UCLA announced today that MediSens Wireless, a wireless healthcare start-up, has obtained an exclusive license from UCLA on patented technology developed by UCLA professor Majid Sarrafzadeh and his team. (Sarrafzadeh is also a founder of MediSense.) MediSens plans to use the real-time wireless monitoring technology to develop body monitoring systems that help diabetic patients with peripheral neuropathy, which causes a loss of sensation in the foot, and other patients with health issues that affect their balance.

UCLA will receive royalties from products developed by MediSens, and MediSens has rented lab space at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), which gives it access to the Institute's core lab facilities for research and development. This incubator program at UCLA "offers shared, flexible lab space dedicated to housing eight to 10 early-stage incubation projects for short periods of time," the university said in a statement.

"We hope that this technology will help to reduce the large number of injuries caused by diabetic foot ulcers and by falls each year, both in hospital rehabilitation departments and in at-home care environments," Sarrafzadeh stated.

Sarrafzadeh is also a co-director of the Wireless Health Institute (WHI) at UCLA, which is dedicated to improving the timeliness and reach of health care through the development and application of wireless, network-enabled technologies integrated with current and next-generation medical enterprise computing. The WHI is under the executive direction of Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a UCLA visiting professor of bioengineering and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics, whom mobihealthnews interviewed soon after his recent appointment at WHI.

For more, read this press release about UCLA and MediSens