Why they matter: the $225 million acquisition of Propeller Health; Hill-Rom’s integration of EarlySense’s bed monitor

December 12, 2018 | by

It’s all about the integration of newer technology and partnerships into established, older tech–or furniture. In late 2014, a seven-year-old early-stage company from Wisconsin had a booth at the NYeC Digital Health Conference. Their digital, connected monitors attached to prescription inhalers and tracking app interested this Editor enough for her to discuss it with a telehealth company she consulted for at the time as a natural fit for their digital remote monitoring of COPD and asthmatic patients. The startup had a few major clients, mainly drug companies, and would have been boosted by Viterion’s VA business. (Editor note: it didn’t go anywhere)

Flash forward to November 2018, and after $70 million in funding and marketing in 16 countries, integration with nearly 90 percent of commercial inhalers, Propeller Health is being acquired by the much larger ResMed for $225 million, closing in March 2019. This is surprising as Propeller never exceeded $10 million in revenue (Research2Guidance).

Why it matters: Propeller brings to ResMed’s older respiratory technology not only new yet proven technology, but also established partnerships with pharma, healthcare, and payer organizations. They inhabit a huge and growing worldwide market. According to WHO, asthma affects 334 million people worldwide; COPD 250 million people. Digital solutions could be targeting as many as 270 million patients by 2023. Propeller also brings eight US FDA 510(k) clearances and CE markings. All of this makes this small digital medical company worth a serious multiple of revenue with the prestige of being a standalone unit within ResMed led by the co-founder. Read more about it from Research 2 Guidance’s “ten major reasons” why Propeller was worth it, Mobihealthnews, and MedCityNews.

An even smaller monitoring company, Early Sense, has made a significant lift (sic) in a partnership with leading hospital bed manufacturer Hill-Rom. Early Sense has been featured at many CES Unveileds (New York) as one of many Israeli companies with a growing US presence. While starting in the hospital area years ago with bed and chair sensors, within the past two years this Editor noted their move into consumer with an under-mattress sleep sensor unit that could track (via an app) your sleep, stress, heart rate, breathing–and fertility. Their clinical version tracks heart and respiratory rates, alerted for patient falls out of bed, and patient movement (or lack thereof) as an indicator of risk for pressure ulcers. Hill-Rom, which claims to be the world leader in hospital beds, is adding the Early Sense technology to its Centrella model to create a smart hospital bed–one that will monitor heart and respiratory rates over 100 times a minute. A 2015 study quoted in the release stated that mortality related to “code blue” events was reduced by 83 percent, cardiac arrests by 86 percent, and reported overall hospital length-of-stay was reduced by 9 percent ICU days by 45 percent.

Why it matters: Even hospital equipment has to differentiate versus competition, and one way is going digital RPM integrated into the bed itself. The least expensive way of doing so is to buy new technology and incorporate in your ‘traditional’ offering. For the smaller company, it is worth its weight in gold in publicity and the potential business through the giant company. Release, MedCityNews, Mobihealthnews

The wind may finally be at the back of telehealth distribution and payment (US)

November 15, 2018 | by

Medicare Advantage may lead, but Medicaid and regular Medicare are not far behind. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced in two proposed rules changes expansion of telehealth access for both privately issued Medicare Advantage (MA) plans (26 Oct) and state-run Medicaid and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Plan) (14 Nov) plan members. This may mean greater acceptance by providers because they will be paid for these services.

For MA, the proposal would, starting in 2020 as part of government funded basic benefits, eliminate geographic restrictions (rural telehealth) and allow members in urban areas to access telehealth services. It would also broaden present location restrictions, allowing MA members to receive telehealth from home versus traveling to a health care facility. The most intriguing wording is here: “Plans would also have greater flexibility to offer clinically-appropriate telehealth benefits that are not otherwise available to Medicare beneficiaries.” which very well could mean remote patient monitoring in conjunction with visits. MA plans have always had more latitude to offer telehealth benefits to members, which are about 1/3 of Medicare-eligibles (over 65). Over 11 percent growth is forecast and it is highly competitive though dominated by United Healthcare and Aetna–over 600 new plans are entering the market next year. Enrollments close on 7 Dec for 2019. CMS.gov release, mHealth Intelligence, Healthcare Finance News.

