Longer and better life is a big dream. Rising standards of living have helped in achieving it almost everywhere. However, aging populations bring many challenges into the healthcare sector.
“Getting people out of hospital as quickly as possible while still maintaining patient safety and control is one of the biggest challenges for us in future. It’s also great for the patients if they can recover in their natural environment”, says Pekka Puska, Professor and former Director General of National Institute for Health and Welfare in Finland.
Medieta is developing an Early Risk Recognition System together with Innokas Medical that automates patient monitoring both in the hospital and home environments by detecting and analyzing patients´ vital signs through a wearable wrist monitor. This enables hospitals to discharge patients earlier and predict deterioration of vital functions before irreversible conditions develop.
”Our breakthrough comes from cleverly combining vital sign data from the patient to determine a risk category for the individual. Any one sign by itself might not be alarming but a combination of multiple data points can be predictive of a deteriorating condition. If we can predict a potentially fatal condition we have the possibility to prevent it with the right measures”, says Niku Oksala, Medieta’s Medical Lead and the Associate Professor of Surgery.
Medieta is not doing this alone. Partnering with Innokas Medical provides access to product development expertise and manufacturing capabilities that enable fast scaling.
”Patient monitoring, wireless connectivity and mobility are our core competence areas. Traditionally, our projects in this area are related to conventional patient monitors. Now Medieta challenged us to minimize it to be wearable. From engineering perspective this was the kind of project our team loves”, says Tommi Kaasalainen, VP of Sales & Marketing at Innokas Medical.
Medieta’s innovation is following the growth of wearable electronic devices. According to a report from Markets and Markets, the global wearable electronics market is expected to grow from $2.5 billion in 2012 to $8 billion by 2018.
As a result of very close cooperation between Medieta and Innokas Medical, the first prototype of the system is now functional and being demoed at Compamed 2014. Medieta and Innokas Medical welcome everyone to see it in action at Hall 8a, booth N35.
For more information
Jouni Ruoppa, CEO, Medieta;
tel. +358 400 450 204
Tommi Kaasalainen, VP, Sales & Marketing, Innokas Medical;
tel. +358 50 486 1210
