Wireless and mobile technologies don't just appear to be shaking up the medical device industry; according to new studies, there's some real evidence backing these claims up.
A recent report from British research organization CambridgeIP found that a whopping eighty-nine percent of the more than 4,700 global patents for heart-rate monitors have some sort of wireless component, as do seventy-one percent of patents for blood-glucose monitors. Overall, wireless technology is part of thirty-one percent of the 26,503 patents CambridgeIP identified in five categories of medical devices, which also includes inhalers (six percent), auto-injectors (fifteen percent) and blood pressure monitors (forty-four percent).
"Our findings suggest that the number of patents referring to the wireless communication aspect of medical device technology has increased at a much faster rate than the overall number of device patents," write the researchers, including CambridgeIP’s Ilian Iliev, Helena van der Merwe and Quentin Tannock, as well as Dr. Puay Tang of the University of Sussex.
According to the report, much of the growth can be traced to the entry of telecommunications and consumer electronics companies into the formerly insular domain of medical devices. There are a number of factors at work here, but one in particular stood out:
"In all datasets we observed a spike in the number of wireless communication-related patents in 2001, which could be due to the release of Bluetooth v.1.1. Although Bluetooth had already been around for some time (and no doubt companies were already conducting R&D into the uses of this technology), the 2001 standardization addressed many of the previous issues associated with this technology," the report says.
"The networked medical devices market is characterized by ready-made open interface standards, such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or the humble USB port, which make it possible for monitors and drug delivery devices to be connected to mobile phones in order to exploit their ubiquity, connectedness, processing power and the sophistication of their interfaces," the researchers explained.
Nontraditional manufacturers have been particularly active in recent years in producing wireless heart monitors. While Medtronic leads others in patented devices in this area, Cambridge IP found a "large presence" of telecom and consumer electronics companies, such as Qualcomm, Sharp and Hewlett-Packard. "This is probably related to the greater level of simplicity of this space from a non-pharmaceutical perspective, as there is no 'body intrusion,' and to the fact that there are fairly few clinical requirements around heart rate measurement. It is also notable that watch companies (such as Casio) have entered this space, as the wearable watch/device platform expands beyond the 'time-keeping' function to other fields," the report says.
And competition is likely to increase. "The entry of external players from the telecoms and consumer electronics [industries], in combination with interoperability initiatives such as the Continua Alliance standards body may yet lead to an increased diversity of telehealth products on the market place, and a higher rate of innovation."
Interestingly, 64.5 percent of wireless-related patents were filed in the U.S., compared to 33.2 percent of patents for all medical devices. The researchers did note that it is easier to obtain patents for software and methods in the U.S. than in other countries, and telehealth innovations tend to fall into those categories.
