Shimmer and Wyss Institute Partner to Advance Remote Patient Monitoring

By HospiMedica International staff writers
Posted on 20 Jun 2016
Shimmer Sensing (Dublin, Ireland), a leader in medical-grade wearable wireless sensors, has entered into a partnership with Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (Boston, MA, USA) in support of ongoing research focused on remote patient monitoring with wireless sensor technology.

The research is led by Prof. Paolo Bonato, PhD, of Wyss Institute and Harvard Medical School. "Partnering with Shimmer Sensing will allow us to further develop our remote patient monitoring platform called MercuryLive," said Prof. Bonato. MercuryLive is designed to support clinicians’ monitoring of patients — who, for example, could have Parkinson's disease or be stroke survivors, traumatic brain injury survivors, or children with cerebral palsy — via live streaming of wearable sensor data and an interactive video feed.

Image: A knee sleeve for remote monitoring of patients with knee osteoarthritis using technology being developed for various clinical applications of remote monitoring with embedded wireless sensors (Photo courtesy of Wyss Institute at Harvard University).

Prof. Bonato’s team is developing the latest version of MercuryLive, which enables integration of a variety of wireless devices. Among other clinical applications, the platform will allow to monitor patients with knee osteoarthritis using a knee sleeve with embedded wireless sensors and to observe older adults in their home using wearable sensors and a mobile robot designed to navigate the environment and reach the subject in case of an emergency.

Shimmer’s will accelerate the development with financial support of the research and with its technical expertise in solutions that provide high quality biophysical and movement data in real-time with technology that overcomes challenges of size, wearability, communications, and power consumption.

"The Wyss Institute is renowned for taking academic innovation to the next level, and partnering with physicians and the industry to bring new technologies to the bedside. We are very enthusiastic about the opportunity to support Prof. Bonato's research team and their work toward the development of the next generation of remote clinical monitoring systems," said Patrick White, CEO, Shimmer Sensing.

"Wearable patient monitoring systems represent the future of ambulatory medicine, and we are excited to help catalyze collaborations between engineers, clinicians, and industrial partners to make this a reality," said Wyss Institute founding director Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, professor at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Related Links:
Shimmer Sensing
Wyss Institute

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