Why bother with wireless health?
 "I am not going to dwell on the technology," Cambridge Consultants‘ Paul Williamson promised during his presentation at the Mobile Healthcare Industry Summit in London this week. "The technology is not a true barrier since [the technology] is relatively low-cost already."
Williamson then presented what he called an admittedly "simplistic" analysis of what could and should motivate various groups to enable wireless health services. In effect, Williamson asked the opposite question to the one we often hear, which is: Who Pays? Williamson asked, Who gets paid? And once that’s determined, Williamson wondered why the others would want to bother with wireless health at all.
Medical Device Makers
A medical device maker, for example, one that manufacturers blood glucose meters, must increase its bill of materials to add wireless connectivity to their device, Williamson said. Their goal, however, is to increase their users’ loyalty to their device. While the device makers may or may not be contributing additional content for a mobile application that might interface with the medical device, the reason for adding connectivity to a personal medical device is clear for this group, Williamson said.
Healthcare Service Providers
Of course, for healthcare service providers, wireless health looks to offer only a relatively small opportunity for revenue generation, according to Williamson. However, if the care provider can integrate wireless health solutions into electronic medical records (EMRs) and show real efficacy that demonstrates "real results" and "real costs," the care provider may be able to attain reimbursement from payers, he said. The key there, however, is demonstrating that longterm value.
Wireless Carriers
What about wireless carriers? Data volume for wireless health services is relatively low, Williamson noted. The corresponding increase in data revenue then is also rather low. If the costs, burden and returns are low, carriers won’t be motivated to offer wireless health services because of the direct returns alone. However, might they offer them anyway? Williamson thinks so.
Mobile Phone Makers
The silicon vendors may be willing to embed wireless health sensors in phones free of charge in order to win the deal to sell the silicon to phone makers. The handset maker then may end up investing no money to ensure its phones are ready for wireless health — but they have invested so little in this emerging industry that they are likely not to gain anything either.
Why Bother?
"So why bother?" Williamson asked. Each of these groups should bother and probably will "because mobile health in this environment is inevitable," he said. "There is a need for these services."
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| GE buys elder care remote monitoring start-up
GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric, has acquired remote monitoring company Living Independently Group for an undisclosed sum. LIG’s key product is still in development: QuietCare is an infrared sensor system that monitors seniors activity throughout the day and sends alerts to caregivers if seniors appear to need assistance. GE Healthcare acquired a minority stake in the New York-based start-up in September 2008.
LIG planned to offer QuietCare worldwide and targeted senior housing, home care, hospitals, health systems, other aging services professionals and individuals aging-in-place as its potential customer base.
The acquisition follows hot on the heels of GE Healthcare’s agreement with Intel earlier this year. As part of that deal, GE began marketing Intel’s Health Guide. At the time of the agreement, QuietCare was highlighted as a key offering that GE brought to the table. Intel and GE plan to invest $250 million over the next five years for research and development into this emerging market of wireless sensors. Intel and GE predict that the home-health monitoring market will grow to $7.7 billion by 2012, which means it would more than double from today’s $3 billion home-health monitoring market.
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Vodafone: Not when but how for wireless health
"The question is not whether governments should use mobile health," Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao declared, "it is how" they should use it. Colao’s keynote presentation kicked off Informa’s Mobile Healthcare Summit here in London.
Vodafone group counts more than 315 million people as its wireless customers, which includes Vodafone subsidiaries all around the world. Vodafone also owns a substantial stake in U.S. carrier Verizon Wireless.
"I personally believe that the mobile phone has a very siginifcant role to play in the provision of healthcare," Colao continued. He explained that key use cases for mobile in healthcare include: the simplification of clinical work flows, statistical analysis of record keeping, supporting the chronically ill at home as well as reaching under resourced and geographically dispersed communities.
In the short term, Coloa said that many mobile health services can be created without having to develop new technology. More often than not we think about mobile health as very complex systems, which may be right for developed markets, but in general technology is not the problem. For developing markets especially, many pilots have shown the power of mobile healthcare, Colao said, but unfortunately there has been little success in scaling these projects. Vodafone Group recently established new mobile healthcare unit that aims to work with medical organizations, governments and pharmaceutical companies to fully understand what the needs are.
