News roundup: Paradromics; Cerner’s trials with DOD, VA; Medtronic; Babylon Health; NHS’ private data

June 28, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /]Connecting the brain with medical devices is Paradromic’s USP. Their brain-machine interface technology is seeking to power prosthetics to assist the blind, deaf, and paralyzed, and in future brain diseases. Their current project is to enable the paralyzed to communicate through a computer in real time. Their seed round of $7 million was led by Arkitekt Ventures and Synergy Ventures. Crunchbase. Mobihealthnews

The US Department of Defense’s replacement of the ancient AHLTA EHR with a Cerner-Leidos system, MHS Genesis, has been having a rough test period at Fairchild Air Force Base, Oak Harbor, and Naval Station Bremerton. No one is happy. Congress will exercise its right under the just-passed HR 4245 for the House Veterans Affairs Committee to review the implementation and to receive quarterly updates. POLITICO’s Morning eHealth for 6/25  Over at the VA, Cerner’s EHR will roll out starting in October in three hospitals in Washington state, to be completed by March 2020. The VA Committee has been asking some tough questions on the feedback that VA doctors have been providing, the fact that VA is under-strength on the modernization and that there is no permanent head of the implementation. POLITICO’s Morning eHealth for 6/27

Medtronic, the 9,000 elephant of healthcare devices, is partnering with AI-based nutrition platform Nutrino, an AI-powered personalized nutrition platform. Nutrino’s FoodPrint Report technology will integrate into Medtronic’s iPro2 myLog app that connects to their continuous glucose monitor. Users log their food by taking a picture of each snack or meal. The patient’s sensor glucose data is integrated with the food data for a Pattern Snapshot report and a FoodPrint report. Nutrino recently gained $8 million in Series A funding. Mobihealthnews

Babylon Health passes the test–the British GP test. Babylon recreated the MRCGP (Member of the Royal College of General Practitioners) exam based on publicly available questions. Its AI system passed with a score of 81 percent. A separate test subjected Babylon and seven primary care physicians to 100 independently-devised symptom sets, and Babylon passed with an 80 score. GPs…it’s coming. Mobihealthnews 

The NHS will be partnering with a repository of private healthcare data, the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN), to integrate their data with NHS Digital. PHIN has committed to reporting 750,000 privately funded hospital “episodes” to NHS Digital each year through the Acute Data Alignment Programme (ADAPt), Mobihealthnews

Google’s ‘Medical Brain’ tests clinical speech recognition, patient outcome prediction, death risk

June 28, 2018 | by | 2 Comments

Google’s AI division is eager to break into healthcare, and with ‘Medical Brain’ they might be successful. First is harnessing the voice recognition used in their Home, Assistant, and Translate products. Last year they started to test a digital scribe with Stanford Medicine to help doctors automatically fill out EHRs from patient visits, which will conclude in August. Next up, and staffing up, is a “next gen clinical visit experience” which uses audio and touch technologies to improve the accuracy and availability of care.

The third is research Google published last month on using neural networks to predict how long people may stay in hospitals, their odds of re-admission and chances they will soon die. The neural net gathers up the previously ungatherable–old charts, PDF–and transforms it into useful information. They are currently working with the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Chicago with 46 billion pieces of anonymous patient data. 

A successful test of the approach involved a woman with late-stage breast cancer. Based on her vital signs–for instance, her lungs were filling with fluid–the hospital’s own analytics indicated that there was a 9.3 percent chance she would die during her stay. Google used over 175,000 data points they saw about her and came up with a far higher risk: 19.9 percent. She died shortly after.

Using AI to crunch massive amounts of data is an approach that has been tried by IBM Watson in healthcare with limited success. Augmedix, Microsoft, and Amazon are also attempting AI-assisted systems for scribing and voice recognition in offices. CNBC, Bloomberg

Some more views on (and by) Atul Gawande on the JP Morgan-Berkshire-Amazon health combine

June 28, 2018 | by

Often the best indicator of the success of a person in a new venture is to examine their own words. An interview with Dr. Gawande in STAT a few days after the Big Reveal of his new position as CEO of the JPM-BH-Amazon healthcare nonprofit indicates that he has an excellent grasp of the task before him. His main points:

  • Before accepting the position, he established that the healthcare company would be an independent entity and not part of the three companies
  • It is also non-profit and not expected to return money to those companies
  • He will be devoting 100 percent to the new job and have it be the number one priority, but he will be with patients and his surgery through at least the summer
  • “My job for them is to figure out ways that we’re going to drive better outcomes, better satisfaction with care, and better cost efficiency with new models that can be incubated for all. That is a tall fricking order. But what they’re saying to me is that resources won’t be the problem. Human behavior will be. And achieving scale will be.”

