Wideblue, a product design and development consultancy, has won a gold award in the European Product Design Awards for a medical device that it developed for Cambridge Respiratory Innovation Ltd. The device, N-Tidal, is a small battery powered personal capnometer—used to measure the amount of CO₂ in exhaled breath.

Russell Overend, managing director of the Wideblue, says: “We are delighted to be recognised by the European Product Design Awards for a second time. In 2017, we won the ‘Best Design for Humanity’ for our Peek Retina product which is a mobile phone based ophthlamoscope.”

Currently in normal hospital use, a press release reports, capnometers are a large bedside machine connected to a patient’s face mask or a sensor located in life support equipment. It adds that N-Tidal is transformational as it will be used as a personal respiratory monitor.

“With the N-Tidal product our designers sought to miniaturise and simplify this advanced technology to such a point that a hand held, battery-powered device could be developed for use by patients at home, by GPs or respiratory specialists. Wideblue chose an infra-red LED tuned to the peak CO2 absorption wavelength and developed some patented infra-red optics to measure CO2 levels as the patient breathes through the device. Miniaturisation allowed the sensor to be located directly in front of the mouth—this gave a much better resolution of the CO2 concentration in each individual breath profile,” Overend comments.

He adds: “The device is currently undergoing clinical/user trials and has already produced superb clinical results.  Subject to successful completion of these trials and regulatory approvals we expect the units to go into commercial production in 2020.”