SensiVida Medical Technologies Inc. Gains Momentum

SensiVida Medical Technologies has stepped up its product development activities after raising the first $1.5M of their $10M Series A financing.

This initial financing phase is being used to accelerate internal product development and fund commercialization activities with partners such as Wi Inc. and Dhurjaty Electronics Consulting LLC.

Dhurjaty Electronics Consulting performs research and development for research hospitals as well as industry customers. Among its notable clients are the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Abbott Point of Care. The principal, Sreeram (Ram) Dhurjaty, has 35 years of experience in medical electronics and systems. With a rich portfolio of experienced associates, the company has tackled projects that include sensitive devices for non-radiological breast screening, patient monitoring systems, low noise medical power supplies, embedded systems and application software, and complete medical systems, including packaging. The company is well versed in design and documentation in conformance to FDA regulations with the help of several associates, each of whom are experts in the fields of hardware, software, regulatory, and packaging.

President and Chief Technology Officer Jose Mir says: "Dhurjaty Engineering is a great addition to our product development efforts. They bring to us significant expertise in medical electronics, imaging systems, and image processing -- all critical to our product family. We have been interacting with Dr. Dhurjaty and his colleagues for over a year. They are already very familiar with SensiVida's technologies and will be able to hit the ground running."

First in SensiVida's product family plan is a totally painless allergy test that provides digital results after only 10-12 minutes.

Mir states, "Our allergy test is designed to deliver the quantitative objectivity of in vitro allergy testing while improving the comfort, immediacy, accuracy, and productivity of the widely used Skin Prick Test. Simply put, it provides the best of each test while avoiding their respective disadvantages. Allergic reaction data and images are also saved as part of the patient's electronic medical record, which is expected to greatly improve the physician's ability to diagnose the patient's allergic profile over time."

SensiVida will also use proceeds from recent financing to accelerate development of its second product, a totally painless in vivo blood glucose monitor. The automated glucose monitor is based on the same platform as the company's allergy test, leveraging its optical microneedle and image processing technologies. Unlike reported optical glucose monitors (all still at the research stage), SensiVida's test directly samples minute amounts of body fluids, accurately, without extraction, biofouling, or frequent calibration. SensiVida's proprietary technology is also advantaged relative to commercial in vivo Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGMs), since optical discrimination methods are used to measure actual glucose levels, while discarding invalid elements of the measurement. The technology has been described as a "microscopic window to the physiology" that probes body chemistry intelligently using image processing.

Mir adds, "SensiVida's technology has the potential to provide both Type I and Type II diabetics an automated monitor that tracks their blood glucose levels periodically like CGM's but with therapeutic accuracy. Although we have a ways to go before our glucose monitor becomes a reality, early laboratory tests are promising and we believe that we have filed strong patents supporting this innovation."