Fitness trackers, mobile apps shown to leak sensitive data

February 10, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/band1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]An unnerving 35-page report published by Canadian nonprofit OpenEffect, assisted by the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, claims that leading fitness trackers and their corresponding mobile apps are veritable sieves of personal data, inviting security breaches. Where Hackermania Runs Wild starts with lack of Bluetooth LE privacy, allowing tracking via Bluetooth even when the tracker isn’t paired to a smartphone. Then many of the companion apps leaked login credentials, transmitted activity tracking information in a way that allowed interception or tampering, or allowed users (or others) to insert false activity tracking information. The trackers studied were the Basis Peak, Fitbit Charge HR, Garmin Vivosmart, Jawbone Up 2, Mio Fuse, Withings Pulse O2 and Xiaomi Mi Band. Notably the Apple Watch 2.0 was secure.  The full report is titled dramatically “Every Step you Fake: A Comparative Analysis of Fitness Tracker Privacy and Security”. Security article, study in PDF, TheStar.com. Hat tip once again to Toni Bunting, former Northern Ireland Contributing Editor. 

Older adults anticipate their relationships with ‘helper’ robots: study

February 10, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Penn-State.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]How older adults (65+) respond to the idea of ‘helper robots’ which may be a part of their future lives span a wide range. The key seems to be that they are ‘most advanced, yet acceptable’ (designer Raymond Loewy’s MAYA dictum) when they perform passive ‘physical, informational and interactional’ tasks–‘helpers and butlers’ in the researchers’ terms. Robots which kick it up a notch and are more autonomous, making its own decisions without direction, are far less acceptable and perceived as ‘robot masters’. “Seniors do not mind having robots as companions, but they worry about the potential loss of control over social order to robots.” That is a leap that goes forward, in the lead researcher’s terms, to how the media has portrayed robots as shaping older adults’ perceptions. A team from Penn State University’s Media Effects Research Laboratory surveyed 45 older adults — between ages 65 and 95 years old — at a senior citizens’ center in Pennsylvania. Published in the Interaction Studies journal. Penn State News Hat tip to our former Northern Ireland Contributing Editor Toni Bunting. On the other end of the age spectrum, an earlier study by the same lead researcher noted that older people were quite concerned about the effects of robots on young people and the desire for parental controls, lest the robots might encourage laziness and dependency. Penn State News (2014)

The evolution of Facebook: implications for social health

February 9, 2016 | by

The Telegraph’s recent retrospective on Facebook and its evolution from 2004’s ‘Thefacebook’ of Harvard University students to the Facebook that many of us use now, with Chat, timeline and a converged mobile and desktop design, led reader Mike Clark to drop Editor Charles a line about how healthcare isn’t maximizing social media and internet-based innovation. Recent studies have indicated that these social patient communities benefit their members. Agreed, but there are increasing qualifications–and qualms.

Back in 2014, Facebook made some noises on forming its own online health communities, a move that was widely derided as Facebook monetizing yet another slice of personal (health) data from users. While Charles has made the excellent point that “almost all good health apps are essentially the tailored interface to an internet service that sits behind it, a fact often forgotten by commentators”, Editor Donna on her side of the Atlantic has seen concerns mount on privacy, security and the stealthy commercialization/monetization of many popular online patient support groups (OSGs) which Carolyn Thomas (‘The Heart Sister’) skewers here, excepting those with solid non-profit firewalling (academic, government, clinical). Example she gives: Patients Like Me, which markets health data gathered from members to companies developing products to sell to patients. How many members, with a disease or chronic condition on their mind, will browse through to this page that says in part: “Except for the restricted personal information you entered when registering for the site, you should expect that every piece of information you submit (even if it is not currently displayed) may be shared with our partners and any member of PatientsLikeMe, including other patients.”

We’ve also noted that genomics data may not be sufficiently de-identified so that it can’t be matched through inference [TTA 31 Oct 15], with the potential for sale. And of course Hackermania Running Wild continues (see here).

For now general information sites like WebMD and personalized reference sites such as Medivisor feel more secure to users, as well as small non-commercialized OSGs and ‘closed’ telehealth/telemedicine systems.

