Can you highlight any other companies you see as driving innovation in wireless healthcare?
One example is iVisit: They enable PDAs and a variety of other cellular mobile tools with software that enables people to do wound management, home care, workflow tools for people with Alzheimer’s. Companies like iVisit are trying to build platforms and applications.
Then you have all the wireless sensor companies who are going after the consumer market. It might be weight loss, exercise, calorie counting and things like that. Healthcare is really a very inefficient chronic disease management engine that requires the sophistication of these technologies, but it really needs much more focus on workflow solutions for disease management. The successes [in wireless remote monitoring] so far are related to cardiac failure and cardiac rhythm, but there is an “umpteem” number of conditions that we could be doing this for. We can see the beginnings of this even in sleep apnea. Look at what ResNet is doing: They have provided a ventilator and a monitor capability, but they don’t know how to take the service to the home without going cellular or wireless. For providing an appropriate physician to monitor it, they need to figure out the billing side of it. That is the roadblock and one of the challenges we need to figure out as a group. We need to start scratching that service and beating the drum on, which I think you are already doing well.
You had mentioned wireless sensors before. Many believe that wireless sensors are really a critical enabling technology for this emerging wireless healthcare industry. Do you agree?
I agree that they are critical for getting timely, accurate information to caregivers, but I don’t think that is the only hurdle. You can enable ubiquitous sensing, but without a services and disease management workflow system in place, who is this data going to? Who will interpret it? If there are algorithms involved with telling users what to do, well, who is overseeing that? There’s risk in that. You need a care provider to be overseeing it, which then leads us back to who is going to pay for it? I don’t think sensors are the only answer.
How do you see the larger federal healthcare reform discussion effecting the wireless health opportunity?
I think [everyone in this emerging industry] is in favor of healthcare change because it will bring the attention to “efficiency, efficiency, efficiency,” which, obviously for reform, is a significant issue. Efficiency does not just mean “efficiency that the costs associated with communicating with a physician,” it is also the efficiency of the patient understanding what their problem is. I think this industry is in favor of the heightened awareness and the talk of reform, but at the same time, when government talks about change, regulators get into the mix, too. The regulatory burden on the device world in the last two or three years has been extremely painful. It’s only going to get worse, unfortunately. That regulatory issue is one we need to manage and explain to the government and explain to them where we need assistance.
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