What you may want to know about Mr. Roger Heath and his claimsMr. Roger Heath & LifeBotFor the past 20 years (1990-2009)
1, Mr. Roger Heath’s principle occupation was an independent Sales Representative selling General Devices’ EMS products. During this period he represented General Devices in the Midwestern US as a single individual. General Devices and Mr. Heath parted company in July of 2009 and shortly thereafter
2, LifeBot and the LifeBot website appeared. LifeBot was not a part of any relationship that Mr. Heath had with General Devices.
Prior to representing General Devices, Mr. Heath was involved in defibrillation electrodes where he started, and then was separated from the R2 Corp. Defibrillation and resuscitation have been one of Mr. Heath’s interests and appear to be the subject of his claim of his “30 patents”
3. Our search of the US Patent and Trademark Office revealed 7 patents
4 assigned to him by that office and 3 applied for, all related to defibrillation and resuscitation. We have no knowledge regarding foreign patents assigned to Mr. Heath.
In contradiction to Mr. Heath’s claims that “We (i.e.: Roger Heath) have now been designing and deploying of these systems for more than 37 years, almost twice as long as any one else in the industry”, in his 20 years as a Sales Representative for General Devices, Mr. Heath was not involved in any of our engineering, research, design or development activities. In fact, we are unaware of any formal technical training that Mr. Heath has, and, insofar as we know, prior to LifeBot, Mr. Heath has never “designed and deployed” any communication system or similar electronic medical device.
Regarding the “200 installations”
5 Mr. Heath takes credit for, he omits the fact that these installations are all General Devices' products and installations, all of which predate our awareness of Mr. Heath’s LifeBot console and company. One of the things that concerns both us and our customers is that the manner in which Mr. Heath has portrayed these installations leads the reader to assume they are “1st generation” LifeBot products. In fact, these installations are completely unrelated to LifeBot.
Mr. Heath’s claims about LifeBot are indeed sweeping, but are mostly vague and without specifics. Unlike General Devices’ CAREpoint, Mr. Heath’s LifeBot console appears to be an aggregate of equipment manufactured by other companies. If this is the case then LifeBot is merely another company’s radio controller connected to another company’s logging recorder as well as other bits and pieces combined to make something that Mr. Heath is calling his “Patented LifeBot Workstation"
6. An aggregate of separate pieces of equipment supplied by others and somehow connected together is hardly what CAREpoint is, and something that Mr. Heath is not clearly stating. Most real products have clear specifications you can refer to, but, other than a “coming soon” notice, we cannot find any technical specifications on the LifeBot website
7, something odd for a “patented device” that Mr. Heath claims
15 is “in use in more than 3,500 locations”.
General Devices is a company that has been in business for over 30 years, with in-house facilities and staff for all aspects of product design, manufacturing, sales and support. From what we can gather and despite Mr. Heath’s references to “us” and “we” on the LifeBot website, LifeBot is in reality a one-man show. Further, we have been unable to find any evidence on the FDA website
8 indicating that LifeBot or Mr. Heath is registered with the FDA as either a medical device designer or manufacturer and we have found no record of the LifeBot console having a FDA 510K approval for marketing to the healthcare industry contrary Mr. Heath’s claims of being “FDA Compliant”.
We have asked Mr. Heath
9 to remove the misleading references to General Devices’ products and installations and expressed our desire that he clarify and correct what we feel are misleading claims he presents as facts. We have also requested Mr. Heath
9 to stop
blocking us from his website because of his “concerns” about “virus and “spam”. We have had no response from Mr. Heath as of the date of this writing.
EMS TelemedicineUnlike interfacility telemedicine commonly used throughout the country, mobile telemedicine involving ambulances and wireless connectivity presents a far more difficult technical challenge and requires considerable engineering skill and expertise to “make it all work” in the world of EMS and the ED. General Devices has been working in this area for more than 25 years, having created some of the first true mobile telemedicine devices
10, a workable tele-homecare system
11, and has pioneered the field of commercial mobile EMS telemedicine
12. The experience gained in these activities is incorporated into our entire family of EMS products. In fact, General Devices’ e-Bridge EMS Telemedicine System now has two real-world, working EMS Telemedicine installations in Tucson, Arizona and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Mr. Heath’s claims and statements regarding his experience and patents would leave the reader to believe that he is some sort of “telemedicine expert”. In point of fact, despite Mr. Heath’s claims about his involvement in General Devices’ Tucson ER-Link project, his participation was minimal
13 and, in the case of Baton Rouge, completely non-existent. Furthermore, we are unaware of any Heath/LifeBot telemedicine deployment or any substantive experience in this difficult field that predates his recent LifeBot venture.
Regarding Mr. Heath’s claim of “having installed more emergency life support communications and telemedicine deployments than any other organization nation-wide”, he casually neglects to mention General Devices, the company whose installations these really are.
