Philips innovation facilitates development of wireless home healthcare devices.
Philips Applied Technologies, part of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) has launched the market’s first ZigBee Health Care “reference design.” ZigBee Health Care provides a global standard for interoperable wireless devices. Device manufacturers can now use this to develop a range of wireless telehealth devices for home patient and fitness monitoring, such as blood pressure meters, heart rate monitors, respiratory peak flow meters, and medical alarms.
“ZigBee” is a wireless technology similar to Bluetooth but with connectivity to base units at greater distances. It is widely used in home security, consumer electronics, telecommunications and smart energy systems.
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Philips Applied Technologies was the chief technical editor of the ZHC specification, and its reference design is ZigBee “Golden Unit” qualified to ensure that the devices from manufacturers using its design will all interoperate seamlessly. The ZigBee Health Care hardware module is integrated on chip and uses the IEEE 11073 Personal Health Data standard, which allows medical devices to communicate with each other directly. Medical device manufacturers can use the design to develop and test products using the ZigBee network and ZigBee Health Care profile quickly and easily. The new reference design includes software for both ends of the link, with hardware and development systems developed in partnership with Atmel Corporation. The hardware is built on the Atmel BitCloud ZigBee-Pro protocol stack, and the software can be ported to other ZigBee stack implementations. The contribution of Philips Applied Technologies to reaching a timely completion of the ZigBee Healthcare Profile was important in enabling ZigBee to be included as the wireless Local Area Network in the Continua Version 1.5 Design Guidelines of the open-industry Continua Health Alliance. The decision was based on ZigBee’s low power consumption, wide recognition in industry, and the robust performance of its mesh network. Systems can include wired USB, Bluetooth Health Device Protocol and other links within the same Continua/IEEE 11073 compliant framework. Philips Applied Technologies is also offering development services to integrate and modify the platform to meet the needs of new or existing products. |
The Philips design will enable medical device manufacturers to develop wireless systems for monitoring homebound patients as well as persons with chronic conditions and leading active lives outside the home. With the use of the Zigbee reference platform, data captured by these devices can be safely transmitted wirelessly to a computer or home hub device that stores the data or sends it on for remote monitoring by a clinician, according to Paul van Schendel, Senior Vice President at Philips Applied Technologies.
The platform includes an embedded hub manager which can be designed to integrate data from many sensors, and either store the data locally, or connect across a remote monitoring system to offsite servers. The data can be aggregated, processed and distributed securely at any of a number of different levels to form part of a telehealth system.
The small footprint ZigBee design connects to portable, mobile and fixed products, eliminating physial cables such as serial and Ethernet. Devices have very low power consumption for long battery life of up to several years, depending on the device itself, with the “mesh network” design ensuring reliable coverage over a wide area. The new platform will free device manufacturers from having to learn the technical ZigBee specifications, so they can instead concentrate on their own specialization to make best use of their medical expertise.
www.apptech.philips.com/zigbee-healthcare
PHT Corporation and Entra Health Form Strategic Partnership to Provide Integrated Clinical Trials Technology for Diabetes.
PHT Corporation, a provider of electronic patient reported outcome (ePRO) systems has announced a strategic partnership with Entra Health Systems, an international applied healthcare technology company, to provide integrated data monitoring technology for the management of clinical trials for the treatment of diabetes and in trials where blood glucose management plays a critical role in the investigation.
The partnership combines Entra Health’s MyGlucoHealth wireless blood glucose meter with PHT’s ePRO System to create an automated glucose monitoring and ePRO solution. “It comes down to hard data versus soft data.” said Richard Strobridge, CEO of Entra Health Systems. “Clinical Investigators now have direct access to real-time blood glucose data during clinical trials. Patient-related inaccuracies are eliminated. With the MyGlucoHealth wireless meter we can monitor in real-time not just blood glucose readings, but when and how often patients are testing.”
MyGlucoHealth offers the ability to wirelessly upload readings using Bluetooth, which Strobridge says will add to reading accuracy.
“Our goal is to capture time-sensitive data, directly from the patient,” said Phil Lee, President and CEO of PHT. “Research studies have shown hand-written paper log book entries of glucose data contain numerous errors both in transcription and time accuracy.”
www.phtcorp.com
www.entrahealthsystems.com
www.myglucohealth.net
CellTrak to implement for Canadian provider.
Markham, ON (June 7, 2010) – Saint Elizabeth Health Care is introducing a mobile healthcare technology to its front line staff across Canada in 2010. The Ontario provider will equip its highly mobile staff with tools to enable real-time communication, automated data collection and increased flexibility.
Saint Elizabeth Health Care president and CEO Shirlee Sharkey says the organization has “a strong focus on enabling an exceptional client experience.” CellTrak, running on Blackberry devices, will integrate with the agency’s Procura scheduling software to allow increased efficiency and faster response times.
“This mobile solution provides additional safety for our front line professionals and greater reliability for our clients with its GPS functionality,” she continued. “As home care providers often work alone, the increase in connectivity is invaluable. For clients, fast and accurate schedule adjustments make it easier to get assistance when they need it.”
Saint Elizabeth Health Care will use Procura’s clinical management system to send patient-visit schedules directly to the mobile devices of field staff, decreasing scheduling issues and increasing flexibility to respond to new appointments or changes in a client’s condition.
Michael K. Wons, President and CEO of CellTrak Technologies, Inc., commented, “The Saint Elizabeth leadership team has established a great vision on how to improve care and front-line staff efficiency at the point-of-care. We and our partner Procura are very pleased to help enable that future vision today with the industry leading integrated home health point-of-care mobility and administration system”.
