Medical Device Connectivity Conference Wrap-up
The first ever Medical Device Connectivity Conference and Exposition was held September 10 and 11, 2009. The event was at the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School in Boston (what a swanky place!).
The program focused on regulatory changes (the FDA’s proposed MDDS rule and the new IEC 80001) and industry standards (IHE PCD, HL7, 11073, ICE, 802.11x, etc.) and patient safety. The second day had separate tracks for:
- Trends in connectivity infrastructure, like networking, converging hospital IT and Biomed departments, and wireless sensors;
- A survey of predominate medical device connectivity applications — EMR documentation, infusion pumps, operating room integration; and
- A clinical track looking at why people make and buy connectivity, to improve patient safety and improve outcomes.
There were over 200 attendees at the conference, split about 60/40, manufacturers and health care providers. Among the providers, there was a preponderance of clinical engineers, then came IT folks, and finally clinicians. Manufacturers were mostly senior level product management and engineering people.
There were 9 sponsors for the event: Capsule, Cardiopulmonary Corp., Cerner, Cisco, Fluke Network, Hill-Rom, Medical Connectivity Consulting, Nuvon, and Philips.
I’m proud to note the following supporting organizations, with which many speakers and attendees are affiliated: AAMI, ACCE, ACCE Healthcare Technology Foundation, Mass Technology Leadership Council, the Medical Device Group, and RFID in Healthcare Foundation.
The nature of the conference business is that the first year’s always the hardest. The biggest challenge is that, because your conference did not exist last year, no one has budgeted money to sponsor or attend the first year. Under that handicap, we did quite well — which is a testament to both the organizer’s acumen (TCBI) and market interest in the topic.
Next year — yes, there will be another event next year — will be bigger and better. Thanks to everyone who participated for helping create a great event. Any comments, observations, critiques and suggestions are welcome — just leave a comment.
First Ever Medical Device Connectivity Conference
Can you believe it? Connectivity started in the 1980s, and it’s taken over 25 years for the first medical device connectivity conference to be held. I am fortunate to be serving as the program chair for the conference, responsible for the topics covered and finding speakers (you can download a program here — pdf). Unlike other conferences that address connectivity as one of many issues, this meeting is all about medical device connectivity. This is the first of what will be an annual meeting delving into connectivity in depth, tracking changes over time.
Here’s an overview of the agenda:
- Define and frame medical device connectivity for this event
- Industry standards
- Regulatory issues
- “Systems of systems” patient safety issues
- A review of the real costs of connectivity
Day two is divided into three tracks:
- Infrastructure, especially converging medical device and enterprise networks
- Connectivity solutions, a review of the most common connectivity applications (it’s not just about EMR integration)
- Clinical and workflow impacts of connectivity
Friday afternoon, there are two great post-conference workshops. One workshop delves into Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), describing 
best practices for the selection and implementation of DAS. The second workshop is for providers and manufacturers getting ready for IEC 80001. You are getting ready, aren’t you? This workshop details the standard’s requirements with special focus on the risk management process that’s at the heart of IEC 80001.
The conference well be September 10 and 11 (Thursday and Friday) in Boston, at the Joseph B Martin Conference Center at Harvard Medical School. This is a pretty snazzy venue, as you can see by the photo.
Convergence Summit – Day One
I’m at the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance conference, called the Convergence Summit, May 13 and 14. Held at the Estancia La Jolla hotel, today was a full house — standing room only. A few of us are also Twittering the event; you can search for #wlsa to pull up everyone’s posts. You can also see the Summit agenda and prestentors here.
During breakfast, I chatted with Michael Kurgan, CEO of start-up Service Wing Healthcare. They’re targeting the wireless gateway market to support body area networks. I mentioned a company I heard about yesterday, GainSpan and Michael had some great perspective on the challenges picking tech winners in immature markets. GainSpan has an ultra low power wireless SOC (system-on-chip) that includes an 802.11b radio and two ARM processors, one for the radio and one to drive whatever device the chip is enabling. In an immature market, just because a component comes from a big company does not mean that their component will have long term success. A much smaller competitor with a better solution may win, or the big company may acquire a better solution in order to be a big player in that market segment.
Rob McCray, chair of the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance, kicked things off. Camille Sobrian was up next, touting San Diego as the biggest wireless hot spot in the world (perhaps for cellular wireless). She also mentioned the West Wireless Health Institute, and the upcoming TEDMED event. Dr. Paul Jacobs, CEO and chair of Qualcomm passed on introductory remarks and jumped right into things wireless.
Paul noted that what’s going on right now is convergence, and it’s those who understand both industries that can lead that convergence. He described the new mobile internet experience: networks, devices and applications in the cloud. Multiple air interfaces are a key enabling component. The newest radios are only a few percent more efficient, but they tend to support broader bandwidth to improve network performance. He mentioned a mobile WAN, and various wireless LANs and BANs. A future trend is where applications control the radio to optimize performance for that application.
In Europe, mobile broadband radio dongles for connecting laptops outsell all the 3G phones sold there. Paul defined convergence as the overlapping of computing devices, consumer electronics and wireless tech. Paul alluded to the Amazon Kindle, as a prototypical device for the future, where an embedded system includes a cell phone built in for connectivity. He also highlighted Snapdragon as a platform for mobile data processing, multimedia performance, 3G wireless connectivity and the low power consumption.
