Print“The company sees the partnership as a key component in its strategy to expand in the emerging areas of digital health and remote patient monitoring.”
Avery Dennison, known for its self-adhering labels, is partnering with digital health startup Proteus Biomedical to make patch-based wearable sensors that can monitor a person’s vital signs.
Proteus granted the company's Avery Dennison Medical Solutions division a non-exclusive license to Proteus’ personal monitoring technology for use in health, wellness, and remote medical monitoring applications. Though better known for products such as mailing labels, the company has for more than three decades produced pressure-sensitive adhesives for medical applications. The company sees the partnership as a key component in its strategy to expand in the emerging areas of digital health and remote patient monitoring.
Proteus’ technology uses multiple sensors to monitor such things as heart rate, physical activity, and sleep patterns, which can then be relayed to a user’s smart device or a doctor. Proteus’ lead product is an embedded ingestible sensor made from food ingredients. When embedded in a medication and ingested, this “smart pill” can both monitor a patient’s vital signs and track compliance with prescription drug regimens. The pills transmit information to a tiny receiver worn either as a skin patch or implanted under the skin.
Avery Dennison will develop proprietary products that incorporate the Proteus technology and Proteus will continue to develop and commercialize its personal monitoring and other mobile health products in consumer, medical, and pharmaceutical applications. As part of their agreement, Avery Dennison is providing adhesive and material technologies and developing the manufacturing platform to mass-produce the wearable sensors for the companies’ customers.
Cheap production of the sensors could help make Proteus’ technology an important tool for keeping patients aware of their vital signs and on track with medications. Novartis, which has a significant investment and licensing agreement with Proteus, is applying Proteus’ smart pill technology first to its organ transplantation drug business, and has rights to apply it later in cancer and cardiovascular applications. It is currently conducting clinical trials of the technology with heart failure patients.
June 09, 2011
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