Partnership to use smart t-shirt to help patients manage chronic conditions

Pharmaceutical player Servier has teamed up with the digital health company Chronolife to test how a smart t-shirt can continuously monitor patients with chronic diseases to help them better manage their condition.

The move comes off the back of COVID-19 and healthcare providers’ struggle to monitor patients with chronic conditions, due to a much higher rate of hospital bed occupancy. 

As such, Chronolife developed a smart t-shirt which integrates multiple sensors and a smartphone application for the remote monitoring of patients. The Keesense t-shirt enables healthcare providers to continuously monitor six physiological parameters - including electrocardiogram, physical activity, abdominal and thoracic breathing, skin temperature, and pulmonary impedance to detect edemas.

By measuring these parameters, healthcare providers are able to see any significant changes in a patient’s overall health. A digital interface has been developed by platform provider Be-Ys and has already been deployed across a number of French hospitals. Healthcare professionals can use the platform to see any changes in a patient’s condition and then make the appropriate therapeutic decisions. 

To help support Chronolife, Servier will use the t-shirt to remote monitor 40 patients with chronic heart failure. The pharmaceutical company hopes to determine whether Keesense can provide useful information to medical practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic and also assess its use in regular clinical practice. 

Olivier Nosjean, Servier research scientific director, said: “We are very happy to support Chronolife in deploying their medical device that contributes to improving the continuum of care for patients with chronic diseases and to help facilitate the work of healthcare professionals, especially in this time of crisis."

Laurent Vandebrouck, CEO of Chronolife, added: “We are very proud to be selected by the Coalition Innovation Santé for the remote and at-home monitoring of patients with chronic diseases using our medical device certified connected t-shirt, which can monitor multiple vital parameters continuously. The comfortable and machine washable t-shirt, guarantees greater patient compliance with telemonitoring services and could contribute to a better quality of life. We are working on several chronic conditions and use-cases such as heart failure, sleep apnea as well as postoperative follow-up in order to bring to these patients the benefits of real world continuous remote monitoring.”