M2M : Machine 2 Machine

IBM involved in Remote Patient Management – ( A M2M Application). Read the previous post of Remote Health Care Management

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and VISICU, Inc. (NASDAQ: EICU) today announced a joint effort to wire a telemedicine network to provide remote critical care support to military hospitals along the Pacific Rim. Tripler Army Medical Center (Honolulu, Hawaii), in conjunction with staff at University of Hawaii, will manage the remote monitoring and support system using VISICU’s eICU® technology on IBM BladeCenter servers. The eICU center, in collaboration with remote military hospitals, will provide an enhanced level of care to active-duty military, their families, and other beneficiaries.

VISICU’s eICU solution enables military hospital personnel throughout the Pacific Rim to “electronically connect” with the remote eICU® center in Hawaii. This allows instantaneous access to critical care specialists who are able to monitor patient status and speak directly with bedside clinicians to guide appropriate intervention. By taking immediate action, patients can be stabilized to prevent further complication subsequently eliminating or delaying the need for air evacuation. Using state-of-the-art network and video technologies, along with device connectivity and Smart Alerts®, the eICU specialists have the potential to provide support for over 300 patients across the Pacific Rim.

Tripler Army Medical Center, part of the Pacific Regional Medical Command (PRMC), is the first military medical center to use the VISICU eICU solution for remote monitoring and care of patients. Tripler has been supporting Joint Medical Operations with the U.S. Naval Hospital in Guam four thousand miles away. In order to extend access to other hospitals along the Pacific Rim, a more flexible server platform was required.

By moving to IBM BladeCenter servers and IBM System Storage, Tripler is now in a position to extend support to additional hospitals throughout the Pacific Rim. This advanced solution has the capacity to support over 300 patient connections on an expanded telemedicine network that can span over 4000 miles.

The Remote Patient Care Market (M2M Machines to monitor People)

            The 65+ age group is slated to experience a strong growth in the coming years. As we age so do our needs for frequent check checkups and fixes to ensure we are in good health – same as a car – Older the car the more trips to the Auto Repair Shops. Looking at the graph below we see a sharp increase in the 65+ population in starting around 2010.  This segment will be in need of frequent high end medical care. Once way to meet this need is to staff up the care giver organization – which is very costly. The other option is to improve the efficiency of the current system and use technology to scale up to meet the demand. Remote Patient monitoring is a possible solution to mitigate this problem. This is a classic M2M application that has all the standard challenges of connectivity , Privacy and Security.

 

Why is Remote Patient Care Attractive?

            The remote patient monitoring market is a nascent market. Currently it is valued at $81.1 million dollars in 2005 for the US market. To put this in perspective the total US Disease Management Market was valued at $1.01 billion. This is a small slice but factor in that the majority of the Baby Boomer’s will be in need of medical care in the next 5- 10 years and you can sense the potential for this market. The challenge is that this type of new technology and shift in thinking in terms of medical care needs a stimulus for it to become main stream and accepted. Talking about a US centric model this imputes needs to come from the government and or the Health Care provider organizations such as the HMO’s. Once these big guns certify and promote this technology it will help reduce the cost burden on the medical system as a whole.

 

Who Gains from this?

            The primary beneficiary in all this is going to be the patient. It will be a lifestyle changing tool that they get access to. The patients will no longer have to endure countless visits to the local clinic for routine checkup’s and can have some of the common conditions diagnosed by a remote doctor by looking at their charts. In addition to the lifestyle changes they will also expect to have a longer life expectancy as this is a result of better care. The doctors get additional data to look at and understand and some of this data analysis can be automated – The human body operates like a machine in a set of defined parameters so getting this done should not be a big challenge (I am not a doctor and may be wrong on this). The public at large – as this reduces the growth of the medical cost as borne by society in general.

 

Remote Patient Monitoring Systems

            What are the available patient monitoring systems in the market? Majority of the patient monitoring systems use off the shelf technology – reducing the risk.  This does nto come as a surprise as the primary elements of any remote monitoring system are

• Sensors to measure the patient parameter
• Communication Channel to report back
• Ancillary Hardware software for record keeping and Security

Not rocket science – Companies can leverage their existing products to venture into this field as has been done in the past. Here are some providers of Remote Patient Monitoring Service’s

• House Call Plus
• Remote Nurse
• Med Star

I would watch this segment of the health care market closely as it evolves over the next few years

 

 

Frost & Sullivan (http://www.healthcare.frost.com) finds that the U.S.
Remote Patient Monitoring Market earned revenues of $81.1 million in 2005
and estimates this to reach $191.5 million in 2009. The U.S. Disease
Management Market was valued at $1.01 billion in 2005 and expects to reach
$2.2 billion in 2009.

Here is validation on the benefits of M2M / Remote monitoring int eh medical. The first step for any M2M application is to start out by collecting data – Monitor. Onc eyou have the data you can analyze and take the necessary corrective actions. In this case you get to save/ extend a life..

Link

Researchers from Canada and Australia have found that the use of remote monitoring for patients with chronic heart failure has the potential to significantly improve clinical outcomes (mortality, morbidity and quality indicators).

