Mobile & Wireless

CTIA 2009: Wireless finds a niche in healthcare

The revolution will be monitored – wirelessly

by Sam Bookman

Wireless technology isn’t just a consumer-centric feature any longer – it’s become an integral part of the U.S. healthcare industry, and will only continue to grow within this segment. This according to CTIA keynote speaker Dr. Eric J. Topol, M.D., Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and Chief Academic Officer of Scripps Health, who on Wednesday morning talked about current and future wireless applications in medical practice. Dr. Topol also announced the opening of a health center dedicated to developing digital wireless medical devices.

Calling it “a sea change in the way health can be practiced in the years ahead,” Topol discussed the advent of monitoring applications – such as a fitness tracking chart for the iPhone – offered for the latest generation of smartphones, and ideas that are being developed that will make such apps an even more powerful component of medical care.

In future healthcare, “pill phones” – inexpensive cell phones currently in use which allow patients to track and report their medication schedule – may be replaced by “smart pills” or “ingestible event markers”: pills with a tiny embedded RFID chip that reports when the pill is taken (currently being tested under the name "Proteus"). Or even pills (like the “iPill”) that don’t break down in the body until they are wirelessly activated.

Devices that track “lifestyle” – such as fitness or diet trackers – will become much more advanced, he said.

Remote or home-based monitoring advances would allow the elderly to stay in their homes longer, rather than being moved into an assisted-living facility, Topol said. And heart patients can be monitored constantly from the time EMTs arrive on scene, through the patients’ hospital care and during cardiac rehabilitation – much of which the patient may be able to do from home.

The upshot of all this technological growth? According to Topol, big savings on healthcare costs. He projected that wireless monitoring of, for example, congestive heart failure patients would save $10 billion in costs, while providing better care due to the nonstop data received from patients’ monitoring systems.

Topol also featured the new West Wireless Health Institute, a San Diego-based medical research center launched on March 30. Funded by philanthropists Gary and Mary West and built with the assistance of Scripps Health and Qualcomm, the institute is the first wireless healthcare research institute in the United States.

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