Sagentia partners with Senseonics to improve diabetics' lives

The Senseonics Glucose Monitoring System consists of three major components: an implanted sensor; a wireless transmitter that communicates with the sensor; and a smartphone mobile medical application.

After insertion, the system can function non-invasively, automatically and continuously for six months or longer before replacement. With this approach, glucose levels of a patient can be measured every few minutes with accurate and specific alerts being sent to both the user and their physician about impending hyperglycaemia (high blood sugar) and hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar).

Sagentia was brought into the project as the development partner to provide expertise with Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity between the mobile application and the System. In addition, the team recommended and implemented solutions to provide an enhanced user experience.

The final system was delivered within three months, in time for a clinical trial of the first generation product. As a result of the collaboration with Sagentia, the Senseonics system is now capable of extremely fast and reliable communication between the smartphone application and the embedded device, yielding a 10x bandwidth improvement.

The Sagentia team initially conducted a system level review of the transmitter hardware, transmitter firmware and application software. Through this analysis it identified and significantly improved connection drop outs and low data rates. Sagentia then recommended and implemented several user interface improvements.

The potential benefits of connected health systems such as this include increased access to specialist knowledge, improved patient compliance with treatment, greater patient mobility, alerts for acute events and easier collection of clinically relevant data outside of clinical settings.

At a time of significant budgetary constraint, healthcare providers must find new ways to reduce costs and increase the efficiency and quality of care, according to Dr David Pettigrew, Patient Care Sector Manager at Sagentia.

"Ensuring underlying health issues are properly addressed and encouraging lifestyle improvements drives reductions in both the number of people visiting healthcare providers and repeat visits," he says. "Technology is proving a key enabler in realising these aims and connected health breakthroughs like Senseonics could have a really significant impact."