http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/feb/23/tp-wireless-monitoring-comes-to-palomar-medical/
In 2000 I worked with Jim Welch to advocate why Welch Allyn had the right “non” WMTS patient monitoring solution.
In 2005, Integra Systems worked with Siemens then to become Draeger Medical to develop the novel solution of OneNet. This was the first ever shared 802.11 Patient Monitoring enterprise architecture. Bottom line it is just another application on the enterprise and at the end of the day with the right design, it is bullet proof. Oh yes, it is ironic that patient monitoring data does not take up a lot of bandwidth. Now all the infusion pump companies have WLAN enabled their smart pumps.
Still the market leader like www.philips.com and also www.ge.com cling to the notion that you have to have WMTS. Why, I just do not know. I hear the worn out excuse for years that is is “safer”. Guess it is kind of like saying..you have to have a Blackberry because it is secure…and no you cannot use your I-Phone or Android device on our corporate network! So I question the continued investment in WMTS telemetry….just why? It is very costly because of a totally separate coaxial infrastructure just for telemetry only. Why continue to sell WMTS because the companies can sell it!
I have no doubt reading the “tea leaves” that Philips WILL have a shared 802.11 patient monitoring architecture out in 2013. It is only a matter of time. Since you own 50 some % market share in patient monitoring..you do not have to be first.
Two years ago Integra Systems worked with www.carefusion.com to test and validate a shared wireless medical device application at Palomar. We wrote the test plans and protocols and conducted all the testing for a FDA 510k approval. It resulted in the fastest regulatory approval in the history of the company.
Hats off to Sotera, Jim, Gunnar and others for making this happen!
