It’s been announced that the Mayo Clinic has once again teamed with mobile app provider Preventice to create an mHealth solution.  Unlike the last partnership the two organizations aren’t working on an app, but rather a remote monitoring device called “Body Guardian” — which is being developed to monitor irregular heart rhythms.

The new device is meant to be worn unnoticeable under one’s clothing and tracks heart and respiratory rates, ECG, physical activity and other vital signs.  Using the patients smartphone, the data is transmitted back to a physician.  The system can be setup to monitor regular rhythms and only send data back to a physician when irregularities and/or cardiac events are detected.

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It’s been announced that ActiveCare, a provider of telehealth and Personal Emergency Response (PER) solutions has entered an agreement to acquire 4G Biometrics — a company who’s technology helps healthcare and insurance providers, as well as employers, manage risk and reduce costs associated with employees diagnosed with diabetes.

Diabetes management, and chronic care management in general, remains a huge issue that mobile and digital technologies are aiming to streamline.  Diabetes trails only cardiovascular disease as the most expensive disease to treat.  4G Biometrics helps people with Diabetes manage their disease and avoid acute events that cost healthcare and insurance providers millions of dollars per year by providing near-real-time blood glucose monitoring through Bluetooth-enabled devices.  When specific data points with any irregularities are spotted, the information is instantly communicated to individuals/care providers based on profiles defined by medical providers.

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Helping reduce hospital readmissions is a large reasons for bringing digital and mobile health technologies to market, especially ones that allow patients to take more control over their care while at home and after they leave the hospital the first time.

That’s where remote patient monitoring comes in, and numerous companies large and small are entering the race.  It was announced that AT&T is teaming up with Intuitive Health to pilot a home-based remote monitoring solution that helps engage patients and family members in their own care, while seamlessly involving healthcare providers through integration with their clinical information systems.  The end goal for the pilot is to help reduce hospital readmissions and associated healthcare costs, while increasing quality of care and patient satisfaction.

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A new survey published recently by HIMSS and Qualcomm Life show that while consumers understand what remote patient monitoring is, only a quarter of those surveyed reported using one before.

In addition, only 16% of those surveyed had heard about remote monitoring devices from their healthcare provider, and 22% said they’d used such a device themselves in the past.  Just 8% said they currently used such devices as part of a fitness program and 5% said they were using such a device provided by a physician.  The survey included phone interviews with 125 American adults in January so the sample size wasn’t that large.  Still, the findings fall in line with similar research showing consumer awareness of the concept, but not the adoption to match.

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New estimates out from Juniper Research suggest the number of people using mobile networks for remote health monitoring services will top 3M by 2016.

Though nearly all health conditions can benefit from round-the-clock mobile monitoring, the report found that the field is being led by cardiac outpatient monitoring, as insurance reimbursement in the US market plays a key role.  However, the management of diabetes and COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder), in addition to other chronic diseases will play an important role in the remote patient monitoring market over the next several years.

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Zephyr Technology, a provider of various remote monitoring solutions, announced today that it now supports Qualcomm’s recently introduced 2Net Hub and mHealth platform — a cloud-based connectivity solution for healthcare information.

Zephyr’s technology is a perfect fit for Qualcomm’s new connectivity platform, as it’s developed a central mobile health portal that receives aggregated bio-data from the company’s bluetooth-based “BioHarness” mobile medical device.  The device collects vital sign information and communicates by using Android Smartphones to send the data back to the Mobile Health Portal.

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According to new research out recently from Berg Insight, 2011 ended with roughly 2.2M people leveraging remote patient monitoring services based on equipment with integrated connectivity.

This number only includes systems that rely on monitors with “integrated connectivity or systems that use monitoring hubs with integrated cellular or fixed-line modems,” according to the research firm, and doesn’t include patients that use monitoring devices connected to a PC or mobile phone.  Still, Berg projects the market for home monitoring systems will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 percent between 2010 and 2016, reaching 4.9 million connections globally by the end of the forecast period.

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