Medical electronics firms employ advanced Bluetooth to access patient data wirelessly

The wireless data interface standard Bluetooth is getting adopted in medical devices as it reached mature point in consumer devices and personal computers domain.
The miniaturization of electronics has helped medical electronic firms to develop pocket size health monitoring and diagnosing equipments e.g. ECG in mobile phone sized device, handheld ultrasound scanners and heart and blood pressure monitors fitted to patient's body. It's cumbersome task to wire all these devices to the computer for final analysis and data storage. More than the wire tangles, the medicos and patients can go mobile with the wireless interface. Doctor can access the real time patient data by the click of a button through a wireless interface.
The proven Bluetooth is selected by companies to transfer the sensed data from portable medical devices to centralized systems. The two recent announcements in this domain are from Mindtree and Cambridge Consultants.

Bangalore, India based R& D services firm MindTree has demonstrated Bluetooth health device solution on the Android platform at the Continua Health Alliance Fall Summit in Boston held recently. In the demo, an application on Google G1 Android Phone connected wirelessly to a Continua-Certified pulse oximeter from Nonin Medical to gather oxygen reading and heartbeat data. This solution features Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP), integrated with IEEE - 11073 layers.

Mindtree says this design provide seamless interoperability among personal healthcare devices allowing individuals to connect with their healthcare administrators in real-time.

In another announcement, Cambridge Consultants have made available a product called VenaHub to collect data wirelessly from medical devices and then integrates into a customizable online health information portal by using a small pocket sized device.

"Current solutions in the tele-health space are expensive, which means none of the parties involved want to pay for them, whether they are an insurer, hospital or patient," said Mike Dunkley, Vice President at Cambridge Consultants. "But the novel, compact, and portable VenaHub is cheap and can plug into the USB port of any PC. Critically, it can also collect data from devices even when it's not plugged into a computer. This technology could not only disrupt the current medical home market, but could overcome the reimbursement barrier that has prevented connected health solutions from being widely deployed."

Vena wireless healthcare device platform also employs Bluetooth wireless standards selected by the Continua Health Alliance to free patients from beds and such fixed heath-monitoring devices. This platform also supports Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) to securely transfer medical data across chips and systems. Vena supports IEEE11073 standards for compatible exchange of information between health devices.

Mindtree website: www.mindtree.com
Cambridge Consultants website: www.cambridgeconsultants.com