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34 FLEX007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2019 Feature by Anthony Flannery GRAFTWORX The GraftWorx vision is to connect patients to clinicians with clinical data that will have a meaningful impact on their care. Our first application is to monitor patients with end- stage renal disease (ESRD) or kidney failure using a wearable device called the SmartPatch that records numerous clinical cardiovascular metrics. The SmartPatch communicates via BLE 4.2 to a medical grade data relay that trans- mits the data compliant with PHI and HIPAA over a cellular network into our secure cloud. The entire system works seamlessly without any intervention by either party to put real- time, clinical data where it can be integrated into care management pathways to reduce the incidence of hospitalizations and improve the quality of care for patients with chronic condi- tions. Our solution architecture is focused on the design of a comfortable, sophisticated, ultra- low power device that a patient can wear for The GraftWorx Fluid Management Patch Story a week in a "forgettable" manner—quite a challenge! Working with the right electronics vendor as a partner to build our first clinical devices has been critical to the successful exe- cution along our product development time- line. We evaluated a long list of potential part- ners before choosing Lenthor Engineering in Milpitas, California, as our fabrication partner. On a technical level, the device itself was challenging to create. First were the require- ments on the board itself. Because comfort is so important for our wearable product, we wanted to minimize the rigid areas required for bonding electronics and maximize flex- ibility in other regions. We also wanted to avoid the complexity and extra cost of a rigid- flex solution. To meet these needs, we part- nered with Lenthor to spec out and develop a rigidized flex solution that used thicker blank cores within the 4-layer region of the popu- lated "islands" of the board. The tether region was an extremely flexible thin 2-layer region with minimal coverlay. The flexible inner two layers ran contiguously across the board, con-