Thanks to a $45 million gift from the Gary and Mary West Foundation and support from Qualcomm and Scripps Health, the newly formed West Wireless Health Institute in San Diego will work to take wireless medicine out of the lab and into the marketplace. Qualcomm's Vice President of Health and Life Sciences will serve as the institute's Founding Board Member while Scripps Health's Chief Academic Officer Eric Topol will be the institute's Chief Medical Officer.
"There are hundreds of devices out there waiting in the queue," Topol told the San Diego Union-Tribune. "They may have FDA approval, but until they're validated, until you can show that they improve medicine, the medical community won't use them."
Topol also said that the only wireless health care device that has been clinically validated in the US was CardioNet's heart monitor. The institute will use CardioNet's clinical testing as a prototype for other devices.
Qualcomm also made an undisclosed monetary contribution to fund the institute. Jones reiterated Topol's remarks to the San Diego Union-Tribune: Do these devices "improve clinical outcomes?" And "are physicians able to better make diagnoses? That's the part that's missing. That's the part that we're going to accelerate."
