VITRUVIAN SHIELD VITAL SIGNS MONITORING WATCH: PEACE OF MIND FOR THOSE WITH EPILEPSY

Imagine, as someone with epilepsy, being able to predict when you might be prone to a seizure so you can take precautions. Or, as a healthcare provider, think of the possibilities of having data from an epilepsy patient’s vital signs monitoring and be able to deliver a personalized course of action directly to a patient in their home.

These aren’t some futuristic, digital healthcare technologies decades away from deployment. They’re a reality now with the Vitruvian Shield Smartwatch and App.

Now, people with epilepsy can continually monitor their health and feel greater peace of mind by simply glancing at their wrist or checking the accompanying app for their clinical-grade, vital signs monitoring data.

AT A GLANCE

COMPANY

Vitruvian Shield SA, a Switzerland-based medtech start-up, is aiming to substantially improve the quality of life of patients in their daily life outside the hospital by offering a solution that monitors health signals with medically certified precision.

APPLICATIONS

E-health software as a service (SaaS) for remote patient monitoring, diagnosis, and medical research.

CHALLENGES

Fast-track development, scaling, and commercialization of a medical-grade epilepsy detection platform.

GOALS

Enable patients to proactively take control of their epilepsy through a smartwatch and easy to use app that provides comprehensive monitoring of all important physiological bio-markers.

65M

People with epilepsy in world¹

1 IN 1000/year

SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy) ²

TO VITRUVIAN SHIELD, HELPING PEOPLE WITH EPILEPSY IS PERSONAL

Soon after he began developing Swiss watches for private brands all over the world, Paulo Martins was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. A few months later, his wife learned she had a brain tumor that causes epilepsy. These life-altering events were the impetus behind Paulo founding Vitruvian Shield and its vital signs monitoring watch and app.

In 2018, Vitruvian Shield developed a proof of concept with a prototype from Analog Devices, followed by development of the mobile app, web app, and the API.

Vitruvian Shield utilized ADI’s platform device—the vital signs monitoring (VSM) watch—which has been instrumental in helping accelerate the application of new wearable monitoring technology in the burgeoning remote care market.

For Vitruvian Shield, the ADI VSM watch is the ideal platform for product development because it provides synchronized data outputs across the complete range of vital signs parameters. While Vitruvian Shield is very similar to most smartwatches—quite comfortable, with an attractive display of data outputs including the time—it is also quite different from consumer smart watches.

Image shows a woman smiling and enjoying a cup of coffee. She is wearing a Vitruvian Shield monitoring watch. — Vitruvian Shield watch is a version of the Analog Devices VSM Watch

DESIGNING A SMARTER SMARTWATCH

A typical smartwatch applies proprietary algorithms to convert raw signals into a limited set of parameters—including steps, heart rate, and body temperature— without providing ready access to the raw measurement signals themselves.

For Vitruvian Shield, the synchronized signals from each of the optical and electrical sensors in the VSM watch provide the raw material from which Vitruvian Shield has developed a complete monitoring ecosystem for people with epilepsy. Vitruvian Shield’s machine-learning algorithms scan the patterns of physiological signals produced by the VSM watch to detect the distinctive digital signature of focal and generalized tonic-clonic seizures (GTCS), a prime symptom of epilepsy.

A key differentiator in this type of data compared to a typical smartwatch is that the Vitruvian Shield produces clinical-grade data. So you not only know the number of steps you’ve taken, but you also get analysis of how those steps were taken and if there are nuances or details about those steps that would provide indicators of your health.

Image shows a woman sitting on a couch while looking her cel phone. The Cel Phone screen shows data from the Vitruvian Shield Monitoring Application. — Vitruvian Shield VSM watch and app help people with epilepsy and their healthcare professionals manage treatment

Beyond this, the Vitruvian Shield app truly puts “smart” in smartwatch as it allows people with epilepsy to:

View key functions, including vital signs monitoring data in real time
Track of medication
Create a seizure journal so doctors can track/adjust treatment
Schedule video doctor appointments
Get medical assistance by voice should a seizure occur and the person with epilepsy fails to confirm their wellbeing.