Regarding Mr. Heath’s claims of “telemedicine patents”, if you look up any of his much-cited “telemedicine” patents on the US Gov. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) website
4 (Applied for Patents Nos.: 20,060,069,326; 20,060,155,336; 20,060,155,354), you will see that they are related to various means for resuscitation rather than some fundamental breakthrough or comprehensive telemedicine system, as his website implies
14.
Mr. Heath’s claims regarding the “patented LifeBot EMS Workstation” also appears entirely without substance. A search of the US Gov. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) website
4 lists no such patent issued or applied for.
About EMS WorkstationsGeneral Devices’ CAREpoint EMS Workstation incorporates over 35 man-years of engineering effort and is a fully integrated, multi-function “platform” designed specifically for the tough EMS and ED environment. It has a rich and growing suite of features and applications and is continuously being improved and upgraded. We are proud of the fact that unless you look “under the hood”, the first CAREpoints sold appear almost identical to the most recent ones shipped, and wherever possible, we have striven to make all upgrades and improvements upward and downward compatible. This is done for the specific purpose of avoiding obsolescence and prolonging the useful life of CAREpoint. Contrary to Mr. Heath’s unsupported claim that CAREpoint is now “obsolete”
14, we invite you look “under the hood” and determine for yourself what is “obsolete” and what is not. The concept of a single, fully integrated platform designed specifically to serve the full range of tasks needed by EMS... managing communications, information, documentation and telemedicine, and as an information conduit to HIS, is one that General Devices has pioneered and perfected. To the best of our knowledge, this has not been achieved or even attempted by any other company – including LifeBot.
Questionable Claims and Representations- If you go to Mr. Heath’s LifeBot website, you will see numerous photos of Mr. Heath’s “installations” as well as statements touting his “37” years of experience in EMS communications and telemedicine. What is misleading in all this is the fact that these installations are really General Devices’ CAREpoint EMS Workstation installations, which Mr. Heath casually refers to as “first generation’ advanced life support communications and telemedicine products whose deployment was managed by R. Lee Heath of LifeBot”5. This misleading portrayal has resulted in many in EMS to assume their General Devices installations are Lifebot's, which is why we have been receiving calls from our customers asking why photos of their facilities and personnel are on Mr. Heath’s website, what their installations have to do with LifeBot, and why these photos are there without their permission.
- As for Mr. Heath’s claims of “expertise” gained from his association with what are really General Device’s installations, Mr. Heath’s activities were limited to sales only and are no different than the experience any of our other sales representatives have been exposed to.
- The EMS Telemedicine video’s of Tucson Fire and Baton Rouge on Mr. Heath’s website are unrelated to LifeBot and are actually those of General Devices’ e-Bridge Telemedicine system, although Mr. Heath fails to clearly indicate them as such, again leading the reader to assume they are LifeBot systems.
- Mr. Heath’s claim on his comparison chart that LifeBot is able to receive Rosetta transmissions17 is a truly astonishing statement. Rosetta is a General Devices product that employs proprietary hardware and software which Mr. Heath has no lawful technical knowledge of or permissions or licenses from General Devices to use. In addition, Rosetta and the transmission format it employs are registered by General Devices18 with the FDA as a medical device. It appears unclear how Mr. Heath proposes to accomplish this without the approval of General Devices or the FDA. Click here to see General Devices' response to Mr. Heath's comparison chart.
- Mr. Heath also makes claims about his “replacing 1st generation systems that he installed” with what he is calling 2nd generation systems. As many of our customers have told us, Mr. Heath’s language leads the reader to believe that these so-called “1st generation” products were his (i.e.: LifeBot) and that he is now in the process of replacing them. Again, Mr. Heath fails to mention that “his” installations are really General Devices’ installations and that, while he may be attempting to replace them, this is a far cry from the statements he has made on his website.
- Mr. Heath’s also claims that CAREpoint cannot interface with digital communications systems! Despite his claims of involvement, Mr. Heath appears to have forgotten that it was well over two years ago that the CAREpoint in Tucson Arizona’s ER-Link Telemedicine19 system was interfaced to a state-of-the-art broadband wireless mesh radio system and that this is also the case for General Devices’ EMS telemedicine installation in Baton Rouge20.
- As far as obsolescence is concerned, we believe that Mr. Heath is also forgetting General Devices’ “platform” design concept and the continual improvements and software releases that he was always so impressed with and telling our customers about as recently as six months ago, prior to parting company with General Devices.
Conclusion
There is much more we can cite, but the above should shed some light on Mr. Heath and his LifeBot console. While we recognize that Mr. Heath is a convincing salesman, it is our belief that convenient omissions, misleading statements and blatant untruths23 about a competitor’s products are not good salesmanship or the way to inspire a customer’s confidence. Beyond that, it is certainly not the way to compete in as important an area as medical devices – something that, according to Mr. Heath’s claims of extensive experience in the medical devices industry, he should be well acquainted with. We respect Mr. Heath’s interest in competing with General Devices, but we will continue to defend ourselves if he persists in selling himself and his product in the manner he has thus far done.
