It seems that these days everybody is jumping into the medical connectivity space; however there are a lot of issue to look at. This will simply explore a bit what needs to be front and center - that is the core business model.
Overall Design -First determine if the connectivity solution is patient centric. Second, how does this actually help the care giver, or does this just add more layers of "things to do" for the nurse at the bedside. The reason I bring this up is when I was at Symbol Technologies (now Motorola), caregivers had initially a lot of push back on the use of hand-held scanners, but mostly surrounding PDA(s). Application specific PDA(s), seemed to wane and hunting and pecking on a tiny screen added a lot of frustration. Caregivers, simply want technology solutions that work. Several companies in this space have taken different approaches and are pursuing various business models. Not all of these make sense - let me know if you agree here?
Cerner - Cerner a software company by definition has chosen to enter the medical device connectivity space with CareAware and MDBus to add to their portfolio of other solutions to include iCommand, among other previous acquisitions as Bridge Medical. Why move away from their core business? It is going to take a tremendous amount of work and effort to keep these connectivity solutions going and supported. Meanwhile, I do not feel that hospitals want a medical device connectivity solution that is tied to a specific vendors EMR application. Most hospitals have multiple EMR solutions, so it is not quite clear how open other competitive EMR solutions will be playing with Cerner and MDBus. Any contextual patient connectivity needs to be a part of the patients continuum of care.
Hill-Rom - Navicare Bed as a Hub. Driving efficiency at the Point of Care with Navicare Device Connectivity. It is not quite clear how this fits in with Hill-Roms core business which is hospital beds and nurse call. You have to ask yourself if making your hospital bed a medical device integration hub is the right approach? What if you hospital does not have all Hill-Rom beds? And what if your hospital decides to switch from Hill-Rom to Stryker beds? it would appear that you would also have to re-assess your hospital's medical device connectivity strategy at the same time - which makes no practical sense to me. Finally, is this solution able to be patient centric and follow the patient throughout the continium of care?
How much more R&D money does Cerner and Hill-Rom want to throw at "medical device connectivity", when this is not centric to their core business?
Capsule Technologies - The business model that makes the most sense to me is vendor-neutral. A company like Capsule does not make medical devices, hospital beds, a nurse call system, or an EMR application. Medical device connectivity is their core focus and they have been at this for over 12 years. In this space, I believe experience counts for a lot. Capsule does not care what bed, monitor, or ventilator is in the room and can connect all of those to any EMR on the market. This advantge for the hospital is that they can switch out any of their medical devices and even change EMR's - without having to redesign their MDC strategy.
Also regarding a patient centric approach for connectivity, their new Neuron platform will automate the association and disassociation of medical devices to the patient - which is really the right model for data identification. It also does not create extra workload for the caregiver. Finally, by moving away from room centric or bed centric, it provides a platform that is enterprise enabled for the patient's total continuum of care.
Let me know what you think? Are their advantages to any of these business models that I am missing? What models have you seen - good or bad?