The answer, according to health tech industry analyst Laurie Orlov (Aging in Place Tech Watch, Boomer Health Tech Watch) is…not really. Despite its massive size (76 million in the US), spending power (by 2017, 70 percent of US disposable income), breadth (1946-64) and need (despite living longer, by 2030 37 million will be managing more than one chronic condition), most health apps, especially fitness apps, don’t resonate with boomers despite over 50 percent having smartphones. The reasons are many–they’re complicated, often hard to follow, view, and abandonment across all ages is still high. Even among Fitbit purchasers, abandonment is fully one-half. As income decreases, smartphone access also becomes a cuttable budget item. Much more in this paper published by the California Healthcare Foundation.
Taking our own transformation medicine: how to integrate digital health into healthcare
An antidote to Dan Munro’s top-down and pessimistic vision of healthcare transformation (having much in common with Ezekiel Emanuel’s, see below) are two parallel prescriptions on integrating digital health into our healthcare systems and maybe, just maybe, transforming it.
The first acknowledges basic reality: we have all the health tech and funding we need right now. We are way beyond the fictional one device, app or service that will deus ex machina and transform healthcare. What we in the field need to do is integrate them, measure (and integrate) the data, get these systems and services into the home and–interestingly–seek out atypical early adopters. Your users/patients may not be the sexiest market for cocktail party chatter–older adults, the developmentally or cognitively disabled–and you’ll have to think beyond smartphone apps, but here is an opportunity to make an impact on a real, large, high-need and open market which can improve care, outcomes and reduce/redistribute cost over time. How The Digital Health Revolution Will Become A Reality (TechCrunch) Hat tip to reader Paul Costello of Viterion Digital Health.
The second analyzes a key point often neglected in healthcare discussions but well-known to students of behavior, like marketers: the patient’s perception of value. (more…)
Are we in the midst of healthcare disruption–or not at all?
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]If you believe we are in the midst of a slow, tidal disruption of healthcare and the ascendancy of patient-centered care–to the point of Topolesque patient ownership–then you will be upset to tears by the contrarian assertions of Dan Munro in Forbes. He maintains that disruption isn’t what we think it is, but (and we cut to the chase here) it’s more like ‘process improvement’ and that it has to be driven by ‘K Street’ (translation: the street in Washington DC where Lobbyists Rule). Technology–patches on the flawed system. Doctors–desperately seeking to pay back their educational loans by picking the most lucrative specialties. (If they survive the internship and residency system without killing a patient or themselves; see The Misery of a Doctor’s First Days)
But..there’s more. (more…)
Is digital health going to add to Digital Big Brother Watching You?
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Doctor-Big-Brother.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]“They’re watching me on my phone. They’re watching me on Facebook. They’re even watching me when I want to hide. Machines are a form of intelligence, and they’re being built into everything.”–Dr Zeynep Tufekci
The world of digital health is largely based on tracking–via smartphones, wearables, watches–and analytics taking and modeling All That Data we generate. Are we in compliance with our meds? Are we exercising enough? How’s our A1c trending? Drinking our water? All this monitoring–online and offline–is increasingly of concern to Deep Thinkers like Dr Tufekci, a reformed computer programmer, now University of North Carolina assistant professor and self-proclaimed “techno-sociologist.” At IdeaFestival 2015, she took particular aim at Facebook (surprisingly, not at Google) for knowing a tremendous amount about us by our behavior, of course using it to anticipate and sell us on what we might want. The ethics of machine learning are still hazy and machines are prone to error, different than human error, and we haven’t accounted for machine error in our systems yet. Like that big health data that mistakes a daughter for her mother and drops critical health information from a patient’s EHR [TTA 29 Sep]. A thought-provoker to kick off your week. TechRepublic
Related: The Gimlet Eye took a squint at Big Brother Gathering and Monetizing Your Big Blinking Data–data mining, privacy and employer wellness programs–back in 2013, which means the Eye and Dr Tufekci should get together for coffee, smartphones off of course. While Glass is gone, the revolt against relentless monitoring is well-dramatized in the well-watched video, ‘Uninvited Guests’. And we can get equally scared about AI–artificial intelligence–like Steve Wozniak.
