A Sunderland firm that is innovating with health and fitness sensors has secured £500,000 investment to help bring its product to market.
Applied Monitoring has created a non-invasive technology for monitoring lactate levels in the blood which can indicate when athletes have reached peak exertion. The device replaces the need for professional athletes to have regular fingerprick blood tests and the firm hopes it could appeal to amateur sportspeople, including runners and fitness enthusiasts.
After trials at Durham University, the firm has secured a contract with an unnamed European microchip producer to create a miniature device that can be embedded in an armband and sync with a smartwatch. Having raised £600,000 of investment in 2022, co-led by the North East Venture Fund, Applied Monitoring has secured a further £500,000 from the fund, which is supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Mercia Ventures.
The firm now plans to commercially launch its product in the next year, and is said to have already attracted interest from major fitness and wearables brands. It is also looking to apply the technology to the healthcare sector with a device for hospitals.
Lactate levels can be used to detect the onset of sepsis, which is responsible for 48,000 related deaths in the Ƶ each year. It is also thought the technology could be used to monitor glucose levels. The firm has previously been involved in the drug testing market, with its arm-scanning equipment replacing the need for bodily fluid samples to be collected for lab testing.
Jon Dixon, co-founder and CEO, said: “A build-up of lactic acid causes muscles to seize up and athletes to suddenly ‘hit a wall’, but it’s hard for them to know when this will happen without measuring lactate levels. Fingerprick tests are uncomfortable, fiddly and not always accurate.
"Our device will overcome these problems and provide continuous monitoring, rather than a one-off measurement. This latest funding, together with our partnership with a major global chip manufacturer, will enable us to bring it to market.”
Ian Wilson of Mercia Ventures added: “Smartwatches can already monitor vital signs such as heartrate and temperature, and now all the big device manufacturers are looking for a way to monitor lactate levels too. Applied Monitoring is leading the way and has attracted interest from some of the major players. We look forward to the launch of the new device which could revolutionise the fitness market.”
Applied Monitoring was set up seven years ago by former head of B2B at Sainsburys and Argo, Jon Dixon, and NHS informatics specialist Rob Connell. The business has worked with Norway-based academics Olga Korostynska and Alex Mason to develop non-invasive sensor technologies which uses electromagnetic waves to detect biomarkers in the blood.
