Tablets for mental stimulation, concussion detection

April 16, 2013 | by

Clevermind for dementia, cognitively disabled

The new Clevermind app/user interface for iPad is designed to simplify the internet for active use by those with Alzheimer’s disease, dementias or others who are cognitively impaired for a variety of reasons. According to founder Glenn Palumbo in an interview with Neil Versel, “The initial release, set for June will have limited functionality, serving as the front end for communication and social hubs like Skype, Facebook and Twitter, with a simplified display including a basic Web browser.” Depending on the stage that the dementia is in, it can be a boon in mental stimulation or as their website terms ‘neuroplasticity’, if presented appropriately–or, based on your Editor’s knowledge of working with dementia sufferers, potentially quite upsetting. The secondary markets that Mr. Palumbo mentioned, stroke patients and children with disabilities, may be more favorable. Clevermind is on Kickstarter with an initial goal of $10,000 but has raised a low $1,717 with 23 days to go. (Hint: try a healthcare- oriented crowdfunding site like Medstartr or Health Tech Hatch for your next round.)

GeriJoy’s ‘virtual pet’ to engage older adults

Another iPad and Android tablet app, GeriJoy, uses the interface of a virtual pet to respond to the user both by voice and touch to lessen isolation, loneliness and increase connectivity to loved ones and friends. Another asset of these tablets is that they have two-way capability, and that active monitoring can help an older person in a bad situation. From the release: (Co-founder Victor) “Wang describes how a customer adopted a GeriJoy Companion for her elderly father, who lives alone. One day, the companion woke up to a loud sound, and heard a paid caregiver screaming at the elder. GeriJoy reported the abuse to the customer, who was very grateful and replaced the caregiver that week.”

Sideline and ringside voice testing for concussion

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have developed a tablet-based test that can detect injury through before-and-after voice analysis. For instance, an athlete recites a series of words before a game, recorded on a tablet. If there’s a suspected concussion or brain injury, the same words are used and software compares differences. Injury indicators can be pitch, hyper nasality, distorted vowels and imprecise consonants–and the tests are far more difficult to fake. In action in this video, the tests also appear to include spatial and balance. Associate Professor Christian Poellabauer describes the research below using Notre Dame’s boxing teams.

[This video is no longer available on this site but may be findable via an internet search]

 

 

Wearable alert: DARPA’s tinier-than-a-penny nav device

April 16, 2013 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/timu.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Misfit, UnderArmour, Fraunhofer Institute, Samsung, Apple, GuideMeHome and even Avery Dennison, listen up: the US Department of Defense via DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a/k/a the Internet’s real dad) researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a timing and inertial measurement unit (TIMU) that monitors motion, acceleration, time and positioning–without GPS. This navigation chip packs internal clocks, gyroscopes and accelerometers into 10 cubic millimeters fitting quite comfortably in the center of a US penny. Defense usage is backup for military devices in case of malfunctioning/unavailable GPS. In the civilian market, the easy one is wearables particularly for safety (e.g. gait detection, falling)–but the other is backup to in-car and cell phone systems dependent on GPS which, if knocked out, can present inconvenience to hazard. Extreme Miniaturization…. (DARPA.mil)  PopSci’s once-over-lightly.

Google Glass and healthcare: VCs agree

April 16, 2013 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Much to The Gimlet Eye’s consternation, Google Glass is getting the healthcare rush: big-time tech VCs Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures (of course). The group dubbed ‘Glass Collective’ (hmm) promote surgical use, assistance for the disabled and (of course) self-tracking. MobileWorldLive

TechCrunch reports that the first prototypes are starting to ship and are first going to 2,000 “Glass Explorers” who signed up at a major developer conference last year. The Eye observes that Google needs them badly–to start writing apps and debugging the prototypes. But were you one of those who signed up to pay $1,500 so you could Ultimate One-Up your friends? There will be a yet-to-be-determined delay. The Eye believes it cannot be long enough…because this next article contains one Big Blinking Concern After Another, including but not limited to the illicit acquisition of data and all sorts of things the appsters can do to really make Google Glass A Bad Thing in Google Glass and Surveillance Culture (Slashdot). Update 16 April pm: Gizmag reveals Google Glass specs, so to speak.

