Thursday, September 18, 2008
Coming to ICU Near You: Monitoring of In Vivo Drug Concentrations
Filed under: Anesthesiology
, Critical Care
, Medicine
Cranfield University and Sphere Medical out of Cambridge, England are announcing a collaboration to build a real time drug monitoring system for point-of-care applications.
From Sphere Medical:
The medical profession is increasingly discovering that in critically ill patients more frequent monitoring of the patient condition results ultimately in improved patient care. The ability to monitor trends and quickly pick up changes in the condition of the patient is a powerful aid for the clinician. Moreover, being able to monitor important parameters, such as the blood concentration of certain therapeutic drugs, frequently and in real time, without increasing the workload and cost of therapy, is expected to result in new treatment regimes in intensive care medicine and may ultimately lead to better patient outcomes.In order to address this significant clinical need and market opportunity, Sphere Medical and Cranfield University are collaborating to develop novel disposable sensors for the real-time monitoring of clinically important therapeutic drugs, which currently cannot be measured at the Point-of-Care. The device will enable clinicians to control better the delivery of the drug, detect accumulation or changes in the clearance rate of the drug, and provide early detection of faults in the drug delivery system. Providing clinical information, such as drug concentrations, in real time for intensive care patients has the potential to improve therapy, save lives and significantly reduce the cost of care.
Sphere Medical press release: Sphere Medical and Cranfield University Announce Investment by the Technology Strategy Board for the Development of Point-of-Care Sensors to Improve Drug Delivery (.pdf)
Cranfield press release: Cranfield develops drug sensor to aid intensive care clinicians
Sphere Medical technology page...
Image: Photograph of a prototype of Sphere's Proxima system integrated into an arterial line. The Proxima system will form the platform onto which the new drug sensor will be integrated.
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