For Medicaid and CHIP, which states use to extend insurance to low-income individuals and families via private plans, states would be able to, under an approved rule, to more flexibly determine what criteria determine telehealth access. Currently, states use proximity factors–distance from provider and time. The proposed criteria under 10. Network Adequacy (pages 15-16) recommends that time and distance be deleted and instead “adding a more flexible requirement that states set a quantitative minimum access standard (later listed) for specified health care providers and LTSS (long term services and supports) providers”. The reasons why are the limited supply of providers and the functional limitations of the LTSS population. Also notable was language in section 8 discussing access to provider directories via smartphone, as 64 percent of the population with incomes less than $30,000 own a smartphone and use it to access health information.  CMS proposed rule, POLITICO Morning eHealth

This adds to the momentum of the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule published on 1 Nov that added even more:

  • Virtual brief patient checkins and evaluation of patient-recorded photos and video to payments
  • CMS is also finalizing separate payments for three new codes covering chronic care remote physiologic monitoring that unbundle 99091 (CPT codes 99453, 99454, and 99457) and interprofessional internet consultation (CPT codes 99451, 99452, 99446, 99447, 99448, and 99449).
  • Two new codes covering telehealth for prolonged preventive services
  • Finalizing the addition of renal dialysis facilities and the homes of ESRD beneficiaries receiving home dialysis as originating sites
  • After 1 July, the home will be permitted as a permissible originating site for telehealth services furnished for purposes of treatment of a substance use disorder or a co-occurring mental health disorder. CMS.gov fact sheet 

The importance of this is that more digital health covered by Medicare and government payments in public/private programs such as Medicaid and MA lead private insurers to pay doctors for these services, who will then be willing to pay vendors for providing them. For the telehealth and telemedicine companies that have weathered the storms and lean times of the past decade, there may be light at the end of the tunnel that is not an oncoming train.

More good news for telehealth, RPM in FCC approval of $100M Connected Care Pilot Program

August 9, 2018 | by

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) moved relatively quickly to approve the Connected Care Pilot Program, approving broadband-enabled telehealth and remote patient monitoring services in underserved rural and remote areas. Funding for the program has been pegged at $100 million. The approval was unanimous on the program proposed by FCC commissioner Brendan Carr and Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker.

CCPP will provide $100 million for subsidies to hospitals or wireless providers running post-discharge remote monitoring programs for low-income and rural Americans. An example is those run by the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The goal is to lower same-cause readmissions and improve patient outcomes. [TTA 13 July] Hearings late last month also were structured to support the program and start to fill out the details for a 2019 start [TTA 1 Aug].

Public comments are now open for a 2019 start to the program (see FCC website–look under Connect2Health which is the umbrella site for this and similar programs). Commissioner Carr had to look no further than the VA to see how Home Telehealth and other remote monitoring programs worked to drive down cost and improve patient outcomes. VA Health’s remote monitoring program cost $1,600 per patient compared to $13,000 for traditional care in one study. The trick is now translating this into an open system.

This is a nice boost to both real-time video and asynchronous remote patient monitoring in market development (and getting paid) in areas of great need. It’s also another Federal signal (so to speak) for 2019, following the proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule’s increased payments and broader applicability for both.  mHealthIntelligence, Mobihealthnews, FCC Release Hat tip to reader Paul Costello of Medopad.

