I love the smell of tradeshows in the morning.

Good thing, too, because the mobihealthnews team has spent the last two weeks at three of them: CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas (sunny/mild), BodyNets in Los Angeles (sunny/warm), and HIMSS in Chicago (snowy/cold then sunny/warm). The city of HIMSS clearly produced superior beer selections (Chicago's Goose Island 312), but the CTIA Wireless and BodyNets events had their cuff-less wireless sensors finely tuned to the mobile health industry's pulse. HIMSS was too distracted by the tens of billions of dollars in the economic stimulus package (they call it "ESP") for electronic medical records (EMR) to focus on anything else.

Hard to blame HIMSS for that, but here's hoping the collective effervescence dies down by next year.

While traveling from CTIA Wireless to BodyNets to HIMSS, I couldn't help but think back to the authoritative Telemedicine 2.0 report (2007) penned by investment firm Triple Tree's Rob McCray. In it, McCray classifies the wireless health industry into three key buckets: Infrastructure & Communications, Clinical Wireless Solutions, and Personal Wireless Solutions.

Each of the aforementioned events fits into one of these buckets. Here's which and why:

Infrastructure & Communications: HIMSS. The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society trade show brings together all facets of healthcare IT, including wireless enterprise IT technologies, which mostly runs over WLAN like WiFi. These include companies selling wireless VoIP solutions, ruggedized handsets for clinicians, mobile EHR applications for physicians and more.

Clinical Wireless Solutions: BodyNets. Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) or Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) are mostly leveraged by clinicians in therapeutic devices that work to deliver clinical care to patients when they are outside the clinic. As we learned at BodyNets, if a hacker "spoofs" a WPAN and takes control of a body sensor that delivers critical information to a clinician, the results could be deadly. An example is hacking into a wireless-enabled cardiac monitoring device. Security is top of mind for these services as a result.

Personal Wireless Solutions: CTIA Wireless. Naturally the cellular industry is largely interested in the convergence of healthcare and fitness where it intersects with the mobile phone as the hub. Many of these solutions lead to Personal Health Solutions delivered via the wireless carrier's WWAN. As we learned at CTIA, remote monitoring of chronic diseases via WWAN could save more than $20 billion; personalized participatory health care centered on wireless technologies has the greatest chance of relieving the U.S.'s overwhelmed healthcare industry; there are 10 diseases that are currently benefiting (or soon will) from wireless-enabled personal healthcare services.

Of course, there were a few surprise exceptions like the wireless sensors-enabled toothbrush project underdevelopment at Rice University that we heard about at BodyNets — clearly a personal health solution, but one that depends on wireless sensors and a body area network. Or how about the mobile clinical assistant tablet Verizon Chairman Ivan Seidenberg said he was "very excited" about at CTIA? That's more of a Infrastructure & Communications solution for use over a hospital's WLAN.

Next week brings more mHealth news live from Washington, D.C. where the World Health Care Congress convenes. Mobile EHRs look to be the talk of our nation's capital next week. As always, drop us a note if you'll be attending.

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@CTIA Interview: West Wireless Health Institute

If Scripps Health's Dr. Eric Topol's sweeping keynote about the emerging wireless healthcare industry was the main course at the CTIA Wireless show this week, the launch of the West Wireless Health Institute on Monday was the event's amuse bouche.

The mobihealthnews team had the opportunity to sit-down with the West Wireless Health Institute's Chairman and lead donor Gary West to discuss why he decided to invest in wireless medicine, which indicators led him to decide now was the time to invest in mHealth, what kind of CEO the Institute is looking to attract and how the Institute will spend his $45 million donation

Read the full, three-part interview with new details on the institute's search for a CEO here.

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@HIMSS Kaiser's mobile efforts beyond SMS

Earlier this year we reported that Kaiser Permanente was planning on rolling out a national campaign for text message based appointment reminders after the company conducted a successful pilot (article). This week at the HIMSS event in Chicago, we caught up with Kaiser's Director of Enterprise Engineering Carlos Matos and VP of Public Relations Holly Potter to discuss the text message reminder rollout and other wireless health initiatives that Kaiser has under development. As you might expect, they say text messaging is just the first step toward a more connected KP patient.

