Cambridge Consultants' Vena enables A&D device launch

Cambridge Consultants’ Vena platform enables A&D Medical to launch Continua Certified blood pressure monitor and weighing scales.

Cambridge Consultants has successfully deployed its Vena software platform for A&D Medical, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of advanced measuring, monitoring, controlling and testing instruments, including the next generation of telehealth devices. Enabled by Vena, A&D’s blood pressure monitor and weighing scales are amongst the first wireless Continua Certified devices to be made commercially available.

The devices are at the leading edge of a new generation of telehealth services designed to equip healthcare systems with the means to tackle many of the world’s growing health problems.  Globally, 300 million people worldwide are clinically obese, and over 600 million have chronic diseases.  Spending in the US alone on these conditions is expected to increase from $500 billion a year to $685 billion a year by 2020.  The number of people aged 60 and over is expected to double from 600 million in 2000 to 1.2 billion by 2024.  In the face of these major challenges, the healthcare community is turning increasingly to telehealth products and services that enable better monitoring and compliance, leading to lower treatment costs and improved patient outcomes.  Continua Health Alliance, an organisation of more than 200 leading healthcare and technology companies, is working to improve the quality of telehealth and healthcare in general by establishing an ecosystem of interoperable health device communication based on common standards.

“It is part of A&D’s strategy to offer innovative, easy-to-use and standards-based telehealth products that offer clearly better value to all those we serve,” says Jerry Wang of A&D Medical.  “Cambridge Consultants offered us a quickly deployed, cost-effective solution to achieve complete Continua certification without a costly hardware redesign.  We anticipate that the wide ranging compatibility that this certification allows will encourage the development of advanced and innovative telehealth solutions, which will ultimately benefit the patient.”

Cambridge Consultants has installed the Vena software platform onto the existing hardware and sensor of A&D’s blood pressure monitor and weighing scales.  The platform embeds the Bluetooth™ Health Device Profile (HDP), optimised for the secure transport of medical data, onto a single chip.  Vena also offers the IEEE 11073 standard for compatible exchange of information between health devices.

“The Vena platform has been specifically developed to be easily built into devices at any stage of the design or production process,” said Paul Williamson, Head of Wireless Medical at Cambridge Consultants.  “It is this ease of implementation, combined with our own expertise in wireless communications, which has made it possible for A&D to quickly bring to market two Continua -certified wireless devices.  What this partnership demonstrates is that rapid development by a technology company at the heart of the Continua Alliance like Cambridge Consultants can help product companies like A&D Medical adopt market leading positions quickly.”

“In order to address the significant healthcare challenges facing nations around the world, we need to harness technology to enable people to manage their own healthcare,” said Rick Cnossen, President of Continua Health Alliance.  “Interoperable, Continua-certified devices such as A&D’s blood pressure monitor and weighing scales are another step in a healthcare revolution where technology and communications provide a network of care, allowing patients to be more independent while being unobtrusively monitored for any danger signs.”