Upcoming MedStartr healthcare events in NYC; #RISE2017 videos online

March 15, 2017 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/MedStartr_red_grey_sm.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /]MedStartr is sponsoring two upcoming evening events which will be of interest to our New York metro Readers. Next week’s roundtable includes participants from the Melbourne (Australia) Health Accelerator/Startup61.

The first is next week, Wednesday 22 March, starting at 6pm. The Hospitals 2.0: Hospital Innovation Program Roundtable is a discussion on how hospitals are leading innovation programs of their own and to review their progress. This will feature leaders from Mount Sinai, Northwell Health, NY-Presbyterian, Christopher Kommatas of Melbourne Health Accelerator/Startup61, and others. Location: CityMD, 1345 Avenue of the Americas (6th Avenue to the rest of us), between 54th-55th Streets, 8th Floor, NYC. Event link on Meetup here.

On Wednesday 5 April, also at CityMD and at 6pm will be Doctors 2.0: ¡Viva La Evolución! Three doctors–Jay Parkinson (Hello Health, Sherpaa), Rich Park (CityMD), and Greg Downing (HHS)–will discuss rewriting the story of care delivery and what is coming next in the evolution of care. Event link on Meetup here.

Tickets are $25 for either three-hour event. Advance reservations are required due to building security. Ticketing is being done through the Meetup Group Health 2.0 NYC at the links above. If you are not a member, please email MedStartr directly at members@Medstartr.com.

Videos are now online for 1 March’s Rise of the Healthy Machines (#RISE2017). These include keynotes, panels, and the six pitches for the Challenge.

TTA is a MedStartr and Health 2.0 NYC supporter/media sponsor; Editor Donna is a host for this event and a MedStartr Mentor. Also check the MedStartr page to find and fund some of the most interesting startup ideas in healthcare.

AI as patient safety assistant that reduces, prevents adverse events

March 15, 2017 | by

The 30 year old SXSW conference and cultural event has been rising as a healthcare venue for the past few years. One talk this Editor would like to have attended this past weekend was presented by Eric Horvitz, Microsoft Research Laboratory Technical Fellow and managing director, who is both a Stanford PhD in computing and an MD. This combination makes him a unique warrior against medical errors, which annually kill over 250,000 patients. His point was that artificial intelligence is increasingly used in tools that are ‘safety nets’ for medical staff in situations such as failure to rescue–the inability to treat complications that rapidly escalate–readmissions, and analyzing medical images.

A readmissions clinical support tool, RAM (Readmissions Management), he worked on eight years agon, produced now by Caradigm, predicts which patients have a high probability of readmission and those who will need additional care. Failure to rescue often results from a concatenation of complications happening quickly and with a lack of knowledge that resemble the prelude to an aircraft crash. “We’re considering [data from] thousands of patients, including many who died in the hospital after coming in for an elective procedure. So when a patient’s condition deteriorates, they might lose an organ system. It might be kidney failure, for example, so renal people come in. Then cardiac failure kicks in so cardiologists come in and they don’t know what the story is. The actual idea is to understand the pipeline down to the event so doctors can intervene earlier.” and to understand the patterns that led up to it. Another is to address potential problems that may be outside the doctor’s direct knowledge field or experiences, including the Bayesian Theory of Surprise affecting the thought process. Dr Horvitz discussed how machine learning can assist medical imaging and interpretation. His points were that AI and machine learning, applied to thousands of patient cases and images, are there to assist physicians, not replace them, and not to replace the human touch. MedCityNews

#ShareTheHealth: health research using spare Android phone processing, used fitness trackers

March 14, 2017 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/fitness-tracker-and-Android.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Citizen Science on the Move. Two new campaigns harness the power of everyday people to boost research and personal health.

The World Community Grid is coordinated by IBM and taps into the spare processing power of potentially millions of Android smartphones and tablets. Users download an app called BOINC through the IBM site and select a research area in health or sustainability. Researchers then can use the processing power of the device at idle times to fuel processing of massive records or simulations required for research. The app operates in the background when your device is connected to Wi-Fi and at 90 percent+ charge, so it doesn’t use data or drain significant power. It has been or is currently being used for up to two million daily calculations in research initiatives for Ebola, Zika, TB and HIV/AIDS. Highlighted in the BBC News article is the new Smash Childhood Cancer project to help find cures for six types of childhood cancer, including brain tumors, liver and bone cancer. Previously, 200,000 World Community Grid volunteers contributed device power to research on neuroblastoma, which helped identify several potential treatments. The BOINC project started in 2004 and originally used spare mainframe and PC processing. It remains free to researchers in exchange for allowing other researchers to access the data. More information on the IBM World Community Grid with app download links here to put your Android device on the grid. It beats a cat video app! Hat tip to reader Guy Dewsbury via LinkedIn.

