Axiom-1 Mission Ready to Blast Off!
Canadian Private Astronaut Mark Pathy and his crew members have been busy training at NASA Johnson Space Center ahead of the launch. The Axiom-1 mission was recently cleared by NASA and is set to blast off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in April. The mission is set to launch today on April 8, 2022.
You can watch the Launch Live here: https://youtu.be/5nLk_Vqp7nw
Ax-1 is the first mission involving an all-private crew of astronauts to reach the International Space Station. The mission will last 10 days with at least eight days are expected to be spent inside the ISS.
Mark Pathy, Axiom Space private Astronaut, will wear the Astroskin while staying on the ISS. He will conduct several research experiments including research on the effects of microgravity, chronic pain, and sleep disturbances. Mark will be joined on Ax-1 by fellow crew members Eytan Stibbe from Israel, Larry Connor, and Michael Lopez-Alegria from the United States.
A New Prospect for Astroskin and the Advancement of Space Research
Initially entirely funded by national space programs, space exploration is getting momentum with several private companies and individuals targeting Space as the next frontier. Hexoskin has collaborated with the Canadian Space Agency since 2012 on space projects, including the Astroskin (Bio Monitor).
Astroskin seamlessly integrates several sensors in one portable smart clothing to report continuously the vital signs remotely. Integrating a precise 3-lead ECG, and Body Inductance Plethysmography (RIP) sensors, Astroskin allows the ambulatory monitoring of the cardiac and lung function, previously only possible with bulky equipment previously available in laboratories. The Astroskin smart clothing also integrates a portable pulse oximeter for continuous blood oxygen and blood pressure monitoring, a skin temperature sensor, and a 3-axis activity sensor for activity and sleep monitoring.
The comfort and convenience of a smart textile explain why Astroskin is currently the health monitoring tool of choice for the ISS participating countries to conduct health research in microgravity and remotely monitor the vital signs of astronauts. More recently, we announced the upcoming mission of Astronaut Kellie Gerardi, set to conduct research with Astroskin on board a Virgin Galactic Flight. Since Astroskin is operational on board the ISS, it opens new opportunities for private astronauts and space companies to use Astroskin for their training and during spaceflight.
We are thrilled to see new missions such as the Ax-1 mission adding Astroskin to their toolkit to conduct meaningful research in Space and contribute like Mark Pathy to the advancement of science with important potential applications on earth and for future space exploration missions.
Bertrand Nepveu joins Hexoskin as investor and advisor!
We're very excited to have Bertrand Nepveu join Hexoskin as a new investor and advisor!
Bertrand is a well-known Montreal tech veteran. He was founder and CEO at virtual and augmented reality startup Vrvana until he sold it to Apple in 2017. Bertrand is also GP at Triptyq Capital and is involved with many other startups and venture funds in the US and Canada.
Hexoskin solves the problem of monitoring vital signs accurately over the long term, to keep patients at home and healthy.
Hexoskin's biometric garments and connected health platform offer an end to end solution, from physiological data collection to data analytics and EHR integration. Hexoskin is the only clinically validated system that offers a non-invasive solution to continuously monitor the cardio-respiratory function of patients.
Hexoskin's current products serve the clinical research, defense, and aerospace markets. Its customers, including NASA, DOD, Yale Health, Boston Children's, and hundreds of researchers and hospitals, have published over 150 scientific papers with Hexoskin data. Hexoskin smart shirts are used in pharmaceutical clinical trials, and its technology has been part of the International Space Station since 2018
Hexoskin has been selected by Mayo Clinic in 2019 for their MedTech accelerator program, and is currently implementing remote patient monitoring in cardiology and pulmonology with health systems in the US and Canada. Hexoskin expects to get FDA clearance for its remote patient monitoring solution in 2022.
Hexoskin Presenting at the Emerging Medtech Summit
Pierre-Alexandre Fournier, CEO of Hexoskin was selected as an Innovation Leader for the #LSIUSA22 Emerging Medtech Summit. Hexoskin's CEO will present at the event on March 15-18, 2022, and announce exciting new products and partnerships aimed to help patients have better access to healthcare.
Pierre-Alexandre has been involved in health sensor development and artificial intelligence projects for over 15 years and advises many public and private organizations on these topics in the US, Canada and Europe. Pierre-Alexandre is also an advocate for transparency in healthcare, patient empowerment, and healthcare innovation through design.
Hexoskin Smart Garments utilize embedded textile sensors to continuously monitor vital signs. Hexoskin smart clothing is capable of monitoring cardiac, pulmonary, activity, and sleep digital biomarkers.
The Emerging Medtech Summit will feature 150 vetted presenting companies, panel sessions, 1:1 meetings, and networking opportunities.
Join us on March 30th for a New Astroskin Live Event!
The Astroskin Vital Signs Monitoring Platform is an advanced smart clothing used in Space and on Earth for cutting-edge research and projects. Join us live on March 30th at 11:00 am EDT, and meet our speakers to learn more about current and future projects with Astroskin.