"We want to start listening to governments and listening to pharmaceuticals to understand what the needs are. It is clear that there is a pressing need for a reevaluation for how we deliver health services in the coming year"” Colao said. "It is also clear to us that mobile technology has a role to play in how we… provide better service and improve healthcare for those in mature — and more importantly — in developing markets."
Here are seven use cases and associated pilots that Coloa highlighted: Continue >>
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How to get FDA to clear a mobile health app
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By Bradley Merrill Thompson,
Partner, Epstein Becker & Green
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(I would like to thank John Murray of FDA, Scott Thiel of Roche Diagnostics and Russ Gray of the Anson Group for their comments on a draft. The views expressed — right or wrong — are only the author’s and should not be attributed to the commenters.)
Most people in the wireless health industry have heard by now that FDA has started to clear applications for cell phones with medical indications. A widely-reported example is AirStrip OB, cleared to deliver patient waveform data — including fetal heartbeat and maternal contraction patterns — in virtual real-time directly from the hospital labor and delivery unit to a doctor’s mobile wireless device, specifically to an iPhone or a Blackberry. Other software developers are probably interested to learn when FDA clearance is required, and what it takes to accomplish that FDA clearance. In this article, I’ll address both of those questions at a high-level.
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| Wound Tech taps AT&T, HTC Fuze phones
Hollywood-based physician group Wound Technology Network (WTN) inked a two-year agreement with AT&T to provide its certified wound care specialists with HTC FUZE smartphones running on AT&T’s wireless network. WTN has had a longstanding agreement with Verizon Wireless to provide laptop data cards to its physicians who were looking to wirelessly access patient records, treatment visuals and other reference materials online. No word on whether the AT&T deal replaces the Verizon Wireless deal. Data cards for laptops from Verizon Wireless and smartphones running on AT&T’s network seem to be the current wireless tools that WTN offers its physicians.
WTN is using the FUZE smartphones to enable the physicians to diagnose and prescribe treatments for patients with chronic wounds anytime, anywhere, the company’s press release states.
“Under a two year agreement with AT&T, Wound Technology Network will equip its clinical staff including physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants across South Florida and Southern California with HTC FUZE(TM) smart mobile devices when providing care in patient’s homes. Clinical staff will use the devices to access an application developed by iVisit, which creates videoconferencing tools for mobile devices and PCs, and speak live with a wound care specialist at Wound Technology Network’s tele-health center who will assist them to assess their patients’ wounds and perform the necessary treatment. To aid in the treatment process, clinical staff will also capture images of the patient’s wounds using the HTC FUZE(TM) and transmit the images to the wound care specialists to upload onto an electronic medical record which is immediately faxed to the patient’s primary care physician.
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Johns Hopkins, Intel: Health Guides on WiMAX
Intel just announced that thanks to a grant from the NIH, Johns Hopkins School of Nursing will conduct a study that examines whether Intel’s Health Guide device can positively impact outcomes for congestive heart failure patients in Baltimore City, Maryland. The touch screen, at-home Health Guide device will allow the patients to monitor their condition, to learn about theirs and related conditions and also to connect with clinicians online.
"We need to find ways to reach the medically underserved, and I think technology is one way that we can begin to build those bridges," Patricia Abbott, the study’s lead investigator (also an associate professor in Nursing Systems and Outcomes) told JHU’s Gazette.
Intel claims that this is the first study to use Health Guides in "community-dwelling African-American congestive heart failure patients." Intel said 60 patients will be a part of the study and half of them will receive Health Guides. Interestingly, it is also the first wireless health study we have heard of that will run on Clearwire’s WiMAX network, which it calls a "4G" wireless technology.
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Analyst: Market for caring for caregivers
The increasing number of aging Baby Boomers, also known as the "Silver Tsunami" could produce a "short, sharp shock" for the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), according to Wireless Healthcare’s Principal Analyst Peter Kruger, who shared his perspective at Informa’s Mobile Healthcare Industry Summit in London this week.
"In the face of such a perfect storm, it makes one wonder why wireless operators and healthcare providers aren’t gripping each other like two storm struck sailors," Kruger quipped. "Complacency on healthcare providers side" is one reason, Kruger said, but "the other is the complexity of the problem. Wireless health providers are fairly new on the scene," he explained.
