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Consumer ultrasound: Dangerous & irresponsible?
 Will patients ever use handheld ultrasound devices at home? Some sonographers believe that’s idiotic, moronic, dangerous, highly irresponsible, “right up there with in-utero glamor shots,” and “the worst idea I have heard of.”
The consumerization of medical devices, however, is a common vision for the wireless health industry. For example, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group recently predicted Bluetooth-enabled stethoscopes like 3M’s will be available for consumers to use at home in the coming years. 3M, however, said it had no such plans just yet.
Late last year GE Healthcare unveiled its ultra-mobile ultrasound device, Vscan, at a pricepoint of less than $8,000. A few months later the West Wireless Health Institute’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Eric Topol told attendees at the Consumer Electronics Show that in a few years patients would be using similar devices at home to scan their own heart ECHOs, which they would then send to their doctor.
That vision also includes connectivity with a medical professional who analyzes the data, and, as noted above, some of those tasked with analyzing this data are far from bullish about it.
GE’s Vscan officially launched this week thanks to recent clearance from regulatory bodies, including the FDA. Our coverage of the launch generated a number of fiery responses that we traced back to a discussion board on the Society of Diagnostic Medical Sonography’s website. SDMS is an association for medical professionals who use sonography or ultrasound technologies to perform diagnostic testing for patients.
Here’s more from the (uncensored) comments we received:
Rob Says: “This is by far the most idiotic, simplistic and deceiving medical article (advert?) I have ever read in my 33 year career as a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. ‘People are going to be doing their own ECHOs and sending them to their doctors in the not too distant future,’ he predicted. Unbelievable. Yup, even simians can scan a heart!”
Dwayne Says: “Are you kidding me? This is right up there with inutero-glamour shots. It took me years of scanning just to begin to understand what is going on in the body, let alone grasp the conceps of ultrasound physics. To make this available to the public is the worst idea I have heard of.”
Norma Says: “Physicians returning to house calls is a wonderful thought and how nice for the patient. Patient’s scanning themselves? Um, no, never. What a ridiculous notion. Dangerous and highly irresponsible to even publish such rubbish. Thoroughly trained sonographers have YEARS of OJT by competent mentors, or anywhere from 18 months to 4 years of advanced training ALONG with 100’s of clinical hours. I want to know which one of these people who stated these quotes and put out this piece would be perfectly comfortable with their family member (being a layperson) scanning themselves and sending it to a cardiologist for interpretation and subsequent treatment based on that self-scan. Shame on you all. This is going to bring alot of negative light to a perfectly fine diagnostic tool, all in the quest for the almighty dollar. Money changer in the temple.”
Bill Says: “I would add similar to what several others above have noted, the notion of patients scanning themselves and having a physician diagnose based upon those images is moronic. I hope there are no physicians out there willing to do so. Fortunately this device being an Medical Ultrasound device, by FDA regulation is only to be bought and used by Physicians and/or medical facilites. Hopefully this regulation will prevail, and the FDA will be granted the Teeth to be able to enforce it. The more products like this that are introduced, being so small and (relatively) inexpensive the more you will see lay-persons try to be their own Doctor. They will be sadly mistaken once they try and find they don’t know up from down. Now the next thing is we need licensing which requires competency bar exam (ARDMS, CCI) in order to practice. There are too many Psuedo-Sonographers out there already, we don’t need every Joe Schmoe doing medical ultrasound too, furthermore, this would just increase our already overburdened workload with unnecassary testing because “hey Doc I got this new toy and I saw this thingy and it really looks bad”. Half the Doctors that refer to us already don’t really know what they are looking for, we don’t need more nightmares.”
Eric Topol Says: “I am surprised about the harsh comments above regarding patients acquiring their own ultrasound and transmitting the image to their physician. This is how screening for breast cancer will be done someday in the future, as ultrasound is an order of magnitude more sensitive than mammography. For patients with congestive heart failure who develop symptoms, this would be invaluable to sort out the actual cause of decompensation. The comments above do not give adequate credit to consumers who can be quickly taught how to properly place an ultrasound probe on their body and acquire a suitable image. This has nothing to do with interpretation of the image. These naysayers will figure it out in the future thanks to consumer driven health care. The same response was mounted many years ago when home external defibrillators were being developed. Now these are widely used with the right patients and in the right circumstances.”
