Medical IoT: fully realizing the potential of medical device data

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) plays an important role in monitoring patients in hospitals or performing measurements at home. Here medical devices are connected via cloud, where all patient measurement data are collected and analyzed. In the course of digitalization, the relevance of clouds in the medical sector is constantly increasing.

In the interview with MEDICA-tradefair.com, Guy Vinograd informs us about the importance of IoMT-platforms, indicates which three specific medical capabilities the bio-T-platform features in contrast to other platforms in the medical sector and what he expects from the company’s participation in the MEDICA START-UP PARK 2019.

What was your goal when you developed the bio-T platform?

Guy Vinograd: Our goal was to solve the challenges faced by medical device vendors when transforming into data companies. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is booming with over 30 percentage compound annual growth rate (CAGR) a year, becoming a 300 Billion Dollar market by 2025. IoMT forces the healthcare ecosystem to go through cloud and data revolutions. The data sources of the IoMT revolution are medical devices. That’s why tens of thousands device vendors worldwide strategically decided to become data companies. However, medical device vendors face major skill and technology gaps, for example how to do cloud at scale, how to handle cyber security, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, digital health and interoperability. With our platform we would like to offer a solution for this problem.

What target user group is this platform for?

Vinograd: Our target customers are medical device vendors. Nevertheless, the bio-T platform will also provide added value for other players in the healthcare ecosystem, like the health insurers, healthcare professionals and patients.

The bio-T platform is compliant to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). What exactly does this mean?

Vinograd: The topic of privacy and cyber security is the first enquiry a connected medical device vendor has to qualify when approaching hospitals since connecting devices makes them more vulnerable to both deliberate attacks and undirected malware. This is especially hard and a moving target because in today’s world the healthcare industry is the most attacked industry by hackers.

HIPAA and GDPR are two guidelines for privacy and security. The HIPAA is a US requirement indicating how personally identifiable information maintained by the healthcare and healthcare insurance industries should be protected from fraud and theft. The GDPR is intended to ensure the protection of personal data within the European Union as well as to guarantee the free movement of data within the European internal market. Our bio-T platform is compliant to both of them, the HIPAA and the GDPR, and therefore ensures privacy and security.

What do all IoT-platforms as well as the bio-T platform have in common?

Vinograd: All IoT platforms and bio-T aim to manage devices at scale, for example to configure remote devices, to update the firmware of such devices, and to do it in a cost-effective way such that even at scale of millions of devices, the cloud costs are kept reasonable.

In contrast to other IoT-platforms, the bio-T platform provides digital health capabilities. Can you describe them?

Vinograd: bio-T takes a holistic view of the entire ecosystem of healthcare users and for each provides relevant digital health features.

For patients, bio-T provides Consent Management to enable them to control who gets access to which part of their data. bio-T also provides Adherence Prediction, i.e. helping patients adhere better to the medical protocol prescribed. You know most people are lazy and don´t adhere well. So, it is very important for the vendors, and the entire healthcare ecosystem to have transparency and to incentivize patients to health usage. The connectivity of the device is key for a true breakthrough here since the transmission of usage to the cloud in real time lets us know at which time the patients are using the device, so we can compare the actual usage to the schedules the doctor has described and that we have in our system.

For care givers, bio-T provides regulation authorization control via integration to systems like US NPPES. Adherence Tracking so that care givers can take informed decisions about the medical protocol they prescribed is another feature. Last but not least: Patient Recovery Management, which allows care givers to track the improvement of their patients.

For study nurses, bio-T provides Patient Questionnaires mechanisms and Cinical Trial Data Governance.

bio-T provides also digital health features for payers, system administrators, technicians, and many more.

That said, there are many regulation-related digital health features that bio-T satisfies and that are not covered by generic IoT platforms, for example medical-grade quality software, data privacy architecture, that comply with HIPAA and GDPR and cyber security, where the bio-T platform is guided by the FDA's cyber security guidelines, as well as emerging guidelines by other countries.

What is the advantage of working together with several partners?

Vinograd: Creating an end-to-end IoMT solution is a highly multi-disciplinary task. It includes many technologies, for example sensor electronics, embedded software, communication chips, like Bluetooth, mechanical design, manufacturing and logistics, cellular expertise, for devices that use the cellular network to transmit to the cloud, medical regulation, mobile application expertise, cloud and many more.

No single company can deliver top-notch quality in all those disciplines. That's why in bio-T we built a large network of best-of-completing partners, in order to solve the IoMT puzzle for the medical device vendors.

What do you expect from presenting your platform at the START-UP PARK at MEDICA 2019?

Vinograd: Our goal is to convey the message that building medical grade IoMT solutions is not a very risky mission, and that IoMT is not only for the large companies. Everybody can do it today if they use the right tools. And of course, to bring into awareness that bio-T is an essential tool in the toolbox of medical device vendors.