Montefiore Medical Center Expands Use of Cardiocom System
Montefiore is extending use of Cardiocom's remote patient monitoring and disease management system with a grant from the New York State Health Department.
technology consists of the vendor's Commander device that collects data
from several peripheral monitoring devices, including a scale and blood
pressure monitor. The Commander hooks up to a patient's phone line and
then transmits data to a server at the home health organization.
Software on the server then analyzes the data and sends alerts to
nurses when a patient's information is out of a normal range.
The system is currently used with 30-40 congestive heart failure (CHF) home health patients. Montefiore plans to extend the program to more CHF patients, and also use it for diabetes patients. Research has shown that Cardiocom has reduced admissions for patients with chronic diseases by 48 to 80 percent. A study conducted at Covenant Health System, Michigan, looked at heart failure telemanagement.
68% less hospital admissions, along with 3.7% less admissions within
31 days. The length of stay in the Study group was slightly less
(-7%), yet the direct costs were considerably less (-30%).
Inpatient admissions per patient per year (PPPY) fell from 1.17 to 0.38, a 68 percent reduction. Surprisingly, ICU utilization only saw a 0.9 percent reduction.
Talking to Yourself Is Not a Strategy
The competitive and market forces at work today
are causing vendors to move increasingly beyond their core competencies
in order to differentiate their products and meet market requirements. When creating new products, vendors have a wider array of technologies to choose from, and competition between vendors is increasing. In addition, product life cycles are becoming shorter, imitation is more rapid, and the time period a product enjoys differentiation is narrowing.
One of the challenges of medical device connectivity is that you don't know what you don't know. As a result, most embedded systems companies start with their existing business model and product requirements, and just assume they will work for networked systems. The experienced Connectologists reading this are all grinning – because that's were we started too.
The other day I came across a marketing report that caught my eye: “Entering New Markets: Talking to Yourself is Not a Strategy.” Of course adding features to your core product that are outside of your (and your customer's) previous experience is even more deceptive – there's no “new market” here, is there? It is the same market, but its more like finding yourself in a 'bearded Spock” alternate universe, where everything looks familiar, but is not quite the same. Here is the risk, as described in this marketing report:
If you're a medical device vendor looking to add value through connectivity or adding pharmaceuticals to your products, there are:
- Things you know
- Things you know you don't know
- Things you don't know you don't know
It's the third item on the list that will get you, most every time. Getting that unbiased market data and intelligence is critical. What happens when buyers find themselves in unknown territory. How many prospects looking at “smart” pumps have ever bought a smart pump before? (The answer, of course, is none.) They don't really know how it will impact clinical use, what features they'll truly value (and which one's they'll scream for after 6 months), nor do they really know how to buy a smart pump system.
Fortunately for vendors and hospitals alike, some have met the bearded Spock and understand the ways of this alternate universe.
A4 Health Systems Installs Pilot at 11 Hospital Chain
A4 Health Systems has signed an agreement with New York City Health and Hospitals
Corporation (HHC) to install the HealthMatics Emergency Department
Information System (EDIS) as a pilot implementation at Elmhurst
Hospital. If everything goes well, the system may eventually
be installed in all of HHC's 11 acute care hospitals. HHC handles more than 900,000 adult and
pediatric emergency room visits annually at its New York City
hospitals. Goals for the system are to enhance patient safety, improve clinical
documentation and optimize provider access to patient information.
Emergency Department, including tracking, triage, nurse and physician
charting, disposition and reporting. HHC will also take advantage of
auto paging through HealthMatics ED, which will automatically alert
caregivers to events such as returned abnormal lab results, outstanding
orders, etc. Other system features include Remote Chart Access for
community caregivers and hospital staff, so they can securely access an
ED patient's chart via the Web without logging into the HealthMatics ED
system.
Press releases for pilots are pretty unusual. It would seem that A4 is confident in their success, and this could turn into a big deal for them.
Wireless BIOTRONIK Pacemaker Released
BIOTRONIK has announced the market release of their Cylos DR-T pacemaker with “closed loop simulation” and “home monitoring.”
wireless technology allowing the physician to view vital patient
information on a secure website at anytime, from anywhere, within
minutes of the event occurring. In the instance of a cardiac event such
as an atrial arrhythmia, the wireless system incorporated in the Cylos
DR-T pacemaker will automatically and immediately transmit this record
to the physician's office without requiring any patient involvement.
Home Monitoring is invaluable for several reasons: recording of what
would otherwise be difficult-to-detect arrhythmia episodes, immediate
notification of severe events such as lead dislodgement and device
end-of-service, as well as maintenance of a database of events and
device trends.
Perhaps someone from BIOTRONIK can invite me out to their facility so I can write up a more detailed description of their connectivity capabilties.
VeriChip Releases IPO Details
VeriChip is planning to raise as much as $45.8 million in a second quarter IPO. To date less than 8,000 people have had the VeriChip tag implanted in their bodies. Numerous press releases from VeriChip have reported active “adoption” of the technology by hospitals.
its outlook by promoting the chip to a broader audience. According to a
study VeriChip commissioned last year, the chips have a potential
market of about 45 million patients. VeriChip has not yet decided how
many common shares it will sell or the price range for those shares.
VeriChip
- the only company approved by the FDA to sell implanted chips for
humans – is following a business model similar to that of Digital Angel,
which produces microchips to track animals. Digital Angel provided
chip-reading scanners to animal shelters at no cost. VeriChip so far
has provided free scanners to nearly 70 U.S. hospitals, and the
company's system is installed in about 4,000 health care facilities
that use VeriChip's bracelet-identification product.
I'll be surprised if their IPO does well, but then this site has gotten a lot of hits regarding the pending VeriChip IPO.
[Hat tip: iHealthBeat]