"SMS is just one part of it," Matos said. "Our communications strategy is going to have several types of outreach: SMS is one, email is another. Patients using their kp.org email address can get reminders sent there too." Going through the company's own email portal helps it manage the privacy and security concerns, but for those who use text, clearly that option will be more convenient in the longterm since it reaches them anytime, anywhere. Continue

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@CTIA Topol: Remote monitoring to save $20+B

"The economy has hit bottom," Scripps Health's Dr. Eric Topol declared during his keynote at the CTIA Wireless event in Las Vegas this week. "But at the same time there has never been more wireless innovation in the medical community."

Topol spent much of his twenty five minutes onstage describing and demonstrating examples of that innovation.

"As a cardiologist I never thought I would be seeing from a smart bandaid on my phone a continually streaming electrocardiagram," Topol said. "I never thought this would be possible, but, of course, it is ready now." Continue

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@HIMSS Nurses: Voice, Alarm, Text for iPhone

Stalking around the usual suspects at the HIMSS conference this week was a band of pink pants wearing entrepreneurs: The team from Ft. Lauderdale-based start-up Voalte brought more than silly pants to Chicago though, they brought iPhones loaded with wireless VoIP, nurses’ alarms and text messages, too. Vo- (voice) + al- (alarms) + te (texts), pronounced “volt” was founded by Trey Lauderdale, a former regional sales manager at Emergin Systems.

During an interview on-site at HIMSS, Lauderdale told the mobihealthnews team that while at Emergin he sensed his customers growing frustration with the tiny pool of wireless VoIP phones in the market: many of which look like bricks. Lauderdale said nurses and physicians’ demand for a wireless VoIP solution on the iPhone reached a fever pitch so he set off on his own to give it to them. Continue

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@BodyNets: Monitoring tooth-brushing, obesity

At the BodyNets conference in Los Angeles, Rice University assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering Lin Zhong shared a quick synopsis of two of his institution's wireless health projects: childhood obesity monitoring and oral hygiene monitoring.

Zhong described a pilot program Rice carried out to monitor obese children's activity levels and how they correlate to fluctuations in their weight. The kids only needed to attach a sensor with a microSD card built-in to their clothing and keep a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone in their pocket. Zhong said they didn't continuously monitor the data because transmitting it in real-time, all the time would drain the battery of the devices. Physicians and other caregivers, however, were able to pull data whenever they wanted just to ensure the system was working. At the end of the month the caregiver could download all of the data for analysis. In the future the system could include prompts and tips for kids to keep them on certain fitness regimens. Continue

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@HIMSS AllOne on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android

While Diversinet and AllOne Mobile didn't have a booth at the HIMSS event here in Chicago, the companies were busy meeting with the major EHR vendors, solidifying existing relationships and ensuring they have every segment of the EHR market mobilized. It's a simplification, however, to spin AllOne Mobile as a company that only mobilizes health records-as the name suggests, AllOne's vision is much more encompassing.

Mobihealthnews had a chance to meet up with Diversinet's SVP of Business Development Jay Couse. Diversinet is partially owned by AllOne. Here's how Couse describes the companies' plans:

"At Diversinet, we're not looking at what has been done and didn't work-we are focused on what needs to work. We're putting the consumer in the middle and making it work so that the consumer has transparency into all aspects of healthcare delivery," Couse said. "Consumers should have all the same information they already have when buying merchandise goods. They should know whether what they're buying is a reputable product. They should know how much it will cost them and what their obligations are once they do buy in. The next step is enabling them to know how much money is currently available in their various bank accounts to ensure that they can meet those obligations. Finally, they should receive reminders, continual treatment plans and follow-up plans. We almost have that kind of solution complete right now." Continue

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@CTIA $100B market for Proteus Biomedical

Proteus Biomedical's CEO Andrew Thompson explained his company's complementary product to smart bandages: Proteus Biomedical's edible microchip, called Raisin. The microchip, which can monitor whether a person actually ingests their medicine, will help create a $100 billion industry, Thompson said. The Raisin is made from ingredients "all found in the food chain," Thompson assured the audience. He also noted that the technology could be embedded into any pill out there and since its rollout is imminent, it is especially well-timed considering the number of drug patents set to expire in the next few years. Generic drugs with wireless sensors embedded are the lynchpin to the $100 billion market Thompson predicted.

"These solutions are not about cutting costs in healthcare," Thompson proclaimed. "If we wanted to simply cut costs, then that would be easy--just stop providing care. The key is to provide value" to inject value into the healthcare industry in the U.S." Continue

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@HIMSS Another Allscripts EHR iPhone app

The Allscripts booth here at the HIMSS event in Chicago has by most estimates drawn the largest crowd for the past few days. Perhaps one reason for the interest is the company's new iPhone application: Allscripts Remote, which enables physicians to access and control an Allscripts Electronic Health Records (EHR) directly from their iPhone.

