The startup Vivardis joins the TEAM technology incubator. It is thus joining the School’s Centre for Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering as part of the development of a medical device for an initial period of 12 months.
The startup created by Gérard Evers will receive technical support from a faculty researcher at the School’s Centre for Biomedical and Healthcare Engineering (CIS), Laurent Navarron. Alongside TEAM, Vivardis will host an ICM intern and is seeking a candidate for a CIFRE PhD with the CIS.
Vivardis is a Young Innovative Company, with over 50 years of combined experience in technology and service innovation for chronic diseases, particularly respiratory conditions. Building on its connections with expert physicians, Vivardis has developed Nivolis, a connected medical device that fits between the patient and their ventilator, regardless of brand or type.
What does Vivardis offer?
The context
In France, each year, more than 200,000 patients receive home respiratory assistance devices or oxygen therapy. These are typically prescribed with precise settings following hospitalization for respiratory distress. The settings should be adaptive and individualized, as each patient’s respiratory condition evolves differently. The patient and their assistance device form a pair which, as in real life, does not always live in harmony. Sometimes the patient struggles against their ventilator, which ends up dictating its own rhythm. This mismatch impacts the patient’s quality of life, reduces treatment effectiveness, and creates a risk of rehospitalization for respiratory distress.
Vivardis’s offering
Nivolis collects respiratory signals, analyzes patient-ventilator interactions and, when necessary, alerts the physician or home healthcare provider (who installs the devices in patients’ homes and ensures technical follow-up). These alerts reduce hospital admissions, consultations, or avoidable trips.
More than an alert system, Nivolis also aggregates respiratory signals in a Big Data database to analyze, through artificial intelligence, this massive, anonymous data to better understand the complex interaction of patient-ventilator pairs and ultimately offer adaptive, personalized, and predictive respiratory assistance management.
Vivardis also supports companies in conducting and documenting clinical studies and investigations or in innovation projects involving medical devices for chronic conditions.
The TEAM technology incubator draws on the expertise and resources of the Ecole des Mines de Saint-Étienne to support the creation of innovative technology companies. Established in 2004 on the Georges Charpak Provence campus, and in 2016 on the Saint-Étienne campus, TEAM represents: 60 projects supported, 80% five-year survival rate, €3.1M raised in 2021.
