Benchmark VP sheds light on disposable biometric wearables deal with Qualcomm

Qualcomm Life, a wireless technology company that has built a business on connecting devices through its 2net network, has teamed up with contract manufacturer Benchmark Electronics to produce low-cost, disposable wearables. Initially, these biometric wearables would measure body temperature and movement mainly for the purpose of getting a baseline ahead of procedures so the patient’s recovery progress can be tracked in way that’s more meaningful for each user, not just the type of patient they are.

The deal, which was two to three years in the making, is particularly significant for Benchmark for a couple of reasons, as vice president of engineering Mark Troutman outlined in a phone interview. It makes them the manufacturer of record with the FDA. The licensing deal for the biometric patches Qualcomm Life developed will also open up a whole new customer base for Benchmark including hospitals, payers, as well as pharma companies.

Qualcomm Life President Rick Valencia told MobiHealthNews that perioperative care and therapeutic interventions have been frequently requested areas of need, so that institutions can track patients recovery both inside the hospital and after they’re discharged. Unfortunately, they tend to be costly which restricts their use.

“Generally speaking right now in the market, they’re relatively expensive. In some cases they need to be cleaned up and reused because they’re that expensive,” Valencia said. “And it ends up that most are being used in pilots, are being used in research, in relatively low volume. Whereas ultimately we think the industry is going to be using these full time and all the time for patients. So you’ll walk into the hospital you get a patch put on you, or after some sort of procedure they put a patch on you, send you home, capture information for a day to seven days, then you rip the thing off you and throw it away. In order to do that you need to design something very small, very unobtrusive, very inexpensive.”

Troutman described the patches as a “groundfloor device”. He said Benchmark will do the final product design, manufacturing, and distribution. Troutman shared that he expects clinical validation to be finished early next year followed by a submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for 510(k) clearance.

“This is an underserved space and mostly complementary to our customers,” Troutman said. “Qualcomm is a customer of ours so it is a little bit of us moving out of our space in a small way but it also allows us to collaborate in bigger way with existing customers.”