Roche taps Vivonoetics, Great Lakes NeuroTech for wearable respiratory assessment device

Roche (PINK:RHHBY) tapped Vivonoetics and Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies, to provide a wearable respiratory testing device to Roche’s Firefish study. The company’s study aims to evaluate drug efficacy compared to respiratory muscle function and breathing patterns in infants treated for spinal muscular atrophy.

Devices traditionally used to measure breathing include masks and mouthpieces, which aren’t always practical for monitoring infants. The Firefish study is the 1st large spinal muscular atrophy clinical trial to use a respiratory inductance plethysmography system to non-invasively measure breathing, according to Roche.

The wearable system will measure and analyze movement patterns of the chest and abdominal wall to monitor pulmonary function. Vivonoetics’ VivoSense software enables data analysis of respiratory and pulmonary data for clinical trials.

“We strive to advance clinical trials through the use of wearable technology,” Vivonoetics’ chief operations officer Dudley Tabakin said in prepared remarks. “With our expertise in wearable respiratory sensors and detailed data analytics we have developed a solution that works for monitoring infants with airway obstruction observed in SMA.”

Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies will provide its wireless, wearable system, BioRadio, to record respiratory and pulmonary data from infants in real time, Roche reported. The data is transmitted to a computer via Bluetooth and sent to the Vivonoetics analytics team for processing and analysis.

“Great Lakes NeuroTech is very proud to collaborate with Vivonoetics on this exciting study in SMA. This represents successful integration of wearable technology and advanced data analytics to capture infant respiration,” Carissa Simmerman, BioRadio clinical trials manager at Great Lakes NeuroTech, added. “We are strongly committed to using wearable and remote monitoring technology to make a positive impact on quality of life for those affected by respiratory disorders.”

In December, Senseonics (NYSE:SENS) said that it expanded its exclusive distribution agreement with Roche for its implantable continuous glucose monitoring system for people with diabetes. The new agreement includes all of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, excluding Scandinavia, Finland and Israel.

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