January 9th, 2009
March of the mobile medical wonders
After over five years of gestation medical devices containing mobile communications chips are starting to hit the market.
From New Zealand comes the Smartinhaler, an inhaler with a chip that can count how often it’s used and upload the data. A New Jersey outfit called MicroDose has begun U.S. tests of the device.
The idea here is to improve compliance with use of lung medicines by both kids with asthma and adult COPD sufferers. Kids may get ring tones as reminders, older patients may be monitored remotely by doctors or caregivers.
Another way to the same result is with telephone reminders. That’s what eMobileMed of Crystal Lake, Ill. is offering, a virtual pillbox in your phone.
As with all devices, they need to prove the case, so they’re asking folks over 50 (like me) who take hypertension drugs (like me) if they’d like a free phone for 30 days (boy would I).
When my kids get on me I often point out that elder abuse is rampant and happening at younger ages, but even AARP newbies make mistakes. Just the other day I scarfed my hypertension meds in the evening, rather than the morning. It was a dark and stormy night.
Some studies are already coming out. The VA has produced one, for Telemedicine and eHealth, showing patients with remote health monitoring spent 25% fewer days in the hospital than those who were not.
The telehealth study monitored over 17,000 people and showed that the $1,600/year cost of the monitoring more than paid for itself. Those are bottom line results you can believe in.
The danger in all this is that we wind up with incompatible systems costing far more than they should. But if that’s a way station on the path to making this technology ubiquitous it’s a price I’m willing to pay.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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