| Alcatel-Lucent seeks US telemedicine partner |
Jul 11, 2008 11:01 AM, By Ed Gubbins
http://telephonyonline.com
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Alcatel-Lucent is searching for a US service provider partner to help deliver a new telemedicine application it developed with Canadian carrier SaskTel.
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The service, known as LifeStat remote monitoring and health management, allows patients with chronic health conditions to regularly transmit their own health information to a network-based analysis tool that can help them and their doctors monitor and control their condition. The system can also be programmed to issue alerts to patients and their doctors based on the analysis of that data. And it can provide insight into multiple complex sets of variables -- time of day, changes in diet and activity, etc. -- that would be unrealistic for patients keeping log books on paper.
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It starts with the patient’s health-monitoring device -- a glucose meter for diabetics or blood pressure cuff, for example. Those devices report their measurements via bluetooth to a relay point (a mobile phone or a gateway connected to a user’s home dialup or, in the future, broadband connection). Those relay points then send the data to a server-based platform in the network that stores and analyzes the information and is accessible and programmable via Web portals.
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“The model that appeals to us most is the mobile-based client,” said Jonathan Segel, Alcatel’s director of systems development and integration engineering. “You can carry it anywhere. If you’ve got the right cell phone, just download the client application onto the phone.”
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To work, users’ mobile phones must support bluetooth and Java downloads.
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The system can work with monitoring devices already equipped with bluetooth as well as those without it, which can be fitted with a bluetooth-enabled dongle, Segel said.
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LifeStat was developed jointly by Alcatel and SaskTel over the last few years. The project originally began with SaskTel, which was focused on diabetes, a major concern in Saskatchewan.
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“[Alcatel’s] contribution has been figuring out how to make this more of a global product as opposed to one that was only suitable in Saskatchewan,” Segel said. “We don’t have anything like this in our product portfolio.”
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SaskTel, which jointly owns the intellectual property related to LifeStat, has exclusive rights to sell the service in Canada, though Alcatel-Lucent is searching for service provider partners to deliver it elsewhere, including the US, where a number of mobile operators have expressed interest, Segel said.
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The ability of remote health monitoring and management tools to reduce doctor visits has been identified as a large potential source of revenue for telecom service providers. In addition to that savings, Segel said, more effective management of health conditions should rein in healthcare costs as well, simply because it will keep patients healthier.
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SaskTel officially launched the Canadian service offering this week, though it has been commercially available there for a few months, following three years of trials. The carrier is selling the service directly to patients, though Alcatel also sees a model for selling to healthcare providers as well. SaskTel is also trialing back-end integration of the service with healthcare providers that would allow health data to automatically be stored with patients’ clinical records.
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