News roundup: FCC RPM/telehealth push, NHS EHR coding breach, unstructured data in geriatric diagnosis, Cerner-Lumeris, NHS funds social care, hospital RFID uses

July 13, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /]FCC backs post-discharge RPM plan. The “Connected Care Pilot Program” proposed by FCC commissioner Brendan Carr would provide $100 million for subsidies to hospitals or wireless providers running post-discharge remote monitoring programs for low-income and rural Americans such as those run by the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The goal is to lower readmissions and improve patient outcomes. The proposal still needs to be formalized so it would be 2019 at earliest. POLITICO Morning eHealth, Clarion-Ledger, Mobihealthnews

NHS Digital’s 150,000 patient data breach originated in a coding error in the SystmOne EHR used by GPs. Through the error by TPP, SystmOne did not recognize the “type 2 opt-out” for use of individual data in clinical research and planning purposes. This affected records after 31 March 2015. This breach also affects vendors which received the data, albeit unknowingly, but the duration of the breach makes it hard to put the genie back in the bottle, which NHS Digital would like to do. Inforisktoday, NHS Digital release

Unstructured data in EHRs more valuable than structured data in older adult patient health. A new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society compared the number of geriatric syndrome cases identified using structured claims and structured and unstructured EHR data, finding that the unstructured data was needed to properly identify geriatric syndrome. Over 18,000 patients’ unstructured EHR notes were analyzed using a natural language processing (NLP) algorithm.

Cerner buying a share in population health/value-based care management company Lumeris through purchasing $266 million in stock in Lumeris parent Essence Group Holdings. The angle is data crunching to improve outcomes for patients in Medicare Advantage and other value-based plans. Lumeris also operates Essence Healthcare, a Medicare Advantage plan with 65,000 beneficiaries in Missouri. Fierce Healthcare

NHS Digital awarding £240,000 for investigating social care transformation through technology. The Social Care Digital Innovation Programme in 12 councils will be managed by both NHS and the Local Government Association (LGA). Projects to be funded span from assistive technologies to predictive analytics. Six winners from the original group of 12 after three months will be awarded up to a further £80,000 each to design and implement their solutions. New Statesman

Curious about RFID in use in healthcare, other than in asset management, access, and log in? Contactless payments is one area. As this is the first of four articles, you’ll have to follow up in Healthcare IT News

CMS urged to further reimburse telehealth remote patient monitoring with three new CPT codes

June 14, 2018 | by

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which controls payments to doctors for the Medicare and state Medicaid programs, has been urged by 49 healthcare organizations and technology vendors to further unbundle the controlling CPT code for remote patient monitoring (RPM), 99091. The 2018 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Final Rule finally separated RPM from telemedicine remote visits by permitting separate payment for remote physiological data monitoring by unbundling CPT 99091 to reimburse for patient-generated health data (PGHD)–a new term. The letter to Administrator Seema Verma proposes 2019 adoption of three additional American Medical Association CPT Editorial Panel-developed codes which further break down various aspects of RPM, while maintaining 99091. 

CPT codes for Medicare and Medicaid are important because they also influence private insurers’ reimbursement policies. Practices which get paid for RPM are more likely to adopt enabling technologies if they are affordable within how they are paid. 

CMS started to include telehealth RPM in 2015 in a chronic care management code, 99490, but specifically prohibited the use of CPT 99091 in conjunction with CCM. This created a lot of confusion after some brief moments of hope by tying technology to a complex CCM model.

It’s possibly a ‘light at end of the tunnel’ development for hungry tech companies, but one which won’t be determined till end of year when PFS rules are released. Also Healthcare Dive.

Can chronic disease apps get adopted? Is it as simple as four steps? HBR states the obvious.

May 10, 2018 | by

“Why Apps for Managing Chronic Disease Haven’t Been Widely Used, and How to Fix It” is an enticing title, and in the Harvard Business Review no less.

Here’s the advice that two Harvard Business School professors have for app developers. First, find an organization–an employer, an integrated health system that includes a payer–that’s willing to pay for your app. Then work the “adopt-diffuse-use-improve” cycle. Get them to adopt it, diffuse it through potential users (as in getting them to try the app), get them to continue using it, and improve the product.

You have to sled through about 500 words of exposition to get to this conclusion, obvious to anyone who’s worked in the field more than a couple of months. And oh, as if these steps were so easy to achieve! There’s the given example of Fitbit buying the Twine Health tracking/coaching app in a bid for a more integrated chronic disease management (CDM) approach–for those who’ve tracked Fitbit, and even the professors, its success remains to be seen. 