What’s your take? Will medical devices like ultrasound machines and others find their way into consumers hands? Or is that vision an irresponsible and dangerous one? How do we (safely) get there?
In Other News: I am happy to announce that I will be participating in a live video webcast with the American Telemedicine Association’s CEO Jonathan Linkous next Friday, February 26 to discuss “Emerging mHealth Markets: The World of Health and Medical Apps.” I will discuss some of the topline results from our first research report, “MobiHealthNews Presents: The World of Health and Medical Apps.” The webcast is free for ATA members and $40 for other attendees.
Register Here
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GE Vscan: Step closer to truly mobile doctors
After a few months of anticipation, GE Healthcare has announced the commercial availability of its handheld ultrasound device, Vscan, which has secured clearance from the FDA, the CE Mark from the European Union, and a Medical Device License from Health Canada. The company said it is now available in the U.S., Europe, India and Canada.
To be clear: GE’s Vscan is not a wirelessly connected device, but it is certainly a mobile one.
GE describes Vscan as a “pocket-sized visualization tool developed to provide physicians with imaging capabilities at the point-of-care” that is “roughly the size of a smart phone” and includes “ultra-smart ultrasound technology.” GE says the device will provide physicians with “an immediate, non-invasive method to help secure visual information about what is happening inside the body.”
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year, the West Wireless Health Institute’s CMO Dr. Eric Topol performed what was called the first live demonstration of the GE Vscan onstage during Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs’ keynote. Topol explained that the Vscan can replace traditional ultrasounds, which cost upwards of $300,000. The portable Vscan could also replace the 200 year-old stethoscope, according to Topol. Qualcomm’s Jacobs went so far as to liken stethoscopes to an outdated “technology,” like “buggy whips.”
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Report: Health spend to top $4.5T by 2019
Wireless health services aim to improve care, but they also seek to reduce overall healthcare spending, which a recent study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reports is increasing. The study shows that healthcare spending increased by 5.7 percent in 2009 and projects that this decade may bring about an average annual growth rate of 6.1 percent in healthcare spending. By 2019, spending is expected to reach $4.5 trillion, double the amount in 2009. However, as costs increase, so too do the opportunities for cutting costs.
Wireless health services aim to tackle overall healthcare costs from multiple angles: prevention, earlier diagnosis, and intervention. Connected health preventative practice could cut healthcare expenses by 40 percent according to seventy-five percent of healthcare providers, patients, payers and technology enablers surveyed by Cambridge Consultants. West Wireless Health Institute reports that remote monitoring of congestive heart failure, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease would save $21.2 billion annually. As noted in a previous article, the GSM Association’s Chief Marketing Officer O’Hara writes that “GSMA and McKinsey predict that, through remote monitoring, we could see $175 billion to $200 billion in annual savings for managing chronic diseases in OECD countries and Brazil, Russia, India and China alone.”
For more, read the full press release
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GSMA: Remote monitoring to save up to $200B
In Barcelona, Spain right now much of the world’s wireless industry is gathering for the Mobile World Congress event. This year there has been a noticeable uptick in news surrounding mHealth — ahead of the announcements the GSM Association’s Chief Marketing Officer published a contributed piece to the Financial Times that highlights the mHealth opportunity:
The greatest impact that wireless technologies can have in alleviating healthcare costs worldwide is by enabling connected health devices with wireless to help consumers better manage their chronic diseases, O’Hara writes. O’Hara believes that mHealth devices and services will enable providers to ”diagnose disease, manage complications and intervene ahead of acute events, such as a heart failure, through remote monitoring” and also “improve compliance with treatment programs” like medication reminders, care giver alerts and smart pills. O’Hara also pointed to “locator devices for dementia patients” as a key example of mHealth.
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72 percent of caregivers interested in mHealth
According to a recent survey conducted by Accenture and sponsored by the GSM Association, consumers are not only interested in embedded devices and services, like connected health services, but many believe that using them would enrich their lives. Their research included results from an online survey which polled 1,005 early adopter consumers that own at least four networked devices and use multiple internet software services. Survey respondents were from the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, India and Brazil.