Proteus 2.0: more edible monitoring

April 15, 2013 | by

From what only 2.5 years ago wags dubbed ‘creepy’ pills and now is the accepted Proteus Digital Health pill/transmitter/smartphone model, there had to be more in the same vein–or alimentary canal. Teams at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are working on digestible devices which have flexible polymer electrodes and are powered by a sodium ion electrochemical cell, to scrutinize for biomarkers or gastric problems. According to the CMU release, “The battery also could be used to stimulate damaged tissue or help in targeted drug delivery for certain types of cancer.” Health tech monitoring mavens may want to be in touch with… Carnegie Mellon’s Christopher Bettinger Develops Edible Electronics for Medical Device Industry

Employee wellness: Carrot? Stick? Or something else?

April 12, 2013 | by

The actions of companies like CVS Caremark [TTA Telehealth Soapbox] have aimed a white-hot klieg light onto corporate wellness and the various methodologies companies are using to force a change in employees’ behaviors to positively affect their healthcare spend. Both positive and negative incentives have their pros and cons–positive incentives tied to completion of wellness ‘tasks’ seem not to work long term, penalties can be a blow to morale and verge on full-blown discrimination and lawsuits. Increasingly the price of being in a corporate health plan seems to be acceptance of ‘intrusion for your own good’ and privacy loss. On the other hand, why should health insurance be any different than home or auto, at least in the US?  The Wall Street Journal has written several non-firewalled articles on this issue in recent days: Your Company Wants to Make You Healthy; Carrots and Sticks: Which One Works The Best (infographic); If Workers Are Out of Shape, Should Companies Make Them Pay? (At Work Blog–read over 85 comments)

In terms of effectiveness, the only study this Editor has seen was published this month in the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine from wellness/disease manager Healthways’ Center for Health Research, as mentioned in a secondary article by the Integrated Benefits Institute. According to IBI’s summary:

Looking at over 19,000 employees at five employers, the authors find that employees who reduced their total health behavior risks over a 12 month period—for example, by increasing exercise or improving their diet—had a lower likelihood of absence, less presenteeism [working while sick–Ed.], and better job performance.

But some of those 19 factors included work-related risks such as “poor supervisor relationship, not utilizing strengths doing job, and organization unsupportive of well-being” (JOEM)–not health related at all. And the total reduction was a whopping 5 percent.

Magic 8 Ball says: ‘picture cloudy, try again’.

So perhaps the real choice has become this: adhere to employer requirements–or not have any coverage at all. There’s been a 10 point decline in Americans covered by employer-sponsored insurance, from 69.7 percent in 1999/2000 to 59.5 percent in 2010/2011 (SHADAC/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). Much of that is also the US 7.6 percent ‘official’ unemployment rate (U-3)–but the real accelerator here is the 13.8 percent U-6 rate which counts in part-timers and the ‘marginally attached/discouraged’ who are not going to have employer insurance. The Affordable Care Act and its requirements/fees have also discouraged many smaller employers who are simply dropping insurance coverage.

So what is the bottom line? And where there are the opportunities for consumer engagement and self-maintenance linked to telehealth and mobile health which can mitigate cost? Understanding the ill-defined situation companies are in, especially in the US, will help in identifying them.

Wireless health care: ‘the sky’s the limit’

April 12, 2013 | by

Wireless/mobile health tech in and out of the hospital is profiled in this special report from iHealthBeat (California Health Care Foundation): Sotera Wireless’ ViSi Mobile Systems (a wristlet which uses chest and thumb sensors to track multiple vitals including heart rate, respiration rate and skin temperature, and sends the data to Palomar Medical Center’s EHR); startup MedSensation’s robotic Glove Tricorder with temperature sensors and ultrasound pads for diagnosing breast cancer; and the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize to push reliable health diagnostics into the home for 15 diseases. Another reason is the Deloitte estimate of all wireless health devices generating $22 billion in the US by 2015 (not cited by iHealthBeat but we do here–Neil Versel’s January roundup of inexact forecasts). When It Comes to the Future of Wireless Sensors in Health Care: The Sky’s the Limit: article/audio, transcript PDF.

