Remote Diagnostics for Healthcare & Medical Device Equipment Maintenance

AUSTIN, Texas - April 13, 2021 - PRLog -- A New Generation Of Remote Healthcare Diagnostic Systems Allow Healthcare IT Managers To Deploy Systems To Monitor Patients In Remote Locations

Over the past year, the Coronavirus pandemic has brought about changes to nearly every industry.

In the healthcare segment, telemedicine adoption rates have skyrocketed in direct response to the pandemic lockdown.

Now, healthcare executives are looking at ways to combine the benefits of on-site doctor visits with the convenience of telemedicine – by making new investments in remote healthcare diagnostic systems.

But what do we mean exactly by remote healthcare diagnostics?

It turns out the most common example may be on your wrist.

New generation smartwatch solutions from Apple, Kardia, Samsung, and other vendors now offer heart rate pulse analysis using photoplethysmography (PPG) technology, which can help users identify undiscovered cases of Atrial fibrillation (AF).

In addition to detecting incidents of AF, the Apple Watch Series 4 also received FDA "clearance" as a Class II Medical Device as a single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) recording device (Apple claims it can record results in just 30 seconds), it can also detect accidental falls (if the wearer does not get back up, the watch will call emergency responders automatically).

These watches fall into one of the fastest-growing segments in healthcare: Home Healthcare Medical Devices (HHMDs), which are designed to allow patients to perform basic home health tests without the need of specialists to operate them.

However, like many HHMDs, these new watches are far from capable of replacing a full suite of diagnostic equipment that a medical provider would need to substitute for an in-office visit.

For example, Apple has not sought clearance for its built-in oximeter, which is presumed not to be accurate enough to get a nod from the FDA. (In lieu of FDA clearance, Apple is free to market its oximeter as a "wellness" feature instead.)

At the other end of the remote diagnostics spectrum are Class III devices, the FDA's most stringent category for medical devices – including all embedded medical devices (EMDs) such as pacemakers and implantable cardiovascular defibrillators (ICDs).

Here, the classic example of a remote diagnostic medical device technology is the combination of an insulin pump (the first implantable version appeared in 1984) with an embedded continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system (first introduced in 2005). Over time, these devices have become smaller and "smarter," allowing the combined system to automatically control insulin delivery using Closed-loop control (CLC) technology.

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