Home health monitoring has taken off in recent years as large companies like Apple and Amazon have attested, so Health Sciences North is partnering with two local companies to expand the availability of monitoring devices.
Health Sciences North communication director Jason Turnbull says Flosonics Medical and Verv Technology are working on the inventions out of the hospital’s research facility on Walford Road.
Turnbull says Flosonics Medical, a biotech company, has invented the Flopatch, a wireless and wearable sensor that uses ultrasound to monitor vital signs for critically ill patients.
Turnball adds the second company, Verv Technology is working on an in-home health monitoring device, which will feature a number of different health indicators by using a drop of blood and a Smartphone.
The FloPatch should be available within the next few months while Verv Technology is hoping to bring the device to market within the next two to three years.
The Flopatch collects information on heart rate, pulse, blood flow and fluid levels of patients and then transfers that information to a smartphone app so that the patient can be monitored in real-time from anywhere on the planet.
“Imagine a patient who needed to be airlifted from a remote community on the James Bay Coast. If the nursing station in that community has the Flopatch, a critical care physician in Sudbury could be monitoring that patient as the helicopter is in transit. The doctor could be telling staff to do different things to help keep the patient stable and prevent their heart from stopping,” says Joe Eibl, CEO and co-founder of Flosonics Medical.
Verv Technology is a Sudbury start-up that’s developing breakthrough technology in-home health monitoring.
While home monitoring devices for diabetes and high blood pressure have been around for many years, Verv’s technology is a game-changer as it can do something that no other portable device can do – separate plasma from the blood sample using a very simple and inexpensive device.
“No more waiting in doctors’ offices, no more driving to the lab, or big needles drawing multiple vials of blood and waiting days for results,” says Verv President Jeff Sutton. “Our platform allows for multiple tests on one disposable cartridge that collects the blood and performs analysis that can be read within 15 minutes, all controlled by your smartphone.”
Partnering with Flosonics and Verv is important for HSN and HSNRI as the organizations strengthen their academic and research impact improve health outcomes for patients of Northeastern Ontario.
