Alcatel-Lucent seeks US telemedicine partner

Alcatel-Lucent is searching for a US service provider partner to help deliver a new telemedicine application it developed with Canadian carrier SaskTel.

The service, known as LifeStat remote monitoring and health management, allows patients with chronic health conditions to regularly transmit their own health information to a network-based analysis tool that can help them and their doctors monitor and control their condition. The system can also be programmed to issue alerts to patients and their doctors based on the analysis of that data. And it can provide insight into multiple complex sets of variables -- time of day, changes in diet and activity, etc. -- that would be unrealistic for patients keeping log books on paper.

It starts with the patient’s health-monitoring device -- a glucose meter for diabetics or blood pressure cuff, for example. Those devices report their measurements via bluetooth to a relay point (a mobile phone or a gateway connected to a user’s home dialup or, in the future, broadband connection). Those relay points then send the data to a server-based platform in the network that stores and analyzes the information and is accessible and programmable via Web portals.

“The model that appeals to us most is the mobile-based client,” said Jonathan Segel, Alcatel’s director of systems development and integration engineering. “You can carry it anywhere. If you’ve got the right cell phone, just download the client application onto the phone.”

To work, users’ mobile phones must support bluetooth and Java downloads.

The system can work with monitoring devices already equipped with bluetooth as well as those without it, which can be fitted with a bluetooth-enabled dongle, Segel said.

LifeStat was developed jointly by Alcatel and SaskTel over the last few years. The project originally began with SaskTel, which was focused on diabetes, a major concern in Saskatchewan.