Some Facts about General Devices
General Devices was started in 1979 by Michael Smith, a formally trained (B.S. & M.S.) electrical and Bio-Medical Engineer. With engineering expertise gained in the aerospace industry and as a practicing biomedical engineer, General Devices began designing work for many companies, including Sony Medical, 3M, Biologic, Metatech, Medphone, and Impact Instrumentation. This work included designing ventilators, intracranial pressure monitors, defibrillators, evoked response systems, apnea monitors, video devices, pacemaker implantation systems, electrode impedance meters, EMS radios and more22. In 1985, General Devices' engineering team designed one of the first true telemedicine devices, a remote controlled defibrillator10. In 1995, General Devices designed one of the world’s first comprehensive tele-homecare systems11, and in 2006 deployed the world’s first commercially available EMS telemedicine system employing broadband wireless technology12. General Devices is registered with the FDA21 as a Medical Device Designer and Manufacturer. Its products have received FDA 510K approval for marketing, and all manufacturing is performed in accordance with FDA’s GMP regulations. The company employs an in-house staff which includes a full time engineering design staff of 13 along with manufacturing, sales, customer and technical support staff. All work is performed at its Ridgefield, New Jersey facility and we have a long list of satisfied customers and referral sites.
LifeBot® is a registered trademark of LifeBot, LLC.
References:
1 Rep Agreement between Heath and General Devices dated June 26, 1990.
2 The present (Jan 2010) version of the LifeBot (www.lifebot.us.com) website first appeared in the fall of 2009.
3 “Distinguished with more than 30 patents, R. Lee Heath”, “About R. Lee Heath, LifeBot Website, Jan 2010.
4 Searched an 21, 2010: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html , search “IN/HEATH and IN/ROGER”: Issued Patents
#s: 4,895,169; 4,852,585; 4,850,356; 4,834,103; 4,653,503; 4,494,552; 4,419,998; Patents Applied For #s: 20,060,069,326;
20,060,155,336; 20,060,155,354.
5 Posted November 20, 2009 @ 2:04 pm; LifeBot.us.com: In Breaking News: “R. Lee Heath of LifeBot has installed and/or managed
emergency life support communications and telemedicine deployments for the following public safety and health care institutions in
the past. This list displays the more than 200 current or related users of the older ‘first generation’ product deployments installed or
managed by us.”
6 See TO search, above: No patents were found relating to LifeBot Workstation.
7 LifeBot website search on Jan. 21, 2010: No specifications for LifeBot Workstation found.
8 FDA Website Searched Jan 21, 2010: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfRL/rl.cfm
9 E-Mail and Cert Mail, Jan 18, 2010. Note! Mr. Heath has since removed the “spam” & “virus” accusation, but has nonetheless
continued to block access as of the date of this writing.
10 1985 – General Devices develops Medphone Transtelephonic Defibrillator: http://www.general-devices.com/listing-projects
11 1996 – General Devices develops TelAssist TeleHomeCare System: http://www.general-devices.com/listing-projects
12 2006 – General Devices develops e-Brdige EMS Telemedicne System: http://www.general-devices.com/e-bridge
13 Mr. Heath identified the RFP and attended some meetings. He was uninvolved in any engineering aspects of installation.
14 Obsolete claims
15 Dec 2009: Item 6 in Comparison of LifeBot EMS Broadband Telemedicine Communications Workstation and General Devices
Carepoint EMS Workstation”, mass e-mailing by R. Lee Heath of LifeBot.
16 Posted on LifeBot website, Jan. 1, 2010.
17 Dec 2009: Item 23 in "Comparison of LifeBot EMS Broadband Telemedicine Communications Workstation and General Devices
Carepoint EMS Workstation”, mass e-mailing by R. Lee Heath of LifeBot.
18 FDA Website: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/SCRIPTS/cdrh/cfdocs/cfPMN/pmn.cfm?ID=1691
19 TV News on ER-Link: http://www.general-devices.com/tucson-channel-4-er-link-video-interview
20 News Release Re. Baton Rouge BR-Med Connect: http://www.general-devices.com/baton-rouge-announces-launch-ems-telemedicine-system
21 General Devices FDA Reg: http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfRL/rl.cfm
22 Partial list of General Devices projects and products: http://www.general-devices.com/listing-projects
23 General Devices' Response to Mr. Heath's comparison chart between LifeBot EMS Broadband Telemedicine Communications
Worsktation and General Devices CAREpoint EMS Workstation: http://www.general-devices.com/files/news/LifeBotComparisonChart.pdf
