m.Care supports a wide variety of biometric devices. The devices to use vary based on the client’s need. Clients can select from the devices supported, or if so desired, can contract with LST to add an additional device to the platform.

When you think about devices, there are all the basic things to consider like “Is it rugged enough” and “Does it provide adequate measurements” and “Can it measure what I need to measure in a simple way?”

The way a device works with m.Care depends on the device manufacturer’s way of integrating with the platform. These are the basic mechanisms we’ve seen:

1. Bluetooth integration – The device manufacturer supports the Bluetooth 4 HLE spec and the m.Care app has the code to get the data from the device. No other app is required on the device.
2. Cloud to Cloud – In this model, the device captures the data, transmits it to the cloud and configuration records maintained at the device manufacturer’s site tells the device manufacturer that the data should also be sent to the monitor.
3. HealthKit – On iOS PHONES ONLY, Apple makes available a HealthKit data repository. Device manufacturers can place their device data into HealthKit. m.Care can then pull data directly out of HealthKit. Usually in this instance, the device manufacturer requires their app be on the phone and functional at the same time.
4. Hub connectivity – In a hub set up, the devices communicate to the hub and the hub grabs the data and transmits it to the cloud. No iDevice is required. The hub provider usually has configuration mechanisms in place for determining when to send that data to m.Care

Considerations

So, given the above primary scenarios for connecting to a device, the big decision usually comes down to what the user interface expectations are from the customer. For the most part, customers seem to like option 1 the best. It presents by far the simplest end user experience. That said, there are a LOT of devices that support the HealthKit repository. So if access to a lot of devices is required, then using HealthKit may be the best way to go but please note, as of this writing, HealthKit is NOT available on iPads.

If a device manufacturer requires their app to be on the device, this often does not work well with MDM solutions running in Single App Mode as the only app that’s allowed to run in those scenarios is m.Care. So, if the Single App Mode mechanism is in use, then the best scenario for device support is again, option 1… but the devices you have access to is limited.

Configuring Devices for Use

In some situations, the customer wishes to only use a set of devices they have approved. If that is the case, then the Lab/Department notebook can be used to specify which options are to be made available.

In some scenarios, users must grant access to their devices to exchange data. In that case, there is an applet on the iDevice application that allows the patient to enroll the device and connect it with m.Care.

Supported Devices

Click here to see a current list of supported devices.