At the recent Bluetooth Evolution Conference in London, the key applications for ultra low power (ULP) Bluetooth wireless technology were described. One of the most hotly debated applications was healthcare, reports Nordic Semiconductor's Thomas Embla Bonnerud.
Healthcare is crying out for a standardised wireless solution such as ULP Bluetooth. At present, hospitals and healthcare institutions all over the world use a wide range of fragmented systems for tracking, monitoring and recording patients and their medical data both within hospitals and at home.
While out of necessity, management methods and approaches have evolved to work around the challenge, the disjointed nature of patient monitoring and tracking between various treatment inpatient and outpatient stages (including the home) is ripe for higher efficiency and, thus, lower cost approaches. ULP Bluetooth could be the enabler for many new approaches.
ULP Bluetooth wireless technology could be used to allow automatic wireless tracking and monitoring of patients via dedicated ULP Bluetooth wireless technology-enabled instruments and wearable sensors from the moment they come into contact with the healthcare provider, until the moment they leave the system. These systems could be engineered to seamlessly hand over from one treatment phase to the next, while at the same time giving healthcare staff rapid access to information telling them everything that has gone before.
Tracking and monitoring technology need not be restricted to inpatient and outpatient facilities at the hospital. It is perfectly suited to extend to patients' homes. Indeed, as it was explained at the conference, the unobtrusive nature of wireless technology ideally matches the trend in healthcare towards making sure people are treated in hospitals and healthcare institutions when it is the only alternative. This trend is only likely to accelerate as healthcare costs escalate.
ULP Bluetooth wireless technology in health
ULP Bluetooth would enable wireless monitoring and hence remote management of what are fast becoming today's big killers: the chronic diseases such as hypertension (blood pressure), heart disease and diabetes.
Another market with huge potential for ULP Bluetooth in healthcare is enabling elderly independence - ie giving the elderly the ability to age with dignity, for as long as possible, in their own homes. With greying populations in the developed and developing world growing, managing the cost of treating and caring for the elderly is fast becoming one of the key contemporary political issues.
Potentially, ULP Bluetooth could be part of the solution - one that not only meets the financial restraints of healthcare providers and governments, but that also gives elderly people what they want: a chance to live independently for as long as possible. In reality, this means automating the monitoring and care of large numbers of people at home, and minimising costly home visits.
With the appropriate infrastructure (see below: 'A friend of the sick') ULP Bluetooth wireless technology could be used to remotely monitor correct intake of medication, whether the user had successfully got out of bed and eaten on time, and, in a less palatable but nonetheless equally important role, for personal cleanliness monitoring after bouts of incontinence.
Too early to predict
Although the case and potential for ULP Bluetooth in healthcare was made quite strongly during the conference, it has to be stressed that its adoption - or more particularly speed of adoption - was heavily debated.
A number of attendees felt that the universal use of ULP Bluetooth in healthcare - although technically feasible and eminently desirable - was years from adoption and that any discussion of likely product applications and volumes was woefully premature.
Although certain senior speakers from the healthcare sector said ULP Bluetooth was what the sector had been demanding, the doubters cautioned that healthcare was a naturally conservative market and that the decision makers of that industry would need a lot of convincing about the performance and reliability of the technology.
Moreover, it was noted that attempts to introduce wireless into the healthcare sector in the past had resulted in a loss of credibility due to technical problems relating to poor interference immunity.
In a healthcare environment, there are likely to be many wireless sensors and devices transmitting in close vicinity to each other. While ULP Bluetooth's frequency hopping schemes will almost certainly be more than capable of handling such hostile radio environments, a cynical medical community will need some convincing.
That said, ULP Bluetooth is unlikely to ever be used in safety-critical areas (ie in intensive care or emergency room systems that keep patients alive) because of the use of the unlicensed ISM band. This would be because performance could not be guaranteed (and litigation issues are the core worry here) to meet the required medical-grade availability and reliability standards, potentially leaving makers exposed to crippling legal suits.
A long haul to adoption
The overriding message from the conference was that while ULP Bluetooth wireless technology has enormous potential in healthcare - for in-house and home-based patient tracking, monitoring and medical data recording - many observers still predict a long haul, rather than an immediate wave of adoption. This conclusion is despite the fact that ULP Bluetooth addresses one of the healthcare industry's biggest challenges - cost effectively keeping greying populations out of hospital and in their homes for as long as possible.
All this, however, is unlikely to afflict another of ULP Bluetooth's prime target sectors: sports equipment. Here, ULP Bluetooth wireless technology-enabled applications could well appear even before the end of 2009.
A friend of the sick
ULP Bluetooth’s interoperability and ability to run from 3 V coin cell batteries for up to a year make it an ideal technology for unobtrusive monitoring. In one suggested application scenario, patients carry on their daily lives at home while ULP Bluetooth-equipped sensors monitor vital signs such as blood pressure, temperature, blood glucose or heart rate.
In addition, motion sensors could be used to indicate whether medicine containers had been accessed at prescribed times, or whether patients were moving around the house in a normal routine (rather than remaining stationary which could indicate lack of self care).
Standalone ULP Bluetooth chips fitted to these wireless sensors are able to run off coin cells for long periods due to very low duty cycle operation and ultra-low power consumption.
These chips enter ultra-low power sleep modes, waking periodically to send data in short bursts, utilising the 1 to 2 Mbps bandwidth of ULP Bluetooth wireless technology, before returning to sleep mode.
Data is transmitted to a cellphone or PC equipped with a dual-mode ULP Bluetooth chip. The cellphone or PC saves the data before periodically transmitting it via the local GSM system or over the Internet for interpretation by healthcare professionals.
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