Medical Device Makers Respond to Market Pressure to Innovate
Tim Gee wrote a wrap-up for MX Magazine about how several market trends affect “traditional” medical device manufacturers and push them to adapt their offerings and shorten their product life cycles. He bases his observations in part on what was on display at this year’s HIMSS conference.
First, healthcare providers and healthcare IT vendors are driving a number of initiatives to achieve interoperability not only between software applications, but also spanning medical devices so that patient and medical information can eventually flow seamlessly across the whole healthcare chain. The goal is to reduce errors on a system-wide basis, and interaction points between staff members and the tools they use is precisely where many mistakes happen.
Second, demand continues to evolve from a variety of hospital departments, as they accrue experience with devices and systems. For instance, while PACS is widely adopted in the radiology sector, cardiology which is the second largest consumer of imaging information is mostly yet to be equiped with cardiovascular information systems (CVIS). Only about 15 percent of hospitals have one but vendors expect the market to grow strongly in the years to come, with a recent wave of acquisitions to prepare for it. Meanwhile, portable devices such as tablet computers and PDAs have lost a bit of momentum as their constraints became apparent through usage. Issues with software compatibility, battery life and small screens have limited their appeal.
Regarding application interop, there are no industry-wide standards yet but middleware vendors such as Emergin already facilitate workflow automation. There’s also the question of integrating devices with EHRs. Some product categories such as vital sign monitors show little or no connectivity - but that’s starting to change - and there’s always the legacy of unconnected devices that otherwise properly function. As to implantable medical devices, they now tend to report information to receivers that then upload it to information systems. The underlying trend is that hospitals will less and less buy devices as “just a box.”
May 18, 2006 Related topics: Medical Devices & Products, Trends, IT & software