Profusa and North Carolina State University’s ASSIST Center (Raleigh, USA) have announced that their collaboration to develop an ultrathin flexible-patch reader worn on the skin for continuous wireless monitoring of tissue oxygen in patients undergoing treatment for peripheral artery disease has been awarded a US$1.5 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a division of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Combining Profusa’s tissue-integrated biosensor technology with ASSIST’s thin-film electronics know-how, the “bandage reader” is intended to be a companion device to Profusa’s Lumee oxygen platform recently introduced in the EU for use by medical practitioners to continuously measure tissue oxygen levels in ischaemic limbs before, during, and after peripheral artery disease treatment.
“The goal of our collaboration is to develop a bandage-like version of Profusa’s first-generation optical reader that is flexible, disposable, and conforms to the foot for continuous monitoring of tissue oxygen levels during revascularisation and restenosis in patients with peripheral artery disease,” explains Natalie Wisniewski, Profusa’s chief technology officer and principle investigator of the program. “The impact of our alliance has the potential to be transformative, not just for peripheral artery disease, but for the broad field of mobile health monitoring.”
Michael Daniele, the project’s site lead for ASSIST, says the collaboration with Profusa is an extension of their joint work to develop wearable patches for the simultaneous, continuous, noninvasive monitoring of multiple biomarkers, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and to develop a version of the Lumee for home use.