The complexity of the problem of dealing with the demands of the aging Baby Boomer population leads to a number of market opportunities for wireless health, Kruger noted.
"Being born is dead simple, everybody does it and you can even do it at home," Kruger explained. "Dying is more complicated: There is a large number of conditions to die of or die with and the time scale is unknown."
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LifeWatch to track sleep apnea with NiteWatch
Remote wireless cardiac monitoring company LifeWatch has announced a new offering for diagnosing sleep apnea: NiteWatch. The company expects to make the service commercially available during the first quarter of 2010.
Unlike its closest competitor, CardioNet, LifeWatch uses an actual smartphone as the gateway for its cardiac monitoring system — the company has an exclusive carriage agreement with Verizon Wireless in the U.S. CardioNet uses a dedicated device instead of a smartphone. While LifeWatch claims it is the first to offer a sleep diagnostic service, CardioNet also launched a sleep-centered service earlier this year: SomNet. NiteWatch, however, bills itself as a diagnostic service for sleep apnea, while CardioNet shied away from calling SomNet a diagnostic service for sleep apnea, and simply positioned it as an add-on for clinicians already using its MCOT application.
This move by LifeWatch provides further evidence that if cardiac monitoring is the low hanging fruit in wireless health, than sleep apnea diagnosis is hanging from the same branch. The news follows other wireless health solution launches for sleep disorders, including Zeo, NeuroVigil and others.
Here’s how LifeWatch describes NiteWatch: Continue >>
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Intel Health Guide lands varied customer base
Intel announced a whole slew of new customers for its Intel Health Guide in the U.S., including the Veterans Affairs (VA) Rural Resource Center Western Region, Memorial Hospital and Health System in South Bend, Indiana; Nightingale Home Healthcare of Indiana; and all seven independently owned offices of the Home Care Group.
The Intel Health Guide is an FDA-cleared remote patient monitoring system, that includes a touch screen tablet computer, which offers multiple connectivity options including cable/DSL broadband, cellular wireless and residential phone service. Here’s how each of the three new customers plan to use Intel’s Health Guide:
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iPhone-powered remote appendicitis diagnosis
Asim Choudhri, MD, a physician in the neuroradiology division at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore presented a study that investigated whether iPhone applications can improve upon acute appendicitis diagnoses. Choudhri presented his findings at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
"The goal is to improve the speed and accuracy of medical diagnoses as well as to improve communications among different consulting physicians," Choudhri said. "When we can make these determinations earlier, the appropriate surgical teams and equipment can be assembled before the surgeon even has the chance to examine the patient," he said.
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NHS alcohol tracker; APAC’s $1T market?
UK government launches alcohol tracking app: Public health minister Gillian Merron said: "It is all too easy to lose track of how much you drink. So as the festive parties build up, this innovative tool will help people keep tabs on their drinking – wherever they are. Sticking within the recommended limits means you reduce the risk of serious conditions such as mouth cancer and strokes." The application can be downloaded from the NHS Choices website or from the iTunes AppStore. More
APAC: $1 trillion mHealth market come 2010: The Asia Pacific region is enjoying an 80 percent growth rate in wireless health services and analysts and industry groups have valued the market at just under $1 trillion in revenues for 2010. Not surprisingly, Japan is expected to account for 50 percent of those revenues. Mobile applications include remote patient monitoring, mobile nursing, mobile medical records access, access to free mobile healthcare information and more for the region. “Asia Pacific is the prime testing ground for mobile healthcare. Asia is wired, adopts technologies faster than any other continents, and there are billions of dollars being pumped into the Asia healthcare industry to improve the current infrastructure,” Mark Lee, Medtech Practice Head with Solidiance stated in a recent interview. More
Three times as many receive care at home: Unsure about whether people would rather be cared for at home rather than in institutions or longterm care facilities? The American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance and Homewatch CareGivers recently conducted a study that found about 7.5 million people currently receive longterm care at home. Only 1.5 million receive care in nursing homes while 1.1 million receive similar care in assisted-living facilities. More
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Senate HC bill; Mental health via SMS
