LAKKA Health Is Revolutionizing Medical Devices from the Ground Up
Sami Lakka wants to reinvent the wheel. Well, maybe not the wheel, but at least the standard medical devices that the industry has been using for years without any major innovation. His company is currently developing two products — devices to measure blood pressure and sudden drops in blood sugar levels — but their sights are much broader.
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The Challenge
Sami Lakka, CEO & Founder of LAKKA Health, believes that when it comes to common medical devices, the industry is following the old track. “A lot of the medical devices that we use at the moment have remained unchanged for decades,” says Lakka. “Sure they may have a sleeker plastic enclosure but the parts inside that really matter are essentially the same.
Take the blood pressure monitor, for example. It consists of a cuff, a pump, and a pressure sensor that measures blood pressure by squeezing an artery. “That’s been a traditional way of measuring for a century or so,” he states.
When it comes to measuring blood sugar levels, there may be more products on the market, but again, Lakka sees a critical lack of innovation in the underlying technology: it’s either a blood prick or a CGM device.
“Large medical device companies are often reluctant to disrupt their existing market or portfolio,” Lakka remarks. Unconcerned with innovating on devices that they deem to be working just fine, these large companies are typically not forward looking with their sights on new products and new technologies. “This leaves a lot of room for smaller companies like us to play in the field and hopefully bring something new,” declares Lakka. His company finds unacknowledged opportunities where they can reinvent existing technology.
How It Works: Siiring
When LAKKA Health decided to rethink the standard blood pressure monitor (which is “as big as a laptop,” says Lakka) they had the patient’s convenience in mind. The product they are developing — Siiring — measures blood pressure from the finger and is small enough to fit inside a pocket. To reach this solution the company had to challenge the century-long dependence on air pressure. “There’s nothing in the actual measurement process that necessitates the use of air pressure,” comments Lakka. “There’s room for innovation.” Their device uses mechanical shape memory alloy (SMA) actuation and highly-sensitive force sensors to detect blood pressure. The measurement is conducted through a squeezing action whereby thin wire contracts when stimulated by a current. With this approach there is no need for air pressure and the large and noisy equipment that goes along with it.
The Siiring allows users to measure whenever they want, whether at home or in an office, as the device is small and silent. Measurements and readings are accessed through a mobile app. The product is useful for individuals with high blood pressure who might need to take their measurements multiple times a day to identify trends or adjust medications. This consumer-centric approach to design is central to LAKKA’s ethos. From a business standpoint, they want to provide their customers with innovative products that allow individuals affordably to manage their own health.
How It Works: Sokru
For another of LAKKA’s innovations, dogs served as inspiration. From 2014 to 2015 Lakka, who has a PhD in measurement and information technology, was working at the University of Michigan as a post-doctoral researcher and started to become interested in wearable medical devices. Around the same time, he was also reading academic studies about how service dogs are used to assist people who have Type 1 diabetes. Their acute sense of smell allows the dogs to recognize gas compounds emitted from the body when an individual’s blood glucose drops. This research left him with a technical question: can technology mimic the olfactory cells of a dog and measure when someone’s blood sugar levels are reaching dangerous levels?
The team at LAKKA Health began looking at existing sensing technologies and started developing their own that could take very sensitive measurements of volatile organic compounds (emitted gasses) when someone is experiencing hypo- or hyperglycemia. Their technology can detect very low concentrations of these VOCs due to a patented temperature cycle operation that uses a temperature ramp to enhance the sensitivity and cross-selectivity of the sensor.
After creating a prototype of the device, a friend of Lakka’s informally tested it. A Type 1 diabetic, he put himself into a hypoglycemic state with the sensing technology nearby and it worked. They soon began optimizing the device, which they named Sokru, by streamlining the devices that went into it, developing software apps to help it run, and creating hardware so that people could wear it. Last year, they completed their first clinical trial in Switzerland at Diabetes Center Berne.
This novel device could monitor one’s glucose non-invasively, unlike finger pricking or continuous glucose monitoring devices. The idea is that Sokru, which can be attached to one’s body or placed in a room, sounds an alarm when a person’s glucose levels begin to plummet and metabolic responses produce VOCs. Lakka claims that Sokru responds faster than CGMs but he doesn’t think that they will replace this legacy technology. He believes it will be beneficial to people who lack access to CGMs and need something to safeguard them from extreme fluctuations in blood glucose levels. It’s also helpful at night when a child or an adult is sleeping, which is when over 50% of hypoglycemic conditions occur.
Where They Are in the Process
So far, the company is working with two innovations and their attention is now focused on bringing them to the market and raising capital to develop additional devices. “The big thing is proving they work,” says Lakka. “We are on that level now.” They are continuing to tweak the final form of the products and look forward to developing a business model that markets devices directly to consumers for personal use.
Our Take
As a Finnish company, Lakka claims that innovation is in their DNA. “We’re a country of five and a half million people,” reminds Lakka. If your company makes a device only for Finland, “you’re going to die,” he states, and if you try to enter the international market “it has to be innovative because there are so many large US companies that can create existing devices in a very lean way.” Their two devices — Siiring and Sokru — highlight their creative and inventive approach to reimagining common medical devices. We’re excited to see how Lakka and his team apply their ethos of invention — and of questioning the status quo — to more aspects of healthcare delivery.
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Published: Feb 9, 2024