While the PSA test is still widely recognized as a valuable prostate cancer screening tool, its dismal accuracy record has created an acute need for more effective and informative alternatives, and the field of molecular diagnostics, based on gene-based biomarkers, is leading the charge.

The emerging market for wireless and remote monitoring technologies comes at a time when providers are looking for new tools to not only keep patients out of the hospital, but also to prevent unnecessary readmissions. These goals, along with a growing list of enabling technologies in the pipeline, are helping drive health care toward an era of unprecedented connectivity – one in which physicians and other care givers are able to monitor and even treat patients whenever needed wherever they may be – a shift that many believe will profoundly change health care as we know it.

Recent reports questioning the benefits of early prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment have raised an industry-wide debate that has been fueled by the limitations of prostate-specific antigen tests, currently the standard of care for early prostate cancer detection. While the industry searches to improve the use of PSA tests, urologists are asking, "are we over treating our patients?" That question was repeatedly voiced in a number of forums at the American Urological Association's 2010 Annual Meeting. As for a definitive answer to the question, it is a somewhat difficult task to get individual physicians to admit they are personally over treating patients; however, there is definitely a consensus-and a concern-that more patients than necessary are receiving treatments that put them at risk of serious side effects.

Although prostate problems have plagued men for many years, the growing elderly population is now driving an unprecedented increase in caseloads and a corresponding need for improved treatments. One of the primary concerns is the rise in prostate cancer diagnoses. With more than two million American men currently living with prostate cancer and more than 200,000 new cases diagnosed each year, the market for diagnostic and therapeutic products to address this disease is substantial; more than $2 billion in the US in 2007.