News
Wireless technology key to joined-up healthcare
26 March 2008
The market for wireless and mobile-phone-based healthcare platforms
will grow rapidly as healthcare providers seek ways to drive down costs,
according to a report by Cambridge-based
Wireless Healthcare.
The report says mobile communications platforms
provide a relatively simple means of connecting diagnostic medical
devices to the electronic medical record systems and advanced 'Health
2.0' based services being developed by companies such as Google and
Revolution Health.
In the report, Wireless eHealth Platforms, Wireless Healthcare
identifies two main types of platforms: those, such as BlueAid, which
are being built from the ground up as healthcare communications
platforms and others, such as IBM's WebSphere, which are conventional
ecommerce platforms that can be customised to support ehealth
applications.
The report notes that a number of IT vendors are keen to
bring to the healthcare sector technologies and business processes that
they have already used to increase efficiency and reduce costs within
the financial services and travel industries.
Peter Kruger, Senior Analyst with Wireless Healthcare, points out:
"While banks and airlines have managed to radically reduce costs by
deploying technology that lets the customer carry out transactions
online, healthcare providers have yet to realise similar savings by
providing online heart monitoring and blood glucose checks. These types
of services, which free up clinicians by automating routine tasks, are
essential if we want recession-proof healthcare services".
The report sees an important role for platforms that are flexible
enough to allow medical devices that use a range of wireless standards,
such as Bluetooth, 802.11 WiFI or ZigBee to communicate with a mobile phone
or wireless healthcare hub.
It also notes that the platform market will
gain increased traction as search vendors and healthcare portals extend
their health orientated services by adding support for mobile phone-based consumer healthcare services, such a diet management and fitness
monitoring.
As Kruger notes, "We believe the market will be watching the
forthcoming launch of Qualcomm's ehealth platform, LifeComm, to see how
effectively it links mobile phone-based healthcare applications to next-generation back-office healthcare infrastructure".
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