A mélange of short subjects for Tuesday

ATA accredits American Well, Apple ResearchKit, diabetic contact lenses, Hackermania Falls on Indiana, patent trolls get a haircut, and more

The ATA (American Telemedicine Association) has gained more than 200 applications for their US-only Accreditation Program for Online Patient Consultations [TTA 17 Dec 14]. First past the post in accreditation is American Well’s Amwell virtual visit app, which will shortly be listed on the ATA consumer website SafeOnlineHealth.orgRelease, MedCityNews….Stanford University, one of the five academic centers using the Apple ResearchKit, had a mind-boggling 11,000 signups for a heart health study–in 24 hours. The downside is that they may not be representative of the whole population [TTA 10 Mar, see 11 Mar update] including us Android users. 9to5Mac….The Google-Novartis glucose-measuring contact lens [TTA 17 July 14] for diabetes management just gained some Canadian competition–Medella Health in Kitchener, Ontario, founded by a team of very young researchers from the University of Waterloo. They believe that their go-to-market prices will be about $25/lens versus $250 from Google. Just so they don’t scratch.  HealthTech InsiderTelemedicine consult pilots just announced in Boston and New York. Mount Sinai in NY will be using doctor-patient consults for stroke, primary care, pediatric epilepsy (supporting an upstate health center) and for patient follow-up after an ED visit. In Boston, American Well’s WellConnection will be used by the Emerson Hospital Physician Organization and the Lowell General Hospital Physician Organization in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts’ Alternative Quality Contract program. mHealthNews (which confuses telehealth and telemedicine!)….Hackermania runs wild in Indiana, with St. Mary’s Medical Center, part of Ascension Health, notifying 4,400 patients of a cyberattack resulting in compromised data including SSI, names, insurance coverage and DOB. HealthcareITNews And open your copybook (or printer) for some lessons from the Anthem Breach, proposing a national patient identifier number to minimize the value of hacked records (no using SSI) and to help determine record identification. TheDoctorWeighsIn….And speaking of medical records, the almost-non-practicing-entity (a/k/a patent troll) MyMedicalRecords a/k/a MMRGlobal which owns a slew of PHR-related patents [TTA articles here] was told to ‘get out of town’ by the Central District of California court, invalidating five claims in a case against Walgreens, Quest Diagnostics and WebMD. The Electronic Frontier Foundation believes it’s the start of the end for the trolls in PHRs. They’ve moved on to life sciences–as the STRONG patent protection bill wends its way through Congress. MedCityNews

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