There are some nuggets of confirmation useful for presentations, such as you can’t generally sell monitoring apps direct to consumer because managing chronic disease is largely something to be avoided, except for the few with a different attitude, and most believe that insurers should pay for them at least in part. For clinicians, reimbursement and the differential between remote patient monitoring and in-person visits is a big factor.

What’s not mentioned: sustainable pricing that’s low enough for a health system, high enough to support a business; clinicians fitting All That Data into a clinical workflow, much less a patient record in an EHR. 

Digital health is not here. Or it is. Or it’s still “the future” and we’re waiting for the ship to come in.

February 23, 2018 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/long-windy-road.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Another bit of convergence this week and last is the appearance of several articles, closely together, about digital health a/k/a health tech or ‘Dr. Robot’. It seems like that for every pundit, writer, and guru who believes “We’ve Arrived”, there’s some discouraging study or contra-news saying “We’re Nowhere Near The New Jerusalem”. This Editor’s been on the train since 2006 (making her a Pioneer but not as Grizzled as some), and wonders if we will ever Get There. 

Nearing Arrival is the POV of Naomi Fried’s article in Mobihealthnews giving her readers the keys to unlock digital health. “Digital health will be the dominant form of non-acute care.” It has value in chopping through the thicket of the low clinical impact technologies that dominate the current scene (Research2Guidance counted only 325,000 health apps and 3.6bn downloads in 2017). Where the value lies:

  1. Diagnosis and evaluation–devices that generate analyzable data
  2. Virtual patient care–telehealth and remote patient monitoring
  3. Digiceuticals–digital therapeutics delivered via apps
  4. Medication compliance–apps, sensors, games, ingestibles (e.g. Proteus) 

At the Arrival Platform and changing the timetable is machine learning. Already algorithms have grown into artificial neural networks that mimic animal learning behavior. Though the descriptions seem like trial and error, they are fast cycling through cheap, fast cloud computing. Machine learning already can accurately diagnose skin cancer, lung cancer, seizure risk, and in-hospital events like mortality [TTA 14 Feb]. It’s being debated on how to regulate them which according to Editor Charles Lowe will be quite difficult [TTA 25 Oct 17]. Returning to machine learning, its effect on diagnosis, prognosis, and prediction may be seismic. Grab a coffee for The Training Of Dr. Robot: Data Wave Hits Medical Care (Kaiser Health News). Hat tip to EIC Emeritus Steve Hards.

The (necessary?) bucket of Cold Water comes from KQED Science which looked at two studies and more, and deduced that the Future Wasn’t Here. Yet.:

  1. NPJ Digital Medicine’s 15 Jan meta-analysis of 16 remote patient monitoring (RPM) studies using biosensors (from an initial scan of 777) and found little evidence that RPM improves outcomes. The researchers found that many patients are not yet interested in or willing to share RPM data with their physicians. The fact that only 16 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) made the cut is indicative of the lack of maturity (or priority on research) for RPM. 
  2. In JMIR 18 Jan, a systematic review of 23 systematic reviews of 371 studies found that efficacy of mobile health interventions was limited, but there was moderate quality evidence of improvement in asthma patients, attendance rates, and increased smoking abstinence rates. 

Even a cute tabletop socially assistive robot given to COPD patients that increases inhaler medication adherence by 20 points doesn’t seem to cut hospital readmissions. The iRobot Yujin Robot helping patients manage their condition through medication and exercise adherence lets patients admit that they are feeling unwell so that a clinician could check on them either through text or phone and if needed to see their regular doctor. The University of Auckland researchers recommended improvements to the robot, integration to the healthcare system, and comparisons to other remote monitoring technology. JMIR (18 Feb), Mobihealthnews.

As Dr. Robert Wachter of UCSF put it to the KQED reporter, we’re somewhere on the Gartner Hype Cycle past the Peak of Inflated Expectations. But this uneven picture may actually be progress. Perhaps we are moving somewhere between the Slough (ok, Trough) of Disillusionment and the Slope of Enlightment, which is why it’s so confusing?

