Infrared Thermometer Heats Up Health Care Business : Technology: New faster, safer and more accurate instrument measures body temperature from the ear.
Given the drawbacks of thermometers now on the market, health care professionals are understandably excited about a new type that measures body temperature quickly and accurately from an entirely different perspective--the ear.
Infrared, or tympanic, thermometers being developed and marketed by a handful of companies in San Diego County, provide extremely accurate temperature readings in about two seconds. That contrasts with existing electronic models, which can take as long as 30 seconds, and the ubiquitous glass thermometer, which takes as long as five minutes to generate accurate readings.
The high-tech instruments don’t physically touch the eardrum or other sensitive parts of the inner ear. Instead, delicate electronic sensors measure infrared waves emitted by the eardrum. The new thermometers are now available to hospitals and medical clinics at about $500 each. But home models costing $100 could be on the market within a year.
Infrared thermometers represent only the third major advance in the centuries-old science of thermometry. When it comes to taking a sick child’s temperature, relatively little has changed in the more than 100 years since glass thermometers gained widespread acceptance. Though slow and delicate, mercury-filled thermometers remain the instrument of choice in households around the world.
Temperature taking is less of a burden for health-care workers at hospitals and larger medical clinics, where glass thermometers gradually have given way to the durable, fast and expensive electronic thermometers that were introduced in 1976.
Industry observers are predicting that infrared thermometers will revolutionize the way temperatures are taken, as models become cheaper and easier to use.
That revolution will be fueled in part by the anticipation that infrared thermometers, which are not inserted orally or rectally, will substantially reduce accidental tissue tears and the transmission of contagious disease.
The thermometers “seem to be catching on fairly rapidly with hospitals,” said Donald E. L. Johnson, editor and publisher of Health Industry Today, a Chicago-based trade magazine.
Manufacturers predict it will take less than five years for infrared thermometers to become the preferred device in acute-care hospitals. That growth curve is in stark contrast to electronic thermometers, which took nearly 20 years to wrest the acute-care hospital market away from glass thermometer manufacturers.
Carlsbad-based Intelligent Medical Systems introduced the first infrared thermometer in 1986 after more than five years of research. The initial units were decidedly bulky, and, at $695 per unit, expensive. But technological advances have produced slim, hand-held hospital models that sell for less than $500.
Estimates of the domestic market for electronic and infrared thermometers range from $50 million to $125 million, while the worldwide market is estimated at $100 million to $160 million.
Those figures are based on the estimated 2 billion or more temperatures taken each year at acute-care hospitals in the United States. Not included are the untold billions of temperatures taken at home, in schools, at doctors’ offices and by veterinarians.
Intelligent Medical Systems, which has sold 40,000 units to acute-care hospitals so far, is “the market leader,” said Ron Benincasa, the company’s vice president of marketing and sales. The closely held Carlsbad company which refused to release sales and profit figures.
Several companies with proprietary technology--many of which happen to be situated in San Diego County--are intent on grabbing market share from Intelligent Medical Systems.
San Diego-based Diatek, which controls about 45% of the electronic thermometer market, will introduce its initial infrared thermometer later this month. Diatek, which reported $15 million in revenue during 1990, has signed a distribution agreement with Baxter Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest medical products distributors.
A San Diego-based start-up company called Thermoscan recently introduced an infrared thermometer model for hospitals and has sold “hundreds of units,” Thermoscan Vice President John H. Hyle said. The company will soon introduce a home-use model that will retail through specialty retail catalogues for about $100.
Ivac, a San Diego-based subsidiary of Eli Lilly & Co., which helped create the electronic thermometer market during the 1970s, also is expected to introduce an infrared model later this year.
The infrared thermometer’s speed and accuracy are expected to produce substantial cost savings in institutions that take hundreds of temperatures daily. A Kaiser Permanente hospital in Georgia that uses Intelligent Medical Systems thermometers has reported that a $595 infrared thermometer can generate more than $600 in cost savings during a single year.
Doctors and nurses who have used the new breed of thermometers also appreciate the fact that the instruments are non-invasive.
“The instrument itself is superb,” said Dr. Seth Pransky, a pediatric ear, nose and throat doctor in San Diego who has used a model manufactured by San Diego-based Thermoscan. “I’m not sure it’s the be-all and end-all of thermometers, but it sure is an advancement over what we’ve got now, which is a thermometer in the butt or the mouth.”
The new breed of thermometers owes its speed and accuracy to a complex blend of basic biology and high technology.
Unlike glass and electronic thermometers, which measure temperature at the point of insertion, infrared devices give an accurate indication of the body’s “core” temperature, a highly accurate measurement that can play an important role in the treatment of seriously ill patients.
Infrared thermometers’ accuracy stems from the fact that they measure infrared readings emitted by the eardrum, whose temperatures correlate well with those of the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates body temperature.
Although acute-care hospitals will provide initial sales, manufacturers also will focus marketing at medical clinics, nursing homes, schools, public health clinics and, eventually, veterinary offices.
Competitors are split, however, on how quickly the thermometers will move into the potentially lucrative home market. Thermoscan’s Hyle said his company’s $100 product to be introduced later this year “will appeal to any parent who’s tried to take a screaming baby’s temperature at 3 in the morning .”
But Benincasa of Intelligent Medical Systems doubts that consumers will spend $100 for a thermometer . “It might come later when prices drop,” Benincasa said. But the focus, he said, remains on institutions.
The new thermometers seem to be tailor-made for medical settings where “a patient can’t always take a thermometer,” Johnson said, and for health-care workers who treat patients with infectious diseases, since infrared devices do not come in contact with mucous membranes. And, the thermometers are expected to sell well at nursing homes, where residents and staff grudgingly deal with rectal readings.
Manufacturers also are scurrying for part of the market for disposable covers that fit on the tips of the probes. “It’s the old razor and blade deal,” said an executive at one company that is manufacturing infrared thermometers. “The real money is in the probe covers.”
