24 January 2014 – BeneChill, Inc. has been awarded the 2014 Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation Leadership Award for developing the RhinoChill™ IntraNasal Cooling System, a groundbreaking technology for inducing therapeutic hypothermia during active resuscitation after a cardiac arrest and maintaining it while the patient is in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. The system is unique in being noninvasive, early acting, and usable by nonmedical personnel in the field to minimize long-term neurological damage associated with cardiac arrest.
Each year, leading Growth Partnership Company Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated uniqueness in developing and leveraging new technology that significantly impacts both the functionality and the customer value of new products and applications. The award lauds the high R&D spend towards innovation, its relevance to the industry, and the positive impact on brand perception.
To achieve the Technology Innovation Leadership Award, BeneChill’s performance was rigorously benchmarked against key competitors using the following criteria: uniqueness of technology; impact on new products/applications; impact on functionality; impact on customer value; and relevance of innovation to industry.
BeneChill joins other medical device companies such as Siemens, Esaote, MRI Interventions and MedTech Surgical, who have all previously been recipients of a Frost & Sullivan award.
“We are delighted to have our innovative brain protection technology recognized with this prestigious award,” said BeneChill CEO Fred Colen. “This reinforces our belief that early, targeted brain cooling is the key to improved neurological outcome and survival for cardiac arrest patients.”
RhinoChill™ is a portable, noninvasive and easy-to-use system for protecting the brain both during and following cardiac arrest. It rapidly and effectively reduces brain temperature by spraying an evaporating coolant liquid up the nose and into the nasal cavity, a large area situated close to the brain that acts as a heat exchanger. As it is both easy-to-use and portable, RhinoChill can be carried by emergency medical personnel in the ambulance and initiated as soon as they reach the patient then continued in the ambulance until the patient reaches the hospital.
The RhinoChill system is compact, lightweight, and can be battery-powered, making it eminently portable. The system's components can be connected within 30 to 60 seconds and can be deployed immediately. In contrast, conventional systems for inducing therapeutic hypothermia are bulky, heavy, and require mains power, delaying their application to the patient’s arrival at the hospital. Furthermore, these devices initially target core body cooling, which delays cooling of the brain even further, thereby limiting the neuro-protection offered by hypothermia. RhinoChill's technology reduces the risk of permanent neurological injury by initially targeting brain cooling immediately during cardiac arrest as well as after successful resuscitation.
"RhinoChill's technique can be mastered easily by first responders, emergency medical staff, and intensive care teams that can integrate the system into a comprehensive post resuscitation strategy," said Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Geethu Roshan Verghese. "Moreover, it does not require refrigeration and has low power requirements.
“BeneChill is committed to developing a system that meets or exceeds the highest standards in terms of product safety, efficacy and performance.
This shows the great customer value that the company offers,” added Verghese.
Although BeneChill's primary focus has been on the development of intranasal cooling technology to provide brain protection for cardiac arrest, the company is also working to leverage the use of its technology for other applications, which currently offer no or very limited brain protection, such as for traumatic brain injury, concussions, neuroradiology for stroke, neurosurgery, cardiac surgery (e.g. heart valve replacements, aortic root repair and bypass) and for migraine and cluster headaches. Frost& Sullivan anticipates that with BeneChill’s ability to penetrate the cardiology market, the technology will be rapidly deployed for these other applications as well.
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