Philips, Validic partner on health data integration

February 4, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/image001.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]Earlier today, Philips and health data ‘connector’ Validic announced a partnership where Philips’ multi-part HealthSuite digital health platform will expand with Validic’s access to third-party device data. The surprise is how much data Validic now can access: a claimed 223 million people in 47 countries, which was a surprise to this Editor. Philips’ HealthSuite includes Personal Health Programs, the Lifeline PERS line, eCareCoordinator and eCareCompanion eHealth applications. Exactly how Philips will use this access is not disclosed. Philips release

Can technology help to bridge the Loneliness Factor?

February 4, 2016 | by

The Guardian’s impassioned article on how common and harmful loneliness is among older adults led to some reflection by this Editor on how difficult and ‘multi-part’ an approach to help can be, even if you call it ‘The Campaign to End Loneliness’. “Studies have found loneliness can be more harmful than smoking 15 cigarettes a day, increases the risk of premature death by 30% and the chances of developing dementia by 64%. More than one million people aged over 65 are thought to be lonely – around 10-13% of older people.”–statistics from the article and AgeUK’s press release on their recent study, ‘ Promising approaches to reducing loneliness and isolation in later life’.  GPs see a lot of them, and some more for an ‘event of the day’ than actual medical need. Loss of hearing, sight and mobility further isolate the older person, particularly those in rural areas where everyone and everything is at a distance requiring driving, creating dependency among those who can no longer. Even among the middle-aged, loss of hearing reduces engagement in social situations. (And the article does not include the disabled.) It closes with suggestions that councils need to budget for and organize programs to reach out to lonely adults, including carers, and that not one approach can fit all, but emphasizes more personal approaches such as groups and one-on-one support. Hat tip to Malcolm Fisk via Twitter

Is a way to fight the Loneliness Factor located in technology, even remote patient monitoring? That’s been the primary reason for some systems such as GrandCare, but even in RPM, whether hub-based or smartphone/tablet based, the reminders and active clinician monitoring part of chronic care management can and do engage. Older people are using smartphones and tablets–perhaps not as fully as a 40 year old, but they are using Skype, calendaring and social media (Facebook, LinkedIn and news/opinion sites). A big help here, according to Laurie Orlov, would be voice recognition and integration into safety/alarm technologies. This Editor also sees proactive alerting to changes in condition as a still-untapped area.  There’s $279 billion of potential in ‘silvertech’ as estimated by AARP and Parks Associates–it’s a matter of getting young techies/entrepreneurs excited about it, and the Sand Hill funder crowd realizing that yes, it’s sexy too. Long Term Living

Using sensors to speed scientific experimentation

February 4, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/lab-experiment-equipment.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]A Boston-based startup with some impressive backing, Elemental Machines, is seeking to solve the variability problems that hinder scientific experimentation, particularly in drug development. Misfit and AgaMetrix founders Sonny Vu and Sridhar Iyengar join co-founders Elicia Wong and Gary Tsai in raising $2.5 million in seed funding, with investors including Founders Fund, backer of SpaceX and Lyft. The company’s purpose is to develop sensors (called “elements”) sending data interpreted by cloud-based software that will help scientists better detect and control for the most common variable factors that take place during experiments–temperature, humidity, vibration, light, instrumentation and protocols. The goal is to accelerate the experiment and research process so that drugs, devices and products make it to market (eventually) faster and less expensively. BostInno, TechCrunch

Is ‘telehealth lite’ good enough for the Spanish-speaking market? (US)

February 3, 2016 | by

Pioneering or inadequate? Mercer LLC, a major employee benefits consulting company that is part of business consulting giant Marsh & McLennan, and digital health platform developer ConsejoSano (Health Advice) recently announced a partnership where Mercer will market the ConsejoSano platform to its large base of US employers and also to the wider US Hispanic market of 54 million with at least 22 million in the workforce. Their pitch is to the group most comfortable communicating in Spanish as a primary language. The service is via phone or mobile app, and connects employees to native Spanish-speaking doctors. However, you won’t be able to visit that doctor unless you go to Mexico; they are provided via Salud Interactiva S.A. de C.V., a Mexico City-based medical services/telehealth company. Because the doctors are ex-US, they cannot refer or write a prescription, and only address questions on general health needs, mental health, nutrition and chronic disease management. Still, ConsejoSano claims a 60 percent resolution of medical needs upon the first call.

