Sensiotec Inc. announced it will demonstrate its Virtual Medical Assistant™ (VMA) System, a non-contact remote vital signs monitor, at the 17th Annual American Telemedicine Association Meeting & Expo April 29 to May 1 in San Jose, Calif., according to a company press release.
The company said the VMA technology has received FDA 510(k) Class II pre-market clearance and is in market trials.
Patients may like these non-contact monitors a lot, as the VMA monitors heart rates, respiration rates and movement without pressure pads, sensors or cuffs that touch them, according to the press release. Yet, at the same time, the VMA alerts healthcare workers if a patient falls, and if heart or respiratory readings deteriorate. The monitors also prevent pressure ulcers, according to the company.
And they’re not just for nurses at the bedside. Multiple caregivers can get the same patient data at the same time through any smart device.
Interestingly, NASA has used these very same types of monitors on astronauts in space to keep track of their vital signs. Because older systems required extended amounts of time to shave the subject, apply electrodes, and then check the signals of the system before operation, it took time away from more important tasks, but it also kept good track of how the astronauts were doing, thousands of miles away.
With non-contact monitoring, no skin preparation is necessary, there is no skin irritation, and the devices avoid “the subtle, inherent inaccuracies caused by monitors being placed in contact,” according to NASA.
For these same reasons, non-contact monitors are the ticket for patients, too. They’re passive, requiring no movement from the patient (raising the arm for blood pressure cuffs, moving around for the correct placement of electrode wires).
Even the National Institutes of Health is weighing in on the value of non-contact vital signs monitors, stating on its website that they “offer significant advances over conventional methods of measuring heart and respiration rate”. Sensiotec estimated, in the press release, that about half of the 800,000 community hospital beds in the US are currently unmonitored.
"With our patented Ultra-wideband technology, science fiction has become fact,” said Sensiotec CTO and Georgia Institute of Technology Smart Antenna Laboratory founder and director Dr. Mary Ann Ingram. “Practical high-precision non-contact vital signs monitoring and patient movement and fall detection is now a reality, almost like a Star Trek tricorder."
Edited by
Brooke Neuman