Blueprint Health’s 8th Demo Day: 8 new companies show their stuff
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/blueprint-health1.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]Last Friday, in the middle of a NYC nor’easter, Blueprint Health had its eighth Demo Day, where startup companies in this accelerator’s latest three-month Summer class, having worked on their innovations and developed a business plan, ‘graduate’ and ‘pitch’ their audience. There’s been a shift over the past few classes to B2B-oriented digital health, from reducing readmissions through geolocation (Position Health) to HIPAA compliance (HIPAAfix) to streamlined billing for chronic care management (Oculus Health), but half are more consumer-oriented companies, providing more accessible genetic testing (Bind Health), workplace stress reduction (Psocratic) and point of service lending to patients with high-deductible health plans (Crediyo). The other two companies are MedPilot (simplifying patient billing and debt through electronic billing) and DocDelta (streamlining provider talent search). Annually, Blueprint Health’s invites in about 20 digital health companies with an investment of about $20,000 each, has graduated 68 companies and hosts in their space over 24 digital health companies. Release. Company profiles.
Soapbox: The burning technological platform for person-centred care
Rising demands of an aging population are putting increasing pressure on care providers across health and social care. But the technology and thinking that can help alleviate some of those pressures is analogue in a digital world, argues Tom Morton of Communicare247.
Analogue thinking in a digital world
Integrated, person-centred care is seen as a driving force for building public services around individual needs. It aims to bring care out of the hospital and into the community and home to cope with the growing burden of the 3 million people who will have over three long-term conditions by 2018. It will also help acute hospitals to address the ever increasing costs associated with our aging population.
Meanwhile life in our homes and communities is becoming fragmented. One in four (2.9 million) people aged 65 and over feel they have no one to go to for help and support, according to a 2015 report from Age UK and The Campaign to End Loneliness(1). With research indicating that social isolation leads to higher mortality, what point is there keeping people out of hospital, if only they are left home alone, and without the necessary support?
Person-centred care will have minimal success if we do not recognise this fact; people need someone to look out for them. And current approaches are not building the foundations that society needs to help grasp the nettle of providing round-the-clock personal care. (more…)
Situations wanted, talent needed–list with us
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/crystal-ball.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]You don’t need a crystal ball to predict….As Summer winds down, thoughts turn to new situations and to fill those gaps in staff. Your Editors would like to assist those who are seeking a new situation–and those companies which have talent vacancies–in these pages. We are accepting new listings for both under the Jobs tab above. See ‘Who’s Available’ if you are looking, and ‘Who’s Hiring’ for positions. ‘Who’s Hiring’ is free for now; ‘Who’s Available’ will always be free as a service to our readers and for the digital health community.
Since 2005, Telehealth & Telecare Aware readers have been the most experienced and talented industry professionals in the UK, US, Europe and Australia. To reach them, you should be posting here. (And advertising–but that’s another story!)
Updated: We have two people now in ‘Available‘–a project manager with deep remote monitoring expertjse in UK and a Spanish industrial engineer with ‘silver market’ experience. No positions yet in ‘Hiring’–a missed opportunity. What company will be the first to correct this? For now, both types of listings are free.
‘Déjà vu all over again’ or critical mass? NYTimes looks at older adult care tech
“It’s like déjà vu all over again” as Yogi Berra, the fast-with-a-quip Baseball Hall of Fame catcher-coach-manager once said. About 2006-7, telecare broke through as a real-world technology and the tone of the articles then was much like how this New York Times article starts. But the article, in the context of events in the past two years, indicate that finally, finally there is a turning point in care tech, and we are on the Road to Critical Mass, where the build, even with a few hitches, is unstoppable.
Have telehealth, telecare, digital health or TECS (whatever you’d like to call it) turned the corner of acceptability? More than that, has it arrived at what industrial designer Raymond Loewy dubbed MAYA (Most Advanced Yet Acceptable) in keeping older adults safer and healthier at home? The DIY-installed Lively! system keeps an eye on a hale 78 year old (more…)
Digital health startups filling the gaps in Health Canada
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/RCAF_roundel_WWII.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /]Canada’s health system is nominally nationalized, but in a way that leaves large gaps in coverage–for long term, in home, specialty care and prescriptions–as well as variable by province. According to this article in HIT Consultant, VC funding is also thin on the ground, which leads to a short-term outlook. Local governments are stepping into the gap with innovation funding (similar to the Partnership for NYC) and the national government has eased restrictions on foreign investment. EHRs haven’t been a priority (skipping the troubles experienced in the US) which leaves digital health–telehealth, telemedicine and diagnostic apps–to enjoy the available talent and funding. This Editor doubts that any of the 20 profiled here will be familiar names other than possibly InterAxon which we noted at last year’s NYeC Digital Health Conference, and many tread the familiar ground of genomics, social sharing of medical images, and gamification for behavior change, but there are three unique companies in the neurological area in nerve stimulation (MyndTec), nerve disorder diagnostics imaging (NerveVision) and pharma (Oxalys.) We salute the Royal Canadian Air Force with their WW2 roundel on the anniversary of the Allied invasion of Sicily, July – August 1943
Breaking (holiday weekend) news: Aetna does the ‘deal deal’ with Humana
Crap Game (Don Rickles): Ya make a DEAL!
