ClearSky Medical Diagnostics spun out from the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of York, UK in 2013. According to the company, its LID-Monitor can distinguish Levodopa-induced dyskinesia from Parkinson’s tremors to help doctors optimize the dosage of Levodopa, a dopamine replacement agent used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.
Based in Dublin, Ireland, Shimmer Research was founded in 2006 based on Intel technology and introduced its Verisense platform – which was designed for clinical research – at the SCOPE Summit earlier this year.
Speaking to the recently announced partnership with ClearSky, Geoff Gill, president of Shimmer Americas, said pharmaceutical companies and other sponsors will benefit from more accurate, shorter, and less costly trials – and patients from access to improved therapies.
“The use of wearable sensors to generate continuous objective endpoints has the potential to streamline clinical trials dramatically,” he told us. “However, their use has faced two major obstacles: the wearables available to the market did not meet the needs of trials and few accepted clinical endpoints exist.”
The companies’ partnership will use Shimmer’s Verisense wearable sensors platform and ClearSky algorithms and machine learning to improve insights into central nervous system (CNS) diseases.
“Shimmer’s Verisense wearable sensors platform is designed from the ground up to meet the needs of clinical trials and ClearSky’s experience in working with health centers worldwide addresses the lack of clinically accepted endpoints,” said Gill.
The two companies have worked together for years and will continue to do so, “as long as the need exists – which we anticipate to be for many years,” Gill added.
“Fully achieving the potential of wearables to improve clinical trials will take many collaborations across the industry with sponsors as well as suppliers.”
