One could say he took the drama of a family member to heart and got to work. The team around Francisco Neto Nogueira, co-founder and CEO of Glooma, quickly came up with the idea for SenseGlove: a smart glove that enables early detection of breast cancer through a home palpation examination.
All thanks to a few sensors that monitor and detect any abnormalities through tissue analysis. The examination can be performed in three minutes and the results are presented in the application in a simple and easy-to-interpret way.
If an abnormal change is detected, the application recommends a screening appointment and sends notifications when a new examination is due, while also storing the entire history.
The prototype was created by Glooma, a spin-off from NOVA University Lisbon, which was the big winner of the 2024 edition of the Startup Competition – a competition promoted by the NOVA Impact office – and will represent the institution in Stage Two, the next stage of the competition, in Berlin on 30 and 31 October. Interestingly, this is the same day as National Breast Cancer Prevention Day.
Stage Two is a competition in which several spin-offs representing European universities present themselves to investors in order to raise funds that will allow them to reach the market.
For now, SenseGlove has been already in trials in several hospitals across the country and, if all goes according to planned, expects to have the glove on the market by 2026.