MediPines: A Ground-Breaking Impact on Respiratory Medicine

Follow MediPines on :

Steve Lee, CEO, MediPines

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the world was facing a tsunami of respiratory diseases. The World Health Organization recently estimated that about 1 billion individuals suffer from respiratory illnesses world-wide. In the United States, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the healthcare system found itself crippled by rising patient volumes, limited supplies, and very limited number of trained respiratory staff to support the influx of high patient volumes.

At the height of the pandemic, emergency departments and hospitals across the country were flooded with patients. Clinicians were desperately searching for a solution that allowed them to quickly triage patients and monitor response to therapy. The MediPines AGM100™ filled that need.

By using the non-invasive gas-exchange analyzer, clinicians received answers to some of the most essential respiratory questions from anywhere in the hospital: What is the patient’s blood oxygen level? Is ventilation adequate? And is gas transport from the lungs to the blood efficient? These difficult questions, which the clinical team needs answers to, are critical when they are dealing with the time-sensitive respiratory patient cases.

Because these answers were available in 90 seconds, not hours, clinicians were able to rapidly assess patient respiratory status like never before, while having the ability to support triage, titrate interventions, and determine response to therapy without the need for invasive blood draws.

Most importantly, the AGM100 helped clinicians save lives because in the past, it was very difficult to identify a gas exchange abnormality until it was too late.

Now, by providing this information immediately, clinicians are able to recognize the patients teetering on the edge, leading to earlier detection and intervention in these patients, to prevent avoidable decompensation.

As a result, hospital providers that adopted the AGM100 reported dramatic patient outcome improvements and significant reductions in ICU admission rates. The benefits of this technology were further highlighted when the device was used by first responders on a patient who had breathing difficulties. After using the typical conventional tools like pulse oximetry, temperature, and blood pressure readings that all showed nothing out of the ordinary, the emergency response team was almost ready to leave the patient at home. However, after using the gas exchange analyzer, AGM100, they were surprised to see a potentially life threatening, high oxygen deficit. With this information, they made the correct transfer decision and headed toward the hospital, where the patient began to crash. They arrived at the hospital just in time and were able to provide proper treatment. If the intervention was just 30 minutes later, the patient would have likely had a much different outcome.

“Without introducing any pain to the patient, the AGM100 can give healthcare providers respiratory status immediately, and confirm therapy effectiveness at the bedside,” says Steve Lee, MediPines’ CEO.

MediPines continues to advance its non-invasive technology to make it even more relevant in providing early warning signals so that clinicians can properly detect extremely time-sensitive cases like imminent respiratory failure, pulmonary embolism, and pulmonary edema. “Our goal is to continue to advance respiratory medicine through innovative technology that improves patient care,” says Lee on a concluding note.

Although our understanding of the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the lungs is still evolving, the importance of pulmonary gas exchange measurements in a wide variety of respiratory diseases and illnesses will remain vitally relevant in patient monitoring for the foreseeable future.

Share this Article:

Company
MediPines

Headquarters
Orange County, CA

Management
Steve Lee, CEO

Description
MediPines is a market leader in respiratory assessment and monitoring of pulmonary gas exchange. By using the non-invasive gas-exchange analyzer, AGM100™, clinicians receive answers to some of the most essential respiratory questions from anywhere in the hospital: What is the patient’s blood oxygen level? Is ventilation adequate? And is gas transport from the lungs to the blood efficient? These difficult questions, which the clinical team needs answers to, are critical when they are dealing with the time-sensitive respiratory patient cases. Because these answers were available in 90 seconds, not hours, clinicians were able to rapidly assess patient respiratory status like never before, while having the ability to support triage, titrate interventions, and determine response to therapy without the need for invasive blood draws