M2M : Machine 2 Machine

So the results are out from the Remote heart Monitoring trail run by Guidant/Boston Scientific. First reported here.
The LATITUDE Patient Management system can detect clinical events between scheduled follow-up visits and then send the clinical event data directly to physicians. The system basically monitors key heart parameters and send it over to a central server for monitoring – this data can be viewed and acted upon by the Caregiver.

Key numbers
* 15,000 patients participated.
* Monitored Months – 106,000
* Duration – 7 Months
* Irregular Heart Beats Detected – 948 (sustained over 24 hours)
* 1,516 i.e 10% of the trial population had reactive treatment based on the data collected.

THe numbers are a lot better than I expected coming out of this trial. The possibilities are endless – the system will be a enormous cost saver if we ensure that the data collected is actionable, privacy and security concerns are accounted for.

The market for these types of system will expand as the population ages and grows older..

A move towards establishing a standard for remote health care services. Efforts like this will help in speeding up the adoption of M2M services. the challenge all along has been about security and inter-operation between all the different vendors and systems that provide services in the health care segment.

Continua Health Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of 133 medical technology companies, on Wednesday unveiled its first set of interoperability guidelines aimed at helping to connect patients’ in-home health monitoring devices with remote caregivers and electronic personal health records.

Continua was launched in June 2006 to help establish a market for interoperable personal health systems “to empower people and organizations to better manage health and wellness,” said Dave Whitlinger, president and chairman of Continua, and director of health care device interoperability atIntel ( INTC), a Continua founding member.

With 860 million people dealing with a chronic disease and 600 million adults over the age of 60 worldwide today — many who have chronic conditions — the need for remote monitoring and intervention is growing, he said. It’s also estimated that 75% to 85% of health care costs are spent on chronic diseases, he said.