COMPUMEDICS AND BAKER INSTITUTE GETTING TO THE HEART OF SLEEP

Posted on August 23, 2001

Compumedics together with Australia’s pre-eminent Baker Medical Research Institute announce a MOU to lead the world in further advancing the frontiers of research into the relationship between sleep disorders and congestive heart failure.

Melbourne based medical monitoring and diagnostic company Compumedics Ltd (ASX: CMP) together with Australia’s pre-eminent Baker Medical Research Institute will today announce a Memorandum of Understanding to lead the world in further advancing the frontiers of research into the relationship between sleep disorders and congestive heart failure.

The cornerstone of this new partnership is Somte, the world’s first sleep monitoring device capable of simultaneously monitoring and comprehensively analysing cardiovascular and respiratory function.

Somte, to be previewed for the first time today, is the net result of recent research that shows that more than 50% of those who suffer congestive heart failure (CHF) also have sleep disorders. In particular, for those CHF patients who fail to respond to standard treatments, sleep disorders are often the underlying problem and remain undiagnosed. For the first time cardiologists are now offered a powerful tool to identify these CHF patients and investigate the underlying cause of the disease.

Compumedics – recognised internationally as a leader in sleep monitoring technology – has joined forces with The Baker – a world-renowned leader in cardiovascular research – to forge a new era of better diagnosing and treating these interrelated disorders affecting millions worldwide, but until now, treated as two entirely separate areas of medicine.

Apart from its dominance of sleep diagnostic devices in Australia, Compumedics equipment is used throughout the world by leading sleep monitoring research and medical institutions in Europe, Japan, and the USA (including NASA). Importantly, Compumedics exclusively supplied sleep monitoring equipment used in the world’s largest sleep heart study of its kind, the US Sleep Heart Health Study with 6500 patients.

The Baker Institute is a World Health Organisation collaborating centre for research and training in cardiovascular diseases, the only such centre in Australia. Established in 1926, the Baker is leading the crusade to better understand hypertension and atherosclerosis and to provide this knowledge to the prevention of heart and vascular disease.

Chairman of Compumedics’ Medical Advisory Board, and internationally renowned sleep disorders specialist Professor Jack Clausen, acknowledged the importance of Somte and the partnership with the Baker.

“Somte is merely the size of a pager and yet it is able to generate the most sophisticated data analysis. It harnesses the potential to better diagnose and treat the millions of people throughout the world who are dually affected by CHF and sleep apnea,” says San Diego based Professor Clausen.

“In the USA alone, we know that over 4 million people have CHF – half of these people have sleep apnea. The new Baker-Compumedics partnership in enabling research and clinical trials to further develop such technologies as Somte has immense significance and potential.”

Reiterating the potential for mutual benefit, Director of The Baker, Professor Garry Jennings notes “The agreement between the Baker and Compumedics will allow our scientists to branch into new areas of experimentation which were previously unavailable.”