The use of remote monitoring (telephone support or telemonitoring) to electronically transfer a patients’ physiological data such as blood pressure, weight and ECG and oxygen details, to their healthcare provider has increased in prevalence over the past years. According to research recently published in The British Medical Journal, remote monitoring for patients with chronic heart failure helped reduce heart failure admissions to hospitals and lowered all cause mortality by nearly twenty per cent.

“What we found is that the use of remote monitoring programs can improve outcomes in patients with heart failure and such an approach could help deal with the increasing number of patients with chronic heart failure that cannot be accommodated in existing specialty clinics due to access issues related to geography, lack of resources or infirmity,” said Dr. Finlay McAlister, University of Alberta researcher.

Because remote monitoring (either through close telephone follow-up with specially trained nurses or telemonitoring involving the daily transmission of a patient’s vital signs, weight and symptoms to health care providers) permits closer follow-up of patients with heart failure, this allows for the potential for earlier detection and management of changes in a patient’s health.

“It must be noted that although we have found substantial benefits with remote monitoring for patients with chronic heart failure, telephone monitoring is not a treatment, but rather a different way of providing effective care,” said Dr. McAlister. “Therefore, programs that include remote monitoring should not be seen as a replacement for specialist care or multidisciplinary care clinics, but instead should be viewed as a potential adjunct.”

Here we have a doctor who used a laptop, BroadBand and remote Robot to perform a brain surgery. A flavor of things to come
I do not see a widespread use of this in the very near future for performing operations but the use of this set up for performing remote checkups and consultations will grow dramatically as the costs are aligned.

Quote form the article -

“Yes, it was a robot. It was amazing,” Jeanne MacDonald told her husband over the phone Thursday from her bed in the neurosurgery unit at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax.

On Wednesday, neurosurgeon Dr. Ivar Mendez replaced the battery and leads on a spinal stimulator that had been implanted in Ms. MacDonald four years ago to control her debilitating pain.

Earlier Thursday, without leaving his laboratory in Dalhousie University’s Sir Charles Tupper Building, Dr. Mendez used a robot to examine Ms. MacDonald’s surgical wound and help research co-ordinator Paula Chiasson, at Ms. MacDonald’s bedside, program the implant.

Relying on a laptop computer, a joystick and a broadband Internet connection, Dr. Mendez deftly steered the person-sized robot through the cramped space of a two-person room at the Halifax Infirmary.

With a pair of eye-like lenses above the robot’s fully manoeuvrable flat-screen head, Dr. Mendez zoomed in on the incision, took a picture for the patient’s record and checked the readings on the device used to calibrate the stimulator. He talked to Ms. MacDonald and asked Ms. Chiasson questions from two blocks down Summer Street.

Ms. MacDonald and fellow patient Heather Carver greeted the arrival of the steel grey robot, with Dr. Mendez’s face displayed life-sized on its screen, as if it was the doctor himself.

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Ms. MacDonald said after the checkup. “I was just very happy to see his face.”

She said Dr. Mendez had also used the robot to check on her the night before from his home.

“He was like a kid with a new toy,” she said. “It’s so exciting.”

The robot, which began making rounds in Halifax about 10 days ago, is the first of its kind in Canada and one of only a few in North America.

Valued at about $200,000 and manufactured by InTouch Health of Santa Barbara, Calif., the robot was bought through an anonymous gift to the QEII Foundation.

It’s finally here. A M2M Solution to monitor and record your heart beat from within your body – 24/7. Your physician will get to monitor you via wireless/ Internet link and will be notified at the first sign of any problems.

An easy-to-use in home monitoring device for patients is changing the way doctors monitor the health of patients with implanted defibrillators. Rush University Medical Center is participating in a pilot study of the LATITUDE® Patient Management system to determine if the wireless home monitoring system can decrease hospitalizations for heart failure.

A mini-antenna built into the implanted defibrillator sends data to a wireless system placed in the patient’s home. The data is automatically transmitted to a secure Internet server where the physician can access this medical information anytime, from anywhere.

Unlike other remote devices which only transmit data if certain parameters are out of range, the LATITUDE system uploads health information that can help physicians monitor the day-to-day changes in patients. In addition to the data stored before, during and after an arrhythmia, the system employs a wireless weight scale and blood pressure monitor to record vital statistics crucial for the management of cardiac failure patients. An abrupt change in weight could indicate worsening heart failure.

“This sophisticated system allows physicians to manage the patient much more closely. The same information that would normally require a visit to the office every few months can now be downloaded to the physician at anytime without the patient ever leaving home,” said Dr. Kousik Krishnan, a cardiac electrophysiologist at Rush.

According to Krishnan, the LATITUDE system provides added peace of mind for the patient. The physician can remotely check if the defibrillator is working correctly and assess battery life. If the patient feels the defibrillator activate, he or she can transmit the rhythm information immediately. The physician can quickly analyze the data and determine if the shock was appropriate or if the patient needs to go to the hospital.