BioIntelliSense recently announced the commercial launch of the BioButton, a rechargeable on-body device that tracks over 20 vital signs and biometrics throughout the day. The device lasts up to 30 days on a single charge. The BioButton tracks body temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, body position, activity levels, gait analysis, infection-like symptoms, … It is a home equivalent to the hospital’s bedside monitors.
The BioButton is a coin-size device that users stick like a band aid on their upper torso.
This is not the first version of the BioButton. The device was already used by hospitals to track patients’ health once they would return home. In May 2020, in the midst of the covid-19 outbreak, BioIntelliSense had launched the BioButton as a solution to track early symptoms of the pandemic illness, as well as post-vaccine side effects. This BioButton v1 had a 90-day single-charge capacity, and could be connected to a mobile application to visualize body activities. Universities throughout the United States distributed it free to their students or staff as a measure of prevention, such as the Oakland University in Michigan. The device won the CES 2021 innovation award product and was named Best New Monitoring Solution by MedTech Breakthrough Awards a few months later.
With the release of the new BioButton, BioIntelliSense broadens the fields of applications of its product to make it a full, continuous care from hospital to home, beyond its purpose to track early covid-19 symptoms.
The BioButton has also risen some controversies when it was adopted by Michigan’s Oakland University because some students were not so keen to accept such an intrusive tracking device sticked on their body to be allowed to walk the halls of their school, raising issues of privacy protection.