Breas Medical – Redefining Clinical Excellence
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has brought the entire world to a standstill. The pandemic, according to United Nations, is the most challenging crisis the world is facing since the Second World War— leading to loss of lives and an economic recession that probably has no parallel in the recent past. In the wake of the increasing number of cases, the respiratory devices market is witnessing a sharp rise in demand across the globe. Keenly aware of the fact that mechanical ventilators currently can be the difference between recovery and death, hardware experts and device manufacturers are heeding the call of duty, ramping up their production capacities to cope with the increased demand.
Rising to this challenging situation, Breas Medical is one such company committed to empowering hospitals, home care providers, and care institutions with innovative and high-quality respiratory products. As a provider of a comprehensive line of respiratory medical devices in Homecare Life Support Ventilation, Non- Invasive Ventilation, Airway Clearance, and CPAP treatment, Breas has recently hired additional staff to increase its production capacity across its global manufacturing sites. With a network of highly-specialised distributors in more than 40 countries around the world, Breas is on the front line, providing its customers with robust, well- designed, and reliable devices, coupled with highly-responsive customer service.
At the core, Breas is a medium-sized, yet global company with a strong heritage in design and customer support. “For almost 30 years, we have served global markets with our innovative respiratory medical device products, well-known for their Swedish design, reliable technology and ease of use,” says Raffi Stepanian, the CEO of Breas Medical. Back in 1991, Breas was born in Gothenburg with a singular focus on improving the bulky design of ventilators used by patients suffering from sleep apnea. “At the time, ventilators were close to the size of the older desktops. The idea was to engineer a way to make these devices smaller in size,” states Stepanian. Fast forward to 2002; the company successfully launched iSleep—one of the smallest CPAPs in the market. While designing iSleep, the emphasis had been on the design so that patients don’t feel like they are using any equipment around them.
On a mission to be “at the Heart of Breathing,” Breas follows an innovative and patient-centric approach in product design, Raffi Stepanian and develops and manufactures products that pack state-of-the-art monitoring capabilities, making additional monitoring equipment almost unnecessary. These products focus on mobility, and all the advanced integrated features come in a compact package, making sure that the end-users can carry on living their everyday lives.
From Hospital to Home
Breas develops CPAPs, ventilators and MIE devices, as well as abroad range of accessories and a connectivity solution, to help people with respiratory conditions in the hospital and at home. Keeping up with the rise of IT and connectivity and other technological advances in mechanical ventilation, Breas designs and develops products and solutions that make workflows of medical practitioners more efficient and save costs. Today, while more patients are being sent home earlier from the hospitals, Breas acknowledges the growing importance of IT and connectivity in healthcare and the opportunities they usher in for AI and improved treatments and patient management. The company continuously strives to improve the patient’s quality of life to enable a better transition from hospital to home.
From the connectivity perspective, the company’s comprehensive software tool connects to its products to provide data to caregivers, allowing them to monitor the patients using Breas’ products. “Once the patients are out of the hospitals, enjoying life as normal human beings, it gets difficult to track their activities and their physical well-being. Our software tool allows caregivers to download all the data, see what is happening breath by breath through their dashboards and make appropriate care management decisions. In case of any deterioration in the patient’s condition, the health providers and caregivers are immediately alerted,” explains Stepanian. The company also provides extensive training through its platform Education by Breas.
“For almost 30 years, we have served global markets with our innovative respiratory medical device products, well-known for their Swedish design, reliable technology and ease of use”
Apart from earning a pioneering position in the field of ventilation, Breas also has built a decent place in the field of airway clearance, by designing a device that clears mucus build-up for patients. In the past six months, the company had eight new product launches lined-up. But without giving much away, Stepanian mentions about the Vivo 45LS,their latest high-end Life support ventilator for patients needing ventilation continuously. The comprehensive device monitors patients efficiently via integrated polygraphy that measures the breathing efforts of patients.
To illustrate more on the prowess of Breas’ products, Stepanian cites a success story that involved Ellie, a little girl suffering from Central Hypoventilation Syndrome (CCHS). A rare and lifelong genetic disorder of the Central Nervous system, CCHS results in reduced or shallow breathing. Ellie had been in the hospital since her birth, and an ICU ventilator had maintained her breathing. Her parents and the hospital authorities were searching for a ventilator that would be sensitive enough to recognise the changes in breathing and allow Ellie to go home. Ellie responded to the sensitive triggering of the Vivo 65 and was released from the hospital. The Vivo 65 flexes to Ellie’s ventilatory needs with the help of Breas patented eSync technology. Moreover, continuous EtCO2 monitoring enables her parents to monitor ventilation status as well.
Driving Clinical Excellence
Quality, design and clinical support are the areas where Breas provides unique advantages to its customers. For instance, the company incorporated ‘VIP’—Ventilator Integrated Polygraphy—into its latest products to assist clinicians in getting a better insight into the quality of the ventilation treatment. Besides its emphasis on clinical support, product design, quality and user-friendliness, the uniqueness of Breas also stems from the flexibility, equality, environmental consciousness, entrepreneurship, economics and safety it brings to the table. “In Sweden, common sense interweaves every level of society. To that end, we build that common sense right into our products,” adds Stepanian.
Moving ahead, a bright future awaits Breas. With no plans of slowing down, Breas aims to launch about ten state-of-the-art models of ventilators, CPAPs, and MIE devices. Along with this, much of the company’s efforts are currently invested in building a connectivity solution and in education. Breas is also primed to unlock excellent growth opportunities in the US, China, the Middle East, and India.
