Pilot Study: Safety and Performance Validation of an Ingestible Medical Device for Collecting Small Intestinal Liquid in Healthy Volunteers.

The connection between imbalances in the human gut microbiota, known as dysbiosis, and various diseases has been well established. Current techniques for sampling the small intestine are both invasive for patients and costly for healthcare facilities. Most studies on human gut microbiome are conducted using faecal samples, which do not accurately represent the microbiome in the upper intestinal tract. A pilot clinical investigation, registered as NCT05477069 and sponsored by the Grenoble Alpes University Hospital, is currently underway to evaluate a novel ingestible medical device (MD) designed for collecting small intestinal liquids by Pelican Health. This study is interventional and monocentric, involving 15 healthy volunteers. The primary objective of the study is to establish the safety and the performance of the MD when used on healthy volunteers. Secondary objectives include assessing the device's performance and demonstrating the difference between the retrieved sample from the MD and the corresponding faecal sample. Multi-omics analysis will be performed, including metagenomics, metabolomics, and culturomics. We anticipate that the MD will prove to be safe without any reported adverse effects, and we collected samples suitable for the proposed omics analyses in order to demonstrate the functionality of the MD and the clinical potential of the intestinal content.

Towards a metadata registry for evaluating augmented medical interventions.

Quality evaluation in the field of Augmented Surgery is strategic for public health policies. It implies to be able to effectively perform evaluation of Quality in term of Expected Medical Benefit (EMB). The notion of EMB is complex and not standardized in this field. To define and to evaluate EMB, it is necessary to discover the knowledge on the domain targeted by the device and to structure it. This paper presents first parts of this work. Focused on navigated knee surgery, it led us to obtain two main results: the identification of a new criterion for evaluating EMB obtained thanks to the formalization of a new kind of metadata. These encouraging results seem to offer new perspectives for the evaluation of devices from the field of augmented surgery.

Computer assisted electromagnetic navigation improves accuracy in computed tomography guided interventions: A prospective randomized clinical trial.

PURPOSE: To assess the accuracy and usability of an electromagnetic navigation system designed to assist Computed Tomography (CT) guided interventions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: 120 patients requiring a percutaneous CT intervention (drainage, biopsy, tumor ablation, infiltration, sympathicolysis) were included in this prospective randomized trial. Nineteen radiologists participated. Conventional procedures (CT group) were compared with procedures assisted by a navigation system prototype using an electromagnetic localizer to track the position and orientation of a needle holder (NAV group). The navigation system displays the needle path in real-time on 2D reconstructed CT images extracted from the 3D CT volume. The regional ethics committee approved this study and all patients gave written informed consent. The main outcome was the distance between the planned trajectory and the achieved needle trajectory calculated from the initial needle placement. RESULTS: 120 patients were analyzable in intention-to-treat (NAV: 60; CT: 60). Accuracy improved when the navigation system was used: distance error (in millimeters: median[P25%; P75%]) with NAV = 4.1[2.7; 9.1], vs. with CT = 8.9[4.9; 15.1] (p<0.001). After the initial needle placement and first control CT, fewer subsequent CT acquisitions were necessary to reach the target using the navigation system: NAV = 2[2; 3]; CT = 3[2; 4] (p = 0.01). CONCLUSION: The tested system was usable in a standard clinical setting and provided significant improvement in accuracy; furthermore, with the help of navigation, targets could be reached with fewer CT control acquisitions.