Intel is adding more connectivity options to its Intel Health Guide, a simple white box designed to give patients information about their health and virtually link them with their physicians and caregivers. In April, Intel and General Electric jointly announced that they would invest $250 million over five years to develop and promote health care IT technologies such as the Intel Health Guide.Intel
announced on July 16 that it would install more connectivity options in its
Intel Health Guide, a compact white box with a screen that allows users to
check their recent health history and connect with a physician or health care
provider.
The updated Intel Health Guide will have the ability to connect patients
with their health care providers via cable/DSL
broadband, as well as 3G/cellular wireless and residential phone service. This
will likely translate into increased ease of use for what is regarded as the
device's signature feature, the ability to transmit health data as well as
video by integrated camera.
"We believe that deploying technology in the home can help pave the way
for a more personalized, cost-effective health care system and we will continue
to innovate and develop products that achieve this," Louis Burns, vice
president and general manager of the Intel Digital Health Group, said in a
statement. "With more than 80 percent of health care spending focused on
patients with one or more chronic diseases, we need to work together to make
dramatic changes to how care is delivered."
The Intel Health Guide has been integrated into the health care offerings of
a number of in-home care and health services organizations, including
Providence Life Services, Spectrum Medical and Proactive Healthcare.
In April, Intel and General Electric jointly announced that they would
invest $250 million over the next five years to develop health care IT
technologies, including the Intel Health Guide. Both companies suggested that
the market for "telehealth" and home health monitoring would likely
double from $3 billion in 2009 to $7.7 billion by 2012, as the population of
Americans aged 65 and over increases to 20 percent of the total population, or about
71.5 million people.
For a look at the Intel Health Guide, click here.
Intel and GE will pool their R&D efforts, expanding their development
programs to focus on technology for fall prevention, medication compliance,
sleep apnea, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and personal wellness monitoring.
The Intel
Digital Health Group plans to create digital networks that will allow
health care providers to build and manage platforms for issues such as nurse
workflow and disease vector paths.
"Most of the discourse [in health care] today is around integrating
medical technology," Paul Otellini, president and CEO
of Intel, said during an April 2 presentation announcing the partnership. However,
"This is not a business that's going to have instant returns."
Given the burgeoning size of the health care IT space, other major IT
companies have decided to enter with their own products. On March 31, Google
announced a pilot program in partnership with CMS (the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services) that would let Medicare beneficiaries import Medicare
claims data into the Google Health platform.
Also in March, Oracle
announced the acquisition of Relsys International, a company that provides
IT applications for drug safety and risk management, as part of a larger plan
to position itself as a health care software applications provider. The
acquisition could lead to Oracle taking market share in the fields of clinical
development, post-market surveillance and patient care ops.
A few weeks later, on April 22, Microsoft
announced that its HealthVault application would be used as the foundation for
the Mayo Clinic Health Manager, a personal health record service designed
to allow Mayo Clinic patients to share information with their caregivers. Like
Google Health, HealthVault allows patients to store medical information in an
online database.