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.

Lessons learned from rural telehealth in Pennsylvania

January 13, 2016 | by

Several years ago, CJ Rhoads, a business professor at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania and CEO of consultancy HPL Consortium, asked Editor Steve and Donna for some background information on telehealth. According to her note last month to us, the results of her research were reported to the Pennsylvania legislature and The Center for Rural Pennsylvania (a legislative agency of the PA Assembly), in 2014 and now have been published in a more readable form by CRC Press-Taylor & Francis Group. An excerpt from their summary:

Improving the quality of healthcare, while increasing accessibility and lowering costs, is a complex dilemma facing rural communities around the world. The Center for Rural Pennsylvania believed that telehealth, the use of electronic information and telecommunications technologies to support long-distance clinical healthcare was a viable solution so it recently provided grants to conduct a thorough investigation into the factors involved.

Telehealth in Rural Hospitals: Lessons Learned from Pennsylvania reports the outcome of this year-long investigation. Illustrating telehealth implementations in rural settings, it supplies an overview of telehealth as well as an assessment of its economic impact.

The book skillfully intertwines the research and academic aspects of telehealth with helpful insights from the author.

From the table of contents, it appears to be an exhaustively researched book on telehealth and its impact in rural healthcare. It’s available to purchase on CRC’s website. Thanks to author CJ Rhoads for the heads up!

Tunstall acquires Hawaii monitoring service, tracks wandering in Australia

January 13, 2016 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Big-T-thumb-480×294-55535.gif” thumb_width=”120″ /]Tunstall Americas has made a second acquisition of a home monitoring service and distributor in Hawaii, Lifeline Hawaii Services. Based in Honolulu and providing monitoring throughout the Islands, it appears from a statement by CEO Casey Pittock that the 15-year-old company will be merged with an earlier acquisition, Kupuna Monitoring Systems. Monitoring services will be provided on the mainland in New York City and Rhode Island. This marks the eleventh acquisition of local monitoring services Tunstall has made since late 2014. A caution to Mr Pittock: Editor Donna having some experience with a mainland company managing a significant Hawaii presence, albeit in a different industry (Avis car rental), the kama’aina (local) market prefers on-island presence and service, the more personal the better. One of the biggest challenges will be when that Hawaii emergency call comes in, to understand local expressions and to know that on the Big Island, Hilo is not around the corner from Kona but nearly two hours away; even on Oahu outside of Honolulu, help can get far away quickly. Hawaii News Now (Tunstall release)

Down Under, Tunstall maintains a steady level of activity unlike their US brethren who are hard to find at industry events. They began distribution before Christmas of the latest version of the wander alerting Find-Me Carers Watch for the cognitively impaired which just received a AU $3 million investment from local VC OneVentures. Retirement community Living Choice has also contracted with Tunstall to update their emergency call systems for five villages. Since last July, they have transitioned  and customized 700 units across five villages. Residents now can access the National Home Doctors Service and 24/7 monitoring by Tunstall’s centers in Australia and New Zealand. Australian Ageing Agenda Technology Review

The King’s Fund Digital Health & Care Conference

January 13, 2016 | by

5–6 Jul 2016; The King’s Fund, London W1G 0AN

Advance notice for The King’s Fund annual Digital Health Conference. The theme this year is exploring how the better use of technology and data can support and enable the key developments needed to reshape and improve the health and care system. Website information is just beginning to be posted here. Exhibiting opportunities are also available with information on the Exhibition tab.

Last year’s Congress is featured in video highlights and with links under the Presentations tab, including those in the T2D breakout session chaired by Editor Charles (Ms Murphy, Dr Smith, Ms Guthrie). TTA was a 2015 supporter.