Wearable tech that probably won’t wear well

April 12, 2013 | by

Wearable tech’s own blog, FashioningTech takes the measure of four new arrivals and puts them into the ‘Fail’ bucket. Some are obvious: Hi-Call Bluetooth Talking Glove is ridiculous. Others are clonky bracelets which don’t do much (Embrace+ got kicked to the curb on Kickstarter) or are good only for bar conversation starters (LinkMe–and who wants people to see your messages?). One’s an ‘almost’–charging/smartphone storage purse Everpurse. This Editor thinks they should target energy-hogging tablets, not smartphones which have a longer life. (And $250 would not seem quite as bad for a larger case.)  Wearable Tech Fails

Sproxil wins USPTO ‘Patents for Humanity’ award

April 11, 2013 | by

Sproxil, the anti-counterfeiting mobile drug authentication system in use in India, Kenya (for East Africa), Nigeria and Ghana (West Africa), was one of  ten recipients of the ‘Patents for Humanity’ award given annually by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Most of the nine other recipients were pharmaceutical (medicines and vaccines), food and nutrition, clean tech (water and solar bulbs) and information tech (Sproxil and Microsoft). Congratulations to Sproxil, which is up to 3.8 million products verified. We’ve followed them for the past three years for its fine work in developing countries, combating one particularly evil business; drug counterfeiting is a $200 billion global fraud that sickens and kills the vulnerable.  USPTO, Sproxil releases.

Detecting counterfeit electronics

April 11, 2013 | by

Not only drugs are counterfeited (see article on Sproxil) but increasingly there is a world trade in counterfeit electronics–old, substandard components are remanufactured to appear new and brand-name. For mission-critical functions–or in health tech–this can mean bad readings, hazard or failure. Initial research from the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Army Research Office (ARO) on a DNA tag was developed with a private company, ChromoLogic LLC, which first developed a tag with a biomimetic barcode that can be aligned in the proper order and decoded by an optical reader–and the technology was extended to optical mapping of electronic components’ intrinsic surface or ‘fingerprinting’ by their DTEK system. The rather circuitous story is here in this strangely titled Armed With Science article, Sneaky Discovery Can Identify Counterfeits, Track Materiel

The diabetic experience: help on the way?

April 10, 2013 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/IV-AA370_DIABET_G_201304051645212.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]Last week’s article on the limitations of QSing outlined the precursor ‘fly in ointment’: how diabetics have been living long-term with monitoring and self-management. Type 1 diabetes is the ‘Battle of Stalingrad’ for life. The ideal is to create a device that replaces the non-functioning pancreas, which releases insulin in the amount and time as needed to closely balance blood glucose and avoid devastating seizures and blackouts. Technology available for the past few years in Europe is just now (to this Editor’s amazement) in FDA approval in the US (Medtronic’s insulin pump.) Closer to the ideal is an insulin pump that connects to a continuous glucose monitor, which is being developed by Johnson & Johnson’s Animas division. The market, according to the JDRF, is 3 million people in the US. For Diabetics, a Longtime Goal Is Within Reach (Wall Street Journal)

Healthcare moving towards the ‘Wal-Mart Moment’: IBM

April 9, 2013 | by

Perhaps this is more a wish than reality right now, but IBM’s Barry Mason, their VP in charge of global healthcare payers, sees the ‘Wal-Mart moment’ of transparency between insurance companies, hospitals, medical devices and pharma coming up shortly. The four are actually considering sharing data, restructuring their organizations to work more closely together and even going ‘joint’. This sentiment seems to be on display in this week’s World Health Care Congress. The aforementioned ‘Wal-Mart moment’ is when Wal-Mart opened its books on sales data and inventory levels to vendors, creating a superior level of transparency.  The ambitious list he proposes includes supply chain data (claims data), complete sharing of clinical data from providers and all consumer data. Amazing potential here…but many rivers to cross, filled with rocks. Again. Healthcare convergence moves beyond the buzzword. But here’s what still needs to happen (MedCityNews)

FNIH spearheads Alzheimer’s Disease neuroimaging initiative

April 9, 2013 | by

This news could not be more timely, as Alzheimer’s Disease has become the sixth leading cause of death in the US, and one which has increased by 68 percent between 2000-2010 [TTA 25 March]. The National Institutes on Health (NIH) with the National Institute on Aging and 27 private sector companies and non-profits has started the second phase of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI II). It will continue to track the ADNI subjects from the study that ended in 2010, and enroll additional normal, mildly cognitively impaired, and Alzheimer’s disease patients. Additional plans for ADNI II include PET imaging scans on every new patient enrolled. Foundation for the National Institutes on Health.

Thick as BRICS?

