Milan, Italy, ambulances to carry Milwaukee-made heart monitor
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By Kathleen Gallagher
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
(MCT)
MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee company's wireless heart-monitoring device scored a significant victory in Italy.
Local government officials in Milan said they will put Mortara Instrument Inc.'s device in all 100 ambulances that serve the Milan area's 3.5 million people.
The decision came after a year of testing several such devices. The study by Milan's government-run emergency unit found that Mortara's device reduced by 30 minutes to 50 minutes the amount of time it took to get patients with cardiac problems to the right hospital, resulting in an 8 percent improvement in survival rates, according to a news release.
"This is the beginning of expanding use of our device through a larger part of Italy's Lombardia region," said Justin Mortara, the company's chief executive officer. The Lombardia region — similar to what a state is in the United States — has 11 million inhabitants, Mortara said.
The project is significant for Mortara because it is the first time the company has had its ELI 10 wireless heart monitoring device tested for ambulance use. The company has been selling the device for about two years, primarily for use in hospitals and clinics, Mortara said.
With the Italian test completed, Mortara plans to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to market the device for use in ambulances in the U.S., he said.
"They've done more than 5,000 ECGs (electrocardiograms), and we've gotten some great feedback from them. In early 2010, we expect to make a big push into this market," Mortara said.
ECGs record the electrical activity of the heart. Mortara calls the ELI 10 the BlackBerry of heart monitoring devices because the small monitor can wirelessly communicate the data it collects in an ambulance, for example, to a hospital.
Other companies make small ECG devices, but they're not wireless, Mortara said. There's a bigger wireless device on the market that combines a heart monitor and defibrillator, but it sells for $25,000 compared with the Mortara ELI 10's price tag of $5,000, he said.
The Italian project has high levels of applicability in the U.S., said Andy Nunemaker, chief executive officer of EMSystems LLC, a Milwaukee maker of Internet-based products for hospitals and emergency-service providers. The device also has potential to help bring the U.S. health care system in line with other industries, and the lives of everyday people, he said.
"Every day we as consumers use technologies that connect us to anything from anywhere and we'd expect our health care system would have that same connectivity, and the truth is, it doesn't yet," Nunemaker said.
Medics in some areas such as Phoenix, Ariz., get special training in how to use ECGs and read their data, so they wouldn't see the huge benefits a wireless system has delivered in Milan, said John G. Ford, director of customer relations and marketing for Southwest Ambulance in Phoenix.
Ford says many other areas would benefit from the wireless device, which allows doctors to quickly and remotely determine whether a patient needs to go to a hospital with a catheter lab for immediate treatment.
"It would decrease the amount of time it took to get the patient to a cardiologist or catheterization, and that's very important because it decreases the amount of damage to the heart," Ford said.
Mortara is a relatively small company with about $50 million of revenue. Milan is a small part of the potential world-wide market for Mortara.
Mortara says his company is taking its cue from the grandeur of the name the Italians gave the pilot test. They called it the Prometeo project, a reference to Prometheus, the character in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans.
"It's still a small part of our business, but we expect the pre-hospital ECG business could grow significantly in the next couple years," Mortara said. "Our target is to get this technology in as many people's hands as possible."
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