RecycleHealth and #ShareTheHealth is a crowdfunded research/wellness project that aims to put used fitness trackers back to work for those who wouldn’t normally buy them at retail: older adults with chronic disease, veterans’ organizations working to reduce PTSD, inner city running clubs, and more. Developed by Tufts University School of Medicine assistant professor Lisa Gualtieri, Ph.D., RecycleHealth has cleaned and refurbished over 1,000 donated fitness trackers which have been used in three research studies on how wearables affect behavior change and clinical outcomes. The three and future rounds of crowdfunding help with postage (donor and new user) and refurbishment. So far the research has covered hypertension and Type 2 diabetes. Future studies are planned for how wearable activity tracker data can be used in clinical visits for actionable physician counseling and wearables’ therapeutic role in assisting veterans recovering from mental health and other concerns. Dr. Gualtieri’s Tufts crowdfunding site is here, but this Editor discovered her through LinkedIn. (And hope that she will not mind our borrowing her hashtag!)

Telemedicine may drive up medical utilization, increase cost for respiratory illness: RAND Health

March 8, 2017 | by | 2 Comments
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/business-163464_960_720.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Is convenience the culprit? Researchers from RAND Corporation’s Health program conducted a three-year study of telemedicine (here called telehealth) usage by employees of CalPERS for respiratory illness and came to a surprising conclusion. From the study abstract: “12 percent of direct-to-consumer telehealth visits replaced visits to other providers, and 88 percent represented new utilization. Net annual spending on acute respiratory illness increased $45 per telehealth user.”

The study examined 2011-2013 claims information for over 300,000 people insured through the California California Public Employees’ Retirement System, which despite the name provides health benefits to active state employees as well as retirees. It targeted common acute respiratory infections (sinus infections, bronchitis and related) to determine patterns of provider utilization and the change after the introduction of telehealth. Of that group, 981 used the Teladoc system for video consults, adopted by CalPERS in 2012.

The objective of the study was to determine whether the telehealth visits were new care or substituted for other types of care such as doctor, clinic, or ED visits. Even though the telehealth services were far cheaper–about 50 percent lower than a physician office visit and less than 5 percent the cost of a visit to the ED–they did not make up for the calculated 88 percent rise in utilization.

Similar results were reported by RAND in last year’s research on retail clinics, which estimated that 58 percent of visits for low-severity illnesses were new and not shifted from EDs or doctor’s offices. What is in common? Convenience. Convenience opens up greater use. If you have a store down the street, you may pop in daily versus once-weekly.

Updated: Some further insights from Mobihealthnews were that the study stated that telehealth visits may be more likely to result in additional costs, such as follow-up appointments, testing or prescriptions. In other words, the telehealth visit starts off less expensive, but the standard of care in follow-up adds to that initial cost.

The RAND recommendation is thus not a surprise: make more telemedicine visits a shift from office or ED to restrict telemedicine growth. Raise the cost of co-pays for the service to reduce demand. On the ‘high side’, encourage ED ‘frequent flyers’ to use telehealth services instead. Pass the painkillers. Health Affairs (abstract only; paid access required for full study), RAND Health press release.

Analysis: instead of self-doctoring, and suffering at home and in the workplace, the small group of CalPERS policyholders in the study actually used their new benefit to check their health–as intended! The additional cost is not staggering; (more…)

Idaho legislature begins repeal of telemedicine abortion ban

March 8, 2017 | by

An agreement reached in the U.S. District Court in Idaho in [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Idaho-State-Capitol.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]January this year overturned Idaho’s ban of prescription of abortion-inducing drugs during a telemedicine consultation (see our previous article).

The settlement of the case before Chief District Judge B. Lynn Winmill, brought by Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands, required the Idaho legislature to repeal the laws that made such prescriptions over telemedicine consultations illegal. The repeals have to be carried out by the end of the 2017 session, else Judge Winmill will declare the laws unconstitutional and unenforceable, according to Mobi Health News .

Idaho legislature has accordingly started the process of removing the single line from the Telehealth Access Act which bans the prescription of abortion inducing drugs and repealing the law requiring the doctor to be physically present at the consultation when prescribing the drugs. This is to be achieved via the new House Bill 250, sponsored by the State Affairs Committee, named simply An Act relating to Abortion. The bill was introduced last Friday.