April 9, 2013 | by

The developing nations dubbed BRICS–Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa–have prosperity, uneven as it may be, but their public health is not keeping up. In addition to communicable diseases, obesity and diabetes are exploding. This Atlantic article is insistent on ‘infrastructure’–which is needed–but here are five countries which are wide open for mobile health. High rates of cell phone ownership and the huge job to be done in helping people towards awareness and self-management — means opportunity, as long as it is kept simple and inexpensive. Which health tech systems now at BluePrint Health or StartUp Health will help these people manage food consumption, tracking weight, exercise, blood glucose in a non-QS way? Brazil, China, and India Are Fat, And Getting Fatter

Telehealth tiptoeing into skilled nursing facilities (US)

April 9, 2013 | by

Shattering a few stereotypes on older adults and technology use is this profile of Las Colinas of Westover Rehabilitation, a short and long-term-care (LTC) residence near San Antonio, Texas Technology. Their short and long-term residents–largely in their 70s and 80s–use CogniFit brain training games, videos and Skype-ing on a Kindle Fire and Apple TV for brain stimulation, games, socialization and connectedness with families.The facility is also up to date with the specialized long-term-care EHR PointClickCare. Perhaps not typical in LTC now, but a pointer to where the near future should be. Senior care goes high-tech (San Antonio Express-News)

Growing Army-Navy ‘jointness’ in telehealth (US)

April 8, 2013 | by

Our readers will note that most advances in telehealth, in smartphone-based support and TBI research have originated out of the US Army’s  Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC), the Army Research Laboratory, Medical Research & Materiel Command and the Research, Development and Engineering Command. The US Navy has jumped in with Kinect for rehab with the West Health Institute. Now the US Army Medical Information Technology Center at Fort Sam Houston (Texas), part of the Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA), is the point of contact for the Navy for a pilot program using instant messaging hardware and software–Jabber–to be tested at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and planned to be rolled out through worldwide naval medical facilities. JBSA is the locus for medical training in the Army and much of the armed forces; the Army’s medical school AMEDDC&S is located there. Fort Sam Houston’s Video Network Center also handles telemedicine consults for the Army, Navy and VA. USAMITC helps telehealth become a reality for Navy medicine (JBSA release).

The diabetic experience: the fly in the Quantified Selfing ointment

April 5, 2013 | by | 3 Comments
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Quantified Selfers (QSers) maintain that their obsessive practice not only is the be-all and end-all of leading a Healthy Life, but if only more of the hoi polloi would do it, we’d avoid doctors and healthcare costs, the seas would part and we’d bounce to the Gates of the New Jerusalem with a gleam in our eye, driving our Fords with Allergy Alert SYNC. Well, this Eye has gazed Gimlety on this entire Movement for quite a while, to the raised noses of the Healthcare Digerati, and now has found a fellow nay-sayer and nose lower-er in the unexpected pages of The Atlantic. The Eye now slaps the Head for not thinking of the following.

Who were the early adopters of QS? Diabetics. From the late 1970s on, patients were handed glucose meters in the doctor’s office, stacks of reading material and told to go forth and self-manage. Are they happy? Empowered? In control? Au contraire, mon frere!

The fact that diabetics have been doing this for years, and that they largely loathe the experience (author’s emphasis), not only serves as a caution to the vogue of self-tracking. It also offers an opportunity, serving as an object lesson in what works, and what doesn’t work, when people track their health.

Loathing Can Be Quantified as in the 2012 BMC Health-published survey where diabetics told researchers that self-monitoring was the enemy, a Sisypheian task, a perpetual Battle of Stalingrad. No wonder why they are DEPRESSED. The sheer tedium of every day, several times a day, pricking fingers with crude monitors, making the decision on to eat, what, to inject or take pills, meds that get you sick, and never, ever being ‘in balance’, feeling wrong, guilty and scared, would depress The Eye more than sitting through a Jim Carrey movie. Fine to take away a few steps with LifeScan’s VerioSync and iBGStar to send the metering to the smartphone, or to Telcare’s system, and know that hovering in the future may be the non-invasive glucose meter and fully automated insulin pumps that work with your smartphone, but… Thomas Goetz’s point: don’t expect QSing to be a panacea as hyped, do expect that emotional baggage is in the trunk of the car, and that tracking for people is WORK that is really to be avoided. And as Editor Donna continually reminds The Eye, only undertaken when it is a solution to an unavoidable job to be done. And if they don’t see the job… The Diabetic’s Paradox