Telemedicine’s still-sluggish adoption in health systems revealed in survey of health system executives

February 16, 2018 | by

Sage Growth Partners, a Baltimore Maryland-based healthcare research and strategy firm, released a study surveying US C-level executives and service line leaders at a variety of larger health systems (integrated delivery networks (IDNs), academic medical centers (AMCs), community hospitals, and specialty hospitals) on their telemedicine use. It combined initial/exploratory qualitative interviews (total N=65) with online quantitative surveys (completed N=98) taken 2nd Quarter 2017.

Have we reached a tipping point? The findings indicated that just over 50 percent (56 percent) had developed in-house telemedicine systems or were already working with vendor/s on implementing telemedicine in their organizations. The study’s definition of telemedicine was broad, inclusive of any technology and programs that connect providers and patients not physically at the same location when care is provided. 

But many of the findings are dismaying:

  • Budgets–limited at best. Most (66 percent) had budgets under $250,000 per year 34 percent committed over $250,000 with most under $100,000, but three-quarters believe those budgets will increase next year. 
  • What it’s used for: Emergency use (29 percent), remote patient home monitoring (21 percent, and non-emergency cases (20 percent). 
  • How many vendors do they want to deal with?: One is quite enough–54 percent prefer a single telemedicine solution across the continuum of care (however defined), with 31 percent accepting two solutions. 
  • Has it changed the ‘standard of care’?: Yes for stroke, according to 70 percent surveyed. 75 percent believe it will potentially change the standard of care for behavioral health/psychiatry, followed by neurology (53 percent), primary care (52 percent), and cardiology (48 percent).
  • What about direct-to-consumer telemedicine?: The top must-haves are EMR integration, appointment scheduling, and store-and-forward messaging (60+ percent). What’s surprisingly not so desired: store-and-forward of images (47.9 percent–so much for home wound management) and vitals capture (45.9 percent–so much for connecting devices to telemedicine).

Perhaps it’s this Editor looking at the ‘glass half-full’ with a ‘Gimlet Eye’, but here we are in February 2018 still having this discussion at the executive and service line levels. The progress has been glacial at best on starvation budgets, yet telemedicine vendors are multiplying. What is also not promising: these executives’ preference for enterprise solutions which preclude small, innovative companies from getting past the pilot or trial phase. Another barrier: the insistence upon EMR (EHR) integration, which sounds appropriate except that Cerner and EPIC are ‘walled gardens’. Defining Telemedicine’s Role: The View from the C-Suite (PDF, free download from Sage). Also Clinical Innovation + Technology and Global Healthcare 

Rounding up what’s news: LindaCare, TytoCare funding; Medicare telehealth parity, Norway’s big cyberhack, Virta reversing diabetes, DARPA’s 60th birthday

February 9, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”100″ /]Your Editor’s been away and then largely out of pocket over the past two weeks. Here’s our roundup/catchup beyond the bombshells:

In remote patient monitoring for chronic disease, Philips, PMV, and other investors invested €7 million ($8.6 million) in Belgium’s/Hartford CT’s LindaCare. The Series B funding will accelerate its US expansion of OnePulse for remote monitoring of chronic heart failure and cardiac arrhythmia patients with Cardiac Implanted Electronic Devices (CIED). It is in use in major European hospitals and in US trials, though there is no mention in the release or on their website on CE Marking or FDA clearance/clinical trials. Previously from its 2013 founding, it had €1.6 million in funding. Also Mobihealthnews.

TytoCare, a remote monitoring telehealth/video consult platform which integrates peripherals for a virtual physical exam, raised $25 million in a Series C round led by large Chinese insurer Ping An via their Global Voyager Fund plus Walgreens, Fosun Group, OrbiMed, LionBird, and Cambia Health Solutions. Release. Their total raise is $45.6 million since 2012 (Crunchbase). Their most current partnership is with Long Island-based Allied Physicians Group which is featuring at-home telehealth visits at its pediatric practice in Plainview.

