Future CardioMEMS System Could Take a Cue from Diabetes CareFuture CardioMEMS System Could Take a Cue from Diabetes Care

Mark Carlson, St. Jude Medical’s chief medical officer, explains how the CardioMEMS HF System might evolve and shares his vision for the future of epidemic disease care.

Heart failure patients used to be stuck in the intensive care unit so physicians could manage their condition. But thanks to the CardioMEMS HF System, which uses an implantable wireless sensor and external transmitter to measure pulmonary artery pressure and send it to physicians remotely, they can now be effectively monitored in the comfort of their own homes.

That’s a great leap forward in transforming the paradigm of care, but St. Jude Medical, which purchased the maker of the CardioMEMS HF System earlier this year, doesn’t plan to stop there.

Dr. Mark Carlson, chief medical officer and vice president of global clinical affairs for St. Jude Medical, says the company is now working to take the system a step further and allow patients to play an active role in their care.

“One paradigm we may see in the future is to bring the diabetes model of care to heart failure and enable patients with the CardioMEMS device to communicate with their physician directly through mobile applications,” he says. “This would create efficiencies for the clinician, nursing staff, and patient and could even include updated prescription instructions [delivered] directly to the patient.”

In advance of his keynote at the upcoming MD&M Minneapolis conference, Carlson shared his vision of the future of epidemic disease care.

Whereas today physicians and other care providers interact with patients only when there’s a problem or via daily remote updates, he predicts that will change. As portable devices become more sophisticated, he says they will give patients the ability to monitor their conditions in real-time and use physician-prescribed algorithms to adjust their therapy accordingly. Eventually, he predicts, the devices themselves may even be able to take over—with appropriate physician oversight, of course.

“For instance, using GPS and other sensors, devices may ‘know’ where they are and have the ability to adjust appropriately for changes in time zone (sleep/wake cycles) and altitude (automatic adjustments in pressure monitoring),” Carlson says.

Future devices could even be able to learn from the patients who use them, he says. Imagine an insulin pump that monitors the calories consumed by its user and delivers insulin doses accordingly. Even further down the line, we could see devices that can predict problems such as myocardial infarction or sudden cardiac death before they occur and deliver therapy to prevent them.

Miniaturization, wireless communication tools, battery technologies, security measures, and new materials, among other advances, will be key to making this future a reality, Carlson says.

But there are still hurdles to be overcome. Carlson cites the rising cost of innovation, increasing regulatory and administrative requirements across the world, and healthcare policies that have cut funding and resources to support innovation as challenges the industry faces.

“However, at St. Jude Medical we believe in innovation because it’s the power of new ideas that will allow us to elevate standards of patient care around the world while addressing the need to reduce the cost of healthcare,” he says. “Our product portfolio reflects a cumulative investment in medical device innovation totaling more than $10 billion. That’s a big commitment by St. Jude Medical, but we believe our customers and patients deserve nothing less.”

Carlson will deliver the conference keynote October 30, 2014, at MD&M Minneapolis. 

—Jamie Hartford, managing editor, MD+DI
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