A Medical Device Daily

SPO Medical (Simi Valley, California) a developer of biosensor and microprocessor technologies for use in portable monitoring devices, said it has been granted a new baby monitoring patent relating to a non-invasive device or system for monitoring and measuring the heart rate of a baby to activate an alarm when the level falls outside a predetermined range.

This issuance by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) (Patent 7,650,176) brings the company's intellectual property portfolio to a total of 12 patents, SPO said.

This latest patent, developed by the SPO engineering team, increases the company's technological competitive edge in providing an innovative, high performance solution for a market application applicable to most family homes, according to the company.

This new patent focuses on commercial applications relating to the implementation of reflectance pulse oximetry for monitoring babies and infants particularly for ages up to 12 months. During their first year, babies have increased susceptibility to breathing disturbances and respiratory ailments that could lead to physiological distress.

"The granting of this innovative patent could have a major impact on the baby monitoring market – it enables the commercialization of a pro-active monitoring device that can help safeguard a baby during those first-year critical months, especially when parental or caregiver anxiety is potentially high," said Michael Braunold, president/CEO of SPO Medical. "With over 8 million births annually in the U.S. and Western Europe alone, our objective is to make available this unique technology to client corporations who have an interest in commercializing and distributing a product which delivers parental reassurance attributes with real-time monitoring of babies particularly while they are sleeping."

In other patent news:

• Positron (Indianapolis) a molecular imaging solutions company focused on nuclear cardiology, said that the USPTO has allowed for issuance a patent on Positron's Tech-Assist.

The Tech-Assist, invented under the direction of John Zehner, a nuclear pharmacist, dramatically reduces exposure to the worker while injecting radiopharmaceuticals into patients when performing PET imaging studies, the company said.

Currently utilized at several institutions to reduce or eliminate radiation exposure, the Tech-Assist can accept single syringes from a nuclear pharmacy or can be combined with other Positron equipment such as the Nuclear Pharm-Assist to dispense unit doses from a vial. The Tech-Assist fully compliments the Attrius, Positron's cardiac and whole body PET scanner, the company noted.

• The USPTO said it granted a patent to Bellacure (Seattle) for its knee pain treatment device, which was designed to allow the patient to reproducibly apply a therapeutic force that urges the femur and tibia apart on the affected side of the knee at an unmatched intensity level while maximizing force efficiency and minimizing weight (Patent 7,662,122).

The non-invasive, visually discreet Bellacure treatment device is worn against the skin and gives patients and physicians the ability to precisely adjust the amount of pain-relieving force applied to the osteoarthritic knee.

The force application efficiency is achieved by using a cable tensioning system, which creates a true 3-point-force system where nearly 100% of the force developed by the device contributes to the therapeutic effect which relieves OA knee pain, according to the company.

The cables automatically set to the proper initial length, matching the patient's unique anatomy exactly. Then the patient rotates the tensioning dial a certain number of times that is the same every time they don the device.