A continuous monitoring medtech vet charts the course to a less-invasive future

Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD) Worldwide President of Advanced Patient Monitoring Tim Patz spearheaded BD’s launch of its new HemoSphere Stream Module, a noninvasive monitoring technology that enables continuous blood pressure monitoring.

In a Medical Design & Outsourcing interview, Patz — who has a background in engineering and was a leader in the  Edwards Lifesciences Critical Care business that BD purchased and rebranded as Advanced Patient Monitoring (APM) — shared insight on opportunities to make monitoring less invasive.

The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

MDO: What do you see as the biggest opportunity to make medtech monitoring less invasive?

Patz: “When I think about the future of medtech and the future of continuous monitoring, I think two things are happening right now. The acknowledgement that continuous monitoring is critical is becoming more widespread and well accepted. Previously, you could get by with knowing someone’s information every five, 10, 15, 20 minutes. That’s going away. There are more people trying to get continuous monitoring.

“No. 2: There’s an acknowledgement that if you’re a patient who goes into something like surgery, they’re inevitably going to go onto the ward and then get discharged. But there was always a gap. At some point, your monitoring would get less and less, and the nursing ratio would get higher, where you have a nurse taking care of either five patients, six patients, 10 patients, etc., so monitoring is going to play a role. We’re continuously monitoring for longer. Monitoring that will follow you all the way from the admission or the point of surgery all the way to discharge is probably the phase we’re at now, where companies like us and others are trying to look at this space and trying to fill it.

“When you think about getting to more noninvasive products, because those products are being created for these spaces they will travel upstream. Our perspective is if you’re building products for the hospital setting, you want to be as accurate as possible. Our standard is invasive arterial lines as our standard for blood pressure, because if you’re building products for the in-hospital setting, it has to be to that standard. There are certainly companies on a massive scale that are going to go after patients outside the hospital, and that’s not our space at the moment. My hope is that our products can eventually be used outside the hospital, but maintain the same standards that we set for in-hospital use.

“We want to be building at a very high level by partnering with the FDA and focusing on those clinicians who have the high acuity, because we think the high acuity patients probably deserve the most. If I look at our pipeline, 95% of our pipeline is noninvasive, continuous products in different capacities, different parameters, different AI algorithms being in there. That is the future of our business. The other 5% is because we have some legacy products that are invasive that we want to make sure are maintaining a certain standard, and we have some projects on that front as well.”

More minimally invasive advice: Watch MDO’s 2026 Min-Vasive webinar series on-demand to learn more from experts in minimally invasive robotic and cardiac technology.

What technologies do you need to get there?

Patz: “The luxury we have in our business is that we have probably close to 50 algorithm engineers in Irvine. The most fun part of my job is that these algorithm engineers have no shortage of ideas.

“Our first algorithm submission to the FDA was cleared in 2018. It’s almost like a 10-year journey for us, where we were probably the second or third company in medtech getting an AI algorithm cleared, and now we’ve seen the FDA actually have a whole section of their workforce dedicated to AI algorithms. For us, it’s maintaining our continuous focus, our advancements in noninvasive, and then the last thing is probably the overlay of having algorithms that can identify problems early.

“Our first algorithm that we got cleared in 2018 was a hypotension prediction index that showed doctors five to 15 minutes in advance if you’re going to have a hypotensive event. If the doctor wanted to intervene and give a type of therapy, they could. Fast forward to our last submission: We recently got an algorithm cleared that looks at the autoregulation of the brain. When the blood pressure change in the body affects the oxygen perfusion in the brain, we have an indication from the FDA for the first autoregulation algorithm that looks at when that change occurs in the brain. The reason that’s significant is if your blood pressure goes too low, you don’t want to ever get an ischemic event in the brain. AI and algorithms are able to help us determine when that change happens.

“If you have a good physiologic baseline sensor, it can give very clear, accurate information to the clinician. If you’re an algorithm engineer, that same great physiological information is the foundation for getting good algorithms created. Then you have accurate information that can be provided in advance to clinicians. And clinicians’ ability to understand these new parameters is very quick. We’re in an environment where, whether it’s nurses or physicians, their ability to pick up new things is really good. Yes, there is always burnout. Yes, there is a lot to do in the hospital space. But with a partner like APM  where we provide a lot of education, the adoption of these technologies and then inevitably the measurement and publications are coming, I think will show that the next phase is exciting, just as this phase has been exciting.”

Correction: This post has been updated to say that the team’s first algorithm was cleared in 2018.

We’ll have more from this interview at Medical Design & Outsourcing. Subscribe to our free newsletter to watch for the next part.