More favorable Medicare reimbursement for telehealth is the subject of four US Congressional bills. The one furthest along is the ‘Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic Care Act of 2017’ (S.870), which aims to improve at-home care, increases Medicare Advantage flexibility, gives ACOs more options and expands telehealth capabilities for stroke and dialysis patients. It passed the Senate in September and now goes to the House Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. The effect of all four is on Medicare payment parity with in-office visits, which does not currently exist and is not affected by the various state parity bills on insurance for those below 65. American Well touts a 10-fold growth in revenue, but the likelihood of any of these four bills being signed into law is small, particularly with a pending report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Becker’s Hospital Review

Norway released at end of January news on an “advanced and persistent” 8 January cyberattack on Health South East RHF. This has both a health breach and military twist.

(more…)

Medtronic, American Well mega-partner for telehealth + telemedicine for chronic care

October 21, 2017 | by

Boston-based American Well and Dublin-based Medtronic announced this week a partnership to integrate telemedicine and telehealth for chronic care management, targeting complex, chronic and co-morbid patients. Under the agreement, American Well’s telemedicine services will integrate into Medtronic Care Management Services (MCMS) video-enabled telehealth platforms for remote patient monitoring and video consults. The goal is to provide more information so that clinicians gain a more complete view of a patient’s health status when making care decisions, thus reducing the cost of care and improving patient outcomes. Care for patients with multiple chronic conditions accounts for over 70 percent of healthcare spending, according to an AHRQ study.

American Well is currently partnered with 250 healthcare partners in the US and more than 750 health systems and 975 hospitals, along with most major health plans. MCMS has two video telehealth platforms including the mobile NetResponse and the LinkView Wi-Fi tabletop. Their most recent activity is with the Midwest’s Mercy healthcare system for data sharing and analysis to gather clinical evidence for medical device innovation and patient access. MCMS platforms are also being integrated into the VA’s Home Telehealth program [TTA 6 Feb and 15 Feb]. It indicates that Medtronic is seeking to grow its telehealth device business, which has largely (except for VA) been a backwater in the immense Medtronic empire.

This is a very logical and in this Editor’s estimation, overdue type of partnership between a telehealth provider to enhance telehealth and RPM. (An easy bet: expect Teladoc to follow with another telehealth provider)

American Well/Medtronic release, Healthcare Informatics, MassDevice

Want to know effectiveness of telehealth, interoperability? NQF reports take their measure.

September 15, 2017 | by

There’s been an increase in doubt about the efficacy of telemedicine (virtual visits) and telehealth (vital signs monitoring) as a result of the publication of two recent long-term studies, one conducted by the University of Wisconsin and the other by CCHSC for Telemonitoring NI [TTA 13 Sep]. These follow studies that were directionally positive, and in a few cases like the VA studies conducted by Adam Darkins, very much so, but mostly flawed or incomplete (low N, short term, differing metrics). What’s missing is a framework for assessing the results of both. In an exceptionally well-timed announcement, the National Quality Forum (NQF) announced their development of a framework for assessing the quality and impact of telehealth services. 

In a wonder of clarity, the NQF defines telehealth’s scope as telemedicine (live patient-provider video), store-and-forward (e.g. radiology), remote patient monitoring (telehealth), and mobile health (smartphone apps). Measurement covers four categories: patients’ access to care, financial impact to patients and their care team, patient and clinician experience, and effectiveness of clinical and operational systems. Within these categories, NQF identified six areas as having the highest priority for measurement: travel, timeliness of care, actionable information, added value of telehealth to provide evidence-based practices, patient empowerment, and care coordination. Finally, the developing committee identified 16 measures that can be used to measure telehealth quality.

The NQF also issued a similar framework for interoperability, a bête noire that has led many a clinician and developer to the consumption of adult beverages. Again there are four categories: the exchange of electronic health information, its usability, its application, and its impact—on patient safety, costs, productivity, care coordination, processes and outcomes, and patients’ and caregivers’ experience and engagement. And it kept the committee very busy indeed with, from the release, “53 ideas for measures that would be useful in the short term (0-3 years), in the mid-term (3-5 years) and in the long-term (5+ years). It also identified 36 existing measures that serve as representative examples of these measure ideas (sic) and how they could be affected by interoperability.”

