Healthcare Matters

Definition: Medical Body Area Networks (MBANs)—networks of medical devices capable of communicating with each other and/or with multiple designated hosts. For example, a MBAN might consist of various short range wireless sensors attached to a patient’s body that can update a small receiver located in the patient’s room that in turn, can send longer range signals to monitoring systems at a physician’s office or to a central host computing system.

Medical telemetry devices have long played second fiddle to the other mainstream wireless devices that we know and use every day. That’s why today’s long anticipated FCC announcement to allocate spectrum for wireless medical devices is significant. Just ask GE Healthcare and Phillips Healthcare –two of the largest manufacturers of wireless medical monitoring devices. It’s hard to build a business —and impossible to establish an industry– amidst ongoing uncertainties that have included:

• Unreliable transmission standards –Today’s action by the FCC will fix network interference issues and provide a means for network service providers to deliver quality of service (QOS) guarantees;

• No apparent cooperation or coordination between the FCC and the FDA –A level of cooperation is now “theoretically in place” with the stage set for the FCC to manage the technical aspects of these new medical devices and the FDA to handle the safety and effectiveness issues.

The FCC intends to allocate two spectrum bands for such wireless devices. One band will be designated for devices used in medical facilities and the second band will be used for remote monitoring of patients who are in their homes.

Over the next decade, it is estimated that 80% of healthcare spending will be related to chronic disease management and that a significant percentage of the related care will be home-based. This demand shift is changing the game for most SCM professionals who have spent their careers optimizing supply systems in support of even-driven, acute care, for designated facilities.

As we’ve previously reported: “The ‘center of gravity’ for supplies is shifting away from single node acute care facilities to ‘n’ node care networks where the demand for supplies, in terms of delivery/destination options, are far greater and will often include the patient’s home. Not just medical homes (Patient Centric Medical Homes), but private residences.”

Today’s anticipated announcement by the FCC has been in the works for several years. No doubt about it; it’s a champagne cork popping event for the wireless divisions of major medical device manufacturers.

And an example has been provided that’s noteworthy: If the FCC and FDA can figure out how to work together, then there’s reason to hope for the level of cooperation that’s obviously going to be needed between provider IT and SCM departments!

–Tom Finn