Intel Tries Home Health Care Market

Remember all the brouhaha three years ago when Intel CEO Paul Otellini advised digital health might be one of the chipmaker’s best big growth opportunities? Only very little news has gone out of Intel exec Louis Burns’ Digital Health Group since then.

Now Intel appears to be jumping aboard in a huge way. The company on Monday officially took the cover off its own branded home health care monitoring device and own services package.

The device, called the Intel Health Guide, is an FDA-cleared touch-screen pc that’s only for home health care use. It connects to off-the-shelf devices that can read your blood pressure, heart rate and other vital statistics, then connects back through an Internet connection the results to health care providers. Doctors or nurses also can schedule video calls to follow-up on results.

Otellini announced at a conference that the device is being tested in small projects by a number of suppliers, including Aetna, Scan Health Plan and Providence Medical Group in Oregon. The device would be sold to these groups rather than sold directly to consumers.

Burns in a discussion last week said that the number of Baby Boomers beginning to experience chronic diseases is growing rapidly. With a shortage of care-givers around the world, health care providers are anxiously looking for new ways to manage these numbers.

Profit from these devices

Intel are hopeful to profit by building the hardware and software for monitoring devices, and it’s even offering to host services that would monitor the information as it comes in.

The value add is the software, which is used as a sort of digital triage and warning device for doctors and nurses, helping patients that need immediate follow-up because of a medical crisis.

Tech companies for nearly a decade have been starting on the digital health bandwagon, only to jump off again after finding slow progress. Johnson & Johnson and consumer electronics giant Philips are two other companies that are pursuing home monitoring, but along the more traditional routes of medical alerts, “phone visits” and hospital tech tools.

Intel’s approach combines both telehealth and telemedicine and could one day to extend to all manner of devices, including smart phones, net books and laptops.