His speech at AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) annual meeting a day after the announcement pointed out that unnecessary tests and treatments account for about 30 percent of healthcare spending, that our system fails the chronically ill in their needs to be asked about what they want to achieve through treatment, and for doctors to deliver the right and considerate treatment especially in end-of-life care. “Precision medicine has to be matched by precision delivery.”  Healthcare Finance

For the 1 million employees of the three companies, there may not be a lot of chronic illness or end-of-life consideration (people tend to fall out of the workforce under those circumstances). What kind of model will apply to them and save on the 25 percent of estimated healthcare spending which is wasted? The article in Forbes by another ‘big thinker’, Robert Pearl MD, sees a 5-10 year time frame for Dr. Gawande’s task: “…to fundamentally change how healthcare is structured, paid for and provided. He was hired to disrupt the industry, to make traditional health plans obsolete, and to create a bold new future for American healthcare.”

But in the meantime, how will those bank tellers, packers, IT workers, ice cream slingers, and railway workers fare with their health? What will they benefit from in two to three years time? And will the long-term backing and the promises to Dr. Gawande remain after Mr. Dimon, Mr. Buffett, and Mr. Munger (of BH, and possibly why Dr. Gawande is on board) are gone?

The 50,000 foot pick as CEO of the JP Morgan Chase-Berkshire Hathaway-Amazon health joint venture

June 21, 2018 | by | 2 Comments

US healthcare is abuzz at the choice that JP Morgan Chase-Berkshire Hathaway-Amazon made to head their healthcare JV: Dr. Atul Gawande, currently practicing general and endocrine surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and teaching as a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gawande is presently an executive director of Ariadne Labs, a healthcare innovation center, a writer of four best sellers on healthcare and noted as an outspoken theorist on how the ‘broken’ healthcare system in the US can be fixed. (This Editor’s definition of ‘broken’ is slightly different, encompassing countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, post-WWII Germany, and the Ceausescu-era Romania where the basics are simply not there for the average person.)

Dr. Gawande will transition to chairman of Ariadne and retain his surgical and teaching positions.

Praise for Dr. Gawande comes from many quarters. Andy Slavitt, the former head of CMS during the previous administration, said “There are few better people in health care” and praised his ‘moral leadership’ when approached by Messrs. Dimon, Bezos, and Buffett. Jeff Bezos: “We said at the outset that the degree of difficulty is high and success is going to require an expert’s knowledge, a beginner’s mind, and a long-term orientation. Atul embodies all three, and we’re starting strong as we move forward in this challenging and worthwhile endeavor.”

What is missing from this sterling public health advocate and practitioner’s resumé is obvious: real business management experience. Among his three soon-to-be-bosses, there is plenty of pontificating from 50,000 feet–for but one example, see this Editor’s POV on Jamie Dimon’s annual shareholder letter [TTA 10 Apr]. Here is what they stated as the purpose of the JV back in January: “partnering on ways to address healthcare for their U.S. employees, with the aim of improving employee satisfaction and reducing costs” and setting up an independent company “free from profit-making incentives and constraints. The initial focus of the new company will be on technology solutions that will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.” And more in that vein. (Whew!) It was eye-rolling, even shortly after the announcement back in February.

But actually getting this done is not a TEDTalk. First, there is the hard in-the-trenches work to bring both the management and the 1 million employees of three very different companies onto the same page. Second, it is running the gauntlet of regulations on the national level (that CMS and HHS) plus in 50 states, if this combine chooses to operate as an insurer or PBM. Third, if they don’t, there is getting the cooperation of insurers (payers) who aren’t in business to lose money. There is not only regulation, but also what they are willing and can afford to do. This Editor noted back in January that large companies, including these three, “generally self-insure for healthcare. They use insurers as ASO–administrative services only–in order to lower costs. Which leads to…why didn’t these companies work directly with their insurers to redo health benefits? Why the cudgel and not the scalpel?”

