Corventis, Inc.,a San Jose, CA developer, has just announced that its non-invasive patient monitoring system is now available for clinical use in and outside of the United States. A device, recently approved by the FDA, aims to check the status of heart failure patients based on a set of measurable criteria, such as “temperature, heart and respiration rates, levels of physical activity, body position, and body-fluid levels using sensors that include an accelerometer and an impedance monitor,” reports MIT Tech Review. The company’s technology includes the wireless PiiX wearable monitor (pictured) and a mobile phone based device for transmitting the data to a hosted application that clinicians have access to.
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A 15-centimeter wireless sensor, recently approved by the FDA, holds the promise of reducing hospitalizations by allowing automated early detection of heart failure. The noninvasive device, which costs a few hundred dollars and adheres to a patient’s chest, monitors indicators of heart health–including heart and respiration rates, levels of patient activity, and even the accumulation of body fluid–as patients go about their daily lives.
While some technologies exist that can do much of the same job, they are bulky and impractical or must be surgically implanted. “This is much more unobtrusive in people’s daily lives,” says Eric Topol, a cardiologist who directs the Scripps Translational Science Institute, a medical research center in La Jolla, CA.
In patients with heart disease, fluid buildup in the lungs leads to shortness of breath, places pressure on pulmonary arteries, and threatens to cause heart failure, requiring hospitalization to remove fluid. However, if the disease is caught early, before the patient feels symptoms, hospitalization can be avoided by giving the patient diuretics. Topol says that the Corventis device is unique in including an impedance detector, which measures the buildup of body fluid through an indirect electrical measurement. The buildup of body fluid serves as a proxy for the buildup of fluid in the lungs.
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