Esperto wins TRISH grant to adapt blood-pressure tech for astronauts
What's the deal? Esperto MedicalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Fullerton, California healthtech startup focused on critical care and remote patient monitoring, has won a grant from the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH). The money will fund adapting its Resonance Sonomanometry (RSM) technology for microgravity and extreme environments.
How it works: RSM uses sound waves at different frequencies to measure blood pressure directly inside arteries. It requires no calibration, which the company says makes it easy to set up and use for continuous cardiovascular monitoring on Earth and in space.
Why now? Spaceflight triggers physiological changes such as fluid shifts toward the head, arterial stiffening, and cardiovascular deconditioning. The discovery of internal jugular vein thrombosis in astronauts sharpened the need to monitor central venous flow early.
Esperto says RSM can autonomously assess three areas: venous flow and thrombosis risk in the internal jugular vein; beat-to-beat blood pressure, pulse, and respiration rate; and vascular structure, including arterial stiffness, wall thickness, and vessel radius.
What experts say: "Monitoring human cardiovascular health in space requires technology that is compact, highly accurate, and completely autonomous," said Alaina Brinley Rajagopal, chief medical officer and co-founder. She added that the grant lets the company "optimize our ultrasound platform for astronauts while simultaneously accelerating medical innovations that benefit critical care, remote medicine, and underserved patients on Earth."
What's the endgame? The grant follows Esperto's selection for the Space-H accelerator in 2024 and a Phase I ARPA-H award in April 2026 to plan a wearable version of its continuous blood-pressure monitor. The spaceflight work extends the same technology toward astronaut monitoring.
What could go wrong? The grant funds development, not proof the technology is flight-ready or commercially validated. The key milestones remain technical development and testing.
The signal: TRISH, funded by NASA's Human Research Program, backs tools that serve both astronauts and patients on the ground. Esperto's award reflects a broader pattern of space-health research feeding back into terrestrial medicine, particularly remote and critical care.
Read more: third-news.com
Image credit: Esperto Medical