Both reports were commissioned and funded a year ago by the US Health & Human Services Department (HHS). We will see if these frameworks are extensively used by researchers.

NQF release, Creating a Framework-Telehealth (download link), Creating a Framework-Interoperability (download link), Mobihealthnews 

Can technology meet increasing demand for social care? (N. Somerset UK)

September 12, 2017 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Could-you-care.jpg” thumb_width=”100″ /]North Somerset Council (west of Bristol in UK’s mid-southwest) provides care for more than 2,800 people. Their budget for adult social care this year is £65.3million. Yet even with this large budget, the trend is not its friend, according to Hayley Verrico, the council’s assistant director of adult support and safeguarding. In addition to the demand created by more older people and the ‘old-old’ growing frailer, there are special needs children who enter adult social care. The priority is to enable them to stay at home. Will this increased demand be met by technology? Ms. Verrico believes so, giving examples such as telecare and assistive technology for PERS, automatic tap (water) shutoffs, and door/wander sensors. The paradox is that carers also need to be trained in the meaningful monitoring and support management part of home care, transitional care, and encouraging that person to be more independent in activity, versus the traditional hands-on part of direct care.

This story is a chirping canary in the mine in UK, EU and the US. The last situation is in a way worse. Not only are we in the US not set up for community-wide maintaining of adults at home, but also most direct care workers are paid in the bottom quarter of US hourly wages with few perceived opportunities for advancement. Beyond monitoring, how do we handle the next meaningful step–telehealth and RPM?  North Somerset Times

The Nightingale-H2020 project for wireless acute care (UK/EU)

June 12, 2017 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/nightingale.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Susanne Woodman of BRE, our Eye on Tenders, is following the Nightingale-H2020 project for acute care–and if you are in the wireless or wearable remote monitoring business, you should be too. It is a pre-commercial procurement project (PCP) that invites the European healthcare industry to develop wireless solutions for patient in-hospital and home monitoring. Deriving from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 grant, the process started last year with a €5 million award and in the spring had two Open Market Consultation meetings. Q&As from these meetings were recently released. The official tender will be released this November on the EU website Tenders Electronic Daily (TED). For more information, consult the Nightingale PCP website and their useful PDF on the process. @Nightingale_EU

ATA 2017 dispatch: Devices and doom

April 25, 2017 | by | 1 Comment

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Drowning-in-paper.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Bruce Judson, our guest ATA 2017/Telehealth 2.0 reporter, is a bestselling author of books on business and technology issues in the evolving digital era. This is the third and final article this week he’s written from the ATA floor. Mr. Judson writes frequently for The Huffington Post. More on about him may be found in our review of his critique of the RAND telehealth study [25 Mar].

This Editor agrees with his POV that drowning doctors in more and more data, whether previously accessible or not, isn’t a way forward to a successful business model. The current data is overwhelming–and not interoperable with EHRs. More and more data, looking for a home….

Orlando, April 26. Yesterday, I set aside several hours to walk by the booths of the 200+ exhibitors at the ATA show. As I slowly walked the Exhibit Hall, I was struck by the large number of in-home telehealth patient monitoring devices. (Names are omitted to protect the innocent.)

Colleagues had similar reactions. When I asked about exhibitors, the most common response was “I had no idea there were so many new telehealth monitoring devices that are FDA approved or in the process of obtaining approval.”

As I wandered from booth to booth, I was also struck by the failure of so many, if not most, monitoring device manufacturers to focus on the practical uses of their truly revolutionary technologies. At each monitoring device booth, I asked the same question, “How will the data be used?”  All too often, the answer was, “We provide daily patient data for physicians that have never been accessible before, and doctors receive daily graphs.”

My follow-up questions were always, “You believe busy doctors will look at data on their large patient population each day? Why don’t you provide alerts?” Again, there was a frequent answer, which was some variation of “Yes, now doctors can see daily events which will lead to extraordinary improvements in health outcomes, and we don’t want to create alert fatigue” (false positives that suggest a problem where one does not exist).

In my view, monitoring devices without suites of robust predictive analytics will fail. Doctors are already too busy, and anything that adds to their workload is immediately suspect. Moreover, we still live in a fee for service world, and now we are talking about new, uncompensated work.