This Editor asks: What about that other 40 percent? This conceivably is a ‘first turn’ service for that Spanish-speaking person, and after you’ve built up that trust, the consult isn’t completed. Why isn’t this built with warm transfer capability to US-based assistance which can refer the person to either local in-network doctors, a telehealth doctor in their employee insurance network or other assistive services? Is this a good-looking glass-half-full for the Spanish-primary speaking population? Mobile Strategies 360, Mercer release

The rich store of information in…human sweat

February 3, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/sweat-sensor-wristband450.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]’Don’t sweat it’ may in future be the wrong thing to say. University of California-Berkeley researchers have developed a prototype sensor array on a band that successfully captures readings of multiple sweat analytes and sends the information to a smartphone app for analysis, making it the first device capable of continuous, non-invasive monitoring of multiple biochemicals in perspiration. The five sensors measure metabolites glucose and lactate, the electrolytes sodium and potassium, and skin temperature, which serves to calibrate the other readings in real time. The device (left), which can be in a wristband or headband form, also contains a flexible printed circuit board that amplifies the sensor signals and sends them to the smartphone app. The Berkeley researchers look forward to commercializing the technology to capture more analyte readings, for athletic performance, medical and fitness tracking usage–and in the longer-term, population-level studies for medical applications. We wonder how long it will be before these show up in a new model Misfit, Jawbone or Fitbit. Berkeley News   Hat tip to former TTA Ireland Editor Toni Bunting

The security risks, and the promise of, the Internet of Things

February 3, 2016 | by

Jason Hope, who back in September wrote on how one of the greatest impediments to the much-touted Internet of Things (IoT) was not security, but the lack of a standardized protocol that would enable devices to communicate, has continued to write on both this topic and IoT security. While The Gimlet Eye had great fun lampooning the very notion of Thingys Talking and Doing Things Against Their Will [TTA 22 Sept 15], and this Editor has warned of security risks in over-connectivity of home devices (see below), relentlessly we are moving towards it. The benefit in both healthcare monitoring/TECS and safely living at home for older adults is obvious, but these devices must work together easily, safely and securely. To bend the English language a bit, the goal is ‘commonplaceness’–no one thinks much about the ubiquitous ATM, yet two decades ago ‘cash machines’ were not in many banks and (in the US) divided into regional networks.

As Mr Hope put it as the fifth and final prediction in his recent article:

The IoT Will Stop Being a “Thing”
How many times in the past week have you said, “I am getting on to the World Wide Web?” Chances are, not very many. How many times have you thought about the wonder of switching on a switch and having light instantly? Probably never. Soon, the Internet of Things, and connectivity in general, is going to be so common place, we also won’t think about it. It will just be part of life and the benefits and technology that wow us right now will cease to be memorable.

This Editor continues to be concerned about how hackers can get into devices, (more…)

Eight TECS expected to change health and care

January 26, 2016 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/8-technologies-8-connected-community.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]The King’s Fund is still bullish on the transformative capabilities of technology-enabled care services for health (even if others are not, see following article). This article (which almost passed this Editor by this month) highlights eight areas which have the greatest potential. Some are expected–but at least two are surprises. You be the judge!

  1. Smartphones: apps, as hubs/hub replacements, and research transmitters (voluntary but also involuntary?)
  2. At-home and portable diagnostics; smart assistive technology
  3. Smart or implantable drug delivery
  4. Digital therapeutics/interventions; cognitive behavioral therapy; lifestyle interventions
  5. Genome sequencing
  6. Machine learning (computers changing based on new data, spotting pattern) in big datasets (Surprise #1)
  7. Blockchain, the tech behind bitcoin; decentralised databases, secured using encryption, that keep an authoritative record of how data is created and changed over time, to bring together decentralized health records. (Surprise #2)
  8. The connected community; P2P support networks and research communities

