In 2010 a major medical device company (multi B) approached Integra Systems with a business opportunity. They currently have thousands of medical devices that are being used daily in patients homes and outside the walls of the hospital, but it has turned out to be a logistical nightmare for the home healthcare agency. For example, if there was a problem with the device, the home healthcare nurse would have to respond, using the term in the M to M industry “roll a truck…in this case roll a car.” So the issue came up we definitely need “network connectivity”…but how? Thoughts flew, should we add WiFi, no, add connectivity to a POTS line, no..what you need is some type of remote connectivity. When you have ten plus really bright engineers in one room…just can you imagine. With this open medical device engineering team and through a collabrative effort with the partners we came up with a working prototype in less then 90 days. Most people would never have thought that this was possible. This prototype (not PowerPoint) consisted of multiple wireless technologies to include 805.14 to a minaturized web server to outbound GSM/GPRS services. It also consisted of a software UI written for the medical device as well a pretty much total finished integration end to end. The bottom line solution was brought to market with extremely low NRE and a very fast time to market, while everybody brought their best of breed competencies to the table. It was truly a team effort. I say this because a lot of medical device companies struggle for years and millions of dollars are used to pilot or prototype on their own. Seen multiple experiences where the lack of technical synergy and timely execution (to business requirements) misses the window in the fast moving technical medical integration marketplace.

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