Of those consumers surveyed:
- 76 percent believe most of the electronic devices they purchase in the future will be networked
- 88 percent said that networked devices would save them time
- 86 percent said these devices would simplify their live
- 82 percent agreed that these devices would bring them closer to friends and family
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Nokia: Wireless chemical sensors coming
In an on-site interview at the TED conference in Palm Springs, California, Mashable discussed the future of mobile technologies with Henry Tirri, Senior Vice President and Head of the Nokia Research Center. While the interview covers a number of topics, Tirri did admit he was bullish on the wireless health opportunity:
“I think there’s a natural continuum from biosensors — we already have heartbeat sensors connected to a wireless device and measuring you for sports and wellness purposes,” Tirri said. “So again, if you talk about the five to ten years era, the questions there are more related to the sensors. In some areas, the sensor development is slower than one would think. Mechanical sensors are faster, but chemical sensors are much slower, so even in the five to ten year domain, certain things are not so easy to do.”
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Analyst: 1M telehealth gateways come 2014
The number of gateways used in telehealth applications will increase to more than 1 million in 2014 and to about 3.6 million in 2018, according to a new report from InMedica, a division of IMS Research.
While InMedica does not define what a “gateway” is in its press release, Medical Connectivity Consulting’s Tim Gee explained both wireless body area networks and gateways at the Medical Connectivity event in Boston last year. There are two types of gateways: A gateway device (mobile) or a fixed wireless hub gateway, also called a bridge. In the gateway device model, the patient wears the device, which may be a phone, smartphone, PDA or just a wireless-enabled device. The device may connect to a facility’s WiFi or WLAN network or to the carrier network. In the case of the bridge, the gateway is fixed, much like a WiFi access point in a facility. The patient’s wireless sensors transmit their data to various sensors as they roam around a facility.
InMedica’s research includes both types of gateways: fixed hubs and mobile phones.
InMedica cites two key drivers for telehealth gateways’ growth: Government and private payers recent moves to increase reimbursement for telehealth; and Government’s efforts to reduce the legal and liability issues surrounding telehealth. There is now a “two to three year window for the current market barriers to be overcome, including demonstrating the benefits of telehealth on a large scale to health insurance companies,” InMedica states in its press release.
Here’s more from InMedica’s release today: Continue >>
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mHealth drives world mobile users to 5B in 2010
According to the ITU, the number of global mobile phone users hit 4.6 billion at the end of 2009, and it will reach 5 billion by the end of 2010 thanks to growth in mobile users in the developing market largely spurred by mobile health and mobile banking services. ITU announced its prediction at the Mobile World Congress event currently taking place in Barcelona, Spain.
“Even the simplest, low-end mobile phone can do so much to improve healthcare in the developing world,” ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré stated in a press release. “Good examples include sending reminder messages to patient’s phones when they have a medical appointment, or need a pre-natal check-up. Or using SMS messages to deliver instructions on when and how to take complex medication such as anti-retrovirals or vaccines. It’s such a simple thing to do, and yet it saves millions of dollars — and can help improve and even save the lives of millions of people.”
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Broadcom to connect phones, medical devices
Last December, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group released a new standard called Bluetooth Low Energy, which we noted at the time counts mobile health as one of its key use cases. Now, Broadcom, a $4.4 billion chipset company, has added to its portfolio a Bluetooth Low Energy chip, specifically for “very low power health and fitness sensors enabled by Bluetooth” to connect to consumers’ mobile phones. ABI Research recently predicted that manufacturers would ship more than 2.5 billion BLE chipsets in 2014.
“Today there’s a lot of devices that are working in a sense over proprietary solutions — either wired or wireless — so you end up with a pedometer that will only work with a particular cellphone or exercise device,” Craid Ochikubo, the company’s VP and GM of wireless personal area networking business, told GigaOm in a recent interview.
Bluetooth Low Energy for mobile health competes with other short range wireless technologies like ANT+, ZigBee, Sensium, Z-Wave and more. Broadcom plans to demo its Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology at next week’s 2010 Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, Spain.
