CleveMed’s iPSG™
Hani Kayyali
President
CleveMed, Inc.
Cleveland, OH
THE NEED FOR FACILITATING SLEEP ASSESSMENT
There is a vast need to simplify and to facilitate sleep diagnosis and therapy by expanding the settings to include the home, hospital rooms, nursing homes and others. One critical area that is demanding special attention is pre-surgical sleep assessment of sleep apnea patients.
As summarized by a guideline on peri-operative care issued by the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) in October 2005, patients suspected with sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) can develop serious post-operative complications due to the effect of residual anesthetics and analgesics on the upper airways. These complications can be avoided if the surgical staff knew in advance the patient’s SDB severity.
Convenient and accurate methods for inpatient sleep evaluation can facilitate pre-surgical assessment and ensure timely delivery of information to the hospital staff for proper post-operative care.
LEADERS IN PORTABILITY AND CONVENIENCE
With the iPSG, the sleep study can be done while the patient stays in their hospital room; they do not have to be moved to a sleep lab. Our remote monitoring capability permits real-time monitoring of the patient’s PSG data, including video, allowing the sleep technologist to review and score the data as if the patient is in the next room. This benefits the patient by allowing testing and treatment to be completed sooner. In addition, the appropriate skilled nursing staff can continue to care for the patient’s other medical conditions, while the sleep technologist monitors the patient from a different location. The sleep lab benefits by expanding its capacity beyond the sleep lab beds and providing the technologists with a convenient way to conduct inpatient tests.
Furthermore, the small size and wireless capabilities make our systems leaders in portability and convenience. iPSG combines our wireless compact PSG systems with remote access throughout the hospital intranet to allow for remotely attended PSG studies.
A LASTING IMPACT IN DIAGNOSING SLEEP DISORDERS
By offering fast and easy device deployment and powerful, well-established PSG data (up to 22 channels), our product will speed the expansion of sleep diagnosis to many settings that will only improve patient comfort without compromising data quality or diagnosis.
The ability to conduct inpatient PSG in any hospital room will offer the anesthesiologists and other hospital staff a convenient way to diagnose at-risk patients, which can reduce post-operative complications and improve overall management of care.
The industry is working through reimbursement issues especially for the technical portion of the in-patient sleep study; however, we believe, the availability of the product and the increasing evidence of its benefits in that setting will have a lasting impact on the future utilization of sleep disorders diagnosis in the hospital setting.