For those covered by corporate health policies, the day is not far away where employee health insurance programs will require wearing a fitness tracker and meeting certain metrics, such as walking a million steps or sleep quality. Already some programs have the employee log food, exercise, blood glucose, heart rate and other vital signs to qualify for a discount. The trajectory is much like BYOD–once unheard of, now it is expected to be the norm in 50 percent of US companies by 2017, with a concomitant loss of personal security and privacy. CVS Caremark and other companies have already made the stick, not the carrot, the norm of employee wellness programs [TTA 12 April 2013]. Writer Adrian Kingsley-Hughes asks: “How much access do we want our employers to have to our medical data? How much access to our daily activities do we want our employers and insurers having?” And what about spoofing those Fitbits and Jawbones? His ZDNet article notes the interest that Apple (plus Samsung and Google, despite Sergey’s and Larry’s vapors–Ed.) has in health, then takes it out a few more yards with Wearables and health insurance: A health bar over everyone’s head (and do check out the comments.)
Philips Lifeline introduces a mPERS app
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/philips-lifeline-app.jpg” thumb_width=”120″ /]Philips Lifeline has debuted in the US an unbranded mPERS-like app which allows the user from a smartphone (iPhone/Android only) to access the Philips Lifeline call center. The app is free but the service to voice connect to their call center, according to their customer center, is a (bargain compared to standard PERS) $13.95. The phone’s GPS geo-locates the person in need. The fact that the introduction is in the ‘dog days of August’ is one indicator that they are readying well ahead of the late fall (autumn) bump in demand. (Both this Editor and Mobihealthnews see a back and fill for the much-touted GoSafe introduction which 18 months later is still not in market.)
But walk with your Editor through this scenario:
- Smartphone-equipped older person takes a fall, has an accident or is a crime victim
- Despite the fact that all smartphones have accelerometers, the app does not tie in to this data, (more…)
Telecare helping Alzheimer’s patients live in the ‘connected home’
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/140825141047-lively-pillbox-sensor-story-top.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]There’s life in telecare–it’s (finally) morphing into ‘connected home’. Is this ‘slope of enlightenment’ and ‘plateau of productivity’ time? We haven’t had a spotlight on the part of telecare which is sensor-based behavioral monitoring, but here’s one that shines on not just one but four systems which indicates a big change in focus, long developing: SmartThings, Lively, BeClose and certified Grizzled Pioneer GrandCare Systems. CNN.com crafted an article out of a fairly obvious placement by the Alzheimer’s Association, but all to a good end.
Notably SmartThings by Physical Graph (just purchased by Samsung for a reported $200 million after raising $15.5 million through Series A, undoubtedly for their algorithms and in its health reach strategy versus Apple Health) pitches itself on its website as simple home automation, yet this article is all about older adult safety. Lively, which is depicted with an interesting connected pill dispenser (above) and BeClose carve their approaches close to caregivers. All three are DIY systems. GrandCare remains the anomaly, with the highest (custom) home install price ($699 and up) but with a home tablet that engages the older person with virtual visits, music, pictures, daily updates and family/clinician connectivity. They were also first to move in this direction; this Editor recalls their pioneering in the home automation area with CEDIA, the home electronic design association.
After years, are we finally seeing a shift in consumer perception? (more…)
34 to 22 to 10: the Tricorder XPrize finalists
The Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize has arrived at the ‘Final 10’ for the $10 million prize going to the best (and working) “precision diagnostic technolog(y), making definitive health assessment available directly to “health consumers.”” . Less than one year ago, 34 companies had made it through from the initial 255 [TTA 12 Nov 13]. Further reductions brought the next stage to 22. Making the Final 10 are, as expected, Scanadu, but the UK/NI favorite has to be zensor (Intelesens) with its sensor-based patient monitoring in home, hospitals and assisted living (which your Editors have been following since 2010). Four are American companies with one Canadian (Cloud DX), one Indian (Danvantri), one Taiwanese (Dynamical Biomarkers Group), tw0 from the UK (zensor and SCANurse) and one from Slovenia (MESI). Next steps? Supplying X Prize with working prototypes sometime this wenter, 30 complete devices which will be tested at a medical center (not disclosed) May-October 2015 and the award in January 2016. Press release, Mobihealthnews.
Not X enough for you? There’s another, little-noticed XPrize–the Nokia Sensing XChallenge (more…)
Patients should be less engaged, not more
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Thomas.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]What, the very premise of ‘increasing consumer engagement’ doesn’t work? Whatever will all the (startups, websites, gamification, personalized health, behavior modification, Quantified Selfing) do?
