Wireless Integration Of Medical Devices (Ausbiotech 22 10 10)

Editor's Notes

• #3: Who is this Hydrix group Why are we qualified to talk about biomedical devices or wireless ? Largest dedicated software and electronics design consultancy in Australia Focus on Biomedical, Industrial, Mobility/Wireless and Scientific instrumentation Clients across Australia, the US and Europe Well qualified having taken products through to FDA and TGA approval, as well as being ISO accredited in a number of areas including quality & environment. Only Apple accredited developer and manufacturer for software and electronics for the iPad and iPhone in Australia – the reason why will hopefully become clear over this presentation
• #4: So onto the topic of the presentation
• #5: The growth of the wireless medical device industry has 5 drivers, only some of which are technology related. And of course, that oil of industry ,money, plays a major role as we will see As the Chinese say may you live in interesting times - and for anyone playing at the intersection of these 5 drivers, as Hydrix is, they are interesting times indeed So lets look at the five areas in a bit of detail…
• #6: Hands up if you have a mobile phone – keep your hands up if it is a so-called smart phone smart phones and tablets really are very powerful mini-computers that just happen to also make phone calls Give it to your kids when your plan runs out in 2 years - there’s a relentless push to improve the speed, features and pricing of mobile phones. The wonderful side effect of all this innovation is all the spinoff technologies – longer lasting batteries, higher resolution screens, faster processors - …all of which plays right into our wireless medical device hands And these smart phones all already have significant diagnostic capabilities, and current application, BUT of course devices aren’t just phones – biological sensors and wireless enabled Point of care devices are also a huge area of growth in their own right. The Biomedical Wireless sensors network project in Scandinavia has already successfully integrated heart monitoring, ECG, Oximetery and other wireless sensors in a mesh network in a body and reporting data in real time via an encrypted cellphone link to a physician
• #7: Connectivity – this is all about how relevant medical or diagnostic information gets from the patient - to the medical device and from the device at the point of care – which increasingly may not be the doctor’s rooms or the hospital - to the healthcare provider What we are seeing is an integration of short range technologies that can capture patient data combined with long range ones that can send the data to the health care giver Some of these such as Wifi or Bluetooth you may have heard of but I have been asked by Scott our Chair today to explore each of the relevant enabling technologies in a little bit of detail - and don’t worry I promise not to be too geeky or technical. Other wireless technologies such as UWB, wireless USB and WiMAX which are about but little uptake and little ingress into Biomedical devices yet.
• #8: You probably have all heard of wifi or 802.11 if you’re engineering inclined. Invented by Australia’s CSIRO, this is the technology that lets our computers connect wirelessly to the internet or each other via a router. Can send lots of data relatively long distances very fast – up to 54 megabits a second - which makes it ideal to transmit tremendous amounts of information - perfect for sending large files, eg x-rays or other information Operates in the mostly globally unlicensed 2.4GHz, 3.6 and 5Ghz bands Due to power constraints is mostly used as a fixed wireless infrastructure Moderate price for chipsets
• #9: ZigBee® - A ‘Mesh Networking’ technology that is a key driver towards wireless automation and ubiquitous computing ZigBee® is optimised for very low current consumption – talk on the forums of batteries that will last 10 years It can form networks that self-configure and even self-heal in the event that a node fails and up to 256 or more devices Peak data rates to 250kbit/s and operates in the unlicensed 2.4GHz band, so ideal for monitoring or controlling small devices Very cheap The technology to watch
• #10: Bluetooth Operates in 2.4GHz license-free band Bluetooth version 4 combines UWB and low power to achieve data rate up to 24MBit/s Numerous profiles developed for file transfer, audio transfer etc Cheap chipsets about $2 Mostly used to date by mobile phone manufacturers for ear pieces and car kits but standards group is actively pushing into other arenas .
• #11: RFID Mostly used for fixing to things that need to be tracked – eg hospital supplies etc RFID has a couple of basic types of tag. Passive tags have no power source of their own and only power up when quizzed by a powered reader at a distance of 3m typically Active tags are self-powered, usually by some type of battery ad can actively and intensively transmit and process data, and over considerable distances – up to 100m. Tags are pre-coded with small amount of information which is typically read only Very very cheap
• #12: Cellular A ‘Wide Area Networking’ (WAN) technology that is enabling the mobile phone revolution. Cellular systems depend upon a ‘basestation’ infrastructure managed by a third party. Nevertheless, cellular allows transmission over large distances without need to create an infrastructure (as long as it exists). Many flavours – GSM (Global System Mobile), CDMA (used in US), LTE – Long term evolution Long distance – several kilometres Data rates from 9.6kbits (old 2G) to 2Mb/s for 3G to 100Mb/s for LTE Used for very remote connection of device to device or database Chipsets expensive - $15 for 2G, $50+ for 3G LTE ?