Thought Allscripts had already announced an iPhone app for its EHR? We did too. Mobihealthnews reported on it last month: Edge Health Solutions, a start-up based in Richmond, British Columbia recently signed a multi-million dollar deal with AllScripts to embed the company's electronic health record (EHR) into its suite of software applications. The iPhone app would have been marketed as EdgeEHR, but it does not appear in the iPhone App Store yet.

The latest release from Allscripts, however, makes no mention of Edge Health Solutions, and it appears that the two companies now seem to have competing solutions of an iPhone-based EHR. Continue

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@HIMSS ReachMD satellite radio on iPhone

Two years ago the Chief Marketing Officer of the American Medical Association left the organization to take the helm of a start-up in the continuing medical education (CME) sector that had just launched its own XM Satellite Radio show, ReachMD. On the weekend doctors can tune into ReachMD for 15 minute CME classes and take the tests in real-time on their mobile phones. During the week the radio station beams updates, interviews and analysis of medical news throughout the day.

The company's XM Satellite Radio Show boasts 280,000 weekly listeners, which are almost entirely medical professionals. ReachMD is quick to point out that there about 700,000 active physicians in the U.S.

As of last November, ReachMD went all mobile when CEO Gary Epstein took his company's CME content and packaged it into a free iPhone application. The company's EVP of sales is a former Takeda executive-so some of the 15 minute CME podcasts are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.

During an interview with Mobihealthnews at the HIMSS conference here in Chicago, Epstein explained that the company decided to launch an iPhone app for two reasons: One, the ReachMD's 15 full-time employees are "very loyal to Apple"; Two, ReachMD's founder Dr. David Preskill's original concept for ReachMD was as a mobile phone-based CME application doctors could use on-the-go. Continue

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@HIMSS Prenatal care AirStrip OB for iPhone

Earlier this week, AirStrip Technologies announced that the FDA had granted the company's iPhone application, AirStrip OB, clearance to market the app to physicians via Apple's App Store. AirStrip OB enables obstetricians to use their iPhones to remotely access real-time and historical waveform data for both the mother and the baby. The data set includes heart tracings, contraction patterns, nursing notes and exam status. The app pulls the data from the hospitals' labor and delivery units.

In order to connect the iPhone to the hosptials' clinics, the hospital needs to purchase the AirStrip system first, which then works along with the hospital's existing patient monitoring system. Once installed, doctors only need to download the app to their iPhone.

"Labor and delivery is one of the riskiest and most litigious environments in healthcare, and… communication errors lead to a measurable majority of actionable bad outcomes," AirStrip President and CMO Dr. Cameron Powell stated in a company release. "AirStrip OB aims to mitigate that risk by closing the communication gap among caregivers," he said. Continue

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@BodyNets: Spoofing sensors can kill

During a presentation here at BodyNets in Los Angeles, Leif Hanlen from NICTA presented one solution for securing the information collected by wireless sensors in a Body Area Network (BAN) and argued that not all BAN services will require the same level of security.

Hanlen began his presentation by sharing some details of the IEEE working group that is creating the Body Area Networks profile: 802.15-6. The group has defined BANs as having a range of about three meters, support for data rates ranging from 10 Kbps to 10 Mbps, and low enough power consumption that BANs can last for five to 6 years.

"You are going to be living inside a six meter cube" with Body Area Networks, Hanlen explained, after having the audience stand up, spread their arms and spin around to get a feel for the range of these networks.

"Question: Within that six meter cube, are you certain that nobody has a packet sniffer living on one of their laptops?" Hanlen asked. "I'm not. Would you be happy to have your wireless pacemaker just chugging away in this environment?" Continue

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@HIMSS Motorola: Barometer for wireless health

Motorola's principal for Global Healthcare Solutions, Vivian Funkhouser presented at the Mobility & Wireless pavillion at HIMSS this week. Her presentation was called: Mobility ROI: How it can help your hospital navigate challenging economic times.

Funkhouser began her talk by noting that research analyst firm Gartner estimates that by next year, half of all enterprises will have migrated away from siloed mobile applications. Enterprises, including hospitals, will no longer depend on a dedicated mobile device for just one application-enterprises will be bundling in multiple applications, Funhouser said.

