Telefónica Digital today announced a strategic agreement with and a financial stake in information/medical community website Saluspot to extend the latter’s content and network in Spain and Latin America. Saluspot is an interesting cross between health information (WebMD) and physician locators (in the US, ZocDoc and Vitals) in that it provides free, anonymous contact with registered (on their site) physicians via the website to answer consumer questions in areas where healthcare access is limited; through this matching it also provides visibility for doctors as well as a professional exchange and purchasing collective. The benefit for Saluspot is to increase their coverage beyond Spain and Chile, and for Telefónica to add health tech services in major markets such as Brazil, where they acquired chronic care management company Axismed last year. Telefónica’s eHealth reach, according to the release, is over two million eHealth service customers in Latin America and its media networks include Eleven Paths, giffgaff, Media Networks Latin America and Terra.
Tunstall welcomes you to ‘my world’
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Tunstall-tab.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Tunstall unveiled its tablet-based integrated system for supported housing at this week’s Housing LIN Extra Care Housing Annual Conference in London. ‘my world’ groups applications for residents in an easy-to-use way for communication (email/messages), scheduling care visits, booking meals, home maintenance, finding out about community events, weather and the like. These features are all somewhat reminiscent of other systems such as GrandCare and the original concept behind Waldo Health. It appears to this Editor that Tunstall has designed my world/my clinic as Tunstall’s World–a fully proprietary ecosystem, as seen in their model installation with Herefordshire Housing. The release notes that it is integrated with Tunstall’s ‘my clinic‘ multi-user telehealth system and the Communicall Vi reporting system, as well as Contour Homes. Certainly when a system is complex, having it ‘closed’ is assurance that everything works together. But is a closed system the best quality, most economic and effective arrangement for individual, a community’s or a council’s needs? Press release, brochure
Telehealth for Parkinson’s, autism, Alzheimer’s (podcast)
For your weekend listening, Neil Versel’s interview with Ray Dorsey, MD, co-director of the Center for Human Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Rochester, where he discusses use of off-the-shelf telehealth for primarily Parkinson’s disease but also for autism and Alzheimer’s. Article with podcast link (just under 18 minutes.)
Aerotel’s HeartView ECG goes mobile and personal
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/aerotel-heartview-p128-mobile-feb14.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]For those attending GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week and interested in how a more traditional telehealth provider incorporates mobile technology, stroll over to the Israeli Pavilion (Hall 5, Booth #5C81) to see Aerotel‘s new (debuted at Medica Dusseldorf last November) HeartView P12/8 Mobile, an extension of their existing 12-lead ECG line that incorporates a 3G module for patient data transmission to either a call center or to a physician’s email. Aerotel claims that it is the smallest and most accurate 12-lead mobile monitor on the market. We thank Boaz Babai of ARPU~UP, Aerotel’s marketing agency, for the heads-up–but it would have been helpful to have a link to the (nonexistent?) product web page. Release (finance.yahoo.com).
International Digital Health Congress (UK): call for papers
Call for papers due 31 March
The King’s Fund’s International Digital Health and Care Congress has opened their call for speaker papers which showcase new ideas in telehealth and telecare. This year the Congress has widened its focus to include ehealth, mobile health and digital health innovations. Abstracts for oral and poster presentations should be targeted to one of the main topics below:
Sustaining independence as people age.
Preventing and managing chronic illness effectively.
Supporting people with mental health issues.
Digitally enabling service transformation.
Innovations in technology.
Formats for presentations (including PDF) are available at the Congress’ page. More information for the Congress on 10-12 September is available here.
$1.2 million in digital health funding from Aetna Foundation
The Aetna Foundation has earmarked $1.2 million to fund digital health, including mobile health, specifically to support public health in “vulnerable and minority populations.” The grants will go to 23 organizations in 13 states, including regional hospitals and grassroots efforts. Cited in the release (reprinted in HITECH Answers) as an example was the Institute for eHealth Equity (IEHE) and Text4Wellness. The $1.2 million grant is part of a three-year, $4 million commitment to technology innovation in public health. Aetna is also supporting a call for papers to be published in the American Journal of Public Health. Deadline is 1 March, so get your skates on!
