I moderated a panel discussion this week that drew the largest crowd ever at a BIOCOM* Medical Device Quarterly Event. My esteemed panel included a hospital CIO, a nurse executive, a bioengineer and a sales executive for a not-yet-approved wireless patient monitoring device.

Many of the wireless health discussions that I have attended have focused on the technical side of the equation. This discussion looked at wireless health from the commercialization point of view, which is where a company can shine or fail in the success of its product.

Evaluation and adoption of a wireless device within the hospital adds another level of complexity to the traditional decision-making process. Previously, clinical teams decided the majority of medical device purchases. With wireless devices, the IT department within the hospital facilitates the product selection with strong influence from the clinical team. In today’s world, new wireless health applications must meet their clinical claims AND integrate with other systems in the hospital, including the electronic health records.

The clear message for the evening was wireless health must place clinical information at the fingertips of the clinicians, thus facilitating timely, lifesaving interventions, as well as enhance mobility (either physical or remote) of the healthcare worker. Certainly a very tangible benefit of wireless health long term will be the ability to deliver quality healthcare to remote locations.

Looking at the practical side, the panel expressed a concern regarding a clinician’s faith and trust in connectivity and stability of devices. If a system fails or is not stable, it will be circumvented by the clinical team and, thus, not trusted or fully embraced in the future. This is a sobering thought for a manufacturer, especially a new entrant to the market. Companies must balance the desire to get to market with the absolute need to have a safe product that delivers a true benefit to its users.

*BIOCOM is the largest regional life science association in the world, representing more than 550 member companies in Southern California.

As a huge advocate for sustainability I was intrigued by a February 21 episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes on the Bloom Box. The creation of Bloom Energy, a Sunnyvale, California-based company that is promising to revolutionize energy with its “power plant in a box,” Bloom Box is a collection of fuel cells (i.e., “skinny batteries”) that use oxygen and fuel to create electricity with no emissions.

Bloom Energy already has 20 customers, several you’ve heard of, including FedEx, Wal-Mart and Google. The fuel cell stacks are housed in a refrigerator-sized unit, “the Bloom Box.” Oxygen is drawn into one side of the unit, and fuel (fossil-fuel, bio-fuel, or solar power) is fed into the other side. The two combine within the cell and produce a chemical reaction that creates energy with no burning, no combustion, and no power lines. According to Bloom Energy CEO K.R. Sridhar, about 64 stacks of fuel cells could power a small business like a Starbucks franchise. The corporate-sized cells cost $700,000 to $800,000.

Google was the first to use Bloom Boxes to power its data center. Ebay has installed its boxes and estimates it receives almost 15% of its energy needs from Bloom, saving about $100,000 since installing its five boxes 9 months ago.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/18/60minutes/main6221135.shtml