The wording of the bill emphasises the the view that the state believes that abortions induced by medicines prescribed via telemedicine consultations constitute “substandard medical care and that women and girls undergoing abortion deserve and require a higher level of professional medical care”. Planned Parenthood has said that it objects to this statement that telemedicine provides substandard care according to Boise Weekly.

The bill has made rapid progress having had its second reading yesterday and is currently filed for the third reading.

Leeds, Harrogate care homes pilot telehealth system for residents (UK)

March 8, 2017 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Sunnyside.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]The Sunnyside Care Home in Crossgates is the first of 14 local care homes in Leeds and Harrogate with a telehealth remote telemonitoring program for residents. The pilot that started before Christmas is sponsored by NHS England’s West Yorkshire and Harrogate Acceleration Zone as part of their £8m initiative to improve urgent and emergency care.

The Yorkshire Evening Post profiles one of the residents, Mavis Robinson, who has motor neurone disease (MND). She was helped over the festive (US=holiday) season when her condition began to decline based on her vital signs monitoring which appears to be administered by staff. They were then able to obtain medication for pain before the situation escalated. Ms Robinson can discuss her health with the nurse based on the telehealth information. Telehealth information was also used to involve a family member in care for a patient nearing the end of their life. Unfortunately this Editor has been unable to determine what system is being used in the pilot. (Can one of our Readers enlighten us?–Ed.) Based on the closing quote from Sue Robins of NHS Leeds West CCG, it’s also an example of the NHS local strategy mentioned in The King’s Fund blog [TTA 17 Feb] for local areas to pilot and share the knowledge.

Technology for Aging in Place, 2017 edition preview

March 7, 2017 | by

Industry analyst Laurie Orlov previews her annual review of ‘Technology for Aging In Place’ on LinkedIn with six insights into the changes roiling health tech in the US. We’ll start with a favorite point–terminology–and summarize/review each (in bold), not necessarily in order.

“Health Tech” replaces “Digital Health,” begins acknowledging aging. This started well before Brian Dolan’s acknowledgment in Mobihealthnews, as what was ‘digital health’ anyway? This Editor doesn’t relate it to a shift in investment money, more to the 2016 realization by companies and investors that care continuity, meaningful clinician workflow, access to key information, and predictive analytics were a lot more important–and fundable–than trying to figure out how to handle Data Generated by Gadgets.

Niche hardware will fade away – long live software and training. Purpose-built ‘senior tablets’ will likely fade away. The exception will be specialized applications in remote patient monitoring (RPM) for vital signs and in many cases, video, that require adaptation and physical security of standard tablets. These have device connectivity, HIPAA, and FDA (Class I/II) concerns. Other than those, assistive and telehealth apps on tablets, phablets and smartphones with ever-larger screens are enough to manage most needs. An impediment: cost (when will Medicare start assisting with payments for these?), two-year life, dependence on vision, and their occasionally befuddling ways.

Voice-first interfaces will dominate apps and devices. “Instead we will be experimenting with personal assistants or AI-enabled voice first technologies (Siri, Google Home, Amazon Alexa, Cortana) which can act as mini service provider interfaces – find an appointment, a ride, song, a restaurant, a hotel, an airplane seat.” In this Editor’s estimation, a Bridge Too Far for this year, maybe 2018. Considerations are cost, intrusiveness, and accuracy in interpreting voice commands. A strong whiff of the Over-Hyped pervades.

Internet of Things (IoT) replaces sensor-based categories. Sensors are part of IoT, so there’s not much of a distinction here, and this falls into ‘home controls’ which may be out of the box or require custom installation. Adoption again runs into the roadblocks of cost and intrusiveness with older people who may be quite reluctant to take on both. And of course there is the security concern, as many of these devices are insecure, eminently hackable, and has been well documented as such.

Tech-enabled home care pressures traditional homecare providers – or does it? ‘What exactly is tech-enabled care? And what will it be in the future?’ Agreed that there will be a lot of thinking in home care about what $200 million in investment in this area actually means. Is this being driven by compliance, or by uncertainty around what Medicare and state Medicaid will pay for in future?

Robotics and virtual reality will continue — as experiments. Sadly, yes, as widespread adoption means investment, and it’s not there on the senior housing level where there are other issues bubbling, such as real estate and resident safety. There are also liability issues around assistance robotics that have not yet been worked out. Exoskeletons–an assistance method this Editor has wanted to see for several years for older adults and the disabled–seems to be stalled at the functionality/expense/weight level.

