CleveMed Blogs

Cleveland, Ohio – Oct 12, 2010 CleveMed, a leader in sleep disorders monitoring devices announces the launch of eCrystal PSG, its newest product. eCrystal PSG is a web portal that allows physicians to seamlessly access sleep study information and share results with other staff and specialists over a secured internet connection, creating an efficient method to detect and track sleep apnea. The web portal works hand-in-hand with a number of CleveMed home monitors like SleepView™, which records physiological data while the patient sleeps at home. Once the monitor is returned to the physician, data is uploaded to eCrystal PSG and sent to a sleep technologist for review and scoring. Via the web portal, ordering physicians can also connect with state-licensed sleep doctors for proper interpretation of the sleep study. With this product, CleveMed offers the widest range of portable sleep monitors in the market today strengthening its leading position in the market place.

“Testing for sleep apnea in the home, if conducted properly, can offer convenience for the patient, proper assessment for the provider, and cost benefit for the payer”, said Hani Kayyali, the president of CleveMed, “with the addition of the web portal, our breadth of products and services are poised to lead the way in the proper implementation of home healthcare for sleep disorders”.

“As we move forward into the next chapter in sleep medicine, it is critical that we continue to rely on the expertise of sleep physicians to ensure proper study interpretation”, said Mike Papsidero M.D., Chief Medical Officer for CleveMed. “CleveMed’s web technologies ensure great quality, convenience and connectivity to a network of sleep physicians, all of which improve patient care and maintain key advantages over the competition”.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a disorder that prevents breathing during the night and affects more than 15 million patients. Although effective treatment exists, the vast majority of patients (80%) remain undiagnosed and untreated due to the expense and inconvenience of current testing methods. CleveMed’s family of portable sleep testing products effectively addresses this issue by facilitating evaluation in the home.

About CleveMed

CleveMed is pioneering the use of novel wireless monitoring systems for high growth neurology and rehabilitation applications. Through these innovations, CleveMed has developed a growing range of products that address the needs of the medical, research and academic communities around the world. Cleveland Medical Devices Inc.’s mission is to develop, manufacture and market rehabilitation and monitoring products that improve quality of life and allow patients to leave the hospital earlier, thus lowering total health care costs. For more information, please visit www.CleveMed.com.

For More Information Contact:

Amy Rickard
Cleveland Medical Devices Inc.
P: 216.791.6720 | F: 216.791.6739
arickard@clevemed.com
www.clevemed.com

“…for Schmidt’s Cleveland Medical Devices (CleveMed), it’s dreaming up diagnostic devices for sleep and movement disorders that can cut up to 90 percent of the cost of traditional (in-lab) tests — and even help primary care physicians find new revenue sources.

How’s that?”

- Mary Vanac, co-founder of MedCity News writes about it in "eHealth: a remedy for what ails doctors… and U.S. healthcare". Click here to read the complete article from Medcity News (Oct 7, 2010).

As many patients and clinicians are aware, Parkinson’s disease symptom fluctuation is a challenging part of the disease. The process of finding the correct balance of medication doses and appropriate administration times can be lengthy and frustrating to patients and their families. A single in-clinic exam does not accurately portray what a patient experiences at home and diaries and verbal communication may not always be the most reliable method of conveying that information.

Allowing patients to provide objective information on their experiences at home gives the clinician crucial information that may help adjust medication timing and dosage. This can increase the medication “on” times and give patients the ability to perform activities that are important to them more often.

CleveMed has developed Kinesia HomeView, a system for monitoring patient symptoms at home. A small motion sensor is worn on the patient’s finger while several times a day tasks for evaluating symptoms are completed, similar to those performed in the doctor’s office. An electronic diary is also available to allow patients to rate their symptoms and activities over the course of a day and also indicate when medications were taken. After Kinesia HomeView is used for one or more days, the clinician receives a web-based report which includes clinically validated 0 to 4 severity scores and patient diary information. This report provides information on how patient symptoms are fluctuating during the day in response to prescribed treatments. Using this detailed information, clinicians may be able to better minimize motor symptoms during the day by adjusting therapies such as medication times and doses or deep brain stimulation settings.

An informative video is available at www.clevemed.com/PD/IntroVideo.shtml that describes patient and clinician opinions on why home monitoring is an important part of Parkinson’s disease care.

If you are interested in learning more about Kinesia HomeView, please visit www.CleveMed.com/PD. Here you can find information for clinicians including reimbursement, validation studies and publications and the ability to test drive the web-based clinician interface. Information is also available for patients including an overview of Parkinson’s disease, information on the Kinesia HomeView system and an application to test drive the patient interface portion of the system.

It was before I became an employee here, that I first used CleveMed’s Crystal PSG software. I was a sleep tech working third shift at the time, and had very little tolerance for device-software-malfunctions in the wee hours of the morning. Understandably so, right? I thought their wireless PSG hardware was pretty cool; allowing the patient to move quite a bit freer than anything else I had used, but what was in it for me, the sleep tech? This blog is my answer to that question.

Interestingly enough, sometime later I joined CleveMed as their sleep application specialist. My input (as a sleep tech and a former customer), was considered an integral part of product development. More importantly, the customers’ input is routinely considered and often taken right into development. For the sleep tech who has never used Crystal PSG software before, I offer a brief overview in this blog. I also want to highlight a few features in Crystal PSG that I particularly appreciate, (hope other techs might benefit from this as well).

The Crystal PSG software offers a complete and user-intuitive software package for managing patient sleep data with data acquisition, scoring, and reporting. I like that it has a quick and easy system setup, as well as simple (as in convenient) patient and study management. Crystal PSG can be used with any of CleveMed’s PSG systems or SleepScout portable sleep monitor, so the same program and database can be used for multiple products.

In addition to the wireless capability, here’s my list of "what’s in it (Crystal PSG) for me the sleep tech"

I want to hear what my fellow-sleep-techs (who are probably reading this with your 6th cup of coffee) think of this, so write me back!