Sleep Review interviews Tim Quinn, vice president, and Brian Long, sleep product manager of VIASYS Health HomeCare Group.
Brian Long (left) and Tim Quinn
Due to customer requests and the enticement of a growing market, an expansion into the sleep therapy arena was just a natural fit for VIASYS, says Tim Quinn, vice president of the company’s HomeCare Group, Yorba Linda, Calif. Speaking with Quinn and Brian Long, sleep product manager, Sleep Review discovered how system integration was the key to successfully adding sleep therapeutic products.
Q. What new products has this expansion entailed?
A. Quinn: We now have the Constellation Series, which includes four CPAP products: the Orion and the Pegasus and the Dorado and the Delphinus in Germany. The Orion and Pegasus are essential CPAPs—low cost, full feature. The Pegasus has a pressure transducer for better pressure regulation and downloadable compliance data. We just started the 510(k) process on the Dorado and Delphinus.
Q. How do your company’s home care products encourage compliance?
A. Quinn: In all our sleep laboratories, we have software programs called Lab Manager. We have now created a software program for every one of our CPAP devices, except for the Orion, which is downloadable to Lab Manager DME. Like Lab Manager, Lab Manager DME will track patient usage, patient compliance, patient setup, patient follow-up, and inventory control.
Long: Lab Manager DME is for home care/DME (durable medical equipment) providers. We integrated Lab Manager DME and Lab Manager to seamlessly talk to each other so the DME providers who work directly with the laboratory will have the most up-to-date compliance information on their patients.
Quinn: Probably the most important product we have for compliance is our Spiritus™ nasal CPAP cannula. Comfort is what helps drives patients to be compliant, so having an interface that does not require heavy headgear and allows them to wear glasses so they can read is very important. The Spiritus has been going gangbusters for us. I cannot build them fast enough.
Q. What sets VIASYS apart from other companies?
A. Long: Part of it is the direct integration of all the devices. All of our products—including the Alpha sleep system and our portable screeners, the Alpha Screen and the Sleep Screen—integrate into the same type of platform, as do our our CPAP therapeutic devices. There are not a lot of learning curves.
Quinn: Also, we are probably the first diagnostic company to use our knowledge to launch into therapeutics. The other therapeutic companies are those that do diagnostics as secondary.
