HP Unveils Revolutionary Wireless Memory Chip
Here's an interesting bit of new enabling technology, the Memory Spot.
The experimental chip, developed by the “Memory Spot” research team
at HP Labs, is a memory device based on CMOS (a widely used, low-power
integrated circuit design) and about the size of a grain of rice or
smaller (2 mm to 4 mm square), with a built-in antenna. The chips could
be embedded in a sheet of paper or stuck to any surface, and could
eventually be available in a booklet as self-adhesive dots.
“The Memory Spot chip frees digital content from the electronic
world of the PC and the Internet and arranges it all around us in our
physical world,” said Ed McDonnell, Memory Spot project manager, HP
Labs.
The chip has a 10 megabits-per-second data transfer rate – 10 times
faster than Bluetooth™ wireless technology and comparable to Wi-Fi
speeds – effectively giving users instant retrieval of information in
audio, video, photo or document form. With a storage capacity ranging
from 256 kilobits to 4 megabits in working prototypes, it could store a
very short video clip, several images or dozens of pages of text.
Future versions could have larger capacities.
Information can be accessed by a read-write device that could be
incorporated into a cell phone, PDA, camera, printer or other
implement. To access information, the read-write device is positioned
closely over the chip, which is then powered so that the stored data is
transferred instantly to the display of the phone, camera or PDA or
printed out by the printer. Users could also add information to the
chip using the various devices.
This could have applications in both wireless medical devices and wireless sensors. I would think the greatest opportunity will be in the telehealth or remote monitoring market.
New GE Ventilator: No Connectivity
GE Healthcare recently received FDA clearance for the Engström Carestation ventilator. There are lots of new advanced parameters, and quicker and easier ways to measure existing parameters on the new ventilator. A few things were missing from the press release. There was no mention of the clinical significance of the new capabilities, nor was there any mention of improved outcomes as a result.
I know I'm picking on GE – they're probably working on all sorts of follow on data regarding outcomes and clinical significance. What really caught my attention was the lack of connectivity.
More and more ventilator patients are placed on units outside of critical care units. Caregivers in these areas have more patients who are frequently in private rooms and sometimes behind closed doors. Many of these caregivers are not as familiar with managing ventilated patients as critical care nurses, and the respiratory therapy techs who support them can be spread across the entire hospital. The market requirement is clear; respiratory techs need wireless access to the vents they're responsible for, and both techs and caregivers need better alarm notification.
This requirements gap has created opportunities for companies like Cardiopulmonary and their Bernoulli system for managing distributed ventilators. This long standing product feature gap also means something else.
At some point, a ventilator company will bring to market network connectivity (not the serial port that today's vents have) and a central station product – maybe event alarm notification. And when that happens, the first to market will have a “lock-out” spec that they will use to mercilessly beat their competitors. Then the mad dash will be on as competitors scramble to bring their connectivity solutions to market.
If you want to have the best and most profitable connectivity (and maybe the first), give me a call.
Pictured right is GE's connectivity-free Enstrom Carestation ventilator.
Vendor Issues Press Release from Healthcare Unbound
According to Tom Blackadar, founder of FitSense Technology, “We're arrogant, selfish, and busy. We got on the technology train very
late. But we control the spending in our country, we don't want to die
early, and we need incredibly simple ways in which we can monitor our
own health, our kids' health, and our parents' health. We need to
provide this in a nice little package without a lot of gizmos and
wires.”
The “we” he's referring to are the boomer generation, who are clamoring for health care and entitlements are legendary – at least in some minds. (press release)
This week's article in the Journal of the American Medical
Association ('Documenting Activity Energy Expenditure and Mortality
Among Older Adults') and the concurrent commentary by Stephen Blair of
the Cooper Institute in the same issue of JAMA means that we're much
closer to a world of seamless data streaming between people, medical
devices, and their healthcare providers.
“Now it's just a matter of getting all of the infrastructure in place to do it,” said Blackadar.
Yeah, that will be easy. Pictured right is the FitSense FS-1 wellness system.
Clinical Evaluation of Detecting Retained Surgical Sponges Using RFID
A small study, done by Dr. A Macario and team at Stanford University tested an RFID-based system for detecting sponges left the surgical cavity.
Stanford University Medical Center. Some tagged and non-tagged sponges
were ‘hidden' inside the patient during an operation by one surgeon,
who asked another surgeon to find them. A battery-operated wand, a type
of detector, was used to find the tagged sponges. The tagged sponges
were very easy to find, say the researchers, while the others were not.
The device detected all sponges correctly, in less than 3 second on
average. There were no false-positive or false-negative results.
The system used was developed by start-up ClearCount Medical Solutions Inc. located in Pittsburg, PA. The company is privately held, founded out of
Carnegie Mellon University to address novel ways of preventing retained
foreign bodies and to improve surgical safety.
cavity, something is left behind in the patient – a total of 1,500
operations each year. This kind of mistake happens more often during
emergency operations. Even though doctors and nurses carefully check
before closing up the patient, the problem still persists, with over
60% of things left inside patients being sponges. Sponges left inside
the patient can go unnoticed for along time, years and even decades -
they can lead to serious and sometimes fatal infections.
I'm surprised they are using passive RFID technology rather than something that would support a more automatic solution, like SAW RFID. ClearCount has a system in development for tracking instruments, and perhaps that will use SAW.
You can read the abstract of the study published in The Archives of Surgery here (Arch Surg. 2006;141:659-662) or you can pay $15 to read the entire study. As an aside, this study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the vendor. Under pending legislation, this study would be required to appear online (for free) within 12 months of publication.
Pictured right is the ClearCount RFID tag used in the sponges.
Billings Clinic Participates in CMS Telehealth Demonstration Project
The Billings Clinic, Billings, Montana, is participating in a three-year CMS demonstration project, trying to reduce
costs to Medicare. The project seeks to determine whether spending
more money on preventive care and disease management saves money
overall by preventing hospitalizations. The Billings Clinic project is focused on CHF (chronic heart failure) patients. For patients over 65, CHF is the most expensive diagnosis for Medicare.
The telehealth system being used by Billings Clinic is pretty simple:
pressing buttons on his home telephone, pop up on [Jo] Rowland's computer
screen. If Rowland [the lead nurse for Billings Clinic's heart failure disease management program] notices something out of the ordinary, she calls him.
Depending
on what else Martin tells her, Rowland might adjust his medication or
schedule an appointment for him with his physician, Dr. Lynn Otto.
This story resonates with a number of topics that were raised at this week's Healthcare Unbound conference. A critical innovation factor that I mentioned in my presentation at HU, is the availability of proofs to validate marketing claims like improved outcomes or lowered costs. What caught my attention was the low tech way this telehealth application was implemented – basically a phone and IVR application. Payors look at both the general application (here chronic disease management of CHF) and the technology used to provide the telehealth application. So in developing proofs for your solution, be sure to validate both the application and the value of the technology being used. The other thing that jumped out is the high-touch human interaction that the system provides.
“It gives you a sense of knowing somebody cares, knowing somebody's watching out for you,” he said.
Even on Independence Day, a holiday for most people, a nurse called to check up on him.
“It just makes you feel good,” Martin said.
Since joining the project in January, Martin has not been admitted once to the hospital – not bad form someone who's near the top of the nation's heart transplant list for those same seven months.
Pictured right is patient Allen Martin.