Now three medical device maker networks hacked
St. Jude Medical, Medtronic and Boston Scientific targeted. The San Francisco Chronicle reported earlier this week, from what they termed a source close to the companies, that all three companies had data intrusions that lasted for several months during 2013, and were not aware of them until alerted by Federal authorities. None of the companies, nor the FBI, confirmed or commented on this for the Chronicle. The attacks were “very thorough” and the source stated that they showed signs of being committed by hackers in China. The attraction of all three companies–Medtronic being the world’s largest– is their intellectual property and of course patient data, with the article mentioning confidential patient data collection from clinical trials. Also iHealthBeat.
Previously in TTA: US health data breaches hit record; Healthcare.gov backdoored?
CUHTec courses in March–updated (UK)
CUHTec has announced two additional telecare strategy courses for March, adding two at Coventry University in addition to the two previously scheduled at University of Newcastle. Topics are Learning Disability Services, Fall Prevention and Digital and Mobile Telecare. These strategy courses are for commissioners, service development managers, trainers and others with responsibility for telecare and AT service planning and delivery.
CUHTec telecare strategy course: Learning Disability Services, HDTI, Coventry University, Thursday, 6 March 2014
CUHTec telecare strategy course: Learning Disability Services. Culture Lab, University of Newcastle, Thursday 20 March 2014
CUHTec telecare strategy course: Moving to digital and mobile telecare. Culture Lab, University of Newcastle, Friday 21 March 2014
CUHTec telecare strategy course: Fall Prevention and Management, HDTI, Coventry University, Tuesday 25 March 2014
To find out more and to book a place, please visit CUHTec’s website. Thanks to reader Prof. Andrew Monk, director of The Centre for Usable Home Technology (CUHTec), for the update.
Powerhouse DC lobbying for telehealth, telemedicine
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The Gimlet Eye observes from a houseboat anchored at a remote Pacific island, with coconuts and occasional internet to Editor Donna.
Telehealth and telemedicine have reached a US milestone of sorts: the formation of a Washington, DC-based ‘advocacy’ (a/k/a lobbying) group constituted as a business non-profit. The Alliance for Connected Care is headed by three former Senators (two of whom were ‘amigos’) from both sides of the aisle and backed by a board including the expected (giants Verizon, WellPoint, CVS Caremark, Walgreens)–and the surprising (much smaller remote consult provider Teladoc and HealthSpot, the developer of the HealthSpot Station kiosk–hmmm, must be a fair chunk of their marketing budgets there) flanked by six well known ‘associate members’ including Cardinal Health and Care Innovations (another hmmm). There’s also a hefty ‘advisory board‘ including the American Heart Association and the NAHC (home care). The leadership team members are all members of major Washington law/lobbying firms. Tom Daschle is recognized as one of the most influential former Senators in town via DLA Piper, though himself not a registered lobbyist (OpenSecrets.org). Trent Lott and John Breaux hung out their own shingle and were recently bought by mega-lobbyist Patton Boggs. To put a fine point on it, more high-powered one does not get. The Eye sees that the time is prime for the Big Influence and…
What the Eye sees is Big Financial Stakes: Private insurers are required to cover telehealth in 20 states, as does Medicaid in most. The VA is a major user. But the great big trough of Medicare is new territory; covering 16 percent of the population, the use of telemedicine and telehealth is limited to certain geographic areas. (MedCityNews) This marks the infamous tipping point: the clarion call to ‘build significant and high-level support for Connected Care among leaders in Congress and the Administration’, ‘enable more telehealth to support new models of care’ and ‘establish a non-binding, standardized definition of Connected Care through federal level multi stakeholder-input process’ (whew!) Big companies want in, insurers want reimbursement, and they want it from somewhere as well. Toto, we’re not in the Kansas of Small anymore with ‘connected health’–we are now in the Oz of Big Money and Power Players. Alliance release (Oddly the website looks preliminary despite the big announcement and backing.)
More on this strategy: It’s called ‘soft lobbying’ and it is the latest thing in the Influence Wars. The Alliance for Connected Care is a 501(c)6 non-profit, similar to a business league like the Chamber of Commerce, and this has become a popular tactic. It’s also a less regulated, less transparent way to shape coverage, public opinion and exert influence on legislators. See this well-timed examination from the Washington Post on the corn syrup versus table sugar wars. ‘Soft lobbying’ war between sugar, corn syrup shows new tactics in Washington influence
TSA: opening up or losing the plot?
