Technology from NASA’S Mars Lander has been adapted by Bruin Biometrics for use in hospital settings as the first device capable of identifying pressure ulcers before it’s too late. Bruin Biometrics SEM Scanner (via Bruin Biometrics)
Pressure ulcers, also known as bedsores, are a serious health problem that alone costs the United Kingdom £ 2.1 billion annually. They are a lethal and costly medical health concern that largely affects elderly and long-term care patients, and until the invention of the SEM Scanner, it was widely believed that bedsores could not be identified and treated until there was visible, irreparable damage to the skin.
The SEM Scanner (pictured above) is a non-invasive, handheld device that uses seismology technology adapted from the Mars Lander by Bruin Biometrics to detect pressure ulcers before they’ve damaged the skin. The scanner uses sensor technology to measure the electrical capacitance of the body’s tissue through low amplitude signals from electrodes placed on the patient's skin, and the electrical capacitance value indicates changes to subepidermal moisture (SEM). In some cases, the device was able to identify early-stage pressure ulcers up to 10 days before visual inspection.
This is a huge victory for patients and medical professionals alike; the SEM Scanner helps not only to identify this life-threatening issue days ahead of the old method, but at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, it’s estimated to be able to save £ 600,000 and over 1400 hours of nurse productivity annually. Given the near 500,000 cases of bedsores annually in the United Kingdom alone, the practical application of this device is evident, and according to Rose Raizman, a nurse practitioner and enterostomal therapist at Scarborough and Rouge Hospital in Ontario, Canada, the SEM Scanner “should be used as the standard of care for pressure ulcer prevention.”
Although there is a full commercial launch in the EU and Canada, the SEM Scanner is unfortunately not currently available for sale in the United States. Hopefully this will not be the case for very long seeing as approximately 2.5 million Americans in acute care facilities develop pressure ulcers, and 60,000 die from pressure ulcer complications annually.
The video below for the scanner runs just shy of four minutes, and it only took about 10 minutes of training for most nurses to be able to use this device accurately, which raises the question: Why aren’t these easy-to-use, cost-effective, life-saving devices available for purchase everywhere?
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