Imagine a hospital with rooms uncluttered by intrusive wires and cables, where patients could move freely and still have all vital signs monitored by doctors and nurses.
That’s the concept behind body sensor networks (BSNs), wireless medical monitoring systems now being developed by GE Healthcare and Global Research, the company’s technology development arm. Under GE’s plan, the battery-powered sensors would be attached to a patient’s body, allowing clinicians to remotely monitor such vital signs as temperature, pulse-oximetry, blood glucose levels, electrocardiogram readings, blood pressure levels and respiratory function.
“Patients are transported all the time between care centers in the hospital setting,” said David Freeman, general manager of parameters for GE Healthcare. “They’re being unhooked from sensors, moved around and hooked back up again, losing time, synch and data continuity.”
The Federal Communications Commission is expected to rule soon on GE’s request to establish a Medical Body Area Network Service, a vendor-neutral, dedicated radio frequency band for low-power, short-range, wireless patient monitoring devices.
Nathaniel Sims, a physician adviser in biomedical engineering for Massachusetts-based Partners Healthcare, physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, is in favor of GE’s concept. As healthcare providers move toward a more mobile, consumer-driven healthcare system, he said, such a network would allow them to continuously monitor a patient, improving healthcare outcomes and shortening hospital stays while allowing the patient more freedom. In addition, he said, payers will be interested in a system that provides better documentation of care to prove quality outcomes and identify clinical gaps.
Sims said the large vendors like GE. Philips, Qualcomm and Intel “have the resources to be an aggregator and a convener” in the field, drawing applications into a vendor-neutral setting that promotes interoperability.
According to Rick Hampton, wireless communications manager for Partners Healthcare, and Michael Dempsey, senior R&D engineer for the Center for Integration and Innovative Technology, GE’s bid to secure bandwidth for body sensor technology is important in that it establishes parameters for a growing field.
“Bandwidth is a limited commodity and everybody wants it,” Dempsey said. Hampton pointed out that the communications network has to be secure so that vital, life-saving data can be transmitted quickly from the sensor to the clinician.
Paolo Bonato, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, pointed out that wireless sensor technology has seen exponential growth over the past decade and will likely continue to grow as the population ages and wants its healthcare delivered at home, rather than in the hospital. With this technology, he said, will come a need for regulation, much like that seen in the cell phone industry.
“Without it, everyone would be listening to everyone else’s conversations,” he said.
Freeman said GE – and others eyeing the BSN field – would be faced with many issues, including scalability, power supply, resolution, frequency agility and error detection. He and Sims both point to smaller versions of sensor technology already in use, from pacemakers worn by marathon runners to remote blood-glucose sensing systems now being used by diabetics.
“There are pieces of infrastructure out there that you can already link into and leverage,” said Freeman. “I think this is going to become ubiquitous.”
