Mayo Clinic, Gentag To Develop Wireless Sensors For Obesity, Diabetes Management
Gentag and Mayo Clinic announced plans to jointly develop wearable biosensors to aid in the management of obesity and diabetes. Information collected by the skin-patches will communicate wirelessly with researchers who can use the information to develop treatments.
The new biosensors will be based on Gentag’s patented near field communication (NFC) skin patches, bandage-like ultra-lightweight, flexible, and disposable sensors that communicate with NFC-enabled devices. Gentag has collaborated with a number of different biomedical companies to develop the technology for indications including fitness, diagnostics, drug delivery, and glucose monitoring. Gentag currently owns 81 patents.
This week, Gentag signed a joint intellectual property agreement with Mayo Clinic for research and development of an NFC skin patch that could help doctors and patients work together to manage diabetes. A sensor in the patch communicates with a smartphone-compatible communication system to generate data for obesity and diabetes research, said Gentag and Mayo Clinic in a joint press release.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Mayo Clinic and Gentag will share patent rights to certain proprietary technologies for the commercialization of the product. The new patch, which will combine Mayo Clinic’s microminiature transceiver chip with Gentag’s radar-responsive tag technology, will be capable of long-range communication and geolocation.
Last October, Gentag announced a strategic development agreement with Welch Allyn, a medical diagnostic device company. According to Stephen Meyer, CEO of Welch Allyn, the two companies planned to collaborate on smart monitoring systems and cutting-edge diagnostics that will provide quick and efficient updates to electronic health records (EHRs).
The CDC reports that over 9 percent of the U.S. population has diabetes and nearly a third of those patients are either undiagnosed or mismanaging their treatment. Diabetes, according to CDC estimates, costs the U.S. healthcare system approximately $245 million per year.
According to a Transparency Market Research report released last year, the global wearable technology market is expected to be worth $5.8 billion by 2018.
“We are thrilled to be cooperating with Mayo Clinic on these amazing new wireless technologies. We look forward to working with the medical device community to get this technology into the marketplace,” said John Peeters, CEO of Gentag, in the press release.
Image credit: "MayoClinic" by Sabine.ritzinger. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.