Astroskin set to be used in Space by Private Astronaut Mark Pathy
Astroskin will soon be getting another ride to Space, thanks to Canadian Private Astronaut Mark Pathy and the first-ever private mission to the ISS, Ax-1, organized by Axiom Space. The Ax-1 space mission is set to send a crew of four private astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on board a SpaceX Crew Dragon. Set to launch in April 2022, Ax-1 is a 10-day mission where at least eight days will be spent inside the ISS to conduct several research experiments including research on the effects of microgravity, chronic pain, and sleep disturbances. Mark will be joined on Ax1 by fellow crew members Eytan Stibbe from Israel, Larry Connor, and Michael Lopez-Alegria from the United States.
M. Pathy, aged 52, is the CEO and founder of the investment firm MAVRIK CORP. He is recognized in Montreal, the city where he resides, to support several causes as a philanthropist. Married and father of three children, Mark Pathy decided to leverage his participation in this mission to collaborate with the Canadian Space Agencies to conduct experiments in microgravity that are a priority for children’s and universities. 
As a Mission Specialist, he will be taking part in a total of 12 science research projects in partnership with six Canadian universities and their investigators, including clinician-researchers at The Montreal Children’s Hospital and Child Health Research at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre and become the first private Astronaut to wear Astroskin on board the International Space Station. Pathy will be funding himself the research conducted in Space and contribute to generating results and potential applications on earth that would have taken more time to be realized under the current Canadian space program.
Going to space involves months of planning. Canadian Private Astronaut Mark Pathy has been busy training at NASA Johnson Space Center ahead of the launch.
Pathy and his crew already took part in training exercises and will now embark on seventeen weeks of training to get ready for the mission. We look forward to following him and the Ax-1 mission in the coming weeks and months.
AGE-WELL Webinar - Monitoring Heart and Lung Health Using Innovative Technologies in 2022
Heart disease affects 1.3 million Canadians. There are technologies that can help patients receive better care at home, and better manage their health and symptoms.
Our Hexoskin CEO, Pierre-Alexandre Fournier was invited by AGE-WELL to discuss about innovative monitoring solutions for cardiac and pulmonary diseases, like Hexoskin Smart Clothing, that can help patients in managing and monitoring their health condition.
You can watch the event here.
Make sure to subscribe to our Hexoskin Newsletter to receive the latest news and early invitations to our upcoming events!
2021: A Year in Review
2021 is finally behind us and our team took some time to look back and reflect on what was accomplished by our community of researchers & developers. Last year was also a year of tremendous growth for our Hexoskin and Astroskin solutions with our professional clients. We'd like to present you with a few publications and case studies that got our attention as we look forward to a new chapter for Hexoskin in 2022.
In this study, Hexoskin smart garments were worn by 16 firefighters to track their psychophysiological responses, specifically HR and HRV, during rescue simulations performed under various conditions (day vs night, and haptic vs audio alarm) at the University of Bourgogne-Franche-Comte. Their results showed that night rescue interventions resulted in significantly higher psychophysiological responses and lower self-confidence than day rescue interventions, and the type of alarm had little effect on psychophysiological responses.
In this study, the researchers at the University of Salzburg evaluated Hexoskin’s RIP sensors with a custom algorithm versus a reference spirometry system to determine the concurrent validity in detecting flow reversals (FR) and breathing pattern (BP). Their algorithm successfully determined 99% of FR, suggesting that the proposed system is valid and practically useful for BP assessments in the field, specifically during exercise and running.
In this study, the team at the University of Alberta recruited six people with neuromuscular conditions. The participants wore the Hexoskin smart shirts and engaged in a 15-week recreational singing and dancing program to evaluate its safety and meaningfulness on quality of life. Overall, they showed improvements in respiratory function along with speech, swallowing, strength, leisure, and relationships, demonstrating that recreational singing and dancing is a safe activity to improve physical and social quality of life for people with neuromuscular disorders.
Human activity recognition (HAR) plays an important role in remote health monitoring and emergency notification. This study is a collaboration between teams from research institutions based in Montreal (Canada) and Cartage (Tunisia) which evaluates a method for classifying acceleration data using an efficient classifier combination of feature engineering-based and learning-based representation. The result yields a 90% recognition rate and performs significantly better than individual classifiers.
This team from Peter L. Reichertz at the Institute for Medical Informatics, is working on a lightweight IoT platform, where ECG metrics from Hexoskin were sent to an edge device and analyzed using deep learning models for binary end-to-end classification.
The performance on 5G showed an average transmission latency of 110ms, data corruption in 0.07% of samples, and deep learning inference of about 170ms, suggesting that 5G networks with edge devices provide a suitable infrastructure for continuous remote patient monitoring.
Looking Forward to A Bright 2022
Choosing is hard and there are many more publications and use cases that deserve attention. That’s why our Publication page provides a full list of the publications from our community.
The entire Hexoskin Team would like to congratulate our Hexoskin community that continues to push the boundaries of science and innovation despite the challenges we face due to the global pandemic.
