Wyss Institute and MediCollector to improve bedside monitoring

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has announced that its bedside data–acquisition software will be commercialised by MediCollector

The software was developed as part of the Institute’s infant apnea prevention program.

During spells of apnea, normal breathing activity is interrupted in newborns and, if left untreated, this can result in a critical lack of oxygen that may cause developmental delays, long-lasting damage and even be life-threatening.

The data acquisition software developed at the Wyss Institute creates a complete record of critical physiological measurements at the patient bedside.

This software allows for in-depth analysis of disease-critical changes and responses to therapies in patients.

The Wyss' apnea prevention technology incorporates three components: software that continuously acquires vital signals such as breathing activity, an algorithm that analyses the stream of signals to accurately predict apneic episodes before they happen and a therapeutic mattress that is set off to vibrate and restore normal breathing as soon as an apneic episode is predicted.

The announcement follows a worldwide license agreement between Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD) and MediCollector, a recently formed startup company.

James Niemi, lead senior staff engineer in the anticipatory medical and cellular device platform at the Wyss Institute, said: "While we were developing and testing our apnea-prevention technology, it became increasingly clear that one of its components, the data-acquisition software, had great potential value for a broad range of applications in research and healthcare, and not just for newborns in the intensive care unit."

John Osborne, a senior staff engineer at the Wyss Institute, said: “In today’s hospitals, clinically-relevant measurements, such as heart rate and blood pressure, are usually only recorded at infrequent intervals. Most of the vital data generated by medical devices at the bedside is therefore lost and never recorded."

MediCollector further developed the software initially designed for the apnea prevention system, to become an independent, portable and user–friendly software application capable of communicating with a variety of patient monitors and devices typically found in hospitals, and recording the data in a plug–and-play fashion directly onto a user’s hard disk.

David Paydarfar, a Wyss Associate faculty member, said: "A wealth of data could be collected with this software and mined to better understand how critical physiological changes evolve in patients with varying conditions, as well as how they respond to treatments.

“In principle, this can lead to more effective therapies."

It has also been shown that many of the alerts constantly beeping at the hospital bedside are actually false alarms that require no clinical response, but currently, there are no effective tools for collecting and analysing alarm counts and response times.

MediCollector's software could collect this data and make it available to hospital administrations aiming to improve their staff performance and operations.

Wyss Institute founding director, Donald Ingber, said: "The MediCollector startup is another great example of how Wyss Institute researchers work collaboratively with clinicians to develop and de–risk technologies, advancing research and speeding up impact at the bedside."