Remote Monitoring News

mHealth Bridges the Gap from the ICU to the IoT

The developer of a clinical-grade heart monitor for hospitals is teaming up with AT&T to make the transition to the Internet of Things and home monitoring.

By Eric Wicklund

- The developer of a medical-grade heart monitor is teaming up with AT&T to ease the transition from the hospital to the home.

biotricity, the Silicon Valley-based developer of the bioflux mobile cardiac telemetry solution, is eyeing the Internet of Things in its partnership with AT&T. The company is looking to the telecom giant to provide “near-real-time connectivity for data transmission” is it looks to market a clinical-grade platform to the remote patient monitoring market.

“For medical device manufacturers to successfully enter and establish themselves in the new connected healthcare industry, it is imperative that they look beyond traditional forms of technological innovation,” biotricity founder and CEO Waqaas Al-Siddiq told Digital Trends. “As we prepare to commercialize our first medical solution, we understand the importance of integrating IoT into next-generation devices within the regulatory environment, as we believe there will be a true market advantage.”

With the German-based Research2Market firm anticipating 20 percent growth in the medical wearable devices market over the next half-decade, reaching revenues of more than $40 billion by 2020, the push is on for healthcare providers to find a technology platform that will provide the data they need while maintaining consumer engagement.

biotricity’s wearable monitor was recently put to the test at Rockyview General Hospital in Calgary, where officials touted the device’s ability to continuously measure the period of time between heartbeats – a metric called heart rate variability (HRV).

“It’s not about the heart rate but about the number of milliseconds between each beat,” David Liepert, MD, an anesthesiologist at the hospital, told mHealthIntelligence.com earlier this year. “Healthy people have a very specific sort of variability,” as do patients in an ICU who are recovering from a major health issue, or period of stress. “There are patterns when that variability isn’t good” that indicate stress and affect the body’s ability to move around and fuel a healthy heart.

Al-Siddiq said Biotricity’s work with Rockyview is focused on creating a remote patient monitoring platform that will qualify for payer reimbursement. That means developing a platform that “gives doctors high-quality data over long terms with a high sample rate.” It also means moving slowly from one stage to the next, studying how the wearable monitors work in ICUs and other departments and with different types of patients before looking at post-discharge capabilities.

With the AT&T partnership, the company is looking for a platform that will not only support its RPM and chronic care management goals, but also the consumer-facing biolife preventive care solution that will hit the market in the not-too-distant future.

“IoT will support a new generation of medical devices capable of transmitting data on an ongoing basis that help push care outside of the hospital and allow for continuous care virtually wherever the patient goes,” Steve Burger, associated vice president of business development and connected health for AT&T, said in a press release. “By wireless enabling their devices, biotricity will help enable caregivers and healthcare institutions to use their patients’ data in near real-time to make informed and timely decisions.”

Dig Deeper:

mHealth Evolution: IoT Devices Will Reportedly Outnumber Phones by 2018

mHealth Study: Remote Monitoring Cuts Costs, Hospitalizations

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