Monday, February 26, 2007

Foxborough firm's tech brings TV tray-side visits

By Ryan McBride

For better or worse, people gather the bulk of information -- on everything from news to fashion -- from their television sets. Now a local startup has a product that enables the elderly and chronically ill to switch on the TV to view their personal health data.

BL Healthcare Inc., of Foxborough, recently launched a system known as TVx. The system gathers a patient's health information from Bluetooth-based wireless diagnostics in the home and displays it on everyday television screens. It also sends the information over the Internet to a secure server, where doctors and nurses can log in to check up on their patients.

In December 2006, BL Healthcare began shipping its TVx systems to the United States, Australia and parts of Europe, entering the emerging market for products that provide patient health information to doctors and other caregivers in remote locations.

With early backing from Boston's Hub Angel Investment Group LLC, BL Healthcare is now looking to raise $3 million to $5 million in Series A financing to boost sales and marketing efforts, said Michael Mathur, president and CEO of BL Healthcare.

Mathur, who founded the company in 2005, said TVx serves a crucial need for in-home technology systems that improve medical treatment of people and reduce overall health-care costs.

"This is a phenomenal system that allows older people to live in their homes longer," he said. "That's been a phenomenal story for us."

The TVx system includes a set-top box with videoconferencing capability and a remote control. Other companies provide the wireless diagnostics, including blood-glucose meters, weight scales, blood-pressure instruments and pulse oximeters that connect to the system. Each time a patient, say, measures her blood sugar, that information is sent from the glucose meter to the box.

Analysts predict growth for the home-health monitoring market, but BL Healthcare faces some stiff competition. Andover's Philips Medical Systems, a division of Dutch conglomerate Royal Philips Electronics, sells in-home diagnostics. AMD Telehealth Inc., of Lowell, sells portable systems that send in-home diagnostic results to central servers for doctors to review.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted BL Healthcare clearance for TVx last June, Mathur said, yet it took time to complete contracts with hardware manufacturers in China. Software development has been outsourced to a firm in India. Manufacturing was moved offshore, he said, due to the relatively high cost of producing the initial systems in New Hampshire.

This is the first startup for Mathur, an electrical engineer who previously for Milwaukee-based Rockwell Automation Inc. and Invensys Home Control Systems. The company's board members include John Poole, a member of the Hub Angel Investment Group.