Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT) and FiberRx, Inc. have signed an agreement to license to FiberRx certain fiber optic technology for use in hospitals and medical facilities. In exchange for the license, Lockheed Martin will receive royalties and a 40 percent equity interest in FiberRx. The issuance of the license and completion of the other transactions are subject to a number of closing conditions, including FiberRx financing.
The Lockheed Martin-patented technology was originally developed for sophisticated military applications requiring very high bandwidth, protocol independence and the ability to adapt to existing equipment. The FiberRx, Inc. network will use a single fiber-optic cable to communicate with existing networks and systems located throughout hospitals and medical facilities, with implementations to provide extremely high bandwidth communication of medical patient data.
The technology enables data to be combined from multiple separate sources of medical information onto a single network. This includes single-cable management of information from copper-wire networks, traditional bundled fiber optic cables, wireless networks and the Internet.
This all-passive, fiber optic network has the potential to render existing medical network architectures--consisting of hubs, switches and routers--obsolete. Traditional copper and fiber optic networks are limited in their ability to simultaneously handle increasingly high bandwidth data demands without significant hardware upgrades.
Such demands are expected to increase with the need to distribute unedited, complex medical images and information to medical professionals. This trend demands the cost-effective use of graphics interactively with live voice, video, wireless and Internet-based information to support collaborative meetings, which can be achieved by current systems with only marginal results.
Lockheed Martin's patented technology, called Fiber Optic Bus Wavelength Division Multiplexing (FOBWDM), provides a non-blocking, bi-directional, protocol-independent, multi-channel, optical transport system. The multi-channel FOBWDM uses a self-monitoring, protocol-independent topology to accommodate simultaneous transfers of discrete, analog, digital and wireless transmissions on a single fiber optic cable. It has been successfully used on multiple military aircraft in flight operations and has demonstrated significant architectural advantages over currently available systems.
About FiberRx:
FiberRx, Inc. is an Orlando-based company incorporated in May 2000 to commercialize the Lockheed Martin network technology exclusively in hospitals and medical facilities.
About Lockheed Martin:
Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced-technology systems, products and services. The corporation's core businesses are systems integration, space, aeronautics and technology services.