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /](Editor Donna is posting for The Gimlet Eye, who is filing from an undisclosed tropical location.)
Hats off to Alyson Bell, the TSA’s Managing director, for publishing the results of an independent review carried out in September 2013 in the Winter 2013-14 edition of TSA’s publication, The Link (sent to members, one of whom kindly passed it to The Gimlet Eye, although not currently accessible to non-members on their website). It makes interesting reading – there are compliments about the speakers and facilities at the annual conference, however there are many areas identified for improvement, such as the comment about TSA Forums that “London Telecare Market Place events are better”. (London Telecare has now of course become UK Telehealthcare). Of particular interest to The Gimlet Eye is the feedback on training which begins with the observation that “Current satisfaction rate was 50%” and goes on to explain that members wanted it delivered more ‘hands on’, with ‘how to’ topics and at lower cost.
It is then quite surprising that Lancashire Social Services, presumably still reeling from the abrupt cancellation of the pricey One Connect deal last November, are said to have awarded their recent tender for telecare awareness training for hundreds of staff (which presumably should be ‘hands on’ and ‘how to’ focused) to the TSA. Was the key factor in selecting the TSA raising the low satisfaction rate with training, or was the lead consideration a lower or lowest cost compared to other bidders? (In this respect, had Lancashire Social Services read the feedback in The Link’s review, The Eye wonders?)
Other factors: the TSA is not a large organization, so given the evident size of the training requirement, will this mean even fewer people available to deliver courses to members? Will it mean contracting in people to deliver courses who perhaps, as TSA members, were competing against the TSA for the Lancashire work?
Is this what member organizations should be doing? Comments please!
National Health Summit (Ireland)–reporter wanted
Unfortunately Editor Toni will not be able to cover this conference taking place 19 February in Dublin as originally planned, due to an overriding business commitment. If there is an interested reader who would like to attend in her stead, and who can prepare a timely report (within 72 hours) from this event, please contact Editor Donna ASAP as the event is next Wednesday. We will make arrangements with the organizers to provide free press admission and of course you will receive writing credit, but other expenses will not be covered. (For the article, our standard is that you can be selective and interesting rather than comprehensive.)
AliveCor ECG gains FDA over-the-counter approval
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/s4_case.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]AliveCor Inc., the developer of the AliveCor mobile heart monitor, announced today the granting of over-the-counter (OTC) clearance for the device. It is a single-channel ECG ‘case’ that snaps on to iPhones and Android phones to record, display, store and transfer data into the AliveCor application where it can be transmitted to doctors or in the US, to a US-based board-certified cardiologist or cardiac technician in a new analysis program called AliveInsights. US residents can pre-order now with shipments starting in March for $199. It is already available for the UK and Ireland through AmazonUK at £169. Release PDF
Nursing home telemedicine reduces hospitalizations: study
A controlled two-year study in a chain of eleven Massachusetts for-profit nursing homes significantly reduced readmissions through the use of telemedicine (remote consults) with patients during off-hours and weekends. Those homes which used the (unidentified) telemedicine provider the most frequently–four–had the greatest reductions in rates of hospitalization: 11.3 percent, versus 9.7 percent for the six facilities which adopted the system first. A control group of five which presumably did not use telemedicine had a reduction of 5.3 percent. Calculating the savings to Medicare, the researchers estimated $150,000 per nursing home per year. With a telemedicine cost of $30,000 per nursing home, the net savings would be roughly $120,000 for each home using the services most frequently. The researchers are David C. Grabowski of Harvard Medical School and A. James O’Malley of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice at the Geisel School of Medicine. Abstract (full text in Health Affairs paywalled), Medical News Today. Hat tip to Editor Toni Bunting.
TTA’s Editors are highlighting several of the articles in this month’s Health Affairs ‘Connected Health’ issue: Study shows telehealth increases new healthcare users, State policies, size influence hospital telehealth adoption, Health Affairs review of telehealth/telemedicine studies. Health Affairs provides a helpful overview of this month’s articles ( full text) in Connected Health: Emerging Disruptive Technologies
US health data breaches hit record; Healthcare.gov backdoored?
