Hoana Medical

Hoana Medical, Inc. was founded in 2001 as a high tech spin-off of Oceanit Laboratories, a Hawaii-based engineering, science, and research company established in 1985. Today, Hoana is a privately held medical device company with products that passively collect patient vital signs in a bold new way. The company’s revolutionary, patented LifeBed™ patient vigilance systems provide non-contact measurement of patient vital signs using sensors embedded in a hospital mattress coverlet, eliminating the need to attach sensors, electrodes, cuffs or other devices directly to the patient.

Hoana’s technology sprang from early development work at Oceanit, funded by grants from the US military to develop a Medevac ambulatory monitoring platform. The LifeBed system proved itself in Medevac helicopters where it was able to accurately detect patients’ heart and respiratory rates through full body armor in spite of the extreme background noise and vibration.

LifeBed systems are currently being used in the medical surgical wards of hospitals throughout the United States to track patient conditions when the nurse is not in the room. If the LifeBed system detects that the patient’s condition is deteriorating or unsafe, it immediately sends an alert through the hospital’s nurse call system to bring the nurse back to the bedside.

To date, over 20,000 patients have used the LifeBed system and many have benefitted from the positive medical outcomes that resulted when nurses responded to alerts generated by the system.