Bradley Merrill Thompson, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice in the Washington, DC, office, was quoted in an article titled "Medtronic Teams with Ford to Explore In-Vehicle Mobile Health Concepts."
Following in an excerpt:
Mobile health developers have a new platform to explore besides smart phones and tablet computers. Last week Ford Motor Co. took the wraps off its new research project on health and wellness applications for use with its SYNC-enabled vehicles.
Ford is exploring concepts including connectivity with FDA-regulated medical devices and voice-activated access to mobile wellness applications.
"We've been hearing for some time that the car represents one of the last but also one of the greatest frontiers for health care," said Thompson.
"There are so many sensors that can operate in a car, and it creates a reliable and consistently timed opportunity to take measurements," he added. "We've been watching this technology develop, and it was only a matter of time until we would see corporate partnerships of the type" Ford is pursuing.
From a regulatory standpoint, Ford's joint announcement with medical device companies last week "makes it all the more important to understand exactly which technologies FDA regulates and to what level," said Thompson."Obviously these companies operate in the class III space, as well as class I and II," Thompson explained. "When, through these partnerships, companies install sensors in cars, we need to understand just how much of the instrumentation and software needs FDA oversight."
The question, he said, is: "Where does the device start and stop?"
