Big home health win for telehealth confirms trend: must expand services, analytics

December 5, 2015 | by

One of the most logical places for telehealth, remote care management (RCM) and transitional/chronic condition management (TCM/CCM) is with home health providers and post-acute care, yet perennially it has been on the ‘maybe next year’ list for most telehealth providers. That ‘next year’ may be getting a little closer with the news that Intel-GE Care Innovations has inked a multi-year deal (no pilot-itis here) with major (~400 facilities) home health provider Amedisys using their PC/tablet-based Health Harmony platform.

The initial focus is an ambitious one: reducing hospitalizations and ER/ED visits among patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes, depression as well as patients who have two or more of these conditions (co-morbidities). The most interesting to this Editor is the parenthetical mention of analyzing ADLs (activities of daily living) with clinical data. Does this imply the engagement of their venerable ADL monitor QuietCare? (It’s something the founding company worked on circa 2006 while this Editor was there; one would think the analytics have advanced since then.) Another aspect is that Care Innovations will manage Amedisys’ complete RCM program from recruiting to logistics, data analytics and application integration services. Business Wire

What this means: Telehealth (and telecare) companies are now increasingly obliged in these big wins to provide a plethora of additional related services. Health care providers demand services beyond the monitoring technology. They want the turnkey package, from nurse evaluations, care coordination/management, to analytics and logistics.This ‘service creep’ implies alliances and mergers to add on to technological monitoring capabilities–and beaucoup financing. (more…)

ATA’s hottest trend: advancing to Healthcare 2.0 via personalized healthcare

May 12, 2015 | by

Guest columnist Dr Vikrum (Sunny) Malhotra attended ATA 2015 earlier this month. This is the third of three articles on his observations on trends and companies to watch.

For those who attended the American Telemedicine Association‘s meeting in Los Angeles, the overarching trend was how a personal healthcare system is taking shape. The three pillars include: care anywhere, care networking and care customization.

The ATA stage opened with a keynote speech by Dr Sanjay Gupta about celebrating new innovation and technology advancements. This is the year where healthcare models are being built around patients in the home to support patient autonomy.These three pillars of personalized healthcare are being made possible by disruptive technologies, wearables/implantables, social networks and analytic technologies to automate remote care. Wearables and biosensors allow patients to move anywhere without interfering with day to day schedules while allowing for optimized data collection.

Access to care anywhere has been a challenge and is becoming realized through providing cheaper wireless tools that takes it to far corners. Dr Gupta focused on the use of telemedicine for delivery of care and its utility for improving access. He endorsed it as a tool for providing care for those with limited healthcare accessibility and locally for more a mainstream solution to a larger healthcare problem. We have seen telemedicine become mainstream (more…)

ATA trend #2: is this the ‘second generation’ of remote patient monitoring?

May 8, 2015 | by

Guest columnist Dr Vikrum (Sunny) Malhotra attended ATA 2015 last week. This is the second of three articles on his observations on trends and companies to watch.

During the course of the ATA conference, I was inundated with the concept of “dumb” data whereby biosensors track patient clinical data and will alarm to clinical staff if outside designated parameters. However, the call center filter between the patient’s data and physician is often a primary cause of increased unnecessary admissions. The Sentrian Remote Patient Intelligence Platform (Sentrian RPI) received recognition for its advancement in utilization of sensors, enabling healthcare providers to utilize this “dumb” data and make it “smart”. For clinicians like myself, this was a new way of looking at an age old problem: “How do we safely and comprehensively support physician decision making at a standard high enough to detect pathologies earlier and more accurately?”

Sentrian has used machine learning to support the work of a dedicated clinical team by monitoring patient data 24/7 to detect subtle signs that warn a family member or care provider of future problems through biometric patterns of thousands of patients, comparing their medical histories, vitals and health information. This novel approach to remote monitoring won Sentrian the ATA President’s Innovation Award. (more…)

ATA 2015: Day 1 news

May 5, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/ATA-15-show-floor.jpg” thumb_width=”250″ /] HealthSpot/Xerox, Sentrian/Scripps, American Well, Honeywell, vitaphone, more

HealthSpot unveiled the first results of its partnership with (and investment by) Xerox, leveraging their HIT cloud infrastructure and back-end for the HealthSpot Station. The telehealth/virtual consult walk-in kiosk has targeted over 30,000 retail pharmacies with a newly developed consumer retail pharmacy personal health record (PHR). Upgraded patient and portal interfaces process insurance claims through a payment data feed and integrates with EMRs. Release….The US/UK predictive data/remote patient intelligence company Sentrian, winner of this year’s ATA Innovation in Remote Care award, is a part of a year-long 1,000-patient COPD remote patient monitoring study by the Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI) with members of Anthem’s CareMore health plan. The goal is to use the Sentrian platform data to accurately detect COPD patient decompensation in advance to reduce avoidable hospital readmissions, which on average in the US is 1 out of 11 within 30 days of discharge. Release….American Well launched a platform for individual physicians to connect with current patients (more…)

ATA announces award winners, Strategic Summit companies

April 24, 2015 | by

ATA announced the six winners of their Annual Awards recognizing innovators in telemedicine and telehealth for significant contributions, along with six new members of the ATA College of Fellows. One of the more intriguing winners (Innovation in Remote Care) is the US/UK company Sentrian which has built intelligent predictive data models (‘Remote Patient Intelligence’) that can monitor disease and co-morbidity in thousands of patients with the goal of preventing hospitalization and readmissions. Release. ATA has also selected 30 emerging companies to participate in the Telemedicine Investor and Strategic Summit  (more…)