This Editor would expect that a group of skilled senior, operationally focused executives will be hired to work under Dr. Gawande in Boston, where this unnamed-yet venture will be headquartered. There may be some more high-profile senior executives with unconventional backgrounds. From this (lower than 50,000 feet) perspective, Dr. Gawande will be the attention-getting CEO, spokesman, and pace-setter; others will be doing the heavy lifting behind the scrim. 

Beyond the usual glowing coverage on CNBC and TechCrunch, those in the business of healthcare are already expressing more sanguine opinions on the enterprise and how Dr. Gawande will be leading it with multiple medical, teaching, and writing commitments. Modern Healthcare has a fairly balanced article.

Instant GP, don’t even add water; Babylon Health taps into the corporate market via insurer Bupa (UK)

June 21, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/instant-gp-300×300.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Is digital health gaining some traction in the UK? One insurer is making the bet. Earlier this week, Babylon Health announced a UK partnership with Bupa’s corporate insurance area to open Babylon’s digital health services to corporate employees insured by Bupa.  Bupa’s Instant GP app offers these employees Babylon services, such as the ability to book virtual appointments with GPs, be transferred to specialists, and receive prescriptions. The app is free to download through the Apple App Store or Google Play for Bupa-covered employees.

Bupa and Babylon have been working together in a limited way since 2015–see this Bupa press release.

Some extras for employees in the program: unlimited 24/7 online GP consultations; Babylon’s clinical triage service, and access to the Babylon’s new “digital twin” service. This medical assessment method works with a smartphone tapping key parts of their body. It’s being previewed by Bupa and is scheduled to be released nationwide later this year.

Reportedly Bupa is seeking to provide Babylon services to their UK SME business (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises) later this year. Telegraph (paid access for full article), Digital Health News

For Babylon, it’s been an extraordinarily busy time. They have a new agreement with Samsung to be included in Samsung Health on smartphones [TTA 14 June], and China’s Tencent offering of Babylon through their WeChat platform. Babylon also recently announced passing the 26,500 patient mark with London NHS GP at Hand.

The Theranos Story, ch. 51: how Holmes wasn’t Steve Jobs despite the turtlenecks–a compare and contrast

June 20, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/jacobs-well-texas-woe1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Did Elizabeth Holmes ‘misunderstand’ Steve Jobs’ methods or was there something more deliberate at work? This article by tech entrepreneur Derek Lidow in Forbes gives her the benefit of the doubt but is still damning. His points in summary are:

  • Holmes ran Theranos with zero knowledge of how to run an organization, and ran Theranos like a dictator. Hiring people with real expertise came late in the day, and most of them left once they realized her style. Jobs knew he couldn’t run a company, generally hired the right people to do so, and then let them run it.
  • Jobs teamed with a genius engineer named Steve Wozniak in Apple’s formative years, and the Woz guided Jobs as much as anyone at numerous critical stages. Woz was the balance to Jobs, the behind the scenes versus the on-stage. Holmes did not work with anyone in that way, which is atypical for startup founders. Her co-founder was unqualified, she didn’t listen to her staff as problems came up, and her board was a waste of titles and people who were either wholly capable in other fields or superannuated.
  • Holmes’ goal of mini-blood assays was impossible, and she was unlike other visionary founders to pivot to what was possible. Jobs tempered his vision by using methods and technologies which already existed to leverage Apple into what he envisioned. (Jobs also had his fair number of stumbles, such as the Newton tablet where the vision exceeded the available technology. It was also too advanced, violating the Raymond Loewy maxim of ‘most advanced yet acceptable’.)
  • Delighting the customer? Where Jobs excelled in this not only with end users but also with developer partners, Holmes failed and more. With deceptive blood testing, she hurt sick patients and doctors who depended on accuracy. The vision and her self-promotion were far more important. She wasn’t doing this for people–she was doing this for herself.
  • Holmes was over the top on compartmentalizing Theranos’ technical development, straight to failure. Teams on the same project didn’t share knowledge or fundamentally communicate with each other. This led to bad testing of only parts of the system, not the whole system. While Jobs kept a tight lock on exposing Apple developments until they were ready, department teams on a given project intensively shared information. 

