Israeli start-up secures grant from EU to develop respiratory monitor

SenseGuard has already made it through the clinical trials stages and received CE marking to market the product in the European Economic Area (EEA).

By ZACHARY KEYSER
NanoVation team (photo credit: Courtesy)
NanoVation team
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Israeli medical start-up NanoVation secured a €2.5 million grant from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 EIC Accelerator program to develop their state-of-the-art respiratory monitoring device, the company announced on Monday.
The respiratory monitor, SenseGuard, is a wireless wearable medical device that continuously tracks a patient's breathing patterns, allowing the early detection lung deterioration within patients suffering from chronic respiratory illness - and notably the first nano-based respiratory sensor of its kind.
SenseGuard has already made it through the clinical trials stages and received CE marking to market the product in the European Economic Area (EEA). It is currently being deployed throughout hospitals across Israel and the European Union (EU), for further clinical research.
The monitor, developed specifically for various respiratory conditions such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), has the ability to track a patient's lung function without the assistance of a physician or the need for invasive testing.
Approximately 328 million people worldwide are categorized as suffering from COPD. The United States spends around $49 billion per year on COPD patients, with the bulk of the costs stemming from hospitalizations.
NanoVation asserts that these hospitalization costs could be brought down significantly with the use of home monitoring devices that can detect lung deterioration early, such as SenseGuard - in which the early detection could lead to home intervention and treatment, instead of hospitalization.
“Lung function changes indicating a worsening condition can appear up to three weeks before reaching an acute state that often leads to hospitalization and a lengthy rehabilitation. The residual lung damage will impair quality of life, or in the worst-case lead to death,” said CEO and co-founder of NanoVation Dr. Gregory Shuster.
“Our pioneering device aims to enable identification of the early signs of deterioration in lung function, and enables early treatment," noted Shuster. "The cost of preventive intervention and treatment ranges from tens to hundreds of dollars, while they minimize unnecessary hospitalizations, which would cost between $10,000 and $40,000 for an individual in the US and between €3,000 and €10,000 in Europe, and translate into billions of dollars annually for the entire health system," he added.
“The Horizon 2020 Program grant is a strong vote of confidence in NanoVation and will help us dramatically reduce the clinical and economic burden of COPD and other respiratory diseases."
NanoVation was founded in 2014 after breaking off from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. The company has secured $6 million over the course of two rounds of funding, in addition to the grant awarded by the EU Horizon 2020 program, and a separate grant awarded by the Israel Innovation Authority.


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