Blood biomarkers to diagnose mild TBI; more studies on TBI, concussion

January 13, 2016 | by

An abundance of studies pointing the way to digital health opportunity. A surprise on the early morning radio news in NYC was mention of a report on a blood biomarker that could confirm a diagnosis of concussion, published in the Journal of Neurotrauma. Once found, it wasn’t exactly as advertised but the research is worth reviewing. First, it applies to mild TBI. The biomarker is the extensively studied glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) versus another biomarker, S100β. The key finding by the central Florida-based team is that in a general trauma population, GFAP out-performed S100β in detecting intracranial lesions as diagnosed in CT scans. Scrolling down in the article is a link to the abstract of a meta-study of 11 biomarkers in concussion, by the same lead researcher and another team. The current featured articles in Neurotrauma are a stunning review of studies around concussion and TBI, including two very interesting articles on why air evacuation can do more harm than good (unless absolutely necessary) for TBI patients (altitude lowers oxygen levels) and how mild TBI suffered by retired NFL players has long-term negative metabolic and pituitary effects. All paywalled unless you have library access or a friend with subscription access; however some of the citation articles are open access. But for health tech developers looking for problems to solve better, cheaper and faster, here it is–a lot more promising than yet another me-too wearable. 

Rounding up best medtech in 2015

January 6, 2016 | by

Medgadget’s 2015 roundup looks at nine innovative and in some cases life-saving medtech systems. These cover ground from diagnostics to robotic exoskeletons, from hearts to eyes and ears. Some are obviously early stage research projects, others are close to market. In eyewear news, a revamped Google Glass made the news with its FCC filing; we look at the Glass reboot and rival facial tech.

  • Evena Eyes-On ultrasound/infrared goggles that let the wearer visualize the peripheral and deeper vasculature for venipuncture procedures.
    • [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/new-glass.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]And speaking of eyewear, Google Glass 2.0 made the end-of-year news with its leaked FCC filing detailing its changes in design, including a bigger screen, hardier build, improved camera and longer battery life. It also confirmed earlier rumors that Glass’ market was now medical and enterprise. Guardian, WSJ (video)
    • Other smart glasses from Vital Enterprises, Augmedix, Pristine.io, Aira.io and a beefed up Google Glass from ThirdEye for the ER recapped in MedCityNews.
  • A brain stent with pressure activated nanoparticles to break up vessel occlusions in the brain that cause ischemic strokes, developed by Harvard’s Wyss Institute and University of Massachusetts’ New England Center for Stroke Research.
  • A combination of EKSO Bionic‘s exoskeleton with UCLA‘s non-invasive spinal cord stimulation from NeuroRecovery Technologies which enabled paralyzed men to move their legs.
  • The XStat Rapid Hemostasis System, developed for the US military, now released for civilian use, which uses small sponges to stop bleeding.
  • Three pacemakers–one fetal, another powered by light and a third from EBR Systems’ WiSE technology that stimulates both sides of the heart
  • The PolyPhotonix Noctura 400 sleep mask for treating diabetic retinopathy
  • A two-part laser-based hearing aid from EarLens where one section is placed on the eardrum

A ‘top 50’ of 2016 US health tech, med tech conferences

December 30, 2015 | by

An unusually diverse list of conferences on health/medical technology and medical devices has been compiled by Pannam Imaging, which manufactures complex, mid-to-low volume integrated human-machine interfaces of use in several industries including healthcare technology. Many focus on medical devices, life sciences and biotech (BIO International in June) but some are on cybersecurity–and d.Health Summit (the d. is for disruptive) on 4 May in NYC is new to this Editor. Are all of them worth attending? Depends on your interest and market, but it’s not the usual suspects. Top MedTech Conferences: 50 Conferences on Health Tech, Medical Devices, and Medical Technology Worth Attending in 2016

Med-e-Tel Luxembourg

December 30, 2015 | by

6-8 April, Luxembourg

Presented by the International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (ISfTeH), if your company is seeking international growth and/or exposure, Med-e-Tel since 2004 has reportedly attendees from over 100 countries focusing on the broad scope of health tech in the EU. There’s also still time to 8 January to submit a proposal on your experience or research in telemedicine, telehealth, eHealth and mHealth. For more information on abstract submission for speaking, see here. Information and registration in their latest newsletter here. TTA is a media partner of Med-e-Tel 2016.

Rounding up the funding rounds of 2015–and the deals some would like to see (?)

