St. Louis, MO - 11/03/2020 – BioRankings, a St. Louis-based consulting group focusing on innovation in statistics, today announced it has been awarded a $256,000 Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). This grant will fund a study with St. Louis Children’s Hospital to apply the Company’s Internet of Medical Things algorithmic approach to streaming multi-sensor data on preterm infants for the purpose of predicting stroke.
Co-Founder of BioRankings, Bill Shannon, PhD, is excited to further develop the software saying, “This work represents an opportunity to apply our novel statistical approach to Internet of Medical Things, and positively affect health outcomes for at risk infants.”
While medical sensor data is becoming widely available as part of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), healthcare provider’s ability to use these data is limited by a lack of real-time predictive algorithms for detecting deteriorating conditions in patients. Very low birth-weight preterm infants have a high risk of experiencing intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), a serious form of bleeding in the brain associated with high rates of mortality and other serious conditions such as cerebral palsy. This software can be implemented in neonatal intensive care units (NICU) to provide real-time alerts to hospital staff, allowing for better understanding of what risk components are driving the change in measurement. This will help to identify mechanisms of injury and provide more specific, tailored interventions.
Dr. Zachary Vesoulis, a researcher of Neonatal Neurology at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, is optimistic about the collaboration with BioRankings to improve neurodevelopmental outcomes of his most vulnerable patients. “There is huge value in having a device-neutral platform for use in the neonatal ICU which provides actionable early warning signs of patient deterioration.”
The software’s initial focus will be in medicine however, Ally McClure, BioRankings other co-founder, envisions wider applicability. “With this funding we’re able to apply this algorithm to medicine, while investigating its application to any streaming multi-sensor data including industrial internet of things. Moving forward, we hope to engage additional partners to develop robust use cases in other industries.”
The results of this innovative research have BioRankings and their partners poised to be major players in the $158 billion Internet of Medical Things market.