CHICAGO—A monitoring device passively and accurately detects flares of Crohn’s disease before clinical signs appear, according to a study of more than 100 individuals monitored for up to a year.
The device—which stays at home and is not worn by the patient—measures biomarkers remotely with a sensor as the patient performs normal activities. Collecting data on the patient’s changes in sleep, gait and respiration, the device then employs machine learning to detect the difference between remission and flare, reported investigator Joshua Korzenik, MD, an associate professor of gastroenterology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in Boston.
“It is passive, touchless monitoring that can identify flares and remission with accuracy that approaches that of fecal calprotectin [FCP],” explained Dr. Korzenik, who presented his data at Digestive Disease Week 2023 (abstract 354).
The sensor is built on the proprietary Emerald platform, which has been developed for sensing and measuring biomarkers for health analytics. Employing radio waves, the sensor is about the size of a book and can sit on a shelf or be mounted on a wall in the patient’s home.