Senate bill includes wireless health: InformationWeek reports that the health reform bill in the Senate includes support for the use of home health technologies for managing chronically ill patients in their own homes with a focus on reducing hospitalizations. Specifically the bill calls for health IT "in providing health home services and improving service delivery and coordination of care across the continuum," which it says includes the use of wireless patient technology, home telehealth technology and chronic disease registries for patients at high-risk of hospitalization. More
Texting during mental health crises: A crisis telephone helpline for people with mental health problems in Surrey, UK now allows callers to send text messages instead: While the functionality is intended for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, anyone who prefers to text may. The user can text a brief message that indicates the nature of the crisis, the helpline suggests. Are 140 characters enough for mental health crises? More
Mobile phones cut maternal deaths in Ghana: "When we did not have mobile telecommunication, women were dying," district nurse Madam Lydia Owusu told IRIN News in a recent interview. "It was horrifying to be pregnant here before this project came along… Mothers used to bleed to death while waiting in their homes, hoping a health worker would come to help them." The program Owusu is referring to is part of the Millennium Villages project. "We have not recorded a single maternal death in Amensie village since 2006 when this project started," Owusu explained. More
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MedAptus brings charge capture to BlackBerry
Boston, MA-based MedAptus announced that three versions of its transactional medical application have been extended to Blackberry devices: The company has extended its Professional Intelligent Charge Capture software, including its Practice Plus Edition, Inpatient Edition and Enterprise Edition to BlackBerry. MedAptus counts its customers in the "thousands" and they include single-specialty groups, larger multi-specialty practices and academic medical centers, according to the company.
MedAptus explains its move to BlackBerry by citing the oft-quoted Manhattan Research’s report earlier this year, which it claims also estimates that more than "half of current physician smartphone users have BlackBerry devices for activities that range from patient monitoring to administrative tasks such as charge capture"
MedAptus is already available for Windows Mobile devices, and it will be available for "some" iPhone models some time next year, according to the company.
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Contact lens: Future platform for mHealth?
University of Washington’s Babak Parviz believes that the future platform for wireless health will be the contact lens — that’s right, the same ones we visually impaired people wear to improve our vision. If Parviz succeeds contacts will do a lot more than just improve vision (even though they will be able to do that a whole lot better, too.) Here’s the opportunity in Parviz’s own words:
"The true promise of this research is not just the actual system we end up making, whether it’s a display, a biosensor, or both," Dr. Parviz said in a recent interview. "We already see a future in which the humble contact lens becomes a real platform, like the iPhone is today, with lots of developers contributing their ideas and inventions. As far as we’re concerned, the possibilities extend as far as the eye can see, and beyond."
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| What’s Happening |
Mobile Forum: Mobile Health
Dec. 9, 2009
Menio Park, CA
Mobile Health is an increasingly hot topic – driven by better devices, better networks, and a national imperative to curb healthcare costs. Improved short-range protocols, sensors, lower power consumption, and mobile gateways, affordable solutions are within reach of entrepreneurs at a time when health costs are getting national attention. Meanwhile, insurance companies are spending money to lower the costs of care, and the mobile industry is eager to stake its role in this emerging ecosystem. This is a great time to launch solutions that can lower costs and keep people healthier.
Register here
2010 Silvers Summit
Jan. 9,
2010 at
International
CES, Las Vegas, NV
Boomers are re-booting life’s rules on how we age. Whether they’re listening to MP3’s on the treadmill, playing brain games on a netbook, or monitoring their parent’s home safety or texting the grandkids, this generation is maximizing their digital life. Hear from the companies, organizations and thought leaders applying technology to improve quality of life and independent living of adults over the age of 45 and for their elderly parents. Experts weigh in on lifestyle trends, product design, caregiving and reminder technologies and more.
Register here
International CTIA Wireless 2010
March 23-25,
2010 at the Las Vegas Convention Center
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!
Register here
CIO Healthcare Summit
May 9-12, Scottsdale, AZ
The CIO Healthcare Summit is a gathering for C-suite executives and industry thought leaders to discuss IT challenges currently facing the health care industry, including improving patient care, controlling costs and meeting government regulations.
Register here
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