iSonea’s new asthma monitoring technology to feature at prestigious Las Vegas expo

iSonea (ASX: ISN, OTCQX: ISOAY) will give healthcare information technology leaders and professionals from around the globe a first look at its new asthma monitoring smartphone technology at a prestigious health information technology conference in the United States.

Chief executive officer Michael Thomas said the conference was an ideal opportunity to promote the potential of the smartphone technology as well as highlight the existing WheezoMeter™ platform.

“This conference brings together healthcare information technology leaders and professionals from around the globe,” he said.

“It is an ideal audience to demonstrate the benefits of our first smartphone application, which builds on our proprietary technology and is in line with our mission to develop future technologies enabling better patient outcomes.”

The company’s first proprietary smartphone application, known as AsthmaSense™, will be previewed in the Qualcomm Life Pavilion booth at the 2012 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition being held at the Venetian-Sands Expo Convention Center in Las Vegas from 21-23 February.

This AsthmaSense™ application will enable patients to better manage their condition and symptoms.

Features of the first version, which is still being beta tested, include a tracking system to monitor symptom trends, triggers, test results including peak flow measurements and WheezeRate™, as well as medication usage and adherence.

iSonea will also demonstrate its asthma management WheezoMeter™ device at the conference.

Like version one of the AsthmaSense™ mobile health application, this product is designed to help asthma patients, their families, caregivers and physicians to monitor asthma symptoms on an ongoing basis.


Advance towards commercialisation

iSonea is preparing to roll out a number of its asthma products over the next 24 months after entering its first formal partnership with telecommunications company Qualcomm Life for the development of a mobile asthma monitoring platform.

The new technology will combine iSonea’s proprietary Acoustic Respiratory Monitoring (ARM) ™ devices and mobile health asthma management systems with Qualcomm’s 2net™ platform.

iSonea will leverage Qualcomm's 2net Hub technology, a plug-and-play connectivity gateway to the cloud-based 2net Platform data server, to collect and transmit patient health data from its asthma monitoring devices.

Importantly, the partnership will also provide iSonea with a larger scale, lower cost platform.


Tapping a US$16b market

In the U.S., healthcare is considered the largest and least tapped market for mobile technology, which is leading to the big IT players like Microsoft, Cisco and Google all seeking out ways to penetrate the market.

The asthma market from a therapy perspective is about US$16 billion annually. Asthma is a widespread and growing condition that affects 300 million people worldwide and represents a major healthcare cost burden.

Australia, in particular, has one of the highest prevalence rates of asthma in the world.

Originally published at: http://www.proactiveinvestors.com.au/companies/news/25595/isoneas-new-asthma-monitoring-technology-to-feature-at-prestigious-las-vegas-expo--25595.html