Abstract:
The past decade has witnessed significant advancements in the areas of power efficient mobile computing, new sensor technologies along with manufacturing techniques and materials. These advances have enabled the creation of new products and applications, in particular the creation of new wearable devices with an ever increasing plethora of capabilities. In recent year, a number of consumer oriented wearables have made it to market, and consumers have been quick to adopt these new products, such as smart watches and activity trackers. However, unlike the consumer market, advances in the the medical wearables market has been much slower to develop. Medical wearables offer the potential to revolutionize the treatment and delivery of health care through better management and understanding of chronic disease conditions by allowing for constant monitoring and new non-invasive treatments. However, unlike consumer devices, medical wearables have major technical and regulatory challenges to overcome.
Orpyx Medical Technologies Inc. is the market leader in the creation of medical wearable devices with our lead product the SurroSense Rx, a plantar pressure monitor designed to prevent foot ulcers a common complication for peripheral neuropathics. In order to bring this product to market Orpyx has addressed the technological challenges of creating a medical wearable, such as accuracy, durability, usability, biocompatibility, along with addressing the regulatory requirements required of a medical device. In addition to the being a device for monitoring, the SurroSense Rx and other Orpyx products, can collect vast amounts of valuable data enabling for the creation of predictive analytics to better focus and adapt treatment of patient populations with chronic diseases. One of the challenges of these types of devices will be the volume of data that will produced. New analysis techniques and tools, like machine learning algorithms, will be required to make sense of the data and privacy will always be a major concern as it relates to health information.
This presentation will focus on the challenges of creating a medical wearable both technological and regulatory, with an eye to what additional insights may be possible with the proliferation of devices and the collection of data.