BELLEFONTE, PA – Actuated Medical, Inc. has been awarded a Phase I and Phase II Exploratory/Developmental Phased grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Catalyze Program. The project focuses on completing the development and commercializing of wearable, graphene-based flexible sensors for chronic monitoring of venous thromboembolism for high-risk patients. Actuated Medical is partnering on this project with Associate Professor Huanyu (Larry) Cheng from The Pennsylvania State University.

Deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a subset of venous thromboembolism, is a condition in which blood clots form deep within peripheral veins, typically in the lower extremities. This disease can cause swelling, vascular damage, and pain. More critically, when clots dislodge and travel through the blood stream they may lodge in lung, heart, or brain vessels and lead to death. Though medications are available to mitigate risk, there are few options for chronic or continuous monitoring. This project develops a wearable approach for monitoring at-risk patients for DVT formation.

“Having a lightweight, low cost DVT sensor that can be easily worn is important for the quality of care for surgical patients that are at a higher risk for DVTs. There are many other applications where a flexible sensor would improve patient outcomes which makes the market potential for this technology very large” said Maureen L. Mulvihill, Actuated Medical President, CEO, and Co-Founder.

“We are pleased to build the healthy and productive academia-enterprise partnership for technology translation and commercialization, which creates clear pathways for our device innovation to reach the marketplace and benefit public health” said Dr. Huanyu “Larry” Cheng, Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, at The Pennsylvania State University.