@ HIMSS: Sprint Nextel weaves mobile expertise into healthcare

ORLANDO, Fla. — New customers of the traditional post-paid set are hard to find in the U.S. market. But business isn’t kind to stagnation. Stockholders in publicly traded companies demand revenue and profit as a matter of principle.
Sprint Nextel Corp. knows this all too well. In an effort to boost revenue and find new business verticals to pursue, the carrier is putting an emphasis on machine-to-machine opportunities, particularly in healthcare.
At this year’s HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) conference, Sprint is showcasing some of its new partners in this space, demonstrating how its network and operational support can improve patient care and reduce costs in healthcare.
“We’ve piqued the interest of the insurance companies,” Gary Rurup, a manager and business development lead in healthcare and fitness, told RCR Wireless News.
“I’m excited about what we’re doing in this space,” he said.
The overall goal and selling point for mobility in healthcare is to cut costs, but plenty of other benefits are brought to the fore as well. At home monitoring helps reduce hospitalization and eliminates what Rurup calls “white coat syndrome,” by giving patients the ability to take tests and monitor diseases and recovery progress in the comfort of their home without the stress of meeting a physician.
“It’s going to do a lot to make their lives better,” Rurup said. “It’s a lot less intimidating or intrusive.”
There are few limiting factors in what mobility can deliver to healthcare and plenty of use cases that haven’t even been deployed or developed yet.
For example, body monitors can help employers decide which emergency personnel professional or fleet driver is best equipped for a job on the fly. Monitoring sleep patterns and a whole range of biometrics can keep those less equipped out of potentially dangerous situations.
“There’s all kinds of applications that extend beyond the true fitness model,” said Scott Durham, senior manager of emerging solutions business development.
As Sprint searches for the right partners it’s bringing a “different set of eyes” to the process, Rurup said. “We’re bringing together multiple players” and “marrying together a whole ecosystem.”
For every organization and device maker that Sprint approaches in this space, an equal number are coming to Sprint on their own, he said.
“I’ve got to dive in and really understand who the players are,” he continued. “There’s a lot of competition in this space.”
And yet, everyone throughout the value chain is interested in the same objective. “The outcome we all want is healthy living,” Rurup said.
Sprint is not only providing network connectivity, but also advising clients on business models and ways to solve customer and patient needs. While some of the partnerships are a pure wholesale model, Sprint can also take some of these products and services down a retail path along with marketing.
“We come into those discussions with a fresh, outsider perspective,” Durham added.
Sprint also brings OEM manufacturers together with module manufacturers to help streamline the commercialization process.
Most of these products and services are being driven by care facilities today because they have an acute interest in getting patients out of their facility and on the road to recovered. Once more facilities and insurance companies are willing to pay for these devices and and services, “I think we’re golden,” Rurup said.
For now the focus is on proving the value and capabilities Sprint can bring to this market, but subsidization from healthcare providers is likely to come down the line
“We’re no longer just a company that sells phones,” Rurup said.
Sprint will make its money on the monthly recurring charges that come along with this suite of body monitor devices. Although the per unit revenue is nowhere near the average revenue per user (ARPU) metric that carriers have relied on for years, the number of devices that can be connected via M2M is significant.
Moreover, the predictability that comes along with M2M is ideal. Most of the devices are not data heavy and Sprint knows the data limit that each of these devices can use, which helps the carrier maintain flexibility and control over its network.
It’s about capacity and the number of connected devices, Durham concluded.