As it continues to develop smart sleeve technology to monitor body motion and biometric data, Denver’s Cipher Skin has landed a crucial contract and partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense.
Cipher Skin was awarded a $1.5 million contract by the U.S. Department of Defense, as part of the second phase of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. This program and contract will support the development and commercialization of Cipher Skin’s BioSleeve in partnership with the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC).
The BioSleeve is a smart compression sleeve designed as a digital tool for physical therapists, trainers and athletes in the rehab and return-to-play process. Users can visualize real-time complex motion of their knees and arms in three dimensions, along with key metrics such as range of motion and joint angular velocity.
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With the acceptance into the DoD program, Cipher Skin will be working directly with U.S. soldiers to further test its product. Co-founder Shaka Bahadu said that within 18 months, more than 200 BioSleeves will be delivered, assessed and validated by three units of the U.S. Special Operations during field training.
While this testing will help Cipher Skin develop its product for military use, co-founder Phillip Bogdanovich said it is also crucial to the company’s non-military applications.
“The ability to put our product on people that will use it and utilize it under the greatest strain means that we are stress testing it in a way that is not otherwise possible,” he said.
One crucial piece of this program is Cipher Skin’s ability to monitor heart rate and dynamic O2 saturation on an active user.
The company sees an important usage of its product in remotely monitoring O2 saturation, whether it’s on an elderly user in a care facility or an active health care worker in a hospital.
“This is about Cipher Skin being an integral part of moving the world of human monitoring forward,” Bogdanovich said.
While Covid-19 has slowed the progress of many companies, Cipher Skin has actively been growing in recent months.
The company has tripled in size to 14 employees in the last year, while also moving into a new, larger office in Denver. Cipher Skin has also scaled the civilian applications of its products, working with medical device distributors and physical therapy clinics in California to further test its solutions.
“While other companies are pulling back and waiting to see what comes over the horizon, we are growing and scaling,” Bogdanovich said. “We are continuing to move forward.”
