A digital hub from Canadian firm Wellteq Digital Health connects, manages, and monitors both standardised medical and non-medical devices for an integrated IoT intelligent edge offering.

This IoMT (internet of medical things) hub allows for control of any standard commercial, industrial, residential or medical smart device for virtual care deployments.

Wellteq supplies digital health and wellness products in 12 languages across 32 countries. The beta release of its IoMT HealthHub will be followed by a commercial release later this year.

Based on a survey of physicians in the USA who serve predominantly Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) and Medicare Advantage (MA) patients, McKinsey estimates that up to $265bn (about $820 per person in the USA) of care services – which represents up to 25% of the total cost of care – for Medicare FFS and MA beneficiaries could shift from traditional facilities to the home by 2025, without a reduction in quality or access.

The HealthHub has been developed from scratch by the company as an IoMT platform that can connect, manage and monitor any standard IoMT or IoT device using edge computing. Edge computing is part of a distributed computing topology in which information processing is located close to the physical location where things and people connect with the network.

The HealthHub was designed for the transition from centralised to distributed health deployments across enterprise health, clinic and pharmacy, and for remote patient locations.

Edge computing augments and expands the possibilities of the primarily centralised, hyperscale cloud model of today, and supports the systemic evolution and deployment of the IoMT and new application types, enabling future digital health applications. It also offers contingency to cloud server processing in the case of a network outage to create a temporary stand-alone network.

The hub has been built with Wellteq’s unified API, which allows for secure remote monitoring and management, and enables third-party integrations with all aspects of the hub and the API. This allows the hub to be an integral value-add for new and existing EPHI (electronic protected health information) systems.

All features and functionality delivered through Wellteq’s client applications and hardware will be offered as combined or stand-alone services for clients and partners to integrate with their own applications, services and systems. This includes IoMT metrics capture, processing and automations, patient tracking with personalised digital coaching, reward scheme management, social activities and content.

An eight-core processor, large memory footprint and a versatile machine-learning secondary processor enable the hub to handle a variety of services, including natural language processing (NLP) services and auto-updated training models for artificial intelligence (AI).

To support the wide variety of IoMT devices, Wellteq has designed a custom wireless chipset, enabling connectivity with wifi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave and, optionally, cellular. Alongside the wireless chipset is a customised firmware stack that helps manage the multitude of wireless protocols, allowing the hub to support over 500 connected IoMT and IoT devices simultaneously.

“We are excited to initiate Wellteq’s entry into virtual care with a uniquely robust and truly one-of-kind solution,” said Wellteq CEO Scott Montgomery. “It has taken some time and a lot of effort, and we are proud to be the first company to launch the IoMT-specific HealthHub that has been designed from scratch to facilitate the digital transition to virtual care for patients around the world.”

Wellteq is now working closely with its beta research partners to integrate the HealthHub into their already deployed IoMT and IoT device configurations and applications for various healthcare use cases, which will be the basis for Wellteq’s generic and condition-specific offerings for new B2B virtual care users.