BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 11, 2000 ISSUE
BUSINESS WEEK E.BIZ -- SPECIAL REPORT 'This Is the Future of Medicine' Blazing trails on a vast frontier called electronic care management Vivometrics, a Southern California startup, wants to put a shirt on your back. But the company's lightweight, stretchy garment is not your average muscle-T. Embedded in the fabric are four black bands equipped with electrodes and physiological sensors designed to record more than 40 vital signs, including fluid in the heart, breathing rate, and oxygen consumption. The gigabytes of data stream from the sensors to a handheld computer discreetly located in a hip pocket of the shirt. Standard issue, one supposes, for Captain Kirk and the rest of the Enterprise crew. But Vivometrics says you will be able to order its Life Shirt within a year or two. Vivometrics is blazing trails on a potentially vast frontier of e-health known as electronic care management. The first examples were fairly crude devices such as smart bathroom scales that could help heart failure patients keep accurate records of their weight. But like everything in the world of silicon, fiber optics, and radio communications, patient-care devices have shrunk in size, soared in IQ, diversified in application, and become so cheap that the most parsimonious HMO will soon consider them a bargain. As a result, gadget makers are zeroing in on a wide range of diseases, monitoring the blood sugar of diabetics, the EKGs of heart-attack survivors, and the breathing rates of asthmatics. ''This is the future of medicine,'' says William W. George, chief executive of Medtronic Inc. (MDT) Ultimately, electronic care will save money and lives. The Institute for the Future reckons that some 120 million Americans, about 40% of the total population, will be living with a chronic disease by 2010. These patients will incur $600 billion in medical costs that year--a 16% increase from today. But Net-capable devices could help curb that escalation. Cost-effective ''virtual office'' exams could ease the burden on beleaguered hospitals, while improving the quality of care. More than 50 companies are competing in the business of keeping patients out of the hospital. They are startups with names like Alere Medical, LifeMasters, and Health Hero Network. Old Economy players such as CorSolutions and Accordant Health Services Inc. also have jumped in with Web versions of their traditional telephone-based medical services. Meanwhile, both Medtronic, the Minneapolis device maker, and Agilent Technologies Inc. (A), the semiconductor spin-off of Hewlett-Packard Co. (HWP), are developing their own Internet-ready monitors. Patients like Bryan Bellanger can attest to the benefits of remote care. Suffering from heart failure, the 49-year-old from Louisiana must keep a close eye on his weight. Even a couple of extra pounds can add so much strain that he becomes short of breath and dizzy. So when his weight skyrocketed last March, his doctor asked him to step on Alere's high-tech scale. Now, when Bellanger checks his weight every morning and evening, the readings are instantly transmitted via a modem to a computer server at Alere's headquarters in San Francisco, where a team of company nurses keeps an eye on him. The remote monitoring makes him try harder--and indeed, since he began using the scale, Bellanger has dropped 60 pounds and hasn't experienced any more problems with his heart. For greater interactivity, Alere and Health Hero Network of Mountain View, Calif., have designed simple Internet appliances that monitor the symptoms of heart failure patients. Health Hero's gadget, called the Health Buddy, is a toaster-size appliance with a video screen and several half-dollar-size teal buttons. Every day, when a patient turns on her ''buddy,'' questions about her condition zip over the Net to the video screen. A few clicks of the teal buttons, and the patient sends her answers back to the nurse who is monitoring her remotely. Implantable devices such as Medtronic's Chronicle may also play a role in electronic care. In collaboration with Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and IBM (IBM), Medtronic plans to spend more than $200 million to develop an implantable heart monitor that will automatically beam its recordings to a patient's doctor wirelessly. The first prototype appeared in 1999, and a commercial device could be on the market in several years. More good news for e-care businesses: Patients seem to recuperate more quickly when they know that a nurse or doctor is aware of their conditions around the clock. Based on this insight, a Baltimore startup called VisICU is targeting intensive-care units at community hospitals. Typically, such units are staffed at night by nurses, not physicians. But recent studies have shown that ICUs can cut mortality rates by 55% simply by having a doctor on the site 24 hours a day. So VisICU developed a system for wiring hospital ICUs so that an off-site doctor can monitor patients in real time--and in an emergency, run a videoconference with the attending nurse. The company already is monitoring 36 ICU beds in two Virginia hospitals and hopes to expand to 175 beds in five hospitals in the next year. Managed-care executives are responding to these remote monitoring systems because they can reduce medical costs. Accordant, based in Greensboro, N.C., has signed up Humana (HUM), Oxford Health Plans (OXHP), and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Colorado as clients by showing that its program can reduce yearly claims costs by about 20%. As medical expenses rise and doctor's visits continue to shrink, services like those provided by LifeMasters, Accordant, and Vivometrics will only become more valuable. Someday, a life shirt a day may keep the doctor away. By ELLEN LICKING _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					e.biz Contents for Dec. 11, 2000 issue RELATED ITEMS ``This Is the Future of Medicine'' TABLE: Net Care INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

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