Wearing the black turtleneck, being a young female, blond, and with enhanced blue pop-eyes akin to a Bug-Eyed Austin-Healey Sprite can get you noticed, but then you have to deliver the goods for that $900 million you raised. Holmes was inexperienced and psychologically ill-equipped to be a tech founder. This Editor also wondered if she (literally) garbed herself in Jobs’ exterior trappings to deceive and gull everyone from the mighty and rich to the ordinary and often sick. (And now she tells people she is a marytr akin to Saint Joan?)

The Theranos Effect, for which Holmes is responsible, will sadly continue to hurt not only early-stage healthcare innovators but also the few women among them. The Theranos Scandal: What Happens When You Misunderstand Steve Jobs

The Theranos Story, ch. 50: DOJ indicts Holmes, Balwani for fraud (updated)

June 16, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/jacobs-well-texas-woe1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The other shoe drops into this bottomless well. If Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani thought that the March SEC action [TTA 15 Mar] would be it, they were misinformed. Today, the Department of Justice, US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, charged them with two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud. According to CNBC, they were arraigned in US District Court in San Jose Friday morning. Both were released on $500,000 bond each and ordered to surrender their passports. Holmes’ parents appeared with her in court.

If found guilty, both Ms. Holmes and Mr. Balwani face up to 20 years in prison, plus $250,000 in fines and clawing back of investor funds. 

“Wire fraud” in US law is fraud that is enabled and takes place over phone lines or involves electronic communications. By appearing online, making phone calls, emailing materials such as marketing materials, statements to the media, financial statements, models, and other information, Ms. Holmes and Mr. Balwani defrauded potential investors. Patients and doctors were defrauded by ads and other types of solicitations to use Theranos’ blood testing services at Walgreens, despite the fact that they knew the test results were unreliable.

Both Ms. Holmes and Mr. Balwani will have plenty of time to explain their sincere belief that their test devices and methods would be validated with time…but they had to, in Silicon Valley parlance, fake it till they made it. Indictments of this type take about two years to conclude, especially if they are big (as a formerly $9 bn valued company is) and tangled. Ms. Holmes will undoubtedly release statements on how she is being martyred like Saint Joan, how this doesn’t happen to men in Silicon Valley, and that they are allowed to fail but she can’t. Perhaps she was under the spell of the 19 years-her-senior Svengali Balwani. (Minus the Jobsian black turtlenecks, one anticipates her next choice of wardrobe. Sackcloth tied with a rope? Chain mail?)

Expect the doors to shut soon. Fortress Investment Group, which loaned Theranos $65 million (of a reported $100 million) in December 2017, was reportedly coming for the assets (as they are wont to do) by the end of July, according to the Wall Street Journal and other sources. 

Ms. Holmes is–finally–removed as CEO. Theranos announced that David Taylor, the company’s general counsel, has been appointed CEO as well as general counsel, while Ms. Holmes will remain as founder and board chair. None of this is reflected on their website. In fact, Mr. Taylor is nowhere to be found on the website’s leadership page. 

The estimable John Carreyrou, who broke the story in the WSJ and is the author of Bad Blood [TTA 13 June], on The Street’s Technically Speaking podcast at 06:00 shared this insight on how Theranos got away with bad tests. While both FDA and CMS highly regulate lab testing and the machines that perform them, neither actively police “lab-developed tests, which refer to tests fashioned with their own methods and devices” for blood testing. Basically, according to Mr. Carreyrou, Holmes and Balwani, our Bonnie and Clyde, “drove a truck right thru that loophole and took advantage of it.” Far beyond B&C, $1 bn of investors’ money is the Federal Reserve of banks.

On the indictment: WSJ, CNBC. The Northern District release on the indictment is here. Another essay by Mr. Carreyrou published 18 May is available to those who can get past the paywall. Hat tip to Bill Oravecz of WTO Consultants.

Updated: For additional coverage of what’s next in the legal vein for Holmes and Balwani, see the NY Times on potential defense strategies for the duo, including that they truly believed what they were saying to investors was true and they were bamboozled like everyone else, ‘materiality’–that investors didn’t use the statements as a basis for investing, and ‘prove it’. Will they take a plea deal? Stay tuned. 

