The Wall Street Journal reports that medical device makers are forging a new partnership with the cell-phone industry to allow doctors to remotely monitor their patients' heart rhythms, body temperature and breathing rates, with the goal of saving billions in hospitalization costs.

The newly formed San Diego-based West Wireless Health Institute is set to announce this week that it has joined forces with Corventis Inc. to conduct the first of its kind clinical trial of a remote heart monitor.

The Band Aid-like heart patch from Corventis sends patient readings through a Bluetooth wireless connection to the person's smart phone - an iPhone or a BlackBerry. The data is then transmitted to a doctor's office. Physicians are alerted if their patient shows irregularities.

Other device makers are waiting in the wings for similar trials, hoping to win over the people who ultimately would pay for their products - doctors, private insurance companies, and the government.

"The goal is to get it used in medicine, to get [government] reimbursement, to shake up how medicine is practiced," said Dr. Eric Topol, the wireless institute's chief medical officer.

But the new methods pose some challenges, in part because they merge two traditionally disparate industries. The Food and Drug Administration can assure that medical devices are measuring a person's vital signs accurately, but it has no control over the wireless network that transmits that information.

"It's all in network reliability," said John Walls, Vice President for Public Affairs at CTIA, the wireless association. "That's a paramount to establishing a relationship in this space and every other."

If wireless companies are successful in winning the trust of the medical community, however, they could be sitting on a brand new market for wireless medical devices.

Large wireless companies like Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. (T), Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) and T-Mobile USA are investing billions to provide next-generation wireless speeds to customers across the country. But the networks continue to evolve and still have hiccups.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture between Vodafone Group PLC (VOD) and Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ). T-Mobile USA is a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG (DT).

The West Wireless Health Institute was launched earlier this year by Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM) and Dr. Topol, who also is the chief academic officer at Scripps Health.

Qualcomm initially teamed up with Topol to sponsor training for engineers and doctors about how wireless and medical gadgets can work together. The institute then was formed when financiers Gary and Mary West donated $45 million through their family foundation.

Topol and is here this week meeting with members of Congress and the administration to alert them that the technology exists now to connect patients with their doctors through the Internet. Topol also will keynote a health forum Wednesday on mobile medicine, sponsored by CTIA.

Topol's goals are strikingly similar to statements from the Obama administration, where officials repeatedly tout the power of technology to reduce health-care costs and save lives. Until recently, much of Washington's focus in this area has been on creating an electronic database of peoples' health records, which would help doctors coordinate care.

Wireless medical monitoring devices, meanwhile, were hatched from fitness and sports enthusiasts. Marathoners now can monitor their glucose levels or calorie expenditures using wireless gadgets. "There's already a pattern that's emerging in healthy people," Topol said.

CTIA estimates that $21 billion in emergency care and nursing home costs could be saved every year just by remotely monitoring patients who have had congestive heart failure, diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

That means big bucks for the government. Among Medicare patients, 27% are readmitted to the hospital 30 days after suffering from heart failure, according to Dr. Topol. Many of those hospital visits could have been avoided if doctors had picked up on warning signs earlier.