Medical Devices For COVID-19: Northwestern University Develops New Sticker-Like Device That Offers Continuous Monitoring for COVID-19

Medical Devices For COVID-19: Northwestern University Researchers together with Shirley Ryan AbilityLab have developed a new wearable medical device for continuous monitoring of COVID -19 patients after having conducted a study of existing consumer devices and other medical device wearables and found limitations in these devices.


Credit: Northwestern University
 
The new extremely sticker like device which is a clinical-grade wearable streams symptom data to physicians.
 
The new stamp-sized device comprises a suite of clinical-grade sensors, including temperature and pulse oximetry.
 
The medical device sits at the base of the throat to pick up vibratory signatures of breathing, coughing, swallowing.
 
The researchers have tested it on more than 50 physicians, rehabilitation specialists and patients at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Northwestern Memorial Hospital
 
The research findings were published in the journal: Science Advances (a journal of American Medical Association) https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/06/30/sciadv.abd4794
 
Dr John A. Rogers, from Northwestern University and corresponding author of the research study and the device development team told Thailand Medical News, “We are already seeing clear vital sign differences collected by the sensor between patients with COVID-19 and healthy-matched controls.”
 
The research team has partnered with BARDA to continue developing and deploying the device to help fight the pandemic.


A pair of sensors sit on the base of the throat and wrap around a finger to
monitor respiratory health and pulse oximetry. Credit: Northwestern University
 
While it might be tempting to rely on your fitness tracker to catch early signs of COVID-19, Northwestern University researchers caution that consumer wearables are not sophisticated enough to monitor the complicated illness.
 
The research team, led by bioelectronics pioneer Dr Rogers, differentiate between popular consumer electronics and clinical-grade monitoring systems.
 
Dr Rogers co-authored the perspective with Dr Shuai Xu, a Northwestern Medicine dermatologist, and Hyoyoung Jeong, a postdoctoral fellow in the Rogers lab.
 
“The three most important early symptoms for COVID-19 are fever, shortness of breath and coughing,” Dr Rogers said. “For a wearable technology, you want to track those key symptoms. A conventional wearable device, such as a fitness tracker, sit s on the wrist or finger not the anatomical location that is most relevant to COVID-19.”
 
The research team together with Shirley Ryan AbilityLab introduced a novel wearable device and set of data algorithms specifically tailored to catch early signs and symptoms associated with COVID-19 and to monitor patients as the illness progresses. About the size of a postage stamp, the soft, flexible, wireless device sits just below the suprasternal notch, the visible dip at the base of the throat - an ideal location for monitoring respiratory health.
 
The research team added a wearable, flexible pulse oximeter to pair with the suprasternal-mounted device. This allows physicians to continuously monitor for silent hypoxia, an often asymptomatic feature marked by alarmingly low blood oxygen levels. Adding this feature will help the device, and accompanying algorithms, give a fuller picture of the disease’s onset, progression and response to treatment.
 
Dr Rogers said, “The device measures very tiny vibrations on the skin and has an embedded temperature sensor for fever. As you cough and breathe, it counts coughs, monitors the intensity of cough and senses labored breathing. The location on the throat also is close enough to the carotid artery that it can measure mechanical signatures of blood flow, monitoring heart rate.”
 
Dr Xu said “This sensor system targets key symptoms for COVID-19, with the goal to identify the infection earlier in patients. It’s a suite of clinical-grade sensors wrapped into one small device. And once it’s placed on the throat, people don’t even realize that it’s there.”
 
Dr Rogers is the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Biomedical Engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, Professor of neurological surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics (QSIB).
 
Dr Xu is an assistant professor of dermatology at Feinberg and of biomedical engineering at McCormick. He also is the medical director of QSIB.
 
The team has tested it on 52 COVID-19-positive physicians, nurses, rehabilitation specialists and patients at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The device was tested both in the hospital and in the home.
 
Dr Rogers and his team, from the research have collected 3,000 hours of data, which will continue to strengthen the device’s algorithms. Eventually, the machine-learning algorithms will become smart enough to distinguish between a COVID-like cough and more benign coughs from allergies, colds or dryness. The team expects to test 500 subjects by the end of the year.
 
Dr Arun Jayaraman, a researcher assistant scientist at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, who leads the algorithm development said, “We are already seeing clear vital sign differences collected by the sensor between patients with COVID-19 and healthy-matched controls. We are working together to develop predictive algorithms for detecting the disease earlier.”
 
Chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern Medicine, Dr Ankit Bharat who performed the first double-lung transplant on a COVID-19 patient in the United States, is actively testing the device on his pulmonary patients. The device wirelessly transmits data to a HIPAA-protected cloud, where automated algorithms produce graphical summaries tailored to facilitate rapid, remote monitoring. This allows Bharat to continue monitoring his patients well after they have been dismissed from the hospital.
 
Dr Bharat told Thailand Medical News, “It has provided valuable information about each patient’s respiratory status. We hope that as we gain experience with this device, it will greatly enhance our ability to monitor patients remotely. Under the circumstances of the pandemic, remote monitoring capabilities improve efficiency in medical care while increasing protection to health care workers against the virus.”
 
In order to accelerate manufacturing and deployment, Dr Rogers and Dr Xu launched a technology startup Sonica Health, based on intellectual property (IP) jointly developed by Northwestern and the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. The IP related to this project has been optioned through Northwestern’s Innovation and New Ventures Office. The effort is supported by the Biomedical Advanced Research Deployment Authority (BARDA), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
 
The healthcare tech startup Sonica Health previously partnered with BARDA for technology focused on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Now the partnership has expanded to focus on early detection of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections in high-risk clinical populations and, in collaboration with another spinout from QSIB, Sibel Health, to provide the pulse oximetry sensor.
 
Along with BARDA’s support, Sonica Health and Sibel Health will jointly submit the device and associated algorithms for Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval later this month. The overall goal is an FDA-cleared platform that gives an early warning of COVID-19 contraction, helping reduce the transmission of the virus.
 
Thailand Medical News has limited numbers of the prototypes for hospitals in Asia (except Thailand) wanting to test out the device. Kindly contact us directly.
 
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