Looking forward to the upcoming months, we are preparing a slate of events aimed to shine a light on some of the groundbreaking research and projects performed with Hexoskin & Astroskin. Make sure to subscribe to our Hexoskin Newsletter to receive our news and events!
Japanese Astronaut Aki Hoshide (JAXA) Wears the Astroskin Bio-Monitor in the International Space Station
Japanese Astronaut Aki Hoshide was the 5th astronaut to wear the Astroskin Bio-Monitor system aboard the International Space Station last week. Astronauts use the Astroskin in space since 2019 to participate in various research studies, including "Vascular Aging", a project lead by University of Waterloo researchers.
Many more astronauts are scheduled to use Astroskin in space. The system is available to all participating space agencies and research universities. The most recent Astroskin payload was launched with SpaceX's mission CRS-23 on August 29th, 2021.
Microgravity affects fluid movements in the body and heat transmission (in the absence of convection movement in microgravity). This triggers physiological phenomena impossible to monitor on the ground and tests our models of human physiology. The Astroskin Bio-Monitor system gives scientists a tool to observe these phenomena in space. It also prepares us to maintain crew health during long space missions beyond low earth orbit (LEO), to the Moon and Mars.
A Brief History of the Astroskin
Here's a list of space launches that carried Astroskin payloads:
- SpaceX CRS-16 (December 5th, 2018)
- Cygnus NG-11 (April 17th, 2019)
- SpaceX CRS-18 (July 25th, 2019)
- SpaceX CRS-19 (December 5th, 2019
- SpaceX CRS-20 (March 7th, 2020)
- Cygnus NG-14 (October 3rd, 2020)
- SpaceX CRS-21 (December 6th, 2020)
- SpaceX CRS-22 (June 3rd, 2021)
- SpaceX CRS-23 (August 29th, 2021)
The Astroskin Vital Signs Monitoring Platform is also used on Earth on industrial projects and scientific research.
Information about Astroskin missions aboard the ISS:
https://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/Hardware/hardconfig/3065
https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/i/iss-bio-monitor-analyzer
New White Paper: Easing the Burdens of Stress on Healthcare Workers with the Hexoskin Stress Monitoring System
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have come to appreciate even more the hard work of our frontline healthcare workers. Their commitment towards their patients is being recognized and praised. However, the pandemic has only exacerbated aggravating factors that are affecting the wellbeing of hospital staff and healthcare professionals. These factors are related to their work environment, such as staff shortages, physical injuries, exposure to workplace hazards, and even verbal and physical abuse by patients and their families. Physicians, nurses, and surgeons are some of the healthcare professionals that hold demanding and stressful positions. Moreover, medical staff hold many responsibilities and duties which increase their level of daily stress.
The pandemic has brought more burden to the medical personnel with the already high workload, the long hours, and the demanding work conditions, contributing to an increase of occupational stress, anxiety, and depression among frontline healthcare workers.
According to recent studies, trauma-related stress among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic range from 5.2% to 45% depending on the country or region. Another recent study performed in the US during the pandemic has shown that stress is higher among nursing assistants, younger clinicians, medical assistants, social workers, inpatient workers, women, and persons of color.
Occupational stress can lead to burnout, distress, psychosomatic issues, and deterioration of quality of life. Occupational stress can also lead to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Before the pandemic, the rates of post-traumatic stress disorder among healthcare workers were estimated to range between 10 to 20%. During the global pandemic, it is estimated that the prevalence of PTSD in healthcare workers was at 21.5%, with levels of depression and anxiety also reported to affect about 22% of medical staff.
Request our New White Paper
In our new Hexoskin White Paper on Easing the Burdens of Stress on Healthcare Workers with the Hexoskin Stress Monitoring System, we review the impacts of stress on the healthcare system and its consequences for the healthcare personnel, which can also affect the quality of care offered to patients due to absenteeism and staff shortages. The White Paper also reviews current and novel methods for monitoring stress levels with healthcare workers. Based on these observations, we present how the Hexoskin Smart Clothing and Stress Monitoring Solutions have been implemented for stress monitoring across the healthcare system using continuous and passive measurement of cardiac, respiratory, activity, and sleep data.
Additionally, we will review how clinical researchers are utilizing Hexoskin’s biometric data to further develop stress reduction interventions and implement policy changes to mitigate organizational stress and burnout. Finally, we will discuss how Hexoskin can be used to monitor the patients' health and reduce the workload of the healthcare staff by providing the evidence needed to support clinical decisions, evaluate the best ways to deliver care to patients and support a culture of evidence-informed decision-making. Request the White Paper today!
Hexoskin Has Your Back
Since the launch of the first Hexoskin Smart Clothing in 2012, we worked with professional organizations and leading academic & research institutions on breakthrough research & projects. We developed tailor-made programs to provide all the support you need to plan your project and getting started. This is why hundreds of world-class universities, government agencies, and companies are choosing Hexoskin to conduct evidence-based research, monitoring programs, and develop new applications with our industry-leading smart clothing solutions. Contact our team today to start planning your next project and get a quote based on our programs for academic researchers & students and professionals.
