Biovotion’s successful first year

Healthcare costs are rising in nearly all developed countries, with a steady increase in the number of people suffering from chronic diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cardiovascular vascular diseases and diabetes. It is estimated that more than 80% of the costs of care are caused by only 10% of the population with such chronic diseases. In hospital, these patients are monitored continuously with readily available hospital-based devices unavailable to the patient at home.

 

In order to reduce costs, healthcare systems are therefore looking to bring hospital monitoring into the patients’ home – patient home monitoring (PHM). As this requires continuous information, the user must wear a monitoring device at all times. Biovotion’s innovation – a truly wearable, non-invasive, robust, accurate and continuous device – helps to do exactly what is needed in the current transformation of healthcare towards PHM.

 

Biovation received its initial start-up funding in June 2011 and by November 2011 its VSM TM5 prototype was ready to be used in testing. In March of this year, Biovotion’s device to monitor vital signs, such as blood oxygenation under daily life conditions, established proof of concept. The device is fully wearable, motion-tolerant and allows cable-free monitoring. In April, it demonstrated performance parity with standard hospital systems, even under movement. In May, the company was selected as a finalist in the EU SME eHealth competition of best eHealth companies in Europe.

 

Biovotion is now working towards further completion of the overall system architecture and the underlying hardware of VSM1. Further industry collaborations are due to be finalised within the next few months.