As Jonathan Linkous said to me on the first day of the ATA show, “the technology is a tool to provide the service,” not the service itself. Patient monitoring device firms must realize they are offering a service. To succeed, their services must provide actionable analysis, not more and more data. If alerts are ready for prime time, then doctors will value the devices: They can rely on the associated algorithms to indicate when an intervention (also to be compensated) is needed.

Moreover, I strongly suspect doctors would prefer a few false alerts, with algorithms biased toward safety and results that can be quickly checked via the underlying data, as compared to wading through charts looking for anomalies.

A fundamental question for anyone is “what business are you really in?” To succeed, many of the ATA exhibitors need to reorient themselves from the business of providing great technology to the business of providing great service enabled by technology.

Mr. Judson’s first article, a discussion with ATA’s Jonathan Linkous on business models for telehealth is here. The second article on Mercy Health’s catalyzing telehealth innovation at the hospital level is here.

Health execs’ wish list for 2017: security, analytics, pop health…and telehealth (US)

January 6, 2017 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2017-upgrade-HITN-survey.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]Healthcare IT News published the results of their October survey of 95 healthcare executives as to their forward plans (resolutions?) for 2017. It’s unsurprisingly centered on upgrades to the following areas:

  • Data security (52 percent)–definitely making up for lost time and spending due to the obvious threats from hacking and data breaches. In November alone, nearly two incidents a day (57) and over 458,000 records were reported by healthcare entities to HHS. (Protenus Breach Barometer)
  • Data analytics (51 percent)–figuring out what to do with all that patient data generated by….
  • Patient engagement and population health (44 percent each)–demanded by quality standards in CMS’ MACRA Quality Payment Program (QPP), including the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and the Advanced Alternative Payment Models (APMs)
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2017-introduce-investigate-HITN-survey.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]The surprises come here–the technologies they expect to introduce or investigate. Analytics and workflow correspond to the last two points above, but what is compelling is an apparent tipping point for technology which links the patient to care monitoring and access: telehealth (44 percent), smart medical devices (41 percent) and remote patient monitoring (34 percent). These overlap (as in telehealth and RPM require smart medical devices), yet these are strong numbers if they accurately reflect these execs’ actual (or eventual) spending. (Does it point to more clinically validated use of trackers like Fitbit? The Magic 8 Ball does not tell here….)

The presence of 2016-17’s ‘It Girl’, precision medicine (21 percent), which applies both data analytics and genomics to improve patient outcomes, isn’t surprising with the emphasis on quality care.

One can quibble that the sample size is small N, and the report doesn’t confirm the selection details like title, location, and type of organization, but the direction has to be cheering on many fronts. HITN’s overview, survey results (16 slides)

AHRQ ‘evidence map’ pinpoints chronic condition telehealth, telemental health (US)

July 6, 2016 | by

The US Government’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released a final and fairly positive report analyzing telehealth effectiveness. It was a meta-review of 58 systematic research reviews on telehealth. Criteria were that the studies could examine real time or asynchronous telehealth, onsite or at distance, and that the patient interacted with healthcare providers for the purposes of treatment, management, or prevention of disease.

The abstract’s conclusions are positive for remote patient monitoring (RPM) for chronic conditions and for telemental health:

  • Positive outcomes came from the use of telehealth for several chronic conditions and for psychotherapy as part of behavioral health
  • The most consistent benefits were when telehealth was used for communication and counseling, plus remote monitoring in chronic conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory disease
  • The improvements were in outcomes such as mortality, quality of life and reductions in hospital admissions

POLITICO’s Morning eHealth has additional and most interesting background. The AHRQ was tasked by two Senators, John Thune (R-SD) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) to analyze telehealth for effectiveness through a literature review and “to give a government’s view – not an industry-funded study or a poorly-conducted academic study – on what the technology could do if, for instance, Medicare paid for more of it.” The December draft seemed to be ambiguous on telehealth studies to date, citing uneven quality and the poor definition of telehealth. (more…)