For more, read this release from Broadcom
Related Articles:
Health devices with Bluetooth LE set for 2010
Continua certifies Bluetooth-enabled BP monitor, weight scale
Continua picks ZigBee, Bluetooth LE for health devices, sensors
Interview: Lifescan on iPhone 3.0
Report: Bluetooth low energy to enable mHealth devices
Making the case for Bluetooth in healthcare
Interview: Bluetooth SIG’s Mike Foley on health devices
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Shorts: Sleep therapy; Wii; Consumer health
Sleep respironics system wins GSMA award: At the GSM Association’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, Philips and Cinterion won an award for best embedded mobile offering for their System One, mHealth respironics sleep therapy service. More
New Manhattan Research report on consumer health finds news content trumps social media: “With all the changes in media and healthcare, we think it’s critical for marketers to take a step back and check their assumptions around the relative influence of various health sources on consumer behavior,” said Monique Levy, senior director of research at Manhattan Research and lead author of the report. “We found many interesting results that can help marketers better align their marketing strategies in 2010. For example, despite the buzz around social media, editorial health content still has significantly more influence over consumer health actions than various forms of social media.” More
Consumer health lowering price points for clinical therapy? According to early tests, a $99 Wii Balance Board — a peripheral device for users of Nintendo’s Wii gaming system — has outperformed a $17,885 Medical Rig for balance therapy for stroke patients. New Scientist published a paper by Ross Clark and his team which compared the two devices. More
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Shorts: World Economic Forum; Bluetooth; CDC
World Economic Forum turned attention to wireless health: At the World Economic Forum last month, a number of wireless health start-ups were among the speakers. One was Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs whose team has uploaded this video about the wireless health opportunity. Word has it that the WEF’s telecom group will have wireless health as a focus this year. Video
Japanese operator to leverage Bluetooth-enabled Bluegiga tech: Finland-based Bluegiga Technologies has released a new product for the wireless health industry: Bluegiga eHealth Access Point, which is based on Bluetooth’s health device profile. Bluegiga announced that its first customer will be a remote monitoring service for Japan-based Alive Inc. Alive powers Japan’s largest wireless operator, NTT Docomo’s “wellness support service.” The service will focus on cardiac remote monitoring to start. More
Where does health fit into mobile Internet usage: Ruder Finn has created a handy guide for mobile Internet use and Jane Sarasohn-Kahn over at Health Populii has looked into the healthcare angle: “Over-arching is the citizen’s value of immediacy. For the health-citizen, immediacy means access to support, nudging, clinical facts, and monitoring on a 24×7 basis if one chooses to most fully engage in managing a chronic condition, or staying well…” Sarasohn-Kahn writes. “For those health citizens and providers who choose to take advantage of it, the mobile web will be the next platform for health — whether via cell phone for receiving messages via Text4Baby, via smartphone or full feature phone for managing carb intake via a health app like SparkPeople or Keas, or empowering health workers in Malawi through the open source network of FrontlineSMS:medic.” More
CDC says women more likely to look up health info online: According to the report: “Fifty-eight percent of women ages 18 to 64 reported using the Internet to look up health information in the past 12 months, compared with 43.4 percent of men ages 18 to 64.” More
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| February 18, 2010 Edition |
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Mobile and Wireless Healthcare 2010
Feb. 24, Birmingham, UK
Mobile and wireless technologies offer the opportunity to secure the delivery of more patient-centred care. Better access to knowledge at the point of care also increases overall efficiency and reduces costs.
This one-day conference will bring together healthcare IT professionals and clinicians alike to explore how to realise the benefits of mobile and wireless technologies both on the ward and in the community.
More info
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16th Annual Wharton Health Care Business Conference
Feb. 25 – 26, Philadelphia, PA
The annual Wharton Health Care Business Conference is a leading health care forum for industry professionals, academics, and students. The two-day event typically attracts over 700 attendees across the nation and features distinguished speakers, panel discussions, special events, and various networking opportunities.
This year’s conference, entitled Breaking Barriers: Innovation Leading to Change, will explore the groundbreaking ways in which companies and individuals across every sector of health care are leading change in an increasingly dynamic field.