What the chronically ill really want is less engagement with, less time spent on their particular condition or disease–certainly not to be forced into Sisyphean tasks. What this Editor has termed the ‘perpetual Battle of Stalingrad’ of self-monitoring (especially apparent in diabetes) means extra effort with minimal/no reward, never achieving ‘normal’ and never catching a break. Glen Tullman, former CEO of Allscripts and currently a healthcare investor with 7WireVentures, points out that the endless promotion of ‘consumer engagement’ is not only patronizing, but also wrong-headed in blaming the patient for not managing their illness their way. People want simply to live their lives, not their problems.
- “What if we ask patients—or “health consumers” as I call them—to do less rather than more?” (more…)
Testing the ‘blast response’ of synthetic bone
While protection against concussive and sub-concussive head blows that lead to brain trauma (TBI) and may lead long-term to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is being developed in several areas, by DARPA, US Army research, universities and the NFL‘s helmet providers, the final test has to involve cranial bone similar to those belonging to 20-30 year olds. Testing on humans is out of the question, deceased animal and older human crania are dissimilar and surgical implants do not react like real bone. The US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) along with university partners are developing synthetic cranial bone that behaves like real 20-30 year old bone when subjected to combat-intensity blasts, for testing devices to mitigate the adverse effects and/or track the effects of those blasts. Armed With Science
CHS data breach estimated price tag: $150 million
Huge price tag, is the solution more ‘white hat hacker/crackers’, get a clue, C-Suite and why China leads in hacking (important updates!)
Dan Munro in Forbes got out his calculator and estimated that the cost to Community Health Services, based on prior incidents, may be as high as $150 million. He bases it on recent poster children Columbia-NY Presbyterian and BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. The message to healthcare business executives: pay now–by beefing up HIT and data security–or pay later in rush remediation of data breaches like identity theft protection, Office of Civil Rights-HHS fines, potential insurance fraud, legal charges and damages awarded. On the latter, it took only hours after the announcement for the first class action to be filed in Alabama.
Of course cybersecurity experts, particularly the ‘white hat’ or ‘cracker’ variety, are in increasingly high demand across all business areas and internationally–and there aren’t many at that exalted level or even a rung or two below. Their commensurate compensation is one factor, but calls to hire less expensively overseas as explored in this article are, in this Editor’s estimation, a two-edged sword: much hacking, many sleeper bugs and ‘backdooring’ are engineered overseas (China, Russia, the Balkans, India); what is to say that these ‘former hackers’ aren’t playing both games? Cybersecurity’s hiring crisis: A troubling trajectory (ZDNet)
The C-Suite Must Care…The Workforce Must Be Aware
Since data security and data breaches threaten to swamp many sectors (universities and colleges, even more than healthcare, rank as the most vulnerable), the solution may not be wholly in the code. (more…)
Aetna’s CarePass passing into history
Another Aetna Healthagen initiative is shutting its virtual doors–the much-touted CarePass aggregator for mobile health apps. Available to both Aetna and non-Aetna members, it incorporated leading apps such as Fitbit, Jawbone, Withings, MapMyFitness and BodyMedia. A dimming of its consumer/mobile health star which burned so brightly from late 2012 through last year was evident at this year’s HIMSS. CarePass was nowhere to be seen, and the iTriage patient engagement tool was off in the shadows [TTA 28 Feb]. From its redone website, Healthagen is increasingly concentrated on core areas for payers: ACOs, clinical decision support, data management and health information exchanges. MobiHealthNews broke the exclusive including Aetna’s confirmation and also the quiet departure of two CarePass executives from the company which took place earlier this summer. (more…)
The smartphone as great healthcare leveler: Eric Topol
Eric Topol MD, cardiologist, Chief Medical Advisor for the rebooted (but so far quiet) AT&T ForHealth and Chief Academic Officer at Scripps Health, is no stranger to the ‘big statement’ and is well known as an advocate for all things mHealthy. For at least two years, he has been promoting the smartphone’s ‘equalizer’ capabilities in health not only via apps and ‘add ons’ but also as a storehouse or central repository for individual health information, including genetic screening, which can be transmitted onward to a practitioner, lab or PHR. Dr Topol’s ‘big statements’ were fully on display in his keynote at HealthLeaders’ CFO Exchange conference. A promoter of the ‘creative destruction of medicine’ (the title of his most recent book, WSJ article), he believes that everything from the office visit (virtualized) (more…)
Five ‘Wellvilles’ found for five year experiment (US)
Tech angel investor, philanthropist and astronaut-in-training Esther Dyson and her HICCup (Health Initiative Coordinating Council) team have picked the five model communities with populations less than 100,000 on what is now dubbed ‘The Way to Wellville’. They are: Muskegon, Michigan; Lake County, California; Spartanburg, South Carolina; Clatsop County, Oregon; and Niagara Falls, New York. Each of the towns will spend between (more…)
Ding! Telecare developer Healthsense raises $10 million in 8th round