While it shows how plodding enterprise IT is when it comes to mobile communications adoption, the statistic also demonstrates that the infrastructure and communications group of wireless health services-like using mobile devices to improve efficiencies in care at clinics-has finally reached a tipping point.

According to Motorola's own most recent research, about 80 percent of global information technology decision makers within the healthcare industry said that mobile technologies are more important to their organizations this year than they were in 2008. Continue

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Jitterbug taps WellDoc, Meridian for mHealth

Thanks to the focus on mHealth at the CTIA show in Las Vegas this week, a number of bigger players are opening up about their plans to launch mHealth services in the year ahead. Great Call's Jitterbug phone service for the less tech-savvy older demographic (and anyone else looking for a very, very simple user interface) told Wireless Week that it has firm plans in place for a medication adherence application, an emergency contact service and a diabetes management program.

Jitterbug is partnered with Meridian Health for the medication reminder application. Meridian Healthcare acts as a distribution channel for Jitterbug phones and offers the service to its members. As we have noted many times here, failure to adhere to medical regimens is a major issue for everyone in the industry–patients, doctors, payers and even pharma. While skipping the last few antibiotics dosage is a common, albeit ill-advised habit of many, research shows even cancer patients fail to adhere to their regimen–studies have shown 80 percent of cancer patients do not take their medications correctly. Continue

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It's official: Intel, GE partner on mHealth

Looks like the Wall Street Journal's rumor mill piece was right: As we reported earlier this week, Intel and GE are planning to work together to market home-health monitoring solutions leveraging wireless sensors that aim to prevent falls, increase medication compliance and treat sleep apnea. The companies plan to invest $250 million over the next five years for research and development into this emerging market. Intel and GE predict that the home-health monitoring market will grow to $7.7 billion by 2012, which means it would more than double from today's $3 billion home-health monitoring market.

"We think this partnership offers the potential to lower costs by keeping people out of hospitals while giving health professionals the data they need," GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said during the companies' joint press conference in New York.

As part of the deal, GE Healthcare will sell and market the Intel Health Guide, which is a personal health record (PHR) for patients that also includes a direct communication link to their doctors.

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CardioNet to buy Biotel, enter clinical research

This morning wireless cardiac monitoring company CardioNet announced its intent to acquire Minnesota-based Biotel for $14 million. CardioNet is particulary interested in Biotel's Agility Centralized Research Services, which is based in Chicago, and provides ECG monitoring services to the medical device and pharma industries as well as to contract research and academic research organizations.

The deal pending customer closing conditions as well as approval from Biotel's shareholders who are set to receive $4.82 per share of Biotel. Both companies' boards have approved the deal. The companies expect to close the transaction by the middle of this year.

We hear the company plans to keep Biotel's operations in Minnesota. It is likely, however, that some of Biotel's existing clients, which offer competing products to CardioNet's, won't be working with Biotel in the future if the CardioNet deal comes to fruition. Continue

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Topol's Top Ten Targets for Wireless Medicine

During his keynote at CTIA, Scripps Health's Dr. Eric Topol outlined a top ten list for conditions and diseases that are already benefiting from wireless health services or soon will. Here's Topol's Top Ten (in alphabetical order) with a figure of the number of Americans affected by each condition or disease. Did he miss any notable opportunities?

Alzheimer's: 5 million Americans. Wireless sensors can track the vital signs of patients as well as their location, activity, and balance.

Asthma: 20 million Americans. Wireless can track the respiratory rate and peak flow so patients can use inhalers before an attack occurs.

Breast Cancer: 3 million Americans. Women can use a wireless ultrasound device at home and send the scan to the doctor--won't have to go in for a mammogram.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD): 10 million Americans. Wireless can monitor FEV1, air quality and oximetry

Depression: 19 million Americans. Wireless can monitor medication compliance, activity and communication.

Diabetes: 21 million Americans. Wireless can monitor blood glucose and hemoglobin.

Heart Failure: 5 million Americans. Wireless can monitor cardiac pressures, fluids, weight and blood pressure.

Hypertension: 74 million Americans. Wireless can continuously monitor blood pressure and track medication compliance.

Obesity: 80 million Americans. Wireless scales can track weight and wireless sensors can track calories in/out and activity levels.

Sleep disorders: 15 million Americans. Wireless sensors can monitor each of the phases of sleep for quality of rest, detect apnea and track vital signs.

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