If you've ever had an MRI, you know the experience can be unsettling at best and seriously anxiety-inducing at worst. Trapped in a small tube for 20 minutes or more, unable to move, while a series of loud clacks and bangs erupt around you, it's an antiquated system that has been in need of a serious experiential upgrade for some time.
Recognizing an opportunity to improve the MRI patient experience, Boombang set out to learn about the industry and assemble a best-in-class team for the challenge. In this case, that meant engaging top engineers and scientists—including a leading expert in brain mapping at UCLA to launch SMRT Image, a Boombang Venture.
The result of the collaboration was the revolutionary Lumica Patient Comfort System. Instead of being engulfed by a claustrophobic tube and nerve-wracking sounds, now patients are immersed in a soothing theater-like experience, allowing them to enjoy relaxing nature video and audio programming, which is proven to reduce stress and thereby the need for costly re-scans. The Lumica system also allows patients to easily communicate with operators using an IR two-way camera.
And, to help alleviate the tight schedules that often give MRI operators just minutes to set up between patients, the newly imagined Lumica control room console now lets operators monitor patients with a high-resolution camera system and interact with them via push-to-talk and video chat buttons.
Boombang also created first-of-their-kind ANC electrostatic headphones and fiber optic mic arrays that are MRI safe. Meticulously custom engineered in two form factors that cover a wide range of users and equipment, these headphones provide maximum comfort. And for scans that require even tighter spaces, we made a low-profile in-ear solution that fits any head coil.
The Lumica platform also serves as an advanced stimulus device for functional MRI (fMRI) research. FMRI is an emerging neuroscience field that uses visual and audible paradigms during the MRI scan to identify brain function and mapping via blood flow.
Even with all of these added functions, Lumica is simple to set up and operate, and greatly reduces healthcare costs and increases scanning revenue for imaging centers and hospitals. In fact, recent data shows that the Lumica system reduced repeat scans by more than 15% and improved both patient experience and throughput.
Seeing results like that, along with the obvious need for a medical devices company that bridges the gap between medical care and the patient experience, Boombang Ventures decided it wasn't just an interesting project to work on, but a promising business worth investing in.