Dräger is bringing its Infinity Acute Care System, an advanced ICU monitoring package, to the U.S. and Canada. The system features a wireless patient monitor that stays attached to the bed, allowing for quick movement of patients between different clinical departments without ever losing live data feeding back to the central console.

The Infinity includes Masimo’s complete rainbow SET noninvasive Pulse CO-Oximetry, interfaces with Dräger’s ventilators, and the “Medical Cockpit” integrates the data with information from the EMR including diagnostic images and patient history.

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Next up in our coverage of semi-finalists for Sanofi’s Data Design Diabetes Demo Day is LiveHealth.

LiveHealth CEO Chris Gay started off by showing data that demonstrates that diabetes self-management can really help compliance and health outcomes — but education necessary for proper self-management requires 15 visits in the first year alone, which is too much for many patients, especially those without reliable transport or means.

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Next up in our coverage of semi-finalists for Sanofi’s Data Design Diabetes Demo Day is GreenDot, which used to be called Diabetes 3.0 (good idea on the name change, guys!)

GreenDot was started by two UCSF endocrinologists – Jenise Wong and Aaron Neinstein. We believe they’re the only doctor-originated company in this bunch. They were frustrated, and their patients were frustrated, with the overwhelming amount of data generated by pumps and glucometers. Data in its own format, and in nonstandard layouts, is challenging for patients to interpret and difficult for doctors to compare.

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First up in our coverage of semi-finalists for Sanofi‘s Data Design Diabetes Demo Day is iRetainRx. Previous coverage here and here.

iRetainRx’s founder and CEO, David Parpart, began the pitch boldly, by saying, “We are going to save 500,000 lives this decade.” He then went on to describe how their interactive mobile system will allow caregivers, patients and pharmacists to collaborate on care plans. See, for every 100 prescriptions, only a fraction are filled, and only a fraction of those are even taken correctly. This attrition is particularly difficult with diabetes, where the regimens are complicated, the effect of the drugs can be hard to notice, and yet: noncompliance leads to huge extra social costs.

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When you think of cutting-edge medical technology, a baby’s pacifier probably does not come to mind. However, Florida State University and Powers Device Technologies announced today the development and commercialization of an innovative, yet simple, medical device for infants born prematurely. The problem is that premature babies often do not develop a skill known as “non-nutritive sucking,” which is critical for breathing, feeding, self-comforting, and growing both physically and neurologically. This behavior begins developing when the fetus is at the 28 week stage, though continues to develop throughout to week 34; hence when a baby is born prematurely, it may not have developed proper form for a breathe-suck-swallow reflex.

The device, known as the Pacifier Activated Lullaby (PAL), is essentially a pacifier that plays music when the baby is sucking on it properly. According to the press release:

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An experimental new device called Diabetes Insulin Guidance System (DIGS) from Hygieia, Inc. (Ann Arbor, MI) is being developed to automate insulin dosage titration in patients with type I and type II diabetes, based on measurements of blood glucose and analysis of patterns in the obtained data. The company hopes one day to provide patients with an automatically calculated insulin dosage adjustments between doctor visits, in hopes of improving their glycemic control.

The company’s clinical advisory board is packed with diabetes experts such as Martin Abrahamson, MD from Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, so they obviously know what they are doing. And the latest data seems to confirm that. A recent publication in Diabetes Technology and Therapeutics is quite positive for the technology, as it demonstrated DIGS’ potential to improve blood glucose control for insulin-using patients with type 2 or type 1 diabetes. Over the 12-week intervention period of the study, investigators observed:

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Sometimes it seems that there are almost as many diabetes monitors, or glucometers, as there are people with diabetes (well, not really, but you get the point). Furthermore, each one seems to tout a different set of features that differentiate it from the rest. So when we at Medgadget were approached by the people at Life Scan about their new OneTouch Verio IQ Meter, we were curious to learn more. Described as “the first meter ever that looks for patterns of highs and lows—and alerts you, right on screen, when it finds one,”  the VerioIQ is a hand-held monitor with a simple array of four buttons, a color display screen, memory to hold 750 recordings, and bilingual (English/Spanish) capability.

Like most current glucometers, it provides the user a lance to draw blood via finger-prick. This editor was provided with a complimentary review device and found it to be user-friendly, though had to lend it out to a diabetic colleague who was impressed enough with the added features. The key development is the VerioIQ’s PatternAlert system that detects time ranges during a five-day period during which the patient’s glucose is running abnormally high or low, thus virtually eliminating the need for a logbook. For those with extremely well-managed diabetes this is likely not as much of an issue, though it’s clear how patients with more variable glucose levels may benefit.

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Tangent Medical out of Ann Arbor, MI recently unveiled its NovaCath Secure IV Catheter System, a device designed to improve peripheral IV catheter stabilization and reduce the potential for clinicians being exposed to patient blood.

The closed system includes the catheter, high pressure extension tubing, multi-use flow control clamp and stabilization components.

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Sanofi has announced that its iBGStar, the first approved blood glucose meter to interface with the iPhone, is now available in the U.S. The device will display glucose readings on the iPhone (or iPod touch) screen and those will be saved for long term analysis. On the other hand, if your iPhone is out of power or you managed to lose it, fear not, the iBGStar dock will work independently and provide readings on its own little display. While disconnected from the iPhone, the meter will save glucose levels it measures locally until it is back in touch with the phone.

Sanofi is reporting that the new glucometer is available from Apple and Walgreens at both their retail and online stores.

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Researchers from MIT and Harvard have recently been testing a better way to analyze epileptic seizures that doesn’t require an EEG cap or an invasive implant.

Sympathetically mediated electrodermal activity has been suggested as containing enough information to profile a seizure. So the research team, doing a study at Children’s Hospital Boston, has shown that using a wrist worn watch-like sensor that measures the electrical conductance in the skin is as effective as EEG in determining the severity of a seizure.

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