Opportunities
Propofol has become one of the most commonly-used drugs for inducing anesthesia, used in 54% of general anesthesia procedures and 39% of ambulatory and ICU sedation procedures in 2006, and projected to increase to 64% and 42% respectively by 2010. Propofol usage is estimated at 18.8 million annual events in hospitals, 19.5 million in ambulatory surgery centers and 8.4 million in physician's offices and ICUs. The anesthetic’s popularity is due to several factors, including the pleasant mental state patients’ experience, the drug’s rapid onset and short duration of action, shortened waking and recovery times for the patient and a reduced need for opioids, resulting in less nausea and vomiting.
The potential for medical devices that monitor “level of anesthesia” produced by intravenous anesthetic agents is $1.4 billion in the U.S. and $2.6 billion worldwide. And, with nearly 47 million propofol procedures annually in the U.S. today, each with the need for a dedicated monitoring unit and a disposable element, the market is significant.
Xhale has two issued patents and one patent application and is developing the first device in a line of point-of-care breath-based IV-anesthetic monitors for use in hospitals and outpatient settings. Xhale’s vision for its propofol monitor is a device that utilizes a SAW sensor to track propofol levels in the breath as a surrogate for the blood providing the clinician with a means to accurately predict a patient’s “level of sedation” in real time.
Although anesthesiologists are very familiar with dosing monitors for gas anesthetics and have relied on these monitors for years, there is no similar monitor which tells an anesthesiologist the ongoing blood level of propofol during a procedure. Xhale believes that a propofol monitor that offered the ability to monitor propofol concentration in plasma via the exhaled breath during a surgical/medical procedure will be welcomed by anesthesiologists.