Medicollector acquires Harvard licence

Harvard University has spun out Medicollector, a medtech firm which will be commercialising bedside data collection software.

The software was first developed by Harvard’s Wyss Institute, which developed it as part of Wyss’ infant apnoea prevention programme.

Apnoea can interrupt normal breathing in infants, and can lead to a critical lack of oxygen which can have a lasting impact on development, and can even be life-threatening. The Medicollector seeks to address this by continuously monitoring breathing, analysing the data to predict apnoea episodes, and using a therapeutic mattress which can restore normal breathing activity.

John Osborne, senior staff engineer at Harvard who worked on the software, said: “In today’s hospitals, clinically-relevant measurements, such as heart rate and blood pressure, are usually only recorded at infrequent intervals.  Most of the vital data generated by medical devices at the bedside is therefore lost and never recorded.”