News

Wireless Makes Health Care Inroads
By Brad Smith
April 1, 2006
Wireless Week

Health care providers around the world are adopting wireless telecommunications to help them monitor and even diagnose patients, both inside and outside the hospital.

Hospitals in particular used to frown on wireless telecommunications, and many still have warning signs cautioning against the on-site use of cell phones. But Don Jones, business development vice president for QUALCOMM's budding health care business, says those bans are falling away because health care professionals recognize the value of anytime, anywhere communications and because fears of electronic interference have subsided.

Progressive hospitals allow cell phones in most areas of the facilities now, he says, except in the vicinity of hospital electronic equipment. For instance, bans still are in place in the intensive care units.

Wide area networks also are taking the hospital outside their physical walls with new technologies and applications. How about electrocardiograms (ECGs) done remotely and continuously, peel-and-stick "wireless Band-Aids," handsets that take your blood pressure or double as a blood glucose meter, or even a wireless pacemaker? All of these are not only possible, but are in use now.

"Health care has a lot of value propositions for improving the health of the chronically ill outside the hospital," says Jones, who spoke at the recent Wireless-Life Sciences Convergence Summit in San Diego.

He says wireless telecommunications is being used over a wide swath of health care applications. These include patient monitoring, equipment monitoring, record keeping for clinical trials, telemedicine, pharmaceutical and medical equipment sales, prescriptions and patient records.

CardioNet has more than 50,000 patients. QUALCOMM consulted on the technology and provides the managed WWAN services through its QConnect subsidiary.

In March, Philips Medical demonstrated its "Smart Wireless Band-Aid" at the San Diego health care summit. The patch contains an RF device, a processor and a battery. It continuously monitors a patient's heart rate and sends the data to a handset, which then transmits the data over a cellular network to a physician's office or hospital. The adhesive patch is being tested in Asia.

Another San Diego company, Triage Wireless, has developed a sensor that reads an outpatient's blood pressure, heart rate and blood oxygen levels and sends them via handset to medical facilities. Triage says about 75 million Americans suffer from high blood pressure and that most remote monitoring now is done with an inflatable cuff. The Triage technology uses a combination of electrical and optical sensors.

In Korea, LG Electronics has built a cellular handset with a blood glucose monitor embedded in it. The phone displays the glucose metering, keeps track of the results and sends them to a medical facility. To date, the handset is only in use in Korea.

LifeWatch, a subsidiary of Swiss-based Card Guard AG, has developed a monitoring technology for an implantable cardiac defibrillator. The defibrillator is used to shock the heart to restore normal rhythm while LifeWatch remotely monitors the implant using wireless telecommunications.

QUALCOMM's Jones says one of the hurdles that wireless solutions have to overcome is the cost of the devices. This makes insurance companies reluctant to cover them, but Jones thinks the costs will come down in the future as more devices and services are introduced. The glucose cell phone actually is cheaper than two separate devices, so the health care industry in Korea helps subsidize that handset, he says.

If the device is a "closed-end" apparatus that is only used for medical purposes, insurance companies are more inclined to help pay the cost, Jones says. If the handset is also used for regular communications they are less likely to pay.

One mobile health care service that doesn't require a physician's approval is an application called MyFoodPhone. The basic service, which costs $10 a month, allows people to use a camera phone to keep track of food intake, compare food-portion sizes to recommended consumption and measure results. The service includes a consultation with a nutritional advisor every two weeks. For $100 a month, you get continuous contact with a registered dietician and weekly nutritional analysis.

Jones says it makes sense to use wireless telecommunications in health care because cell phones and networks are becoming ubiquitous.

"For much of the world, a cell phone will be the only computer most people will own and if it can be part of their health care monitoring, we can make improvements in their health," he says.