Sensor-based remote monitoring company and certified Grizzled Pioneer Healthsense has completed a raise of $10 million, its eighth round of funding since its founding in 2003. This round was led by new investor Mansa Capital with previous investors Radius Ventures and Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. Mansa has current investments in only two other companies–smartphone med adherence platform HealthPrize Technologies ($3 million from Mansa just yesterday) and employer behavioral health risk manager E4 Health (CrunchBase) with a third, Independent Living Systems, listed on its website, but was a prior investor in well-known Athenahealth. Earlier investors Ziegler HealthVest Management (2007) and West Health did not join in this round. The VentureBeat article alludes to home monitoring pilots with home health providers Humana Cares/Senior Bridge and Fallon Health–odd since Healthsense has always had units in home health. Last year Healthsense bought rival telecare company WellAWARE [TTA 2 July 2013] after the latter experienced difficulty (more…)
FBI ‘Flash Alerts’ health organizations about hacker attacks (US)
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/keep-calm-and-encrypt-your-data-5.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]Late yesterday Reuters reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a ‘flash alert’ to healthcare organizations, warning they are being targeted by “…malicious actors targeting healthcare related systems, perhaps for the purpose of obtaining Protected Healthcare Information (PHI) and/or Personally Identifiable Information (PII),” and that “These actors have also been seen targeting multiple companies in the healthcare and medical device industry typically targeting valuable intellectual property, such as medical device and equipment development data.” These alerts are sent to businesses by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to help prevent cyberattacks. This follows an April FBI alert warning healthcare companies that their security systems were lax compared to other sectors, making them highly vulnerable to hacker attacks. Our Monday report on the Community Health System attack on 4.5 million records at the the #2 US publicly traded hospital operator (more…)
The drip of data breaches now a flood: 4.5 million records hacked–update
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/keep-calm-and-encrypt-your-data-5.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]Breaking News–updated at end Earlier this year [TTA 23 Apr] this Editor commented on the fourth annual update from the Ponemon Institute plus a qualitative study from IS Solutions that contained mostly unwelcome news for healthcare IT departments in the US. Ponemon’s new estimate of data breaches’ cost per year: $5.6 billion. While making some progress in the existential threat that data breaches present to institutional and personal security, both reports also outlined the disconnect between HIT professionals busy dealing with and sealing off the mice of internal causes versus the looming, huge menace of the external criminal threat. We now know that Godzilla has arrived and he’s stomping ‘n’ chomping. Community Health Systems of Franklin, Tennessee claimed today as part of a SEC regulatory filing that hackers originating in China breached sensitive information in 4.5 million patient records accumulated over five years during April and June using cyberattacks and sophisticated malware. (more…)
More (much more) on tDCS brain stimulation research
Prepare to be shocked! Can brain enhancing techniques via transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) be the future of performance enhancement? Will it be the future basis of recovery from some mental illnesses, stroke and other neurological diseases? It’s a hot research area, according to this Atlantic article. Researchers at DARPA, University of New Mexico, George Mason University, Stanford University, Oxford University, University of Göttingen and this Editor’s local City College of New York (CCNY) are hot on the trail. Four areas being investigated are (more…)
Now a sensor for healthier necks and spines (TW/CN)
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/fineck.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Would you like to monitor your neck and spine as an aid to fitness, better posture and to avoid strain? This Editor, who has a history of both neck and back problems, surely would–and it’s an area not covered by current fitness monitors. Fineck, developed by the China/Taiwan company VEARI with central Taiwan’s Sport and Health Research Center at National Chung Hsing University of Taiwan, claims to have developed a waterproof, reasonably presentable (left) necklace sensor along with analytics. It will send alerts via smartphone when it determines bad body posture or too much inactivity. ‘Neck-Health’ pictures demonstrate what you should do. While not clinical grade like devices such as those from Australia’s dorsaVi, it opens a whole new pursuit for QSers! Fineck website. VentureBeat
All that Quantified Self data? Drowning doctors don’t want to see it.
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/reduce-documentation1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Our long-time readers will remember Questions # 3, 4 and 5 of The Five Big Questions (FBQ*). They have not lost their salience as doctors are rejecting the not-terribly-accurate ‘telehealth’ data [TTA 10 May] generated by popular fitness trackers such as Fitbit, Misfit Shine and Jawbone. We do note that Apple’s Health/HealthKit has trotted out alliances with Mayo Clinic and Epic Systems (EHR) on apps and integrating data into an PHR [TTA 3 June], as well as Samsung’s SAMI [2 June] funding a University of California (UCSF) research center and (of course) Google. But this article confirms (more…)
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