December 30, 2015 | by

Mobihealthnews rounded up 2015’s hot funding in the mobile health/health tech-related space, with helpful links to their articles. They cite as we have previously [TTA 16 Dec] Rock Health‘s flattish year-to-year 2015 total of $4.3 bn, but also StartUp Health’s bloom-off-rose 2015 digital health total of $5.8 bn–larger than Rock Health’s tote, but 17 percent off their 2014 total of $7 bn. If you consider the proportions: the top 10 deals raised $738 million–$130 million alone to the endlessly funded but yet to take over the world ZocDoc –the roster below $20m remains the longest, which is completely in accord with the lower part of Rock Health’s pyramid of angel-A-B rounds.

Yet Aditi Pai’s detailed summary strikes this Editor as useful in an unanticipated way. There is a certain sameness in the products and services of these companies, as if funders are seeking validation in similarity. ZocDoc, DoctoLib and Vitals–doctor profiles and appointment booking. Sharecare, Welltok, Novu, Noom, AbilTo, SocialWellth, Health Recovery Solutions, Jiff–health and wellness engagement programs/apps, many for corporate programs. Whoop, Sano, Sproutling, TuringSensor, Valencell, Moff and four others–wearables. Hello, Sleepace, Sproutling (baby)–sleep tracking. Klara, SkinVision, Spruce–dermatology apps. Beyond the gloomy forecast for unicorns (Theranos being the Child on the Milk Carton), how many of these corporate wellness programs, sleep trackers and wearables will be around in 2017? Mobihealthnews’ 2015 funding roundup.

MedCityNews takes a lighter-hearted (I think) look at 2016 deals. IBM would buy athenahealth mainly for its EHR and practice management data, plus data aggregator Validic, to beef up Watson; 23andMe, past its two years of troubles after stepping on FDA Superman’s cape, would buy PatientsLikeMe (endangering its community shaped credibility? 23PatientsLikeMe?) and the best–Theranos bought by Boston Heart Diagnostics/Eurofin (EU lab testing giant), which would reduce this unicorn to a pony…but one that might make it. Theranos also made VentureBeat’s list of Likely Carcasses in the Valley of Unicorn Death (to quote the article’s author). Chris Seper’s Deals He’d Like To See.

NIH funds in vivo CTE research with $16 million–$0 from NFL; “Concussion” released

December 23, 2015 | by

CTE research funded–and at a US theater near you Christmas Day

In the run-up to the holidays, our Readers may have missed another gift to those concerned with brain health–the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarding of a major grant to fund research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) to diagnose victims in vivo (while still alive). Awarded by NIH in conjunction with the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke, the $16 million will go to researchers from Boston University, the Cleveland Clinic, Banner Alzheimer’s Institute (Arizona) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Leading the team is Robert Stern MD, Boston University professor and director of clinical research for BU’s Alzheimer’s disease and CTE centers, and a researcher we’ve followed since his June 2013 presentation at NYC’s German Center. According to a report in sports network ESPN’s ‘Outside the Lines’, the National Football League (NFL) refused to fund this research from their long term $30 million grant to the NIH due to Dr Stern’s alleged lack of objectivity; according to ESPN, a NIH official told ‘Outside the Lines’ that “the NFL’s $30 million gift was contingent on the league being able to veto decisions on projects that the money was funding.” Seemingly outside this research is another area of interest to Dr Stern–why some athletes have CTE, and others do not, as discussed in the May 2014 NYC MedTech ‘Brain Games’ presentation attended by this Editor.  Medical-Net (BU release), New York Times

Sports CTE and brain injury is back on the front pages with the release of the film ‘Concussion’, starring Will Smith as foundational researcher Bennet Omalu MD, the then-Pittsburgh forensic pathologist who uncovered CTE after performing a detailed brain examination of Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who died of a heart attack aged 50 in 2002. His 2005 case report with others from University of Pittsburgh in Neurosurgery was the kick-off (so to speak) and so enraged the NFL that they attempted to have it withdrawn from the journal. In this interview with Medscape EIC Eric Topol MD, Dr Omalu discusses (more…)