Hoana Medical Inc., a Honolulu-based company with patient monitoring technology being adopted by hospitals, said it obtained $1.7 million in funding to test how its system improves the effectiveness of hospital rapid response teams.

The company yesterday said the U.S. Army Medical Research Command and the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center is funding the research at a large Pennsylvania healthcare system, Veterans Administration hospitals in Florida and Nebraska, and the U.S. Army.

Over more than a decade Hoana has developed its "LifeBed Patient Vigilance System," a system that uses sensors embedded in a hospital mattress coverlet to monitor vital signs.

It can detect when a patient's condition worsens or becomes unsafe and sends an alert. The system can be used in a variety of settings, including medevac helicopters where it is difficult to detect heart and respirator rates, or in general care areas of hospitals were patients aren't typically hooked up to monitors or have constant nursing attention.

Patrick Sullivan, Hoana president and chief executive officer, said the research effort will look at whether having such systems helps the effectiveness of so-called hospital rapid response teams by alerting them earlier. Hoana said almost 40 percent of unexpected hospital deaths occur in the general care areas.

"If you find someone early, does it make the rapid response team more effective?" said Sullivan. "I think the answer is obvious."

"It finds people that are going south and gets them help fast."

He said a report out yesterday called attention to the issue, questioning whether hospitals having such rapid response teams make a difference if the patient problems aren't detected early enough.

"What we'll be doing in this partnership is collecting data on how much more effective it is," Sullivan said.

The research partnership is the latest award earned by Hoana, which in June received a U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs contract to market and sell the system to more than 240 federal medical facilities and Department of Defense hospitals. Hoana Medical, which was spun out of Oceanit Laboratories in 2001, has so far attracted about $40 million of funding from investors.

Locally, its LifeBed product is being used by The Queen's Medical Center, which uses it on 48 beds on two different floors.

"We're very happy with the product," said Queen's spokeswoman Nicole Pickens.

The system has been tested in 25 hospitals, with some coming back now with plans for bigger implementation, Sullivan said.