Big Joe (Telly Savalas): What kind of a deal?
Crap Game: A DEAL DEAL.
—Kelly’s Heroes (1970), on getting the German Tiger tank and commander to help them in their bank heist
A $37 bn deal, that is. Announced on the Friday before the US Independence Day holiday (a day which may define media ‘black hole’), Aetna and Humana announced either their merger or the acquisition by the former of the latter, depending on what account you read. If approved by the Feds, the combination of #3 and #4 insurers (by revenue) respectively will exceed 33 million insured, making the combined entity #3 in insured individuals (after UHG and Anthem) and #2 in revenue. The announcement also stated that Louisville, Kentucky, Humana’s current headquarters, will continue to manage the Medicare, Medicaid and military Tricare businesses. Both are in Medicare Advantage, which is problematic due to market share and anti-trust considerations in at least four states, according to Reuters. (Humana has about 20 percent of national Medicare Advantage private policies.) We’ve previously noted the unfavorable comparison to the end stages of airline deregulation–consolidation reducing competition and consumer-favorable pricing. No word on the future of the Humana brand and marketing, which has always been executed well.
As to the outlook for digital health support–the prognosis by this Editor of this combination is, in the Magic 8 Ball’s answer, ‘reply hazy, ask later’.
- Humana was known in the industry for being fairly open to opportunities and backed them with funding (Healthsense, Vitality, what remained of Healthrageous) under business such as Humana Cares. Humana at Home also owns a home care management company, SeniorBridge. Will this be of interest to Aetna in population health management, or an early ‘For Sale’?
- Aetna, by contrast, has pivoted several times. CarePass consumer apps was a patient engagement experiment that proved the point that policyholders don’t want apps from insurers. Healthagen (an acquisition) was first positioned as an ’emerging businesses’ skunkworks of sorts umbrella-ing over iTriage (now integrated into the parent), ActiveHealth, Medicity and other digital health/analytics related businesses, then scaled back in early 2014 [TTA 28 Feb 14]. Repositioned as ‘population health management, the ACO business dominates.
Various reports: Daily Mail, Forbes (which likes it not at all and sees none of the touted ‘economies of scale’) and the WSJ.
Call for presentation proposals: mHealth Summit (US)
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/mHealth2014_logo4c_FINAL-thumb.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]You have till 8 June to submit a proposal for a presentation at one of the largest digital health conferences in the US, the mHealth Summit (which is same place–near Washington D.C.–but a month earlier than usual–8-11 November). This year’s theme is “Anytime, Anywhere: Engaging Providers and Patients” and centered around one of five topics: clinical care, technology, patients and consumers, research, policy or business. The co-located Global mHealth Forum has a separate submittal process. Information and submittal link. Telehealth & Telecare Aware has been a media partner of the mHealth Summit US since 2010 and the 2015 Global mHealth App Developer Economics Study presented earlier this month at mHealth Summit Europe in Riga.
Politics, clinicians or demand holding back Australian digital health? The debate.
A familiar debate raged at the Connect Expo Future Health Summit in Melbourne this week [TTA 15 Apr]. Is lack of digital health adoption due to lack of political push, as Lyn Davies, managing director at Tunstall Healthcare, maintained? Australia continues to back the Personally Controlled EHR (PCEHR) to the tune of AU$1.1 billion so far, yet it is still not integrated into the healthcare system. Are clinicians allergic to technology qua technology projects, and need to be approached differently to adopt digital health, as Donna Markham, advisor to chief executive affairs at Monash Health, said? Is it people–the patients– not seeing any benefit to things like PCEHR, a lack of demand filtering down to the practice level, per Toby Hall, Group CEO of St Vincent’s Health Australia? There is a certain comfort in the issues not being much different in a smaller, centralized health system (as the US is not–and as we’ve learned from ISfTeH, in Germany telehealth adoption is low). What seems to be missing is a perspective on what individuals are doing with their own health management and tracking outside the system. TechRepublic Hat tip to David Trainor of Belfast’s Sentireal on David Doherty’s mHealth LinkedIn group (signup required).