The King’s Fund’s publications 1 Jan

Health tech innovations are doing little for baby boomers

January 26, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/upside-down-duck.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Wonder why the duck is upside down and sinking? Maybe it’s looking for all that transformative tech! Versus The King’s Fund sunny article above is Laurie Orlov in Boomer Health Tech Watch. Her POV is that as of right now, health tech innovations are not moving the needle for obese (39 percent) and chronically diseased US baby boomers. They aren’t downloading health apps and wearing wearables. Workplace wellness programs? Au contraire, they make us feel less well (Harvard Business Review) and anxious that we’re getting spied on by the company. Maybe we realize that All That Data isn’t secure (healthcare being a Hacker’s Holiday Camp), so we’re not playing the game. And the cost of care that the ACA was supposed to level off? Not if you’re a self-insured Boomer struggling to pay an ever-higher monthly premium, or even in a corporate high-deductible plan, paying increased deductibles, restricted networks, ever-higher treatment costs and fighting your insurer at nearly every turn. Add to that safety risks of procedures, mistakes compounded by EHRs [Dr Robert Wachter, TTA 16 April]  and (not mentioned) hospital-acquired infections. No wonder investment has cooled. Health and tech innovations do little for baby boomers

VerbalCare debuts a new symbol-driven app for patient health communication

January 24, 2016 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/verbalcare.png” thumb_width=”200″ /]Many patients in both home and hospital/post-acute settings have difficulty communicating their needs for a variety of reasons: post-stroke, cognitive impairment, facial surgery, aphasia, age (very young, very old) and of course there are language and cultural obstacles. VerbalCare‘s relaunched patient and caregiver apps may find a way around it. The patient clicks on icons in the VerbalCare Patient tablet app, which if touched in succession can form a sentence, then sends the message either to family members or the care team via the paired Messenger app for smartphone or tablet. The app can also send custom texts, phrases, or reuse a favorite selection; it will record patient appointments with patient consent. It has been tested over the past four years at Massachusetts General and Franciscan Hospital for Children. The Boston-based early stage company was acquired in August 2015 by an area durable medical equipment company company, Medical Specialties Distributors (MSD) and operates as a subsidiary (Mobihealthnews). The current pricing is for the VerbalCare Patient app $9.99 per patient per month, BYOD, but founder/CEO Nick Dougherty expects that healthcare organizations will pick this up. MedCityNews  What would be interesting is if a telehealth company licenses this for integration, in part or wholly, with its remote patient monitoring–Ed. Donna

HealthSpot files for Chapter 7 liquidation (updated)

January 19, 2016 | by

The shock continues with HealthSpot. On Wednesday the company filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Ohio in Columbus. The laundry list: assets of $5.2 million, about $3.5 million in inventory, and $23.3 million in liabilities, including convertible notes of $10 million from cable/broadband company Cox Communications, $6 million from investor Xerox and an undisclosed amount from the Ohio Development Services Agency. HealthSpot had raised close to $44 million since 2011. Their bankruptcy attorney David Whittaker cited cash flow; with only $1.1 million in revenue over the past three years, according to the filing, including $600,000 in 2015, no elaboration was needed. There’s not much left in assets to sell: 191 kiosks, mostly in storage (137) and 54 operating but shuttered at customer sites. The remaining value in liquidation (a/k/a pennies on the dollar) is dependent on whether the name, the kiosks and the IP are purchased. The last is problematic due to the current legal action by Computerized Screening [TTA 8 Jan] We hope this is not a sad harbinger of digital health in 2016, though we have already sensed that the unicorns are heading Over The Rainbow or wherever they go to pasture, but it’s not reassuring. Columbus Business First, MedCityNews.

Update: Neil Versel in his Throwback Thursday took a look at HealthSpot’s steak and salad days at International CES 2013. (See comments for this Editor’s impressions of HealthSpot at ATA 2014.) Perhaps good marketing, but symptomatic of the capital burn, doomed by a lack of sales and quite possibly, a solution that would have knocked it out of the park in 2010. As the old fighter pilot said, ‘timing and luck are everything.’

RSM hosts digital health event 25 February

January 19, 2016 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/RSM.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Recent developments in digital health 2016
Thursday 25 February 2016
Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 0AE

Presented by the Royal Society of Medicine’s Telemedicine and eHealth Section (presided by our Editor Charles), this full day conference is open to the public and provides a global perspective from leaders within digital health. Keynoters are Mustafa Suleyman from Google’s Artificial Intelligence branch, DeepMind, and Dr Euan Ashley from Stanford University in California who leads Apple’s MyHeartCounts. Rates are reasonable: £50-115 for RSM members and £60-175 for non-members, plus 6 CPD credits. More information and registration on the RSM website here and download the flyer here.

