Device transmits patient health data over phone lines
By Jon Van
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — After passing out and winding up in an emergency room last year, William Robie agreed to wear a heart-monitoring device about the size of a pager.
Each time it alerted him, Robie dialed a phone number so the device could transmit data to technicians stationed at LifeWatch Inc.
"I seemed to have more incidents at night, so it'd wake me up," said the Lake Forest, Ill., resident. "I'd transmit the data, reset it and go back to sleep."
After monitoring Robie for a month, his cardiologist prescribed a pacemaker for the 84-year-old. "I've felt fine ever since," he said.
Known as telemedicine, the technology is used by thousands of patients like Robie who phone in cardiac data to firms such as LifeWatch to help diagnose their conditions.
Now the technology is poised for growth, as electronic monitors patched into phone networks are reaching new markets.
In one example, parents can monitor blood sugar levels in diabetic youngsters. LifeWatch is also working on systems to monitor respiratory diseases, track blood pressure and even to remind patients when they forget to take medications.
"It's really a dramatic change in diagnostics," said Dr. Jay Alexander, a Bannockburn, Ill., cardiologist and Robie's physician.
Patients who experience lightheadedness, who pass out, or who have palpitations have been difficult to diagnose because symptoms seldom occur while they are being examined, Alexander said.
The devices used by LifeWatch and produced by Card Guard, its Swiss-based parent company, are typically worn for a month. They don't record all of a patient's heartbeats, but store electrocardiographic information for short periods and then discard information about normal heart activity.
Abnormal events cause the device to alert the patient who then transmits the data over phone lines to LifeWatch. Technicians usually ask the patient what he was doing when the abnormality happened and note the answer along with the monitoring data.
The devices are an alternative to Holter monitors, which have been standard tools for cardiac diagnosis since their invention in 1940 by Dr. Norman Holter. Patients wear Holters for 24 hours to monitor heart rhythms. They provide a full record of what occurs each day but may still miss vital data, Alexander said.
LifeWatch still supplies Holter monitoring service as well as pacemaker monitoring, but remote cardiac event monitoring now constitutes about 80 percent of the firm's business.
The firm's annual revenue is around $40 million.
It typically costs about $250 for a month's worth of electrocardiographic information, a charge that insurance routinely pays, said LifeWatch Chief Executive Ofer Sandelson.
A Holter monitor analysis costs about $95.
