Snow and rain hit the Washington DC area last week just as mHealth 2013 was getting started, shuffling a lot of travel plans and moving some speakers around. Not a lot was announced this year but Medgadget visited the exhibition floor last week and caught up with a few companies.
Interestingly, a lot of companies we talked to seem to be holding their announcements for CES in a few weeks, the medtech side of which we’re planning on covering. This may be an indication that a lot of the money for mHealth is still perceived as coming from the consumer side, where CES is better at getting more attention, rather than the medical industry.
Masimo announces BYOD SpO2 sensor for use in newborns (as long as your device is iOS).
Masimo continued the rollout of its iSpO2 system by announcing a partnership with the Newborn Foundation to deploy the system in a pilot study in China to look at prevention of neonatal sepsis, pneumonia, and birth defects.
Masimo also demonstrated that their iOS 30 pin connector plug (soon to be available for newer iOS Lightning plug and Android) will also be able to utilize the Masimo M-LNCS disposable sensor system, meaning that providers will hopefully not need to buy a whole new set of sensors that can work with their phones and tablets, just the appropriate cable to connect them.
A lot of what is driving these recent changes and miniaturization of the Masimo system is the moving of the data processing to an integrated circuit board in the cord, rather than a large processing unit. This allows the sensor to output relatively simple data to the tablet or phone in a form factor that only needs the power draw and processing power from the tablet itself.
Zephyr BioPatch available in US
Zephyr, a physiologic monitoring device company, announced an expansion of their health ecosystem with the ZypherLIFE system. The ZypherLIFE system includes monitors, remote monitoring, and displays for following patients from a central or remote location in a healthcare system. And now that the BioPatch, a largeish bottlecap sized wireless transmitter that attaches to the patient via two ECG electrodes, is commercially available in the US.
GlobalMED TES (Transportable Exam Station)
Not a new device, but we got to see the GlobalMED TES as part of the AT&T display. Think of it as a diagnostic clinic in a box with many of the same capabilities as the separate devices making up the Smartphone Physical. Similar in concept to the Smartphone Physical, it has several different peripherals that interface with a rugged laptop. However, since the computer it is based around is a traditional laptop with store-and-forward capability, it can be set up to interface more directly with a hospital or healthcare system EMR, communicating almost anywhere thanks to the partnership with AT&T.
Link: mHealth Summit