Knowing and understanding your body’s vital signs just might save your life someday, especially if you are one of the 1 billion or so people on the planet who suffer from high blood pressure, or hypertension. But getting an accurate reading on this key medical indicator is not easy. It usually takes four dedicated devices to capture the core vital signs of temperature, pulse, blood pressure and blood oxygen level (or SpO2, monitored via pulse oximetry). Enter the smartphone health monitor.
A Los Angeles-based company focused on connected health is aiming to make health monitoring easier. Vital USA Inc., in partnership with Lenovo and Motorola, introduced a smartphone-based product at January’s CES 2018 show in Las Vegas that can accurately monitor and track those four vital signs, plus respiratory rate, in a matter of minutes.
Smartphone health monitor
Known as the Vital Moto Mod, the modular device snaps on to Motorola’s very thin Moto Z family of Android smartphones, and leverages Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity. This turns the phone into what Vital calls the “first connected, integrated, multi-vital-sign monitoring platform that you can operate through a simple app on your phone.”
The product was born in part as a result of another product — a digital, contactless thermometer — developed by ARC Devices USA Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla. ARC Devices’ founder, Irwin Gross, also founded and is executive chairman of Vital. ARC’s InstaTempMDâ digital thermometer allows practitioners to take clinically accurate core body temperature in 2.5 seconds.
After seeing how the thermometer helped doctors to treat patients in remote parts of Liberia, the Vital team imagined developing a single finger cuff that could capture those key vital signs, attach to a smartphone, connect to the Internet via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and transmit vital signs to a mobile app.
“The healthcare market is full of technology from the 1980s and we’ve been talking about changing it since then,” Gross is quoted as saying. “Now it’s actually happening.”
Vital began working to turn its vision into a tangible product. By May 2017, the team had specifications and a rough prototype whose tubes, wires and cables functioned, but it was far from a finished product. Gross met Phoenix-based contract manufacturer Avnet Inc., which brought design, mechanical, electrical and IoT expertise to the project. The ambitious goal was to have a market-ready product ready to show investors at the Mobile World Congress in San Francisco in just three months.
In that time, the partners overcame a number of challenges, including:
- Adding a sliding mechanism to the cuff to make it adjustable for various finger sizes
- Connecting the cuff to the phone via magnets
- Ensuring proper connectivity between the Bluetooth algorithm and mobile app
- Completing work without affecting the electronics in the cuff, including a pressure cup and light
Vital and Avnet met the goal of having a product ready to show privately at the MWC 2017 event, and Vital also was able to secure agreements with both Lenovo and Motorola. Lenovo is the exclusive global distributor, and the device is designed for use with Motorola’s ecosystem of Moto Mod phones.
The resulting product — dubbed the Vital Moto Mod — was truly a team project. The Twinsburg, Ohio-based Avid Technologies Inc. unit of Avnet did the electrical board design, firmware, and app software; Design First in Ottawa, Canada, designed and manufactured the finger cuff; Design Partners in Bray, Ireland, did the app design and assisted with industrial design; Smartshape Design in Cleveland, Ohio, did the detailed mechanical design and fabrication of the prototypes; and Sanmina Corp. in Turtle Creek, Wis., will be responsible for production.
Vital plans to begin selling the product in the United States and the European Union in April, and is considering a retail price of between $300-$400.
In addition to incorporating ARC’s InstaTempMD technology, the resulting device now features a proprietary finger cuff that uses advanced sensors and a novel inflatable bladder to accurately measure systolic blood pressure (the pressure your blood is exerting against your artery walls when the heart beats) and your diastolic blood pressure (the pressure your blood exerts while the heart is resting between beats).
One particular challenge, noted Dr. Mark Khachaturian, Vital’s chief technology officer, was the need to find a biocompatible material that did not impact the skin but which could withstand multiple inflations/deflations as well as exposure to bleach or other harsh cleaning materials. They ended up choosing silicone. The outer shell is made of polycarbonate/ABS.
In an interview at the CES show, Khachaturian said they also needed to stack components on the electrical board, to keep the lens area clear for the phone’s camera, and the product also needed to be water-resistant.
To use the Vital Moto Mod, you insert your left index finger into the cuff and hold it steady for 110 seconds. To take your core body temperature, hold the device near your forehead till it dings. The battery can withstand 150-200 uses before needing to be recharged, and it can recharge in 2.5 hours using a USB Type C connector. Performing all five measurements takes between two to three minutes.
Using the app and a cloud-based platform, the device captures the data for each of your vital signs, saves it locally, and then stores in the cloud, explained Liz Gross, Vital’s chief marketing officer. This also makes it easy to share with a medical professional, if desired.
More than 55 approved and pending patents support the Vital technology. And the firm, meanwhile, continues to focus on further developing the product to enable additional measurements, such as EKG readings for cardiac monitoring and perhaps even glucose readings for diabetes management.
Further reading on plastics in the medical field:
- Webinar: TRENDWATCH™ Materials Matter for Medical Wearables + Digital Health
- Engineering Plastics at the Forefront of “Made in China” Plan
- Novel biomaterial filters out harmful micro-pollutants, wins science award
- Spin to Win: Polymers in Regenerative Medicine
- K Show Recap: Medical Polymers in the Spotlight
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