Two NY area events: Mission Physician Transition and ‘Their Big Idea’

June 15, 2018 | by

Tuesday, 26 June: Mission Physician Transition, hosted by Health 2.0 NYC and MedStartr, 6-9 pm, at McCarter & English, 825 Eighth Avenue, NYC

Physicians are increasingly dissatisfied with just being clinicians and want to get involved in healthcare innovation. Similarly, innovative companies need the clinician’s insight into how care actually works in order to create solutions that work for doctors, patients, and all stakeholders in the healthcare value chain. Speakers/panelists to be announced. To register, go through Meetup here.

Thursday, 28 June: Entrepreneur’s Forum–Their Big Idea. Hosted by BioInc@NYMC & iCANny, 5-7 pm, at NY Medical College’s The Café, 19 Skyline Drive, Hawthorne, NY 

Four entrepreneurs present the ideas which they believe could be The Next Big Thing. Moderated by Dan Potocki of Finis Ventures who is experienced in spearheading business development and strategic initiatives for industry-leading data analytics tech startups. Cost: $15 non-members; $12 members, and includes wine and cheese refreshments. Register in advance here.

Rounding up the news: Babylon’s Samsung Health UK deal, smartphone urine test debuts, a VA Home Telehealth ‘announcement’, Aging 2.0’s NY Happy Hour

June 14, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /]Huge or Ho-Hum? Babylon’s ‘Ask an Expert’ feature is now available within the Samsung Health app as of the start of June. It will need to be activated at a cost of £50 per year, or £25 for a single consultation. Babylon’s service with over 200 GPs is now available on millions of Samsung Galaxy devices in the UK. Babylon now claims half a million users of its private GP services and 26,500 registered in London with its NHS-funded and controversial GP at Hand app.

Is it as our Editor Charles, quoting Niccolo Machiavelli writing in The Prince, “Nothing is more difficult to undertake, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its outcome than to take the lead in introducing a new order of things. For the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old and lukewarm defenders who may do well under the new”. The debate rages–see the comments below the Pulse Today article. 

Healthy.io is introducing a test of its urinalysis by smartphone test with Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust’s new Virtual Renal Clinic. 50 patients will received the Dip.io kit to test their urine. Dip.io uses the standard urine dipstick test combined with a smartphone application that guides the user through scanning in the results with a smartphone camera and sends the result to their doctor. Healthy.io claims this is a first-of-kind technology and system. According to Salford Royal, chronic kidney disease (CKD) costs the NHS £1.45 billion in England alone. The company is part of the NHS Innovation Accelerator Programme. Digital Health News

In what has been the worst kept secret in US telehealth, 1Vision LLC and AMC Health finally announced they were partners in 1Vision’s over $258 million Home Telehealth award by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) [TTA 6 Feb 17]. The news here is that the AMCH release states that they have an “Authority to Operate (ATO)”, which means they can provide Home Telehealth services using AMC Health’s CareConsole to VA-enrolled veterans and their families. This last step is very important because it is a common post-award point of failure for new awardees. Earlier this year, the Iron Bow/Vivify Health award failed on the country of origin of Vivify’s kit, dooming the implementation [TTA 16 Jan] and Iron Bow’s award. (Vivify Health has gone on.) Medtronic, as a long-term incumbent, has few worries in this regard, though any new equipment has to be cleared. The mystery is if Intel-GE Care Innovations, the last new awardee, has passed the ATO bar. AMC Health/1Vision release. 

And on the social front for New Yorkers, raise a Pint 2.0 at Aging 2.0’s NYC Happy Hour, Tuesday 18 July at 310 Bowery Bar, 6pm. Aging 2.0 website, where you can check for a chapter and events near you.

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.

The Theranos Story, ch. 49: CEO Holmes reportedly raising funds for a new company–and feeling like Joan of Arc

June 13, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/jacobs-well-texas-woe1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Here’s the place where your money will go if you’re an investor. John Carreyrou has now compiled his reporting for the Wall Street Journal on Theranos into a new book, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, and it is a Must Read for this Editor and anyone interested in the nexus of Tech, Healthcare, and Hype. (The link goes to AbeBooks, a worthy marketplace for independent booksellers.)

According to Mr. Carreyrou, the founder/CEO Miss Elizabeth Holmes–still leading the company despite settling with the SEC on fraud charges, surrendering her voting control, barred from serving as a public company director or officer for 10 years, and still fighting civil lawsuits–is raising fresh funds for a new venture.

