Monitoring systems maker EarlySense this week touted FDA clearance for its 1st-of-a-kind Chair Sensor Solution, a continuous vital sign monitor based in a chair.
The contact-free system monitors heart rate, respiratory rate and movement in patients seated upright, a position that EarlySense says improves healing, reduces the risk of complications and shortens length of stay for patients in the hospital.
"Medical institutions have often expressed the need for automatic sensing in chairs," CEO Avner Halperin said in prepared remarks. "With a chair sensor we believe that a number of other clinical environments will open up to the EarlySense System, such as emergency departments, outpatient clinics and waiting areas where concern around patients may exist and today there is no practical way to monitor patients."
More than 100,000 patients have already been monitored with the so-called "smart chair," Halperin added.
The device was evaluated at the Coffee Regional Medical Center, where clinicians said it helped them watch for problems before patients took a turn for the worse.
"The EarlySense System is allowing the medical staff to recognize potential adverse events prior to them becoming acute events that potentially put patients in jeopardy," Coffee medical/OPO director SueLane Hughes said on behalf of EarlySense. "Since we started using the chair sensor we have had zero patient falls from chairs."