FCC Seeks Comment (Again) on MBANs
Some semi recent news on Medical Body Area Networks (MBANs) from GE Research and the FCC.
Most timely, GE announced September 1, 2009, where they announced (press release):
an initiative aimed to develop wireless medical monitoring systems, or body sensor networks (BSN), which would replace the traditional tangle of bedside cables used to capture a patient’s vital signs. GE’s vision for the systems would enable wireless monitoring from anywhere in the hospital—or even remotely from home.
For the past couple years, GE's been pushing for the allocation of spectrum for MBANs. The press release notes that, "The FCC recently issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), acting upon GE Healthcare’s petition to establish a new, vendor-neutral dedicated radio frequency band for low-power, short-range, wireless patient monitoring devices. This petition requested creation of a new Medical Body Area Network Service (MBANS), to support wireless sensors that monitor a patient’s health state, linked together in body sensor networks."
Here's David Davenport talking about their wireless sensor initiative:
Apparently, GE's going after the cable replacement business for traditional multi parameter patient monitors. LifeSync has had a product replacing ECG cables (by far the most predominate) for several years. LifeSync also controls the Besson patent (licensed to them exclusively by Motorola) that applies to wireless sensor based physiological monitoring.
The FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking referenced is from June 29, 2009. Another "article" written by a law firm apparently engaged by GE was published March 20, 2009 and outlines:
Proposed Frequency Band: "identified the 2360-2400 MHz band as the preferred frequency band based on engineering studies showing that MBANS devices can successfully coexist with incumbent operators and users." I would love to see that coexistence data. I was told by David Davenport, with GE Global Research that, spectrum just outside 2.4 GHz was desired because it would enable the use of off the shelf 2.4 GHz components, with only minimal modifications.
Permitted Operations and Eligibility: "the proposed rules limit the type of devices that will be permitted to operate within the spectrum to those involved in the monitoring, diagnosing or treatment of a patient." No big deal here.
Authorized Locations: While only medical applications may use the spectrum, users "will be fully mobile, both inside and outside of healthcare facilities, without restriction."
Spectrum Sharing Requirements: Here's the big issue -- "The proposed rules do not require the use of any specific standard protocol but GEHC anticipates that industry standardization efforts may occur. Currently, the proposed rules only require that all devices implement basic contention-based mechanisms to allow predictable and fair access to the spectrum." The same vague promises of working out an industry standard after the fact were make when WMTS was created. Nothing ever came of that, and there were very serious coexistence problems with both GE's and Philip's WMTS the first several years they were on the market. This is a recipe for the creation of vendor specific proprietary systems. This is a great product strategy for GE (and Philips), but not so good for smaller competitors with not so large R&D budgets.
Emission Limits: This is low powered stuff, "MBANS devices be permitted to have fundamental emissions of up to 0 dBm EIRP for the proposed maximum 1 MHz emission bandwidth."
It appears that nothing will preclude medical device manufacturers from using other portions of the ISM band do develop and sell their own wireless sensor based systems.
Here's a great summary from mobihealthnews, written by Mintz Levin (another law firm engaged by GE?). More details are provided on the potential frequency allocations (a total of 3 bands), and specific issues the FCC is looking for comments on. Conspicuously absent are any instructions on how to submit your comments (except through Mintz Levin).
Here's a pdf of the FCC's press release on the proposed rule, and a pdf of the actual Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. More late.
Here's a photo of LifeSync's Wireless ECG rig. Note that each sensor (there can be as many as 12 of them) is not wireless.
