Wearables continue to prove their worth in clinical trials. We originally wrote about Blue Spark Technologies’ TempTraq in June 2015. At the time we took note of the wearable’s thin, lightweight, and convenient wireless continuous temperature monitor design for infants and children. In 2017 we covered the TempTraq again, this time for its significant improvements in running time, temperature tracking reports, and HIPAA-compliant data and report storage. Blue Spark Technologies’ wearable is in the news again, this time for its role in a Bristol Myers Squibb clinical trial.
Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) will use the TempTraq in up to 12 CAR T cell therapy clinical trial sites in the U.S. “CAR” is short for chimeric antigen receptor. The basic process involves removing immune system cells from a cancer patient, adding new proteins, and then putting the cells back in the patient’s body. When the therapy works as designed, the cells with added proteins act as live pharmaceuticals that go to work fighting patient cancer. The CAR T treatment can have a dangerous side effect, however, called cytokine release syndrome (CRS). CRS is associated with high fever and organ dysfunction. BMS plans to use the TempTraq continuous temperature monitor wearable to track and report changes in body temperature to warn clinicians of the potential CRS onset in a test subject.
We’ve seen wearables progress from rough pioneering designs to clinical-grade biosensors. In this case, a mature continuous biosensor plays a support role with a specific disease therapy that has the potential to save lives of cancer patients. Wearables have come a long way in a short time.
