Cerner Corp. and Qualcomm Life, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, today announced an agreement to extend Cerner's industry leading medical device connectivity capabilities beyond the hospital to the home. Cerner will leverage Qualcomm Life's FDA listed 2net(TM) Platform and Hub to seamlessly capture data from medical devices and sensors within a patient's home, and transmit it to Cerner health care clients through Cerner's CareAware(R) device connectivity platform. Through this initiative, care providers can remotely monitor chronically ill patients in near real-time to enable proactive engagement to potentially reduce the risk of an acute care episode.

Qualcomm Life's 2net Platform collects, stores and aggregates patient data from connected medical devices provided to the patient, such as weight scales, blood pressure monitors and pulse oximeters. These data values will transmit via CareAware(R) to the Cerner Millennium(R) electronic health record (EHR) and is viewable to the patient in HealtheLife(SM), Cerner's patient engagement solution. Extending CareAware to integrate devices within the home to the patient's EHR will provide health care organizations a more comprehensive view in their efforts to focus on chronic condition management, reduce readmissions and improve patient health and satisfaction. The connected devices will be demonstrated in Cerner's booth (913) and Qualcomm Life's Ecosystem Pavilion (6420 in Hall B) at HIMSS15, the largest health information technology event in the industry, April 12 - 16 in Chicago, Ill.

"The industry is more concerned than ever about monitoring a patient's health outside the walls of the hospital through intelligently connected devices," said John Gresham, vice president of DeviceWorks, Cerner. "Cerner's CareAware device connectivity platform integrated  with Qualcomm Life's technology will enable prescribable, turn-key monitoring capabilities that can be tailored to the needs of a person's chronic conditions across the care continuum, including the home."

Qualcomm Life will join Cerner's CareAware certification program, an initiative that creates alliances between Cerner and medical device manufacturers to better acquire data from devices to integrate with the EHR via CareAware device connectivity architecture.

"Our collaboration with Cerner will enable expanded reach of a scalable, remote patient monitoring (RPM) solution and is a step toward the realization of widespread population health management," said Rick Valencia, general manager and senior vice president, Qualcomm Life, Inc. "As the industry transitions from episodic care within acute care settings to continuous care, available away from the bedside, there is a need for a secure, medical-grade connectivity solution, which our 2net Platform provides."

Agnesian HealthCare is one of the first enterprise clients to implement this powerful combination of technologies to remotely monitor and manage at-risk patient populations.

"It is increasingly important that providers are monitoring the whole health of an individual, not just at the point of care in the facility," said Michael DeGeer, DPM, FACPS, FACFAS, vice president of Population Health Management, Agnesian HealthCare. "Remote Patient Monitoring allows our clinicians to have access to patients health data, within the patient's health record, while they are at home, which will provide the opportunity for clinicians to make informed interventions as needed.