AcuNetx offers dual products, detects drug use through eyes

SUPERIOR – AcuNetx Inc. is tapping a technology that notes if a person is using illegal drugs by magnifying and recording human eye movement. And it stands to make a lot of money doing it.

The Superior-based company plans to enter the market next year with two products: HawkEye, for police to use to prove drug use, and SafetyScan Cleared for Duty, for employers to determine if employees have the mental fitness to perform critical tasks.
The technology, which uses infrared video, was created to better understand and diagnose dizziness and vertigo in astronauts in early space exploration.

During the 1980s, AcuNetx’s Vice President of Innovation and Product Development Ron Waldorf, a neurophysiologist and the co-inventor of HawkEye, developed the technology to understand eye movement in relation to vertigo in astronauts.

One night Waldorf was fighting insomnia and listening to a talk radio show. On it a cop explained how he examined eye movements to determine if a motorist was impaired. That’s when it hit Waldorf that his technology might have other applications.

HawkEye allows police to capture, for the first time, objective evidence of a suspect’s eye movements regardless of lighting conditions for use as evidence in prosecuting DUI suspects and drug users. For example, a person using methamphetamine or any other stimulant typically has very enlarged pupils.

Before the technology, officers simply made notes of suspects’ eye signs using long-established standardized field sobriety test and drug recognition protocols. They had no way of recording the eyes for others to see and evaluate.

HawkEye does not replace those well-established tests, which an officer must perform. Nevertheless AcuNetx reports the device will help the officers prove their cases better in court.

Instead of an officer testifying what he’s seen, the HawkEye can be used to record both eyes at the same time, and that image can be shown to a judge. The device has two cameras and connects to a DVD player. It also includes a wireless audio microphone for comments.

The company reports that recently the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, the highest court of Wisconsin, ruled that field sobriety tests are not scientific, but rather subjective observational tools that law enforcement officers use to discern intoxication.

Waldorf said the technology has the potential to “vastly reduce” costs associated with identifying and prosecuting impaired drivers and drug abusers.

Because the law enforcement community has given Hawkeye “overwhelming acceptance,” Terry Knapp, medical doctor and chief executive officer of AcuNetx, says he expects it will become fully commercial in early 2007.

Other potential customers include businesses and employers that can use the technology to stem on-the-job accidents – hence SafetyScan.

“Businesses have been begging for something like this for years,” Knapp says. “It’s much better than urine or blood testing because neither detects impairment. They just attempt to determine which workers have used specific substances known to cause impairment in the recent past.”

He says urine testing doesn’t test for alcohol, reactions caused by prescription medications, abuse of over-the-counter medications, medical conditions or impairment as the result of fatigue. But he says SafetyScan provides “actionable information,” and that it can identify impairment regardless of cause. And Knapp says it’s much cheaper than urine testing – $1 to $3 versus $15 to $40 for urine testing.

Knapp says drug and alcohol use, illness and fatigue are costly to U.S. businesses, causing injuries, deaths, liability claims and environmental damage.

Knapp says employers are ready to accept something like SafetyScan, citing a study the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J. conducted of companies that tried impairment testing. The study found:

_ 100 percent of employers who used impairment testing considered their experience successful.

_ 82 percent of employers found that impairment testing improved safety.

_ 90 percent of employees accepted impairment testing.

_ 87 percent of employers found impairment testing superior to urine testing.

As for HawkEye, AcuNetx unveiled it in September to the Governors Highway Safety Association meeting in Oklahoma City, and at the Office of Law Enforcement Technology Commercialization meeting in Charleston, S.C.

“Based on the reactions we had to our product, we’re very bullish about the prospects for HawkEye,” Waldorf says. “We believe that our HawkEye product will prove invaluable to law enforcement authorities, particularly at this time.”

Knapp did not share revenue projections, but said the U.S. market potential for existing AcuNetx product lines, all of which are patented or patent pending, exceeds $7 billion annually.

AcuNetx (OTC: ANTX) emerged in late 2005 as a combination of a small public company, Eye Dynamics Inc., and the combination of two private companies, OrthoNetx Inc. and PrivaComp Inc.

Eye Dynamics had proprietary products to analyze human eye movements.

on Facebook on LinkedIn