Sensiotec, an Atlanta-based startup that's developing contactless remote patient monitoring technology, raised $1 million from investor George Harris. Harris, a former leveraged buyout specialist introduced to the company by chief medical officer Dr. Neal Templeton, will also join the company's board, CEO Robert Arkin told MobiHealthNews in an email.
The round brings Sensiotec's total funding to $7 million, according to the company. The money will go toward developing clinical trials of its contactless monitoring technology at Atlanta Medical Center and Children's Health of Atlanta.
"We're hard at work on improving our algorithms, improving the device significantly to pick up more heart rate and more respiratory rate information," Arkin told MobiHealthNews.
Sensiotec's Virtual Medical Assistant technology, which is not yet commercially available, uses ultra-wide band (UWB), a high-frequency, low power radar technology that monitors heart and respiration rates without the need to touch the patient at all, and transmits the data to a variety of recipients -- the technology has an open API and the company stresses interoperability. The company says it can integrate data from other third-party monitoring devices, such as Bluetooth-enabled pulse oximeters, blood pressure monitors, and weight scales.
"The VMA measures heart and respiration rates and movement, providing critical 'spot' and 'trend' data to a nurse’s station, tablet, cell phone or pager, without the need for electrodes that touch the patient directly or indirectly or pads that require contact with a mattress or other surface," Arkin said in an email.
Sensiotec's UWB monitoring technology, which was developed by Canadian company Wireless 2000, received FDA 510(k) clearance as a Class 2 device in 2009.
The company is one of many that compares its technology, with its noninvasive, no contact scanning, to Star Trek's fictional tricorder. Arkin said the company has not yet decided whether to enter the competition for the Tricorder X Prize. Sensiotec may have more claim to Star Trek cred than others however, since the company has an actual astronaut, Dr. Bernard Harris, as chairman of its advisory board.
