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. Now we have things like the West Wireless Health Institute that is more along our lines. We are enabling things to be end-to-end.”
The wireless sweet spot between fitness and clinical: Wireless healthcare is, ultimately, a consumer play. That was one key message built into presentations by both West Wireless Health Institute’s Eric Topol and CardioNet director of business development Aaron Goldmuntz this week at the Qualcomm Smart Services Leadership Summit. So while the venture capitalists’ focus may be on clinical products with a good chance at attaining reimbursement, and the majority of wireless sensors are being used for fitness applications and services instead of consumer-facing medical apps, the space between the “clinical” and the “fitness” opportunities for wireless health is still very much a sweet spot for this emerging industry.
Cisco on wireless health hype: Daniel Sands, senior medical informatics director for Cisco Systems, gave a keynote on the challenges of getting physicians to adopt new health technology tools at the World Health Care Congress’s Wireless Health event last week in Boston. While he didn’t use the word, Sands clearly believes there to be a lot of hype about wireless health. His keynote began with a rant against fetishizing technology for technology’s sake, but ended with a series of thoughtful challenges that face every company looking to gain a foothold in the emerging wireless health industry.
CardioNet looks beyond the heart: CardioNet director of business development Aaron Goldmuntz laid out his company’s growth strategy during a presentation at the leadership summit in San Diego. Immediate opportunities for growth, Goldmuntz said, included leveraging CardioNet’s platform to develop additional applications for atrial fibrillation. Adjacent markets could include clinical trials, cardiac surgery, stroke prevention and leveraging the CardioNet platform for international markets. Other conditions CardioNet sees as potential opportunities for wireless diagnostic and monitoring tools: Sleep apnea, hypertension, heart failure, diabetes and neurology.
Brian Dolan is editor of mobihealthnews, the emerging wireless health industry’s daily monitor.