A collaboration led by Innovation York has partnered start-up medical device company Studio 1 Labs with York’s School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, to test and analyze an intelligent bed sheet that can monitor health and vital signs.
In the summer of 2016, Innovation York’s industry engagement manager, Cheryl Giblon, introduced Laura Nicholson, director of York’s Nursing Simulation Centre (NSC), to Olivia Lin and Edward Shim, founders of Studio 1 Labs to work together to determine proof of concept for the health device.
Members of the intelligent bedsheets project team in the Nursing Simulation Centre located in the Health, Nursing and Environmental Studies Building on York University’s Keele Campus
The intelligent bed sheet is developed by Studio 1 Labs and aims to monitor the health of patients at home, in hospital or in long-term care. It uses unique fabric sensors which are embedded into the bed sheet and detect respiratory patterns that are wirelessly transmitted to a computer terminal.
In December 2016, phase one of a three-phase project began in the Nursing Simulation Centre, supported by York University Professors Eva Peisachovich and Celina Da Silva, and School of Nursing Simulation Manager Raya Gal.
Data collection was completed in January 2018 as the second phase of the project, with participants sleeping overnight in the NSC. The NSC is used to train York’s nursing students, and provided a unique opportunity for the start-up to collect data in a simulated hospital setting.
Studio 1 Labs’ goal is to commercialize the intelligent bed sheet, which has the capability to transform any bed into a patient vital signs monitoring system.
The collaboration and support provided by Innovation York and the School of Nursing has been an integral part of helping Studio 1 Labs achieve this goal, said Nicholson, the principal investigator on the project.
The project is funded by an Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) Voucher for Innovation and Productivity (VIP) 1 grant of $25,000.