Partnering with Graywards: Cardiometabolic Screening Pilots Come to Barasat

A man in his fifties comes into our centre in Barasat for something unrelated. A cough, a form that needs a signature, a relative he is accompanying. Somewhere in the conversation he mentions that he gets winded climbing the stairs to his flat. He has never had his blood pressure checked properly. He has never had an ECG. He does not think of himself as a heart patient, because nothing has happened yet. That word, yet, is the whole problem, and it is the reason we built a cardiometabolic clinic in the first place.

India carries one of the heaviest burdens of cardiovascular disease in the world, and diabetes is rising fast in exactly the semi-urban places that sit furthest from a cardiologist. Most of that risk is silent for years. High blood pressure does not hurt. Early diabetes does not hurt. A heart rhythm that quietly raises stroke risk does not announce itself. By the time a person feels something is wrong, the cheap window for prevention has often already closed.

What we are starting

Since February 2026, our cardiometabolic clinic has a new collaborator. We have begun a joint pilot with Graywards to bring preventive heart and metabolic screening closer to the families we serve in Barasat and the blocks around it.

The idea is simple. Pair the painless screening we have validated with the medical-grade cardiac equipment in the clinic, run it through trained local operators, and put it where people already come instead of asking them to travel to a city hospital they will put off visiting. A single finger test screens for anaemia, oxygen levels, diabetes risk, and heart rhythm in about two minutes. Anyone the screen flags is referred for confirmatory testing, and people we have identified can be followed over time on the SamaBeat monitoring band so a flagged case is tracked rather than lost.

In our validation study of 175 adults at this same Barasat centre, the finger sensor detected anaemia with about 89% accuracy and worked across all Indian skin tones, including the darkest. The device costs under $7 to build, and a full screen costs roughly the price of a bus ride. Those are the numbers that make a clinic like this affordable to run at the edge of the health system, and they are the reason a preventive cardiometabolic service can reach people who would never otherwise be screened.

Why a partnership, and why now

Preventive care at this price only works if the pieces fit together: the screening, the clinic, the people who run it, and the follow-up. Bringing in a partner lets us move faster on the parts we do not have to build alone, and it is the kind of shared effort the work needs. No single clinic closes a gap this size by itself.

It also fits how we think about sustainability. The screening runs off a phone, with no plug and no batteries, so it works where power is unreliable and it does not leave a trail of disposable cells behind. The cost is low enough to scale. The operators are drawn from the same communities they serve, which keeps the model rooted locally rather than dependent on specialists who appear once a year. A cardiometabolic service built this way is meant to last, and to be copyable in the next district over.

This is an early pilot, and we are treating it like one. We will share what we learn as the work matures, and we will report it the way we report everything else: honestly, with the screen flagging and clinicians diagnosing, and without letting any tool sound like more than its evidence supports.

FAQ

What is the SamaHealth–Graywards pilot? A joint effort, begun in February 2026, to run preventive cardiometabolic screening through our Barasat cardiometabolic clinic and bring it closer to families across the surrounding area.

What does the screening check for? In a single painless finger test, it screens for anaemia, oxygen levels, diabetes risk, and heart rhythm. Anyone flagged is referred for confirmatory testing and can be followed over time.

Is a screening result a diagnosis? No. The screen flags people who should see a clinician and get confirmatory testing. Clinicians and lab tests do the diagnosing; screening points the right people toward care.