Cleveland Medical Devices Inc. (CleveMed) announced today that it recently conducted the first virtually attended sleep study using mobile phone broadband internet service from a subject's home.
The study was performed using CleveMed's proprietary wireless technology and medical communication system to provide real-time transmission of polysomnography (PSG) data. This new technology combined with CleveMed's established wireless PSG systems can now allow a technologist to perform virtually attended sleep studies from almost anywhere in the world.
The Crystal Monitor 20-B is a wireless 14 channel PSG system for diagnosing sleep- disordered breathing. Unlike sleep screeners that only collect a limited number of physiological signals, the Crystal Monitor 20-B is a complete PSG system that collects all of the relevant data needed for proper sleep diagnosis including EEG, ECG, EMG, EOG, airflow, snore, thoracic and abdominal respiratory efforts, body position and pulse oximetry. Because a large number of homes in the United States and around the world still are without high speed internet access, CleveMed's system utilizing the mobile phone broadband network allows for virtually attended studies to be performed in almost any setting, regardless of the patient's personal access to the internet.
During the virtually attended study, a sleep technologist monitored the PSG signals and video in real-time from several miles away. Because the data is monitored in real-time, the sleep technician was able to view the data in a supervised manner that is comparable to a study done in the sleep lab where the sleep technologist monitors the patient in the next room.