Upcoming RSM Telemedicine events into early June:
Medical apps: Mainstreaming innovation–Thursday 7 April 2016

The future of medicine – the role of doctors in 2025–Thursday 19 May 2016

Big data 2016–Thursday 2 June 2016

Outsourcing of retail clinics–another reason for HealthSpot’s demise? (US)

January 14, 2016 | by

Walgreens earlier this week announced another round of outsourcing their in-store health clinics to a local health system, this time in the Midwest US with Advocate Health Care. It affects 56 locations in the Chicago, Illinois area which will operate as Advocate Clinic at Walgreens in May 2016. It’s an interesting spin on the much-touted integration of healthcare services into retail pharmacies. It gives an integrated health system a prime location for community services–a clean, well-lighted place (to quote Hemingway, minus the daiquiris) with minimal overhead that provides one-stop-shopping for patient pharmacy and OTC products. It also solves part of the ‘fragmentation of care’ problem for Advocate patients as their records will go straight into their EHR. For Walgreens, it offloads the licensure and operating expenses of a clinic, gives a strong competitive advantage lent by the legitimacy of a leading provider, and attracts Advocate patients to their locations. Walgreens release  Last August, Walgreens turned over the keys of 25 Washington and Oregon clinics to Providence Health & Services in what now can be seen as a trial balloon.

What is surprising is how few Walgreens have clinic services–400 of over 8,100–over nine years of operations, starting with the acquisition of former travel industry executive Hal Rosenbluth’s 25 or so TakeCare Clinics around Philadelphia back in 2007. Yet further clinic expansion has been difficult as many locations have no physical space, there are restrictive state laws and the competition is everywhere between over 1,000 CVS Minute Clinics and local urgent care clinics. CVS also recently acquired 80 Target pharmacies and walk-in clinics. It’s reported that profitability has been a challenge for Walgreens in the clinic biz. Expect to see more of these arrangements to grow Walgreens’ clinic network.

Why might this be a contributor to HealthSpot Station’s end? A change of direction and a need for cost cutting that wasn’t there a year ago.  (more…)

Care Innovations’ Slovenski, 23andMe’s Schwartz move to Healthways

January 13, 2016 | by

Breaking News: Healthways, an online wellness program company based in Nashville, this morning announced that two executives well known to many of us in digital health have joined them. Sean Slovenski, CEO of Intel-GE Care Innovations, is now their President, Population Health Services. Steve Schwartz, their new SVP Strategy and Corporate Development, joins the company from VP Business Development and Strategy, 23andMe.

Mr Slovenski’s track record in 2.5 years at CI certainly impressed this Editor (formerly with the developer of their behavioral telemonitoring system bequeathed from GE Healthcare, QuietCare) with turning around the company from an outpost of Intel and GEHC having difficulty transitioning from ancient technology (remember the Intel Health Guide?) to a telehealth platform dubbed Health Harmony. He also put together a team that engineered multiple academic and health system alliances, along with an interesting turn into home digital health certification. While he came to CI from health insurance giant Humana in Louisville Kentucky running their behavioral health and wellness businesses, his prior experience includes both entrepreneurial turns at his own company and with smaller companies. He most recently engineered a Louisville outpost of CI [TTA 14 Oct 15]. Since Mr Slovenski is still listed on the CI website as CEO, this may have been a quickly executed move.

Mr Schwartz’s business development background includes long stints at two large healthcare companies, Allscripts (EHRs and practice management software) and LabCorp (lab testing). He weathered 23andMe’s FDA troubles and headed up their B2B sales area. Healthways release

Unusually, Healthways is a NASDAQ traded company that closed at $12.11 today in a down market. It’s old (in our terms) having been founded in 1981, becoming publicly traded ten years later. Its last round of venture financing was $20 million from CareFirst BlueCross Blue Shield in October 2013 (CrunchBase). Healthways has a fairly new CEO as well, who joined last August and obviously feels comfortable adding to his team.