Security firm Redspin reports a total of 7.1 million affected records in 2013, up from 3 million in 2012. The five largest breaches accounted for 85 percent of the total: Advocate Health, Horizon BCBSNJ, AHMC Healthcare, Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth and Indiana Family & Social Services Administration. Hardware theft of unencrypted devices accounted for the first three; Texas Health was perhaps the most unique because it disposed of over 277,000 microfiche patient records in a city park, making it the winner of last May’s ‘It’s Just Mulch’ award in ‘The exploding black market in healthcare data’. Not included in the Redspin report (free download here) was a mid-December breach of 405,000 records at Bryan, Texas-based St. Joseph Health System which would have put it fourth on the list. This took place in a two-day data security attack on their servers traced to China and reported to the FBI. While Redspin attributes only six percent of breaches to hacking, this is an amount sure to increase as more information is digitized. Health Data Management, iHealthBeat, FierceHealthIT Security breaches, natural disasters and outages are events that cost US hospitals over $1.6 billion annually, and 82 percent of health IT executives surveyed by MeriTalk said that their technology infrastructure is “not fully prepared for a disaster recovery incident.” The $1.6 billion seems low in light of the Ponemon Institute’s 2012 health data breach estimate of $7 billion annually–and the $12 billion in victim costs [TTA 14 Sept 13]. FierceHealthIT
.…and wait till Healthcare.gov-related security breaches start. This Editor stopped beating the dead and quartered horse of Healthcare.gov last year, finding that what was suspected and detailed from the start was simply borne out by subsequent revelations. Another example: the recent revelation that US intelligence agencies are highly concerned that code in the website was produced by programmers in Belarus, a former Soviet republic closely allied to that hotbed of hacking, Russia. That means that ‘backdoors’ are right in the code, waiting to be opened. This affects more than the website–but through the hub, states, HHS, IRS and DHS. How did our Washington types find out about it? When a top Belarusian official bragged on state radio about it! Ace intelligence writer Bill Gertz in the Washington Times broke the story. (Want more on the website’s security problems? See here for more on the Gertz story plus the David Kennedy/TrustedSec testimony and more. But bring your preferred headache remedy!)
State policies, size influence hospital telehealth adoption
A study published this month in Health Affairs examines the factors influencing adoption of telehealth (likely telemedicine/remote consults, though it’s difficult to tell from context). While 42 percent of US hospitals have telehealth capabilities, positive influences are inclusion in a hospital system, teaching hospital status, non-profit status and importantly, whether state regulations promote private payer reimbursement. Another apparent positive in adoption is small population and few hospitals: Alaska (71 percent), Arkansas (71 percent), South Dakota (70 percent), and Maine (69 percent). A major negative factor: restrictive licensure of out-of-state providers that prevent multi-state practice. Authored by the busy Dr. Joseph Kvedar of the Center for Connected Health, Julia Adler-Milstein of the University of Michigan and David W. Bates of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. HA abstract (full text is paywalled), FierceHealthIT Earlier this week in TTA: Ohio telehealth bill passed in Senate
Health IT funding bubble seen by veteran investor
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/crystal-ball.jpg” thumb_width=”120″ /] How is health tech like the 1990s ‘dot-com’-ers? Veteran Silicon Valley investor (HealthTech Capital) and former entrepreneur Anne DeGheest projects a ‘Series B crunch‘ in funding health tech and IT in an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch. The key factors: angels and ‘unsophisticated investors’ are pouring money into all sorts of devices, apps and related services in seed and Series A stages just to get on board in a hot sector. When the founders of these companies get to Series B and present to more demanding investors, the lack of a true value proposition and a detailed business plan that answers basic questions leave them standing on, as aptly put, ‘a pier to nowhere’ or as Joe Hage termed it last month, ‘insolvent with a great idea.’
Ms. DeGheest’s view that we are reprising the elements of the ‘dot-com’ bubble is confirmed by the numbers in Rock Health‘s and PwC‘s funding reports throughout 2013: (more…)
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