Great Lakes NeuroTechnologies has received two federal grants totaling about $2 million to further develop its technologies for home-based monitoring of patients suffering from movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.
The largest of the two grants from the National Institutes of Health, $1.7 million, will go toward the development of a portable essential tremor monitor that will classify tremor type and rate tremor severity continuously throughout the day while a patient performs typical activities, according to a statement from Cleveland-based Great Lakes.
Essential tremor is a type of involuntary shaking movement in which no cause can be identified and is one of the main symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, a nervous system disorder for which there is no known cure.
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Understanding the type and severity of tremors a patient experiences will help doctors better prescribe medications to minimize the patient’s fluctuations throughout the course of a day, according to the statement.
The essential tremor monitoring system, called ETSense, collects data via a motion sensor placed on a patient’s finger, similar to Great Lakes’ flagship movement disorders product, the Kinesia.
The Kinesia is a device that measures motor symptoms and wirelessly transmits data on the severity of a patient’s tremors.
The second NIH grant, $256,000, will go toward enhancing the company’s Kinesia technology.
The Kinesia device was cleared for marketing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2007. Great Lakes has been around since 2006 as a division of Cleveland Medical Devices, but was spun off earlier this year as a stand-alone company to focus on movement disorders.