• #13: NBN We’ve all heard the hype, the issue is will it live up to the hype Data rates to 100Mb/s for 93% of Aust or 12MBs if you’re the unlucky 7% Not wireless but ideal for transferring huge amounts if data very long distances, s perfect for providing the network backbone for all the poc devices Oh, and also, its only in Australia so it is a very good development platform but the bandwidth available cannot be relied on in other countries so if or your product or service needs this sort of bandwidth to work, think before your develop
• #14: More than 3000 apps on the Apple app store + many 1000’s under the heath and fitness heading + for iPad. + medical and health apps available on the other 12 (yes 12) app stores = many 10,000savailable and being used every day CTIA: 78% of US is interested in mobile health solutions. 40% said mobile health would supplement the medical care they receive from their doctor; 23% believe mobile health services could replace doctor visits altogether. PWC found 73% of US consumers would use biometric electronic remote monitoring services to track their chronic condition or vital signs. And in mid-2010 Best Buy announced that 40 of its stores in the U.S. had begun offering personal health solutions devices like pedometers, Bluetooth-enabled weight scales and blood pressure monitors.
• #15: Historically health care lags other sectors in terms of technology adoption (ie paper based medical records, pagers etc), but recent signs point to a sea change in this lag and a number of changes that will accelerate wireless health:: Many facilities now use wifi to support initiatives such a IP telephony, data connectivity etc According to Manhattan Research of the US : 99% of doctors physicians use the internet in their practices 80+% of nurses direct patients to health-related websites
• #16: A graph of life expectancy vs % of GDP spent on health care. Most countries spend around 7-10%. Pretty reasonable. One Outlier – the US and its clear why there is so much interest in wireless medial devices and remote health care in the country
• #17: Influx of data from connected health devices and monitoring services could be like a fire hose of new data into an already overwhelmed healthcare system but 40 percent of all chronic conditions are attributable to our behavior. Wireless health solutions can monitor, analyze, encourage and ultimately change behaviour Verizon Wireless recently estimated that mobile broadband solutions improved U.S. health care productivity at a savings of almost $6.9 billion. That figure is expected to increase to $27.2 billion by 2016. According to Cambridge Consultants, 75 percent of healthcare providers, patients, payers and technology enablers believe that connected health preventative services could cut healthcare expenses by 40 percent.
• #19: Most areas of healthcare will be affected
• #20: Another reason why so many device manufacturers are interested And as the old saying goes, if I got just 1% of that market …
• #21: Some 3 months back the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the FDA signed an MOU to work together to create an efficient regulatory process for wireless-enabled medical devices and services. Under the MOU, the FCC will oversee the efficient use of airwaves and the FDA will be responsible for the safety and efficacy of medical devices. The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recently set up a Medical Device Technology Forum that is tasked with establishing regulatory best practices for new technologies. Given the regulatory uncertainty of a lot of wireless medical devices and the outright non-compliance of so-called diagnostic apps on consumer devices like an iPhone, despite the fact that they are in many cases being used for diagnosis by professionals, most wireless device designers and developers are either still in ‘research’ mode awaiting the day, or are branding their application as a ‘novelty’
• #23: The pill is needed because many patients fail to take their medication, exacerbating medical problems, causing unneeded hospitalizations and leading to an estimated 217,000 deaths annually.
• #24: It is a portable microscope with an Apple mobile device to view live images , freeze them and capture them to the Photo album of the device.
• #25: Airstrip Observer suite of products has a variety of applications available for smart phones The system taps into the hospital systems and securely delivers vital patient waveform data — for example the Airstrip OB which includes foetal heartbeat and maternal contraction patterns — in virtual real-time directly from the labour and delivery unit to a medical professional’s mobile wireless device wherever they may be Physicians can now closely monitor patients 24/7 when the demands of their day necessitate their periodic absence from L&D.
• #26: The Near-Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment (NETRA ) provides eyesight tests by utilizing the screen of a smartphone to display images while the NETRA sensors measure the optical distortion across different regions of the eye. This method eliminates the need for more expensive components found in traditional optical sensors
• #27: Apparently more than 3 million doctors have downloaded the $1.19 application -
• #28: Apparently scientists from Johns Hopkins University rallied formally behind the app when they presented the results of a study conducted at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville of patients suspected of having acute appendicitis. Reviewing nothing more than computed tomography (CT) scans over an encrypted wireless network using an iPhone 3G with the OsiriX app, researchers were able to diagnose acute appendicitis correctly in 99 percent of the scans of 25 patients, with one false negative.
• #29: Now this could be really interesting…