isonea launches mobile health technology airso

new announcement

Melbourne, Australia and Severna Park, MD, USA - 24 September 2013: Medical technology company iSonea Limited (ASX:ISN) will today launch its flagship product, the AirSonea wheeze monitoring device, in the Australian market.
Intended for people diagnosed with asthma, the digital device enables wheeze monitoring via smartphones for the first time, using the Company’s proprietary Acoustic Respiratory Monitoring (ARM™) technologies.
The device will be launched by high profile ambassador Australian Gold-Medal Olympian Cathy Freeman at a launch ceremony this morning at the Victorian Institute of Sport in Melbourne.
iSonea chief executive officer Mr Michael Thomas said today’s launch signaled a turning point for the Company, with immediate revenues expected from sales of the product.
“For the first time in nearly 50 years, we have a new monitoring technology available for people suffering from asthma,” he said.
“Investors in our company are participating in the most exciting advancement in decades in respiratory mobile health technology. The AirSonea is a global product and builds on our Company’s existing platform technology - the AsthmaSense® app. This new product heralds the ‘second wave’ of mobile health in the asthma space.”
The AirSonea is a handheld device that turns a patient’s smartphone into a portable wheeze monitor. AirSonea is held against the windpipe near the base of the throat to record breathing sounds. These sounds are automatically transmitted to a cloud based site and analysed with the Company’s ARM wheeze detection algorithms and software.
The AirSonea enables people with asthma to monitor their wheeze anywhere, at any time. It also provides objective data to help doctors with patient reviews. The device has been listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Traditionally, devices known as peak flow meters have been available for manual asthma monitoring outside of clinical settings. However, peak flow meters require repeated forced breathing efforts, which are difficult for children and some elderly patients. Studies have noted that compliance and reporting of peak flow measurements have been unreliable and physicians often consider this method inadequate for pediatric use.