

For two years, Julián Ríos researched cancer detection methods, because his margin of error was the reason why his mother was diagnosed with the second cancer in advanced stage. "I realized the terrible fallibility of the mastographic and self-exploration method," says the young entrepreneur.

When Julián Ríos was 16 years old - together with José Antonio Torres, José Ángel Lavariega and Andrés Muriel - he founded Higia Technologies, a company dedicated to the development of the wearable EVA that, adhering to the woman's support, is able to detect breast cancer in a timely manner through biosensors.

Ríos explains that his wearable can give a diagnosis 93% accurate, that is, "is the amount of confirmed positives that we can obtain with EVA. Quite superior to what we can have with a mammogram, which is 80%. And the reliability percentage can be increased the further the investigation progresses. "

Julián's mother, Graciela Ríos, lost half a year to start treatment. "Mammography was done in Mexico and nothing was detected, until six months later he repeated it in the United States and already had tumors of five centimeters," says the young entrepreneur.

With traditional methods (self-exploration and mammography) a woman can take up to eight months to receive a diagnosis of cancer, says the still high school student, but with EVA it is possible to reduce the temporary gaps by up to 95% by requiring only 60 90 minutes a week to evaluate the thermal anomalies in the breasts of the woman, since the malformations caused by the cancer need higher blood pressure to grow, which causes a higher temperature.

However, "in Mexico there is a lack of radiologists and thermographers," Julián laments. According to 2014 figures from the National Institute of Geography and Statistics (INEGI), the country has 689 masthographs nationwide in public health institutions; 6.1% correspond to mobile units.

According to the INEGI, the mammography studies are carried out mainly in Mexico City (29.4%), Veracruz (6.7%) and Nuevo León (6.3%), where Julian is from. But with EVA, this entrepreneur wants to reach the most remote communities in the country to save the lives of 6,000 women who die each year from breast cancer and detect the 23,000 new cases reported by the Ministry of Health in time.

And it seems that he is going to get it, because recently he received an email from the Innovation Department of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) in which Higia was invited to participate in the Innovation Olympics where a couple of days ago , Julián Ríos unveiled his EVA device in a talk and in a workshop.

But the most important thing is that, at the end of this year, the IMSS will make it easier for Higia to carry out tests with EVA throughout the country with the beneficiaries, who will be its clinical base to continue investigating.