Your eyes did not fool you.

Theranos was a Dogpile of Deceit. From hacking standard Siemens blood testing machines to work with tiny samples, falsifying test results, faking up the Edison test machine, to company financials, it was one lie on the other, chronicled for our Readers in nearly 50 chapters and multiple references. 

Mr. Carreyrou was asked by former Timesman and Vanity Fair reporter Nick Bilton whether, in this unmistakable pattern, Ms. Holmes was a sociopath. Mr. Carreyrou wisely refrained from diagnosis based on a used DSM-V, being a reporter and not her psychiatrist. From Mr. Bilton’s interview podcasted on ‘Inside the Hive’:

“At the end of my book, I say that a sociopath is described as someone with no conscience. I think she absolutely has sociopathic tendencies. One of those tendencies is pathological lying. I believe this is a woman who started telling small lies soon after she dropped out of Stanford, when she founded her company, and the lies became bigger and bigger,” Carreyrou said. “I think she’s someone that got used to telling lies so often, and the lies got so much bigger, that eventually the line between the lies and reality blurred for her.”

Mr. Carreyrou, and by inference anyone who doubted her, like her CFO, and especially those who went public with criticism–well, we are the Bad Guys:

“She has shown zero sign of feeling bad, or expressing sorrow, or admitting wrongdoing, or saying sorry to the patients whose lives she endangered,” he said. He explained that in her mind, according to numerous former Theranos employees he has spoken to, Holmes believes that her entourage of employees led her astray and that the bad guy is actually John Carreyrou. “One person in particular, who left the company recently, says that she has a deeply engrained sense of martyrdom. She sees herself as sort of a Joan of Arc who is being persecuted,” he said.

Mr. Carreyrou was set upon by this ‘martyr’s’ legal pitbulls, one David Boies, until he wisely exited stage left with a bushelful of worthless stock [TTA 21 Nov 16].

(And what is it about Stanford University that fosters people like Ron Gutman, recently ousted from HealthTap over employee abuse and intimidation charges in what may be a Silicon Valley First? [TTA 3 May] Here we have someone who plays with people’s lives and health in vital blood testing. Aren’t some ethics courses long overdue?) 

Mr. Bilton makes the extremely fine point that Silicon Valley will continue to be magnetically attracted to founders equipped with a ‘reality-distortion field’ (as he termed Steve Jobs). SV will relegate Theranos to a biotech outlier. Yet as long as Silicon Valley MoneyMen like Tim Draper will back the likes of Elizabeth Holmes as long as they have a good line of (stuff), despite being embarrassingly proven not just (and only) wrong, but now perpetrating fraud, the Jobsian Myth and black turtlenecks will rise again like Dracula. (Another analogy comes to mind, but precocious children might be reading this.)

We haven’t heard the last of her.

An excellent interview by Tom Dotan of Mr. Carreyrou is podcasted on The Information’s 411 in “You’re So Vein”, which gets the award for Title of the Week (trial signup required, or listen on SoundCloud). Starting at 15:00, interesting comments on the why of Sunny Balwani and Ms. Holmes’ series of ‘marks’ including George Shultz. Also Gizmodo and Politico’s Morning eHealth newsletter.

OnePerspective: Analogue telecare is a dead horse: stop flogging it

June 13, 2018 | by | 3 Comments

Editor’s Note: ‘OnePerspective’ articles are written by industry contributors on issues of importance to our Readers. They reflect the opinions of their authors and are archived under ‘Perspectives’.

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Tom-Morton-CEO.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]By: Tom Morton

Call failures to alarm receiving centres in the UK are rising but the reasons for this are currently the subject of hot debate.

The problem is linked to the roll out of the next generation network (NGN) replacing the UK’s analogue Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a task which will be complete by 2025.

What is not debatable is that 1.7m of the most vulnerable in our society are being placed at risk as calls to alarm receiving centres (ARCs) increasingly fail or are delayed in their delivery due to incompatibilities of existing technologies.

At the Telecare Services Association (TSA) conference in November 2017, technology-enabled care services company Appello, with circa 100k telecare system users, identified a 7.5 percent call failure rate and announced the problem as “deeply worrying”.