NY Digital Health Accelerator 2015: call for applications
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/New_York_Digital_Health_Accelerator_534424_i0.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Deadline: 18 May. The third annual call for applications for the New York Digital Health Accelerator is now open. NYDHA, a joint program run by the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) and the Partnership Fund for New York City, is a five-month program for ten early- and growth-stage digital health companies in New York (or willing to locate in NY state). What makes the program distinctive in their view, in addition to being in NY, is that it offers unique exposure to top-level healthcare executives and venture capitalists while accelerating product development and access to capital. Certainly its 20+ partners come from the top level of NY healthcare companies and providers, such as Aetna, North Shore-LIJ Health System, Winthrop University Hospital, Rochester General, VNSNY, Mount Sinai and many others. 15 companies in the prior two years of the program have done extremely well, raising a total of nearly $41 million in additional capital post-program, securing 33 pilots and creating more than 120 jobs. Two were acquired: Avado and Remedy Systems. New for 2015: to encourage collaborative innovation, two companies can jointly apply to present a combined solution. NYDHA website, press release, FAQs on applying.
Call for papers: King’s Fund Digital Health and Care Congress June 2015
Deadline is Friday 13 February for abstract submissions
The King’s Fund Digital Health and Care Congress will be taking place on 16-17 June at The King’s Fund in London, with the theme Enabling patient-centred care through information and technology. Interested presenters should see below:
You are invited to present current or latest research results and/or report on the progress and impact of innovative projects. Authors are encouraged to submit papers to one of the main themes indicated below.
Accepted papers will be presented at the congress by one of the authors and published in a special congress supplement. Acceptance will be based on quality, relevance and originality.
Conference themes
Authors are invited to submit under the following themes:
*sustaining independence as people age
*preventing and managing chronic illness effectively
*engaging health care professionals and commissioners
*digitally enabling service transformation
More information is available on The King’s Fund web page here. (Please also see the PDF in the sidebar)
TTA has been a media partner of The King’s Fund conferences in 2014.
Tunstall’s challenging year: results reported
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Big-T-thumb-480×294-55535.gif” thumb_width=”150″ /]Breaking News. The topline of Tunstall Healthcare Group’s 2014 results (through 30 Sept 14) is now (partly) public thanks to the Yorkshire Post, Tunstall’s ‘hometown paper’. (We do note that it was published on 23 Dec, in the ‘dead of night’ rolling up to the Christmas holiday.) Notably, there is no report on the Tunstall website and it is too early to show on standard corporate reporting sites such as DueDil and CompanyCheck. The YP article appears to be written partly in press release-speak, which we do not fault them for on limited news available. In summary:
- In the 2014 FY ended 30 September, revenues were £215 million. FY2013 was £221 million, a decrease of £6 million (2.7 percent).
- A corresponding but greater EBITDA (earnings before interest taxation depreciation and amortization) drop to £43.0 million. FY 2013 was £52.7 million, a decrease of £9.7 million (18.4 percent).
- The good news: revenues up 6.8 percent in the Nordics, Southern Europe, Central Europe, and Australasia; Spain’s Televida as a market leader also a bright spot [TTA 19 Dec].
- No such good news in UK and the US (more…)
NYeC Digital Health: two diverging visions of a connected future (Part 1)
The New York eHealth Collaborative’s fourth annual Digital Health Conference is increasingly notable for combining both local concerns (NYeC is one of the key coordinators of health IT for the state) and nationally significant content. A major focus of the individual sessions was data in all flavors: big, international, private, shared and ethically used. Another was using this data in coordinating care and empowering patients. Your Editor will focus on this as reflected in sessions she attended, along with thoughts by our two guest contributors, in Part 2 of this roundup.
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Topol-Compressed.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The NYeC Conference was unique in presenting two divergent views of ‘Future IT’ and how it will affect healthcare delivery. One is a heady, optimistic one of powerful patients taking control of their healthcare, personalized ‘democratized medicine” and innovative, genetically-powered ‘on demand medicine’. The other is a future of top-down, regulated, cost-controlled, analyzed and constrained healthcare from top to bottom, with emphasis on standardizing procedures for doctors and hospitals, plus patient compliance.
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Topol-tech-adoption-compressed.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]First to Dr Topol in Monday’s keynote. The good side of people ‘wired’ to their phones is that it is symptomatic, not of Short Attention Span Theatre, but of Moore’s Law–the time technology is now taking for adoption by at least 25 percent of the US population is declining by about 50 percent. That means comfort with the eight drivers he itemizes for democratizing medicine and empowering the patient: sensors, labs, imaging, physical examination, records, costs, meds and ‘Uber Doc’.
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