How are you influencing Portable Medical Devices?
Alex Brisbourne
President and COO KORE Telematics
At KORE
Telematics, we are increasingly helping organizations understand the critical
role that reliable and ubiquitous wireless communications can play in taking
the ‘quality of life’ benefits of portable medical devices to the next level.
With wireless medical devices, patients can conduct normal daily activities
while being monitoring.
One
excellent example is a device developed by MedApps, one of our partners. CHF
patients discharged from the Meridian Health Ocean
Medical Center
in New Jersey
are provided with a MedApps remote monitoring device, and diagnostics are
reported back to a monitoring nurse via the KORE network. By implementing these
portable medical devices, Ocean Medical Center aimed to help patients improve
their progress at home in self-management of their condition, reducing
re-admissions. The program has been successful,reporting decreased re-admission
rates for CHF patients from 14.93% in January 2010 to 5.6% by July 2010 - only
6 monthsinto the program. The overall trend for re-admission rates from 2009
compared with 2010 created an impact of close to 12% in the reduction of
re-admissions.
KORE is
influencing and enabling companies such as MedApps to build wireless portable
medical devices, creating new innovations that improve patient outcomes and
drive new product designs and sales.
Joe Spinozzi
Chief Operations Officer, Cyth Systems, Inc.
In order
to design and test these devices a new paradigm fuels our methods for product
development. For the control module, we vigorously seek the use of
off-the-shelf electrical and software options to enable a rapid prototype in
record time, and automated design validation tests to confirm the success of
the project. Our goal with a small- to medium-sized device, with a successful
concept demo and design plan, is to have a working prototype in as little as 15
days, but typically around one to two months. This leads to data gathering,
validation of key requirements, and critical redesigns to move forward with the
fabrication of pilot units and preparations for a satisfying result for
investors, stakeholders, and eventually consumers
Tim Chismar
Biomedical Engineer for 3M Littmann Stethoscopes, 3M Health Care
 |
Wireless
communication is continually influencing the design of medical devices. The
miniaturization of technology is allowing devices to be smaller and lighter
while the computational capacity of the devices is increasing, allowing more
functionality in a smaller footprint. Roughly 85% of physicians report they are
using a smart phone/device, and by leveraging these available platforms,
medical devices can be designed as a peripheral as opposed to a stand-alone
unit. For instance, 3M Littmann Stethoscopes is developing a smart phone/device
app that will allow multiple Bluetooth wireless 3M Littmann Stethoscopes to
listen to the same sounds simultaneously. The wireless electronic stethoscopes
are also enabled to clearly communicate across data networks in real-time from
a remote location to a healthcare provider anywhere in the world using our 3M
Littmann Scope-to-Scope Tele-Auscultation System. By establishing medical
devices in the market place that are enabled to communicate to a remote
location, a cost savings can be measured, which will subsequently
influence the payers to adopt the portable technology and allow healthcare
providers to bill for that service.
David Niewolny
Medical Segment Manager, Freescale Semiconductor
Technology providers, like Freescale Semiconductor, are
delivering breakthough products to portable medical device designers through
advances in mixed-signal integration, display technology, connectivity and low
power performance. Each of these items
plays a key role in the portable medical space. Highly integrated mixed-signal
microcontrollers allow devices to be more accurate while reducing cost, which
is becoming an increasing concern as more devices are being sold
Over-the-Counter (OTC) to consumers. This trend of consumer medical devices is
also driving advances in display technology and connectivity. Consumers are
looking for high resolution graphics that rotate along with the device and
wireless connectivity. Our company offers microprocessors that have integrated
graphics accelerators and stand alone devices for both sensing rotation and for
wire free communication. Looking to the future, significant focus will be
placed on enabling device manufacturers to eliminate batteries altogether. One
of Freescale’s analog technologies, an ultra-low power DC to DC converter, enables
IC startup thresholds to be reduced to 0.32 V and offers efficiencies of nearly
90%. This technology has the potential to enable devices that are powered
solely by the human body, which would be a paradigm shift in medical device
design.
Anthony J. Kalaijakis
Strategic Medical Marketing Manager, Molex Incorporated
Portable
Medical devices (PMD) are driving the scale of interconnects to unprecedented
micro sizes. There are several examples of PMDs that, a decade ago, were built
only for use in hospitals or clinics. The miniaturization of these PMDs result
in them now being portable and even wireless, making them efficient and
convenient for patients to use at home.As a
result of the miniaturization and portability trend, the form factor of these
PMDs is changing, with embedded electronics and interconnects having to perform
better in less space. This trend continues in the microminiature connector
market. Once only used in mobile phone and handheld electronic device
applications, microelectronics have now evolved into viable medical device
solutions. One example in today’s marketplace is the Molex SlimStack system,
which is not only small – with a 0.40 mm (0.016") pitch and a low-profile
height of 0.70 mm (0.028") – but also available in several configurations,
depending on the device design.
A good example of how Molex is influencing PMD is the Molded
Interconnect Design, which applies its 2-shot molding and Laser Direct
Structuring plated plastic technology (consisting of molding, laser structuring
and metallization) to dense medical application designs. Adapted from sculpting
antennas for mobile applications, this technology makes it possible to
incorporate the aforementioned SlimStack interconnect onto a three-dimensional
housing with integrated traces. This approach significantly increases function
and minimizes size while offering a three-dimensional approach to
interconnectivity.
