Mobile Phone Vendor Update
Verizon and PatientKeeper announce
that the PatientKeeper platform can now be accessed through Verizon's
wireless network. Each wireless carrier's wireless network is somewhat
proprietary, so IP based applications must be tested (and sometimes
tweaked) to run properly. Whether this announcement means anything more
that test and validation on Verizon's network is not clear.
In other news, Sprint announced that they'd completed their acquisition
of Nextel. They passed up a perfectly good new company name (Sextel)
for Sprint Nextel Corporation — boring. Nextel has traditionally been
strong with contractors using their “push-to-talk,” a feature that for
many years was unique. Numerous hospitals have also acquired Nextel
microsites and use the handsets for internal communications.
Sprint has made one of the earliest and biggest pushes into the health
care market, and is the first and only carrier to implement Qualcomm's
third party provisioning system (called QConnect). This allows vendors selling products
with embedded radios to directly provision their customer's devices on
the Sprint network. This self-provisioning system eliminates 2
objections medical device vendors have to using wireless carrier
networks. By allowing vendors to provision their own customer's devices
on the carrier's network, they can maintain a more direct client/vendor
relationship, keeping the carrier at an arm's length. Wireless carriers
provide notoriously poor provisioning service, so the vendor can
provide their own service to their customers.
Qualcomm's been shopping this capability around for a couple of years,
but I'm not aware of any device vendors signing up. Nor have I heard of
any other carriers offering this service. As remote monitoring for
chronic disease gains adoption, services of this type will eventually
be adopted.
UPDATE: I talked with the CEO of Triage Wireless today and learned that his company and CardioNet are both using Qualcomm's QConnect capability (press release). More on Qualcomm's efforts in health care here.
From a coverage standpoint, Sprint probably has the third biggest
coverage footprint (after Verizon and Cingular). Their support of
QConnect was probably the key factor in signing up Triage and CardioNet
to their network.
Internet Worm Infects Hospitals
Last week Partners HealthCare System was hit by a computer worm
that also impacted computers world wide. The malicious code hit
computers in 4 of their 5 hospitals. Fortunately, patient care and
safety was not compromised. Partners has about 55,000 computerized
devices connected to their network, only 800 computers were infected.
Partners computer experts had already installed preventive measures on
the most sensitive records systems by the time the worm attacked
Saturday night, said John Glaser, Partners chief information officer.
No word on whether any medical devices were infected with the worm.
This worm targeted the Windows 2000 operating system; most
Microsoft-based medical devices use Windows NT or Windows XP.
In a case of perfect timing, Healthcare IT News has a Daily News item
highlighting the need to address medical device security. Many medical
devices are susceptible to malicious software, many times rendering
them inoperable.
Guidant Receives 510k for New Wireless Pacemaker Communications
Dispensing with the usual wands, the new CONTAK RENEWAL 3 RF defib/pacemaker and ZOOM LATITUDE programmer from Guidant
uses a wireless radio link for device-to-programmer communications. In
addition to the usual capabilities, the ZOOM LATTIUDE programmer also
includes a remote monitoring capability. The wireless radio link
provides three times faster device interrogation. The only real benefit
here is the faster data link provided by the radio over the wand.
However, the press release does refer to, “additional follow-up
capability, pending FDA approval.” Interesting.
during implant and at follow-up, with device interrogations that can be
three times faster than Guidant’s previous programmer. In addition,
Guidant’s wireless communication technology removes the programmer wand
from the sterile implant field. Guidant plans to introduce these
products in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of this year.
It's not clear from the press release whether these products use the FCC's Medical Implant Communications System (MICS) band (between 402-405MHz), established in 1999. You may recall a post on the release of a Zarlink chip set specifically for this type of application.
UPDATE: Commenter Connie P. was kind enough to reply to me with an
answer to her own question. The ZOOM LATITUDE programmer operates at
914 MHz in a portion of the ISM band that is designated for
radiolocation (active RFID systems like Radianse) and monitoring –
called LMS for Location and Monitoring Service. Of course there are a
myriad of other ISM devices that operated within this same 902 – 928
MHz band . Here's a table showing frequency allocations that include LMS frequencies.
Grand Rounds 1:48
Be sure to check out this week's installment of Grand Rounds at straightfromthedoc.
Physician Kevin provides a sharp and concise listing of the best health
care blog posts from the past week. You're sure to find something
interesting there…