GlobeStar Systems World Connex — Day Three
After a breakfast meeting, I caught Brenda Vollmer’s presentation on Improving Safety Through Automation. Grand River Hospital recently installed ConnexALL to integrate WatchMate patient wandering, Siemens fire panels and Delta Controls building automation systems.
According to Brenda the implementation of ConnexALL was initiated to better align with their hospital’s patient and staff safety goals. After installation they were able to consolidate much of the management and interaction of these three event driven systems into an automated and consolidated system using ConnexALL. Specific benefits included, improved reliability, managed group notification, reduction in manual interventions, automatic alarm escalation, increased mobility (no sitting at a workstation or watching a panel), quicker decision making, and a consolidated auditing capability.
WatchMate is used for wandering, patient elopement and infant abduction. The hospital’s security is based on the premise that it’s easier to contain (a potential security situation) than retrieve, and that it’s easier to catch someone in the act than is to try to find them after the fact. WatchMate provides notification to a user at a workstation. The hospital used switchboard operators to monitor WatchMate, since they’re usually at their desks. They had to recognize the alarm, look up who to notify, and ensure that notification is made. Now, ConnexALL automatically receives alarms, notifies appropriate staff, ensures alarm delivery (including necessary automatic retry), and escalates alarm notification when necessary. (After some googling, it seems that GlobeStar integrated with WatchMate even though the product is no longer sold by the manufacturer, Xmark.)
GlobeStar Systems World Connex — Day Two
The second day of GlobeStar’s World Connex user group meeting included more informative end user experiences implementing ConnexALL.
Shawn Sicard, CEO of PiiComm in Toronto, Canada lead the customer presentations with a discussion about putting togeter complete solutions. PiiComm is a systems integrator targeting the health care vertical market, with a long term relationship with GlobeStar. As an event sponsor, PiiComm has an exhibit demonstrating many of the products they support. Sean highlighted the Motorola CA 50 wireless VoIP phone with built-in barcode scanner. Built orignally for Home Depot, the phone has found some interest in health care. The phone has push to talk (PTT), a 1D barcode scanner in a small size (4.37″x 1.81″ x 1″ and about 4 ounces). The CA 50 is rather like a large Vocera pendant, there is no phone keypad. The phones are configured based on user profiles and voice input and text based menus on the phone to place calls. He also talked about the new Motorola EWP 1000/2000 wireless VoIP smart phones. The Moto phones were prominent in the Vocera/Motorola announcement at HIMSS, and is only one of two wireless phones that meet all the basic hospital requirements — ruggedized, water resistant and impervious to hospital disinfectants. (The other phone is the also new Ascom DECT IP phone, the d62.)
Shawn described asset management, preventive maintenance, temperature monitoring, patient and staff safety and workflow and resource management as key applications supported by AeroScout. PiiCommis also an Ascom reseller. Shawn noted that going wireless, including wireless VoIP is hard; part of his company’s mission is to help with that transition. He positioned Ascom as a DECT wireless phone solution that doesn’t require Wi-Fi.
Patient Monitor Integration
After the break Stephen Rocha with St Vincent Heart Center of Indiana presented Patient Monitoring Integration. Stephen described the corporate culture and noted that Siemens/Draeger are the predominate medical device vendors (Hospira too). They also have Dukane for nurse call, Hill-Rom beds and Siemens (the Chantry Networks acqusition?), Meru and InnerWireless provide wireless networking. ConnexALL is used as messaging middleware.
GlobeStar Systems World Connex — Day One
I’m at GlobeStar System’s annual user group meeting this week, in Lisbon, Portugal. Attendance is about 150, equivalent to last year’s meeting.
The messaging middleware market is transitioning from middleware to an enterprise application. GlobeStar has been in the business just over 10 years. Unlike Emergin, who started in paging messaging, GlobeStar got their start in the 1990s integrating Austco nurse call and Nortel’s Companion (the first wireless phone system in North America). Over the years, the company (and the market) have evolved from a single nurse call/phone integration to a platform supporting many different systems and devices both on the input and output sides — and incorporating workflow automation through rules, alert initiation, and escalation.
The conference kicked off with introductory presentations from David Tavares, CEO of GlobeStar; Dr Teresa Sustelo, President of Centro Hospitalar de Lisboa Central (a large multi hospital system); and Dr Miguel Correia, Regional Secretary of Health, Azores. During his opening remarks, Miguel Correia noted the broad applicability of improved messaging. He spoke to the extension of messaging systems to tracking and eventually orchestrating complext processes and tasks. This is a vital requirement in health care delivery.
GlobeStar’s technology has been applied outside health care too. They monitor automobile painting production lines and “man down” systems in mining. Miguel Correia mentioned that they’re using ConnexAll in CO2 monitoring at volcanos in the Azorres. Now they’re moving further into workflow automation.
Keynote Presentation
My keynote presentation theme was, “everything is connected” and contrasted this with provider’s tendency to only focus on the immediate problem — or what they think is the problem.
Putting the health care IT market aside, the point of care market is divided into 6 separate market segments: wireless phones, patient flow applications, medical device connectivity, messaging middleware, nurse call, and real time location systems (RTLS), not to be confused with indoor positioning system infrastructure vendors like Sonitor and CenTrak. For some time, buyer’s haven’t been able to buy a product from one of these segments without impacting one or more of the others. Connections to medical devices, and the nurse-to-patient assignment process are common points of contention.
