CleveMed Blogs

Hello! My name is Danielle Madere, a recent graduate from Illinois Institute of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. In the past month, I was lucky to join the CleveMed family as their newest biomedical engineer.

My first two weeks on the job consisted of gaining familiarity with some of our devices: Kinesia, KinetiSense, and the BioRadio. There was also much training, many meetings, and assisting with grant writing.

In the coming months, I will be focusing a lot of my time on clinical studies for several movement disorder monitoring products that we are currently focusing on, specifically ETSense, ParkinStep, and PDRemote. I will be organizing meetings with patients, collecting symptom data, and performing some preliminary analysis to ensure the data we are collecting is valid.

I am very excited to work with CleveMed’s Movement team because I truly believe that our devices, such as Kinesia HomeView, will revolutionize the way clinicians treat movement disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Presently, Parkinson’s disease symptoms are rated by the clinician, based solely on the clinician’s subjective opinion of the severity (UPDRS). Additionally, clinicians only see the patient for a very limited window of time in their office, which does not provide significant insight into the symptoms a patient faces at home, where treatment really matters. Kinesia HomeView will allow clinicians to observe the quality of life of a patient throughout the course of a day in the comfort of their own home, and adjust medication doses and frequency accordingly.

The more closely I interact with Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor patients, the more desperately I want to help improve their quality of life, and CleveMed gives me that opportunity, which I am eternally grateful for.

CleveMed specializes in the manufacture of wireless, subject-worn physiological monitoring equipment. Within the Division of Research and Education systems, a number of wireless data acquisition devices are offered for a variety of applications.

BioCapture is a research system that uses the BioRadio, a wireless data acquisition device for physiological monitoring. The BioRadio can measure any combination of signals such as ECG, EMG, EEG, EOG, respiration, SpO2 and more. Data is telemetered to a receiver connected to a nearby PC. The information is displayed through the software and data can be exported for analysis in third party applications, such as LabView, Matlab or Excel. The BioCapture system is suitable for a number biomedical research applications.

CleveLabs is a laboratory course system that uses the same data acquisition device as BioCapture, the BioRadio. The software is different, in that it is tailored toward students as a laboratory teaching system focusing on engineering, physiology and clinical applications. Biomedical engineering, physiology, electrical & computer engineering and other departments can benefit from this technology. The system is very flexible and can be used in biomedical engineering labs and classrooms, biomedical research applications, physiology labs and research, and more.

KinetiSense is a wireless data acquisition system that measures three dimensional motion using accelerometers and gyroscopes. Linear acceleration and angular velocity are measured from different portions of the body and data is transmitted to a received connected to a nearby PC. The software displays and stores the data and some analysis features are included. An export utility is also included for easy export for custom analysis applications using programs such as LabView, Matlab or Excel.

At the end of the week, CleveMed will be releasing a new version of the KinetiSense Biokinetic Analysis System.

KinetiSense was originally released in 2007 and was made up of two parts: the Command Module and the Motion Sensor. The Motion Sensor housed 3 accelerometers and 3 gyroscopes that allowed the user to measure linear acceleration and angular velocity about the X, Y and Z axes. The Motion Sensor connected to the Command Module which contained a radio for wireless data transmission, a memory card, battery and EMG amplifiers.

The new KinetiSense system has all of the capabilities of the previous version with the addition of completely new software and the ability to connect up to 5 Motion Sensors to 1 Command Module. This provides the user with much greater flexibility and makes the system appropriate for numerous research applications. Multiple Motion Sensors can be placed on different areas of the body and the data from each is synchronized and displayed within the software.

The KinetiSense software features a new streamlined, user friendly application that allows the user to collect, save and manage data, as well as review and analyze. Data can be exported to third party packages for custom analysis. Also included is the CleveMed Software Development Kit, or SDK. This provides the ability to create custom front end software using the KinetiSense hardware, broadening the application possibilities.

CleveMed will be attending and exhibiting at the Gait and Clinical Movement Analysis Society’s (GCMAS) 14th Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado. The meeting will be taking place March 9-14.

GCMAS is a society that is made up of orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, developmental pediatricians, physiatrists, physical and occupational therapists, kinesiologists, engineers and many others who are interested in human movement. The professional members of GCMAS are all interested in the advancement of scientific knowledge of gait and human movement analysis in both research and clinical settings.

CleveMed will be showcasing KinetiSense, a compact, lightweight, wireless system for measuring motion and electrical muscle activity (EMG). KinetiSense utilizes a small subject worn device that measures three degrees of linear acceleration and three degrees of angular velocity with accelerometers and gyroscopes. The device also has the option of two channels of EMG for a total of eight channels of data. KinetiSense can communicate in real time with a PC via a Bluetooth^™ radio link or data can be stored in memory. The small size and wireless aspect of the device make the system suitable for a number of research applications, including gait measurement, biomechanics, rehabilitation and any other situation in which movement monitoring and analysis is desired.

A second product on display will be BioCapture, a wireless data acquisition and research system. BioCapture uses the BioRadio 150, a wireless 12 channel programmable physiological monitor. The user can measure up to 8 channels of electrical muscle activity (EMG) on the available programmable inputs. Data is then sent in real time to a PC and displayed and stored using the BioCapture software interface. LabVIEW^™ and MATLAB^® drivers allow the user to write customized interfaces around the BioRadio 150 hardware for real-time acquisition or post processing. Data is also saved in standard ASCII file format for easy import into third party packages, making the system appropriate for a number of custom research applications.