Qualcomm Life brings its 2net platform to Europe

November 13, 2012 Eric Wicklund, Editor, mHIMSS

Qualcomm Life is taking its 2net platform and hub across the Atlantic.

The San Diego-based subsidiary of Qualcomm, which sprang into life last December with a platform designed to wirelessly connect mobile devices in the home through the cloud to caregivers and other parties, announced this week partnerships with two European healthcare companies.

Company officials announced deals with Telbios, an Italian provider of remote health monitoring solutions for chronic care and disease management; and Cystelcom, a Spanish engineering software company that serves the telecommunications industry and recently launched the mHealthAlert remote monitoring platform for chronic disease patients.

"We'd intended to launch in Europe as quickly as we could," said Rick Valencia, Qualcomm Life's vice president and general manager, in an interview last week. "We want to eventually be the one-stop-shop for medical devices around the world.

Unveiled at last year's mHealth Summit in Washington D.C., Qualcomm Life's 2net platform and hub is designed to link medical devices of all kinds to a cloud-based service that sends biometric data in real time to the appropriate caregivers. The 2net hub, a plug-and-play Class 1 medical device, is one of four gateways to the platform, which can also collect data though smartphones, other mobile-enabled devices and application program interfaces that can connect to the service platform.

Valencia said the 2net hub and platform are configured to operate in Europe under EU's 93/42/EEC directive. And while Italy and Spain are targeted first because of ongoing relationships with the two companies, he expects Qualcomm Life to move farther into the continent in the future, targeting mHealth-centric nations like the UK (which is running 12 of 44 mHealth projects in Europe), Germany, France and Denmark.

“We have a number of customers in Europe and the U.S. who want to extend their mobile health solutions in multiple regions around the world, and they need to provide a reliable service that is not impacted by geographic boundaries,” Valencia said in a press release from Telecare & Telehealth (TSA) 2012 in Birmingham, England, where the announcements were made on Monday. “Launching our wirelessly enabled healthcare ecosystem into Europe is another step toward the realization of our vision – a world with access to healthcare anytime and anywhere.”

“There is a clear imperative for health services providers and manufacturers to invest in remote monitoring solutions to improve patient outcomes and align with preventive care initiatives. Europe’s governing bodies have demonstrated a commitment to robust pilots, such as the 3 Million Lives project sponsored by the Department of Health in the U.K.,” said Laurent Vandebrouck, managing director of Qualcomm Life Europe, in the press release. “Qualcomm Life has been helping its customers pave the way for wireless health in the U.S., and this is an exciting time to extend our services and offering in Europe.”

As in the United States, European leaders see mHealth as a means to improve clinical outcomes and drastically reduce costs of chronic disease management by linking patients in their homes to their caregivers through remote monitoring. According to the World Health Organization, Europe has the highest burden of chronic diseases, which will claim as many as 52 million lives by 2030.

Valencia said the early challenges of "creating a healthcare hotspot" in the home have been met as Qualcomm Life has worked to enable connections from a wide variety of medical devices through many channels. He said the company had assumed that most of its business would come from medical device manufacturers, but they're seeing interest from a wide range of healthcare entities, including payers, service providers and even retailers.

"Customers are asking for this across the board," he said, adding that integration with electronic medical records platforms is a popular request. "We're really going to be following their demand on this. We've been focusing on getting it right here first, and we've seen a lot of really, really fascinating stuff."

Valencia said Qualcomm Life, which is once again scheduled to have a strong presence at the 2012 mHealth Summit, scheduled for Dec. 3-5 in Washington D.C., will likely announce new partnerships and enhancements by then. In the works are two more channels for connecting to the 2net platform and enhancements to improve smartphone connectivity.