March 10, 2008
Biosign’s UFIT solution for personal health monitoring
A Workshop on Adverse Response Monitoring (WARM) catalyzed partnerships between MaRS tenant Biosign and IBM as well as with Telus with the aim of getting Biosign’s UFIT® health monitoring system to the commercial market.
Working with the IEEE, the world’s leading professional association for the advancement of technology, Biosign brought together this world-first, multi-disciplinary panel to address patient safety. This workshop launched an international initiative to find solutions for detecting and reporting adverse responses to medications, and to help optimize their efficacy.
Patient safety is a serious global health issue. According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, 10% of patients are harmed while receiving top hospital care.
Virtually everyone takes medication at some point in their life; our objective is to implement solutions that will minimize the risks. While these risks are significant in the supervised world of hospitals, they are potentially greater in unsupervised conditions at home, where more than 90% of medications are taken.
The WARM workshop represents an important step on the path to reducing the risks as well as getting the Biosign product onto the market.
UFIT, which uses a non-invasive, web-enabled device that straps around a patient’s wrist, is an easy-to-use self-monitoring system that reliably and simultaneously captures heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, blood glucose and other key health data.
Word is getting out: the system was also featured in a CBC TV story on the WARM workshop and the imperative need for a solution to adverse medication responses.
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