ADI’s VSM watch and Vitruvian Shield’s algorithms create a complete, end-to-end platform to identify early key indicators of epilepsy seizure detection. By having a patient’s vital signals monitored 24/7 and a comprehensive display of their collected data, healthcare professionals now have keen insight they can use to adjust or change the course of treatment to better fit a patient's response—all without ever needing to come to a doctor’s office.

A Graphic image showing a watch and cel phone. The visuals show the connectivity between the Vitruvian Shield Watch and the Vitruvian Shield cel phone application. — People with epilepsy gain peace of mind with real-time, clinical-grade data delivered to their phone app and medical care provider

ADI + VITRUVIAN SHIELD: PARTNERS IN INNOVATION

Image shows two men collaborating in an office-setting. They are discussing and writing technical data on a whiteboard located on a wall infront of them.

ADI’s vital signs monitoring watch is based on a set of ultrahigh performance sensors and sensing front ends that produce clinical-grade measurement outputs. These outputs make it the ideal development platform for Vitruvian Shield. Beyond delivering keen insights to epilepsy patients and care providers, the VSM watch can also be used by pharmaceutical companies to support clinical trials, helping to detect anomalies at an earlier stage than is possible with hospital-based monitoring alone. In addition, it can be used directly to support scientific research as a monitoring device worn by patients in trials and investigations.

By making its vital signs monitoring watch available to entrepreneurial firms like Vitruvian Shield, ADI acts as a powerful enabler of innovation, freeing developers from the need to develop proprietary hardware. The watch dramatically sped up Vitruvian Shield’s time to market and reduced development risk and costs. Entrepreneurial companies such as Vitruvian Shield can also re-badge volume shipments of the VSM watch, and focus their development efforts on their own, proprietary software and systems.

Vitruvian Shield might never have seen the light of day if it were not for the existence of ADI’s clinical-grade, wearable device.

Jan-Hein Broeders, EMEA Healthcare Business Development Manager at ADI, explains the ADI/Vitruvian Shield relationship: “I see my role as helping our customer be successful. I know from seeing other fast-growing start-ups that the secret of success is focus. It was on advice from ADI that Vitruvian Shield has successfully concentrated its development effort on epilepsy, a clear and important target market.” The proven hardware configuration of the vital signs monitoring watch now provides the basis on which Vitruvian Shield will develop the next generation of its product.

"Our first generation vital signs monitoring watch will prove to epilepsy sufferers that our technology can radically improve their quality of life. Beyond this, we can use the hardware design of the VSM watch, and all the sensors inside it, to produce a new design, with more communications and diagnostics capabilities. None of this would have been possible without the VSM watch and the excellent support from ADI."
Paulo Martins

Founder and CEO | Vitruvian Shield

FOR PEOPLE WITH EPILEPSY, CONFIDENCE AND SUPPORT IS ON THEIR WRIST

Like many other innovations in remote patient monitoring, the Vitruvian Shield vital signs monitoring watch holds out the promise of a new life for patients—in this case, people with epilepsy. The fear of the next, unpredictable seizure lies over those suffering from severe epilepsy at all times. If a seizure occurs in a safe place close to a caregiver or medical professional, the outcome is normally benign. But the fear is always that the next seizure will take place in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that it will lead to a physical injury or worse.

Vitruvian Shield gives people with epilepsy and their caregivers some semblance of peace of mind with early warning detection of the potential onset of a seizure. It also provides real-time health information to be delivered to caregivers, helping them to effectively manage their patient’s condition. Epilepsy patients now have the opportunity to live a life free of the fear of a seizure happening without warning, at any time, and far from medical assistance. This technology is testament to the deep biomedical expertise of Vitruvian Shield and its research partners, and to the clinical-grade capabilities of the ADI vital signs monitoring watch.