# Multiplexed wireless battery-free sensors for pediatric intensive care units (PICU).

> **NIH NIH R43** · WEARIFI, INC. · 2020 · $224,821

## Abstract

Project Summary
In the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) monitoring of hemodynamics and oxygen transport
provide critical information needed by care providers for decision making. Patients end up with
so many wires, tubes and umbilicals that access to the patient and movement become limited.
Furthermore, many of these monitoring techniques are invasive, and for the frailest patients in
the PICU, often result in suffering or even morbidity. There is an urgent need for reducing
invasive monitoring and the number of wires that get attached to PICU patients, while still
providing the critical physiological data that care providers rely on. Wearifi, Inc. is working to
develop a platform for wireless battery-free patient monitoring. In this proposal the platform will
be applied to the PICU setting to reduce the number of wires that are attached to patients and to
investigate if the system can provide a surrogate or indicator for parameters that are traditionally
only available from invasive monitoring techniques. The specific aims of this work include 1)
hardening of the platform for clinical use and compatibility with standard patient monitors, 2)
validation pilot study in the pediatric cardiac intensive care unit (PCICU), and 3) an attempt to
correlate data from the wireless sensor platform to additional markers of interest such as
systematic vascular resistance (SVR). This project fits the mission of the NIH Eunice Kennedy
Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). In particular it is
well aligned with the objectives of the RFA-HD-19-001 Safe and Effective Devices for Use In
Neonatal, Perinatal and Pediatric Care Settings. We have assembled a highly qualified and
competent team form the small business Wearifi, Inc. and clinical experts from Northwestern
University’s Ann & Robert H Lurie Hospital and Feinberg School of Medicine to develop and test
innovative patient monitoring devices for use in the pediatric intensive care unit.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9908207
- **Project number:** 1R43HD101189-01
- **Recipient organization:** WEARIFI, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Jeffrey Model
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $224,821
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-09-08 → 2023-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9908207

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9908207, Multiplexed wireless battery-free sensors for pediatric intensive care units (PICU). (1R43HD101189-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9908207. Licensed CC0.

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