At the same event, Communicare247 presented a report which highlighted a significant 12.3 percent spike in call failures identified by Falkirk Council. This was part of an ongoing analogue to digital assessment program operating across 12 percent of the existing Scottish telecare user base, and significantly this spike occurred in Falkirk within a short three month period. Both Falkirk Council and Appello have published their evidence of increasing call failures in a TSA whitepaper.

The TSA white paper, A Digital Future For Technology Enabled Care, highlights that the 1.7million people in the UK reliant on telecare need answers as their service is “threatened by disruption as UK telecommunications shift from analogue to digital”.

Yet the link to call failures and the rollout of NGN has been called into question by a major equipment provider. In a recent blog, they asked a very challenging question: Are network issues causing a greater number of alarm call failures?

Their answer delivered by the blog was, in essence, ‘maybe not yet’.

In a comparison between one ARC, where call failures were high versus another where they were low, the blog claimed that “while the use of NGN networks has grown in the last few years this cannot account for the increasing trend”.

As a potential compromise, the author also said that they could overcome any potential issues through the use of hybrid terminal adaptors (ATAs).

However, evidence both in the UK and Sweden plainly demonstrates call failures increase as the network switches to digital. (more…)

Rounding up more Events of Summer–plus speaker submissions closing soon!

June 7, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Time flies and so does your calendar! In addition to the important RSM event next Wednesday (maybe more so than the G8 Summit or the NoKo talks, but neither are introduced by Editor Charles!), here are more for your consideration.

Wednesday, 13 June: New York State Chapter’s annual miniHIMSS, “Healthcare on Broadway,” has a full day of speakers in four acts with an emphasis on healthcare advances in NY State and technology applicability. New World Stages in Manhattan starting at 8am. More information here, registration here.

Tuesday, 26 June: Mission Physician Transition into healthcare tech hosted by Health 2.0 NYC and MedStartr, 6-8 pm. More information on Meetup.

Wednesday, 27 June: Newark Venture Partners hosts their 3rd annual Demo Day for their 2018 class at Prudential Center, Newark NJ. Doors open at noon, presentations start at 1:30pm. Investors in NVP span tech, financial, and healthcare with Amazon, Prudential Financial, Dun & Bradstreet, RWJ Barnabas, Horizon BCBSNJ, TD Bank, and Panasonic. Free registration and more details here. 

Saturday, 30 June: Deadline for speaker submissions for the Connected Health Summit: Engaging Consumers on 28-30 August in San Diego.  The online form is here. TTA is a media partner of the CHS.

Tuesday-Wednesday 10-11 July: The King’s Fund Digital Health and Care Congress. More information here. TTA is an event supporter of the Congress. 

Friday 10th August: Deadline for entries/nominations for the ITEC Awards 2018, to be awarded at the TSA’s annual International Technology Enabled Care Conference 2018 16-17 October in Birmingham. The winners in five categories will be announced on 16 October during the Gala Dinner. 

International acquisition roundup: Doro and Welbeing; Teladoc and Advance Medical

June 7, 2018 | by

Two international telecare/telehealth/telemedicine M&A deals made the news this last week.

Sweden’s Doro AB acquired Welbeing, headquartered in Eastbourne UK. Welbeing (formally Wealden and Eastbourne Lifeline) is a telecare provider of home-based personal alarms which supports about 75,000 residents in local systems. Their revenue in last fiscal year (ending 9/17) was £7.6 million (SEK 90m). Doro operates in the UK and about 40 countries, with a core business in mobile phones specially designed for older adults. Their Doro Care solutions provide digital telecare and social services for older adults and the disabled in the home. Doro is paying SEK 130 million (£11.1 million) for the acquisition of Welbeing, equal to eight times estimated EBITDA for the financial year 2017/2018, with 85 percent cash and 15 percent in Doro shares with a bonus based on financial performance. Release 

Making a few headlines in the US is telemedicine leader Teladoc’s purchase of Barcelona’s Advance Medical for a hefty $352 million, giving Teladoc a major international footprint especially valuable for its corporate clients and major payers. Advance Medical provides complete telemedicine services in 125 countries in over 20 languages. Even more valuable is their knowledge of local healthcare delivery systems, global expert medical opinion, and chronic care. The acquisition also gives Teladoc an international network of offices and a significant entreé with international health insurance companies. Mobihealthnews, Seeking Alpha (Teladoc investor slideshow)