Zephyr Technology Corporation, (also known as Zephyr) is a privately owned manufacturer of advanced heart rate monitors, remote physiological monitoring and wireless

telehealth Telehealth is the distribution of Health care, health-related services and information via electronic information and telecommunications, telecommunication technologies. It allows long-distance patient and clinician contact, care, advice, reminde ...

systems for remote patient monitoring. Based in

Annapolis Annapolis ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of Maryland. It is the county seat of Anne Arundel County and its only incorporated city. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east o ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

and founded in 2003, Zephyr developed one of the first commercially available wearable, wireless and field-deployable Physiological Status Monitoring (PSM) systems for use in training and high stress operational environments. The company now has research and development resources in the United States, New Zealand and India, along with 31 distributors in more than 40 countries globally. Zephyr manufactures a range of consumer and professional-grade heart rate and fitness monitoring devices capable of measuring

heart rate Heart rate is the frequency of the cardiac cycle, heartbeat measured by the number of contractions of the heart per minute (''beats per minute'', or bpm). The heart rate varies according to the body's Human body, physical needs, including the nee ...

respiration Respiration may refer to: Biology * Cellular respiration, the process in which nutrients are converted into useful energy in a cell ** Anaerobic respiration, cellular respiration without oxygen ** Maintenance respiration, the amount of cellul ...

heart rate variability Heart rate variability (HRV) is the physiological phenomenon of variation in the time interval between heartbeats. It is measured by the variation in the beat-to-beat interval. Other terms used include "cycle length variability", "R–R variabi ...

, activity level, and 3-axis accelerometry. Zephyr most recent product, ZephyrLIFE, is one of the first entries into the emerging home

and remote patient monitoring market.

History

In 2003, Zephyr was founded in

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

to help develop remote monitoring technologies to address the needs of coaches and athletes in their training. Zephyr's engineers learned early on that there were particular challenges that such systems faced - many of which were the same as those faced by

first responders A first responder is a person with specialized training who is among the first to arrive and provide assistance or incident resolution at the scene of an emergency. First responders typically include law enforcement officers (commonly known as ...

and

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

personnel. Early and ongoing collaboration with fire departments,

NASA Ames The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

Research Center, National Guard Civil Support Teams, and multiple U.S. Special Forces units have allow Zephyr to develop its BioHarness and OmniSense software, which are capable of monitoring up to 50 test subjects at ranges of up to 1000 ft. In 2010, Zephyr's BioHarness and OmniSense system were used to remotely monitor the health and medical status of miners trapped during the

2010 Copiapó mining accident The 2010 Copiapó mining accident, also known as the "Chilean mining accident", began on 5 August 2010, with a cave-in at the San José copper–gold mine, located in the Atacama Desert, north of the regional capital of Copiapó, in northern ...

near

Copiapó Copiapó () is a List of cities in Chile, city and communes of Chile, commune in northern Chile, located about 65 kilometers east of the coastal List of towns in Chile, town of Caldera, Chile, Caldera. Founded on December 8, 1744, it is the capi ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

. In 2011,

Under Armour Under Armour, Inc. is an American sportswear company that manufactures footwear and clothing, apparel headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. History 20th century Under Armour was founded on September 25, 1996, by Kevin Plank, a ...

partnered with Zephyr to monitor athletes during the 2011

NFL Scouting Combine The NFL Scouting Combine is a week-long showcase occurring every February at Lucas Oil Stadium (and formerly at the RCA Dome until 2008) in Indianapolis, where college football players perform physical and mental tests in front of National Foot ...

. In 2012, Zephyr testified to

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...

on behalf of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

. In 2013, Zephyr has partnered with organizations including

Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is a teaching hospital located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the original and largest clinical education and research facility of Harvard Medical School/Harvar ...

, the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

Verizon Wireless Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the div ...

, and 3M to develop and launch ZephyrLIFE - one of the first commercially available comprehensive remote patient monitoring systems for general care monitoring. In 2014,

Covidien Covidien plc was an Irish-headquartered global health care products company and manufacturer of medical devices and supplies. Covidien became an independent publicly traded company after being spun off from Tyco International in 2007. It was pu ...

(ex Tyco Health) purchased Zephyr. Zephyr has continued to sell products in its three areas of consumer, Pro Sports, Defense and Healthcare. In Feb 2015,

Medtronic Medtronic plc is an American-Irish medical device company. The company's legal and executive headquarters are in Republic of Ireland, Ireland, while its operational headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Medtronic rebased to I ...

( ticker MDT) purchased Covidien forming the largest medical device company in the world. The acquisition was valued at $42.9 billion in cash and stock.

References

General references

* * * * {{cite news , url=http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/tmj.2014.0093, title=Panasonic Program Evaluation of Remote Heart Failure Monitoring: Healthcare Utilization Analysis in a Rural Regional Medical Center, date=July 15, 2014 , doi=10.1089/tmj.2014.0093, access-date=March 21, 2013

External links

Zephyr Corporate site
Health care companies established in 2003 Annapolis, Maryland Medical technology companies of the United States Activity trackers Health care companies based in Maryland