Tyndall National Institute at University College Cork in Ireland (UCC) will aquire a NEOLA® system from Neola Medical AB (publ) in order to launch a large study on newborn infants at the research facility at Cork University Maternity Hospital. This study will be conducted in cooperation with The Irish Centre for Maternal and Child Health Research (INFANT) at UCC. The commercial value of the agreement is estimated to 60 000 euro.
The NEOLA® system that UCC will acquire is a non-commercial version of Neola Medical’s medical device for continuous lung monitoring and has gone through an extensive two-year process to now safely be used in a clinical study.
”This cooperation marks not only our first sale of the NEOLA® system but will also be significant in validating our technology through the study that UCC will initiate. INFANT and Tyndall at UCC are both highly respected research organizations. The study will give us extensive insights and data, which will be valuable in our product development and validation process going forward”, said Hanna Sjöström, CEO of Neola Medical.
The study that UCC will initiate is planned to encompass approximately 200 infants, starting with healthy newborns and then follow with newborns with different types of breathing problems and with infants within different weight classes. The study is scheduled to start in the autumn of 2021. More precisely the study will evaluate positioning the probes on different areas of on the infants’ chests. The principal investigator of the study is Professor Eugene Dempsey, Horgan Chair in Neonatology, INFANT Centre, University College Cork (UCC), supported by the BioPhotonics team at Tyndall.
“Preterm born infants are at increased risk of requiring breathing support due to the underlying lung immaturity; this technology has the potential to change the way we manage these babies, help to avoid invasive mechanical ventilation and reduce longer-term lung problems”, commented Professor Eugene Dempsey, Horgan Chair in Neonatology, INFANT Centre, UCC. ”In the future, this system could improve the detection, diagnosis and treatment of newborn infants, particularly preterm born babies with reduced lung function”, he continued.
“Implementing better methods of monitoring the lung function of preterm born infants is needed. Today, neonatal health care professionals treating children being born preterm must rely on manual observation with help from chest x-rays and blood samples predominantly”, commented Research Fellow Jurate Panaviene, INFANT Centre, UCC and Cork University Maternity Hospital.
About NEOLA®
NEOLA® is a system for continuous and non-invasive lung monitoring of preterm born infants.
The system measures the changes in lung volume and oxygen gas concentrations in the lungs of preterm born infants with the possibility of instantly detecting complications such as respiratory distress syndrome, an obstructed airway or a misplaced tracheal tube. This means that health care personnel are alerted to problems in real time and can treat patients right away.
This is an English translation of the pressrelease that was announced on June 21st.