Autonomous Healthcare, Inc. has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant for $746,668 to commercialize a clinical decision support fluid management system for intensive care unit (ICU) patients.

Intravenous fluid management is critical for patients in the ICU, particularly for patients with sepsis---a life-threatening syndrome characterized by inflammation throughout the body. Excessive administration of fluids can result in fluid overload, which is associated with higher rates of mortality. Autonomous Healthcare's clinical decision support solution is based on recent advances in closed-loop adaptive control technology, which provides real-time feedback to clinicians to optimize fluid administration.

"The National Science Foundation supports small businesses with the most innovative, cutting-edge ideas that have the potential to become great commercial successes and make huge societal impacts," said Barry Johnson, Director of Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships at NSF. "We hope that this seed funding will spark solutions to some of the most important challenges of our time across all areas of science and technology."

"This award provides further validation for Autonomous Healthcare's vision to revolutionize critical care by introducing clinical decision support and closed-loop control technologies," said Dr. Behnood Gholami, Co-Founder and CEO of Autonomous Healthcare. Professor Wassim M. Haddad, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Autonomous Healthcare notes that "feedback control technology can ultimately automate respiratory, fluid, pain, and sedation management in the ICU thereby improving medical care by continuous analysis of bedside monitoring data, and ultimately, introducing automation to address detected adverse events."

About the National Science Foundation's Small Business Programs: America's Seed Fund powered by the National Science Foundation awards nearly $200 million annually to startups and small businesses, transforming scientific discovery into products and services with commercial and societal impact. To learn more about the NSF SBIR/STTR program, visit: seedfund.nsf.gov.

About Autonomous Healthcare

Autonomous Healthcare is building a platform for smart patient management for intensive care units and operating rooms with the ultimate goal of reducing morbidity and mortality by introducing various levels of automation. Autonomous Healthcare is a recipient of grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, the NIH, and the US Army Medical Research and Material Command.