Novel Bluetooth-connected electrodes need no gel or suction cups and can be used comfortably at home to gather data while you sleep, and that’s just the start.
When my wife was having trouble sleeping, her doctor referred her to a sleep lab. The lab gave her two options: She could spend a night at the hospital or take the monitoring equipment home and sleep in her own bed.
She opted for the latter.
The equipment was cumbersome, to say the least – elastic belt bands to measure her respiration; a finger oximeter to monitor oxygen levels; a thin wire taped to her nose and mouth; and a large device the size of an old-fashioned Walkman to record the results.
Other home monitoring equipment for sleep disorders – especially for tracking brain activity – includes electrodes attached with suction cups, paste or gel.
With all that equipment strapped to her body, it’s a wonder my wife could sleep at all. And she couldn’t turn on her side, which is how she normally gets her z’s.
The whole experience helps explain why many sleep problems go undiagnosed.
Tel Aviv-based startup X-trodes has developed a less invasive and more comfortable system for medical-grade electrophysiological measurement.
X-trodes’ solution can be used in a sleep lab or, ideally, at home. The company raised $4.7 million earlier this year from Japan-Israel High Tech Ventures, Welltech, and private investor Jeremy Coller.
100 medical uses
X-trodes’ “Smart Skin” is not just for sleep.
“There are over 100 medical uses for electrophysiology,” X-trodes CEO Ziv Peremen tells ISRAEL21c. “We decided to focus on two for our first product – sleep and remote rehabilitation for muscle injuries.”
Smart Skin electrodes can measure up to 10 hours of EEG (brainwaves), EOG (eye movement), EMG (skeletal muscles), ECG (cardiac activity) and EOIG (olfactory activations).The technology has been in development for some 15 years, led by Yael Hanein, professor of electrical engineering at Tel Aviv University. Hanein became interested in electrophysiology when she was at the University of Washington in Seattle.
“At some point very early on, I came across this open issue of ‘How do you make skin electrophysiology better?” she tells ISRAEL21c. “Everyone was limited by these wires and large equipment, but we didn’t have a solution. Now we do.”
The university’s technology transfer company, Ramot, facilitated the license of Hanein’s work to launch X-trodes in 2020. Hanein now splits her time between her university research and her position as CTO of X-trodes. (Her electrodes were recently used in a Technion study to detect “liars” by the movements of their facial muscles.)
When my wife was having trouble sleeping, her doctor referred her to a sleep lab. The lab gave her two options: She could spend a night at the hospital or take the monitoring equipment home and sleep in her own bed.
She opted for the latter.
The equipment was cumbersome, to say the least – elastic belt bands to measure her respiration; a finger oximeter to monitor oxygen levels; a thin wire taped to her nose and mouth; and a large device the size of an old-fashioned Walkman to record the results.
Other home monitoring equipment for sleep disorders – especially for tracking brain activity – includes electrodes attached with suction cups, paste or gel.
With all that equipment strapped to her body, it’s a wonder my wife could sleep at all. And she couldn’t turn on her side, which is how she normally gets her z’s.
The whole experience helps explain why many sleep problems go undiagnosed.
Tel Aviv-based startup X-trodes has developed a less invasive and more comfortable system for medical-grade electrophysiological measurement.
X-trodes’ solution can be used in a sleep lab or, ideally, at home. The company raised $4.7 million earlier this year from Japan-Israel High Tech Ventures, Welltech, and private investor Jeremy Coller.