Connected health tech company Withings announced Tuesday it has acquired Impeto Medical, a French medical device company that makes a tool for monitoring peripheral neuropathies. 

The technology, called SUDOSCAN, uses an electrical stimulus to measure sweat gland response in the palms and soles. Impaired sudomotor function can be an early sign of nerve damage.

Impeto’s device is already being incorporated into Withings’ latest smart scale, the Body Scan, which was announced last week at CES. Outside of nerve activity tracking, Withings said its new scale will also be able to monitor segmented body composition and cardiovascular health. 

It plans to release the device in the second half of 2022 pending regulatory clearance. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Withings said SUDOSCAN, which has received two FDA 510(k) clearances, has been evaluated to assess small fiber neuropathies in conditions including diabetes, Parkinson's, chemotherapy-induced polyneuropathy, family amyloid polyneuropathy and Fabry disease.

Like the Body Scan, the company is pitching the tech as a way for customers to manage these illnesses in their homes. 

"We are delighted to announce the acquisition of Impeto Medical as we welcome its experience and technologies into the Withings portfolio. The company and its team have been important partners to us in the past.

"Now, as part of Withings, we have an exciting opportunity to continue to deploy together their expertise and Sudoscan technology in the development of a variety of devices that have the potential for people to monitor and manage various disease states from the comfort of their home," Mathieu Letombe, Withings CEO, said in a statement. 

THE LARGER TREND

In October, Withings scored FDA clearance for its ScanWatch’s ECG and SpO2 monitoring features, about a year after it received a CE mark in Europe. 

It also launched a new version of its wearable, the ScanWatch Horizon, which differentiated itself from its various competitors with a “luxury” look. 

In Withings’ smart scale business, the company announced in May the Body Cardio scale could measure a user’s vascular age using pulse wave velocity, an indicator of arterial stiffness that’s measured by the time it takes blood to go from the heart to the feet. 

Other companies in the smart scale market include Garmin, Qardio and FitTrack.