The Medical Device Business Journal — Medical Device News & Articles | MassDevice
Cambridge Consultants wants to make sure your glucose monitor and pulse oximeter are on speaking terms.
The Boston-based design and engineering shop introduced its VenaHub device portal, a small, Bluetooth-enabled device that resembles a USB thumb drive, designed to capture data from wireless medical devices and integrate it into a customizable, online portal that can run on almost any computer.
Medtronic seeks wireless health partners Medtronic group president for diabetes and other device franchises Christopher O’Connell sees “potential” in partnering with other companies for wireless health and is already in discussions with a number of undisclosed firms. 
In my last post, I reported on the recent inaugural Medical Device Connectivity Conference and Exhibition. While I mentioned the IEC and ISO efforts at creating connectivity standards, it seems that I left out another group that is working on this as well: ASTM.
Shareholders of CardioNet Inc. are suing the mobile cardiac monitoring firm and two of its senior managers, alleging that they falsely inflated the company’s prospects ahead of a damaging reimbursement rate cut.
The lawsuits, filed in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania, accuse CardioNet, chairman, president and CEO Randy Thurman and CFO Martin Galvan of issuing too-aggressive earnings forecasts that sent the company’s stock soaring to artificially high levels.
Boston recently played host to the first-ever conference dedicated to the integration of medical devices and information systems, the Inaugural Medical Device Connectivity Conference and Exhibition.
The conference, which attracted more than 200 attendees and dealt with the technical and clinical issues associated with acquiring, pooling, and interpreting data from various medical devices, was especially timely considering a key aspect of the latest Obama gold rush (AKA the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (PDF)).
Qualcomm CEO confirms LifeComm shutdown: At the recent Qualcomm Smart Services Leadership Summit, CEO Paul Jacobs confirmed Mobihealthnews‘ recent scoop that the company’s healthcare focused MVNO LifeComm had become irrelevant. The website broke the news that LifeComm was shutting down two weeks ago. “After working for a few years to get the venture capital lined up, we were hit with the economic downturn. In the meantime, operators have done these open initiatives,” Jacobs said. “Lifecomm as an MVNO became irrelevant. Events overtook it.
Physicians Interactive buys classic mobile medical publisher Skyscape: Digital sales and health marketing company Physicians Interactive acquired mobile medical content publisher Skyscape late last week for an undisclosed sum. According to a PI press release, the deal gives its partners access to Skyscape’s more than 1 million users. Skyscape’s mobile apps and PDA programs for health practitioners compete with similar offerings from Epocrates, Thomson Reuters and many more.
Qualcomm looks at its options for LifeComm: It’s been more than four years since Qualcomm first announced plans to help launch a healthcare-focused mobile phone service called LifeComm. Qualcomm and its (still) undisclosed partners recently decided it was time to pull the plug on LifeComm, after failing to raise additional third-party funding, an anonymous source told mobihealthnews. LifeComm is just one of many of Qualcomm’s health initiatives.
Wireless health reimbursement rate cut: After months of rumor and analysts’ speculation, Highmark CMS cut the reimbursement rate for wireless cardiac monitoring MCOT services from $1,123.07 to $754. While some analysts were anticipating a rate drop on the order of $200 for the past few months, the rate cut was almost double that. CardioNet, the only pure-play wireless health company that has gone public, is credited with creating the reimbursement codes for MCOT or wireless cardiac monitoring after receiving them in the first quarter of this year.
Brian Dolan, mobihealthnews.com
