ItoM Medical transplants its biometric sensing platform to a chip

Eyes wide open, forehead beading with sweat and chest heaving violently – as anyone working in an intensive care unit will confirm, patients on mechanical ventilation aren’t always as still as you might think. Even when unconscious, a (perceived) lack of oxygen triggers a violent reaction of panic in a patient, who instinctively starts fighting for his life. It’s a very distressing experience, for both the patient and the medical staff.

‘Fighting the ventilator’ has many possible causes. A patient’s condition can change, the ventilator settings can be wrong or a tube can get clogged by secretions in the lungs. But frequently, no such obvious causes can be found. In that case, asynchrony between the patient’s own breathing rhythm and that of the ventilator may have provoked the potentially life-threatening condition.