According to the University of Minnesota Medical School www.med.umn.edu blog, Joe Jensen while still in medical school, developed a medical device called Andas which literally means breath or “breathe of life” in Swedish. The device is used as an external tool to analyze inflammation of the airways to help diagnose and treat people with asthma.
Today, worldwide there at 235 million asthmatics and in the U.S. alone, there are over 25 million asthmatics with 7 million asthmatics under the age of 18. There are 44,000 asthma attacks each day that are treated primarily with a bronchodilator to dilate the airways or inhaled corticosteroids for more serious cases.
Jansen as a former asthma sufferer himself, is intent on helping people with asthma but he also realized that sensor technology can be a platform for multiple uses. Medical devices such as peak flow meters and spirometers are used to understand how well the disease is controlled to avoid asthma attacks. However, according to Jensen, “Nothing currently addresses the issue of inflammation, and that is where the new device can do a better job.
“One of the ways to look inside the body is through the breath,” Jensen says. “Because of my experience with asthma, one of the first things I think of when I think about breath analysis is asthma.”
Ideally, the device would be used by doctors as part of the analysis process to detect asthma. If someone comes into the clinic with asthma, they will go through the standard workup, exam, and possibly spirometry to measure lung function.
The patient would blow into the Andas device, which would send data remotely via Bluetooth to a computer or any smart device and be able to detect the level of inflammation. If used by patients, the Andas device could be used to direct a better course of treatment. Through regular use, a doctor could improve dosage and tailor medications appropriately particularly if some of the patients are steroid resistant.
Along the way in the development process, Jenson was fortunate to meet Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Steven J. Koester, PhD who had been working on an implantable glucose sensor for diabetes. Jensen saw the potential in this sensor technology for an external device to treat asthma.
Koester shared Jensen’s enthusiasm for the commercial potential for the technology and the team began to work through the University’s Office for Technology Commercialization www.research.umn.edu/techcomm/#.VWlwZeqvikp to negotiate a license for the device.
In 2014, Jensen was able to obtain $30,000 in seed capital from the Minnesota Cup Competition http://carlsonschool.umn.edu/mn-cup to use for further development. The funding enabled the team to get through the laboratory process by working with researcher Tim Anglin in the Shared Materials Instrumentation Facility http://smif.lab.duke.edu at Duke University.
Today, the team is finishing work on integrating the sensor into the lab prototype and has raised enough money to get through product development and the initial FDA submission. They plan to apply for CE marking in Europe as well.
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