“You don’t solve the problem of hospital overcrowding by building 10,000 hospitals. You will have to solve the problem with technology.”
By EYTAN HALONG Medical Innovation's Prizma G2 Medical Smartphone Cover(photo credit: G MEDICAL INNOVATION)
Overcrowded emergency rooms and wards, long waiting lists for family physicians and the burden of costly and potentially preventable hospitalizations are all familiar features of today’s health systems.While we all know the feeling of being kept waiting for the doctor, Israeli digital health company G Medical Innovations aims to keep doctors waiting for their patients, a fear of many physicians and industry partners.The Rehovot-based firm – founded in 2014 and traded on the Australian Stock Exchange – is developing mobile technologies that will empower consumers and providers alike to better monitor and manage patients, and improve clinical and personal health outcomes far from often unnecessary and expensive visits to clinics and hospital.“The whole idea is to prevent a large percentage of patients, who don’t really need it, from going to hospital,” G Medical Innovations President & CEO Dr. Yacov Geva told The Jerusalem Post.“You don’t solve the problem of hospital overcrowding by building 10,000 hospitals. You will have to solve the problem with technology.”The company has designed two products to date, a smartphone case turning your phone into a mobile medical monitor and a medical patch enabling real-time remote monitoring of a wide range of patient vital signs and biometrics.The universal Prizma G2 Medical Smartphone Cover simply attaches to the back of any smartphone. Combined with a free application and a series of easy tests, high-quality sensors can monitor temperature, heart rate, stress levels, ECG and SpO2 oxygen saturation.Results are transmitted to the company’s cloud, analyzed and clinically-relevant reports are sent directly to the patient’s physician, who can then consult directly with their patient where necessary.“The philosophy here is very simple. The more sensors we can add, the more we will prevent people from going to the doctor and to hospital,” said Geva.“Our road map for 2019 is to add a bunch of chemical tests into the same device, so that we will have electrophysiology, physiology, glucose tests and more.”
The company’s G Medical Patch is a clinical-grade solution for monitoring patients’ health. Stuck to the patient’s chest, including in post-discharge and home-based settings, the patch monitors a wide range of vital signs around the clock.By enabling continued monitoring in the post-discharge setting, patients can both spend more time recovering at home than in hospital and health systems can reduce hospital occupancy and staff costs.Both the smartphone case and the medical patch have received FDA and CE approval, and the company is now waiting for final CFDA certification to commence sales in China.As the company grows, Geva’s G Medical Innovations is now aiming to go public on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange and also complete an initial public offering in Hong Kong for Chinese subsidiary G Medical Innovations Asia.“China will be a much bigger market than the US, for a few reasons. Between the hospital and the patient, there is a vacuum with no family doctor. When somebody doesn’t feel well, he rushes to the hospital, but it can take hours to arrive,” said Geva.“They’ll also spend 10 hours waiting in the emergency room. You can hardly imagine what that is for someone who doesn’t feel well.”As healthcare spending continues to rise across the globe, mobile medical solutions offering improved productivity and efficiency, as well as better utilization of centralized assets and scarce resources are highly sought after and the subject of increasing investment.By empowering patients and providers to improve quality of life remotely, G Medical Innovations will certainly be in demand.
