CAVA Diagnostic Medical Device

Continuous Ambulatory Vestibular Assessment (CAVA)   

Acute periodic dizziness is a chronically disabling disease and can leave sufferers reluctant to engage in day to day activities due to the fear of an attack occurring. Diagnosis is challenging as several potential causes exist and the periodic nature means the chance of an event occurring when a health care professional is present unlikely. The CAVA project , lead by researchers and health care professionals at UEA & the Norfolk and Norwich NHS set out to address this and called on GWA to provide the research tools needed. 

A low-power wearable sensor was essential to support this work. This required a full solution of hardware, embedded software for the sensor, and companion PC software.

The device performs an electro-ocular gram (EOG) – a scan that measures the human eye movement. The apparatus needed to be lightweight as it has to be permanently worn on the head, perform regular monitoring, while all the time consuming minimal power to give maximum battery life of 20+ days.

Involvement

• Product design of a device that allows the patient to be mobile and comfortable.
• Firmware development to continuously log sensor readings alongside activity levels.
• PCB design of a small data logging unit and memory, optimally power efficient way to give a battery life up to 20 days from a cell battery.
• Production of  a companion PC application to extract the data in a form suitable for the research scientists to analyse
• Product verification to MDD standards
• Manufacturing setup
• Trials support and troubleshooting