“It will no doubt be of great value both in hospitals and primary care as well as at home for the consumer, and offers a new paradigm in vascular biometrics.”
Abstract
UK Company Tarilian Laser Technologies Ltd.(TLT), located in Welwyn Garden City, UK, has developed a blood pressure monitoring technique based on an optical sensor that reportedly outperforms the current technology and may render it obsolete.
Background
In a world of medical technological advancement it’s curious how some practices endure. For example blood pressure measurement where the most common method currently employed dates back to the 19th century. That may of course be because the method simply works, but there’s no doubt the demands placed on today’s healthcare providers are significantly different to those of a hundred years ago and it is these demands that TLT has tapped into with its new technology.
The technology
TLT has developed and patent protected a powerful optoelectronic-sensor-based technology which it claims outperforms the current “gold standard” for measuring blood pressure in terms of accuracy, breadth of data recorded, size and ease of use.
Its first product will be a cuff-based consumer device that will be on the market in 2012, which will showcase the technology and bring in early revenue, especially with first year sales projections of one million units.
The company’s next-generation Sapphire sensor system allows direct measurement of blood pressure without a cuff within seconds. A further advantage is that the sensor (pictured alongside pencil)) doesn’t just measure blood pressure, it generates a continuous beat-to-beat blood pressure measurement and other ‘haemodynamic’ data, which in combination enable it to give a more complete vascular assessment than any other blood pressure device. This will give clinicians a much improved toolset for monitoring, diagnosing and treating patients suffering from a wide range of diseases.
Bullish TLT claims these abilities alone make it a potential world-beating technology, but what makes the sensor even more groundbreaking is its ability to measure blood pressure on virtually any part of the body without exerting pressure and with no energy entering the body. This creates additional unique applications:
- blood pressure measurement of the eye without putting pressure on the eye.
- foetal heart monitor.
- health and blood pressure of the arteries in the leg.
- health and blood pressure of the Carotid arteries.
- highly accurate miniature sports biometric devices.
This miniature sensor will also make it possible to put blood pressure sensing technology into a completely new range of devices, such as a bracelet, plaster, pen, computer mice, mobile phones and clothing, so that the measurement of blood pressure could become completely innocuous and ubiquitous, while still achieving a high level of accuracy.
Telehealth potential
The company claims use of its sensor is likely to have a profound effect on blood pressure measurement in the clinical setting, medical research and also home healthcare. With the growing use of healthcare in the home, so-called telehealth, the sensor provides a much simpler and accurate way to take the blood pressure of patients automatically and transmit the data to a telecare device.
Company comments
Dr Sandeep Shah, CEO of TLT, said, “This an exciting time for us. The TLT company was founded and developed in Hertfordshire, UK and within a short period of time, we have broken the barrier on sensor capabilities with our novel optical technology. The TLT sensor, because of its power, simply makes other technologies in medical biometrics obsolete, so we see the potential to have our sensor in every blood pressure device — which is a potential worldwide market expanding to a projected 100 million devices a year — projecting TLT into a billion plus dollar company within a short period of time.”
“The technology is very scaleable and affordable; and indeed can compete extremely well with current costs within the BPM sector, and yet it offers unique and powerful advantages over all other technologies. These features simply do not exist with any other technology and this makes TLT a disruptive technology that has both redefined the state of the art of blood pressure monitoring and one that has created a paradigm shift in cardiovascular medicine. It has even been suggested that the ability of the TLT sensor to collect such a rich set of data on the cardiovascular system has opened up a whole new area of physiology.”
Clinician comments
Dr Art Tucker, Principal Clinical Scientist and Vascular Researcher at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, said, “The TLT sensor is a highly novel promising new technology that will have a large and positive impact in this field. It is an exciting and powerful new development in vascular science and has created a new state of the art in blood pressure measurement. It will no doubt be of great value both in hospitals and primary care as well as at home for the consumer, and offers a new paradigm in vascular biometrics.”
The company’s technology has also received accolades from some heavyweights in the UK medtech establishment. Dr. David Jefferys, former director of the UK Medical Devices Agency and current president of regulatory affairs association Topra, has gone on the record to say that “TLT technology offers a significant competitive advantage to all others in the market. Furthermore, TLT’s Sapphire cuffless sensor promises to deliver a sophisticated and elegant solution to future demands within this sector.”
Source: Tarilian Laser Technologies Ltd
published: December 20, 2011 in: Healthcare, Technology, Telehealth