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LIVE WEBCAST:
Emerging mHealth Markets:
The World of Health and Medical Apps
February 26, 2010
Produced jointly by the
American Telemedicine Association and MobiHealthNews
Smartphones have emerged as a powerful new media for delivering healthcare information and services. Providers and patient alike are using their phones to monitor vital signs, treat chronic conditions, and manage health data. Join Jonathan Linkous, CEO of the American Telemedicine Association and Brian Dolan, Editor of MobiHealthNews for a discussion on the role of smart phone applications in healthcare. Brian will unveil preliminary findings from the latest MobiHealthNews research report on the current and future market for smartphone telehealth apps.
More info
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HIMSS 2010
March 1 – 4, Atlanta, GA
HIMSS tracks new and growing areas in health IT that could bring the greatest value to the greater healthcare community. At HIMSS10, we have developed learning and networking opportunities in the most high-growth or high-demand sectors. In addition, the exhibit floor will be showcasing the most innovative product and service solutions in the industry.
More info
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WOHIT Conference and Expo
March 15-18, Barcelona, Spain
WoHIT 2010 will for the first time be held in conjunction with the European Union’s annual High Level eHealth Conference on 15-18 March 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. The objective is to create the largest European high level platform for stakeholders sharing the common goal of advancing eHealth in Europe.
More info
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Everywhere Healthcare
March 24 11:00AM – 3:45PM
Co-located at CTIA Wireless 2010
Las Vegas Convention Center
The wireless health market will double in size next year as wireless carriers launch healthcare-focused business units, care providers ramp up pilots and consumers demand more tools to track their health decisions. Free to all CTIA Wireless 2010 attendees! Join us for Everywhere Healthcare to learn from the wireless health pioneers why this is one of the industry’s fastest growing sectors.
Click here to register for CTIA Wireless 2010!
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International CTIA Wireless 2010
March 23-25, Las Vegas, NV
The International CTIA WIRELESS® show represents a $1 trillion global marketplace that brings together wireless and converged communications, wireless broadband, applications, mobile web and data.
For 25 years, International CTIA WIRELESS® has been THE premier marketplace for all things wireless. Don’t miss 2010—guaranteed to be another crucial and groundbreaking event for the industry. Join us for the next era of Mobile Life!
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ATA 2010 – 15th Annual International Meeting and Exposition
May 16-18, 2010, San Antonio, TX
ATA 2010 is the largest international meeting and tradeshow focusing exclusively on telemedicine. It is the source for the latest info on telehealth, ehealth, mobile applications and advanced remote medical technology. If you use telecommunications solutions for healthcare, the ATA Annual Meeting is the single-most important event of the year, keeping you up to date with the latest developments in your field. The 15th Annual International Meeting of the American Telemedicine Association takes place at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas, May 15-18, 2010.
ATA 2010 will focus on outcomes and evidence for telemedicine and telehealth. The meeting will feature roughly 350 peer-reviewed presentations, covering the full spectrum of telemedicine-related subject areas and specialties, within eight concurrent tracks. Presentations will include oral concurrents, poster presentations, pre-meeting courses and general plenaries. ATA 2010 will also include special Executive Roundtables, featuring top executives in the industry discussing the future of telemedicine from a corporate perspective.
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Seventh Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference & Exhibition
July 19-20, San Diego, CA
The conference focuses on networks, platforms and applications for technology-enabled participatory medicine. Topics to be covered include remote monitoring, home telehealth, mhealth and ehealth for promoting wellness and managing chronic diseases.
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The World Congress 2nd Annual Leadership Summit on Wireless Health
July 29-30, Boston, MA
Developing Effective Business Models for Deploying mHealth, Remote Patient Monitoring and Telehealth Solutions to Improve the Patient Care Experience World Congress is pleased to announce its 2nd Annual Leadership Summit on Wireless Health (WiHealth). The purpose of the conference is to provide health care stakeholders with insight into the business opportunities and revenue potential of incorporating new healthcare applications for wireless technologies into the care delivery model.
SAVE $200 on your registration with PROMO CODE: NZU954
(Not valid for gov’t rate)
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