Intel's Digital Health Products to Debut Next Year

By Jessica Davis -- Electronic News, 9/29/2006

SAN FRANCISCO -- This week at the Intel Developer Forum the world’s largest chip company provided details about a “mobile point-of-care platform” recently piloted at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif.

The tablet-style portable device is designed for nurses to carry with them during their rounds to provide bedside access to patient information and allow input of data, as well.

Intel created the device with the users in mind, said Louis Burns, Intel’s VP and general manager of Intel’s Digital Health Group, who presented the device during his keynote address at IDF here this week. Intel conducted hospital workflow studies, nurse and physician interviews and ethnographic research among nurses at the Mountain View hospital.

Asked when the market might start seeing product releases from Intel’s Digital Health Group, Burns said 2007 would be a big year for the division of Intel.

The El Camino Hospital prototype featured context-aware software for delivering the right information at the right time based on location and roles rules. It also featured a wipeable chassis for cleaning and sterilizing.

Intel announced that Motion Computing a top slate tablet PC maker, will be the primary OEM for introduction of first-generation products based on the Intel mobile clinical assistant platform in the first half of next year. The company’s tablet PC’s are targeted at vertical industries such as healthcare, field sales and service and government, with healthcare making up almost half of its business.

Burns also provided an update on the Continua Health Alliance, an industry group formed in June and spearheaded by Intel to create interoperability standards for electronic devices in hospitals and other healthcare settings ranging from weight scales and treadmills to blood pressure equipment and glucose meters, Intel said. Burns noted that hospitals biggest IT budget item was for middleware that enabled all the disparate systems to talk to each other. 

To address this the Continua Health Alliance is looking to publish technical guidelines for healthcare device interoperability by the end of 2007. Consumer products bearing the Continua logo are expected to be on the market in early 2008, Burns said.

Intel named Burns to head the Digital Health Group following its reorganization along platform lines in January 2005.