Currently Funded Grant Work SMART SEAL OSTOMY APPLIANCE Korosensor.com, Inc. (KI) has been awarded a $749,869 Phase II National Institutes of Health(NIH) Small Business Innovative Research(SBIR) grant by the National Center for Resource Resources to develop a wearable ostomy appliance device that incorporates smart seal technology to provide greater patient confidence and satisfaction, and reduce potential for skin breakdown.  The need to provide a reliable and effective skin barrier is becoming increasingly important for colostomy, ileostomy, and urostomy patients.  An aging population, higher health care costs, recurrence of peristomal skin problems, cyclic skin breakdown, and poor eyesight are all significant factors adversely affecting ostomy care.  There is no existing ostomy technology that provides patients with feedback on the current status of the ostomy wafer.  The proposed Phase II project will focus on the development a smart seal ostomy wafer that will offer patients the following benefits:  provide patient "aware" wear time, identify actual location of undermining effects along seal perimeter, reduce potential for skin breakdown, provide better patient comfort and well-being by eliminating cycle of misery due to an ineffective seal and skin breakdown, and reduce overall cost and time for ostomy management (through fewer appliances and skin problems).  These benefits will provided by incorporating leakage sensing into the ostomy skin barrier to alert the ostomy patient of potential problems.  The ability to detect "undermining" prior to "meltdown" will promote a feeling of self-control and comfort.  The "self-awareness" of the patient will result in lower patient cost, as the patient will change the appliance when needed, not based on schedule.    SELF DISPENSING RESPIRATORY EFFORT BAND Korosensor.com, Inc. (KI) has been awarded a $589,317 Phase II National Institutes of Health(NIH) Small Business Innovative Research(SBIR) grant by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute(NHLBI) to develop a disposable self-dispensing respiratory effort band to reliably detect subtle apnea and improve registration of sleep disordered respiratory events. The effects of sleep disordered breathing, including obstructive apnea syndrome (OAS) and Cheyene-Stokes breathing lead to excessive daytime sleepiness, high blood pressure, heart failure and stroke. The incidence of apnea-related fragmented sleep and cardiovascular abnormalities continues to increase, affecting up to 18 million Americans and 4% of the middle-aged adult population. Existing effort band technology has a number of problems including sensitivity to sleep patient movement (i.e. repositioning) causing data inconsistency; band slippage causing poor respiratory event registration; and restrictive patient fit resulting in patient discomfort.  The proposed Phase II project will focus on the development of an effort band that can be self-dispensed like a roll of tape, offering a low-cost disposable product that eliminates custom band sizes and effort band tension setting via loop or buckle setting, and improves detection of subtle apnea for sleep patients. A smart garment fashioned into an effort band is being developed to sense thoraco-abdominal respiratory movement. This low-cost self-dispensing method of sensing respiratory rate could significantly improve detection of sleep-disordered breathing through “full-circumference” respiratory event characterization.