Vital signs are important indicators of health, however, they often don’t show the whole picture. Technological advancements in the medtech world are equipping clinicians with valuable, detailed insights into their patients’ health, assisting with clinical decision making and optimising patient outcomes.
With over 700 devices in clinical use worldwide, Impedimed’s (ASX: IPD) clinically validated, fully approved tech is quickly becoming the new vital sign, giving doctors key information to support treatment. The SOZO Digital Health Platform works using bioimpedance technology, a low cost, non-invasive way to determine critical information about the human body, namely body composition.
Designed to be minimally invasive and easy to use, the SOZO device requires patients to stand on a platform with bare feet and place their hands on touch pads. The device sends an electric current through the body that is not felt by the patient and measures using bioimpedenace spectroscopy. Results are available within 30 seconds and are available to view immediately on the device or online.
The ability to determine the fluid balance within the body has important implications in treating heart failure, which affects approximately 26 million people per year globally. Current technologies to determine fluid burden include traditional weight scales or implantable pulmonary artery pressure monitors. The SOZO system provides an objective measure of fluid volume, removing the guesswork and inaccuracies of scales as well as the invasive procedures required for artery pressure monitors. The Company is keenly interested in forging partnerships in this area of cardiology.
The device has caught the attention of Dr. Alii Valika, MD, an interventional cardiology specialist who is board certified in Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology. Dr. Valika has been central in establishing the SOZO Heart Failure Program at Advocate Health Care’s Heart Institute located in Chicago, Illinois.
The Heart Institute is within the Advocate Health Group with over 100 sites where 350 specialists undertake more than 20,000 procedures per year.
The introduction of the SOZO Heart Failure Program is primarily aimed at maintaining and monitoring optimal fluid levels in heart failure patients, both in the clinic and post discharge.
The Group already has 10 SOZO devices under their Lymphoedema Prevention Program, the new Heart Failure Program will see the amount of devices in the network increase.
Richard Carreon, Managing Director and CEO of Impedimed welcomed the partnership, saying: “After the significant COVID-19 delays it is fantastic to initiate the SOZO heart failure program at such a highly respected and credentialed medical institution. We are looking forward to working with Dr. Valika and his team in advancing the use of SOZO and improving outcomes in the heart failure patients. We are expecting other hospitals to initiate SOZO heart failure programs shortly, adding to the clinical and reimbursement evidence required to underpin widespread commercialisation.”
The move towards highly accurate body composition measurements has applications reaching far beyond cardiology including in dialysis patients, in oncology and rehab and therapy.
Samantha Freidin is a business journalist at Emerald Financial whilst also completing a Masters of Marketing and Digital Communications at Monash University.
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