Study release TBD

Debate on Care Quality Commission’s position on online prescription services on Radio 4’s TODAY (UK)

March 4, 2017 | by

Friday’s BBC Radio 4 TODAY breakfast show has two segments discussing the Care Quality Commission‘s public warning on online prescription services and potential danger to patients. The first is a short interview of Jane Mordue, Chair of Healthwatch England and independent member of the CQC (at 00:36:33-00:39:00). The second, longer segment at 02:37:00 going to 02:46:30 features our own Editor Charles Lowe, in his position as Managing Director of the Digital Health and Care Alliance (DHACA), debating with Sandra Gidley, Chair of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) English Board. The position of the RPS is that a face-to-face appointment is far preferable to an online service, whereas Mr Lowe maintains that delays in seeing one’s GP creates a need for services where a patient can see a doctor online and receive a prescription if necessary. The quick response allays anxiety in the patient and provides care quickly. Both agreed that a tightening of guidelines is needed, especially in the incorrect prescribing of antibiotics, and that there is no communication between patient records. Mr Lowe notes that GPs have always been comfortable with a telephonic consultation but are far less so with telemedicine consults via Skype. Here’s the BBC Radio 4 link available till end of March.

In the US with 24/7/365 telemedicine services such as Teladoc, MDLive and American Well, there is a similar problem with patient records in many cases except for history that the patient gives, but this is an across the board problem as the US does not have a centralized system. The prescribing problem is less about antibiotics, though MRSA/MSSA resistant superbugs are a great concern. According to Jeff Nadler, CTO of Teladoc during his #RISE2017 presentation here in NY attended by this Editor, Teladoc has a 91 to 94 percent resolution rate on patient medical issues. Of that 9 percent unresolved, 4 percent are referred, 2 percent are ‘out of scope’, 1 percent go to ER/ED–and 2 percent of patients are ‘seeking meds only’, generally for painkillers. Teladoc’s model is B2B2C, which is that patients access the service through their health plan, health system, or employer.

CHANGED DEADLINE Calling all diabetes prevention apps: may be your chance for greatness!

March 1, 2017 | by

Our Mobile Health is seeking to identify the best digital behaviour change interventions aimed at helping people diagnosed as pre-diabetic to reduce their risk of onset of Type 2 Diabetes. They are working with NHS England and the Diabetes Prevention Programme to identify the best 4-5 of these that are suitable for deployment to around a total of 5000 people across England. The aim is to build up an evidence base for digital behaviour change interventions for people diagnosed as pre-diabetic.

Organisations with suitable digital behaviour change interventions are invited to submit their solutions for inclusion. These should be either actually deployed or will be ready to be deployed within three months. They should be suitable to be, or have been, localised for the UK market, and they should not be dependent on any further integration with the UK health system for deployment.  Shortlisted digital behaviour change interventions will be invited to participate in Our Mobile Health’s assessment process; the final selection will be made based on the results of that assessment.

The deadline for submissions, which can be made directly online is midday on Wednesday 15th March.  NOTE THIS IS A CHANGE FROM THAT PREVIOUSLY ADVISED. There is more about the programme on the NHS website.

(Disclosure: this editor has been asked to assist with the assessment process referred to above)

A cornucopia of events and opportunities (UK/EU)

March 1, 2017 | by

This editor has been extremely busy of late representing DHACA members’ interests in Brexit discussions, finalising RSM events and researching technology to help carers. However the requests to promote events have continued to arrive so here is a very brief summary:

Innovate UK is looking for new assessors – click here for more information.

On 7th March ADASS is holding its Care Apps Showcase and Conference event in Central Birmingham. Book here.

The Wearable Technology Show is on 7th & 8th March at Excel, and for the first time will include within it the Digital Health Technology Show. This editor is presenting. Readers can get free entry to the exhibition and cut-price entry to the conference sessions (quote DHTDHAC17).

On 23rd March, the London Health Technology Forum has its annual pitch session. If you fancy trying your hand at pitching your start-up, or your new idea, we want you! There’s no guarantee that winners will get funded. However there are lots of finance people coming, and winners will certainly get some nice champagne…and bag lots of useful experience. Book here. Contact marie.carey@bakerbotts.com if you want to pitch.

The RSM’s Apps event is in its fifth year and on 4th April. We have a veritable constellation of who’s who in mHealth apps presenting this year: I hate the expression “must see” though it’s very appropriate in this case. Book here. These are incredible value events because one of the charitable objects of the RSM is education: compared with commercial events they are a steal, and the quality is superb.

PwC has a 13 week startup growth programme for revenue generating health companies, entitled ‘future of health’ starting 6th March. They still seem to be taking enquiries though, more details here.

Aging (sic) 2.0 has come to London and holds a global startup search event on 11 April. If you want to register on their startup database,  perhaps to participate in that event, go here.

The DigitalHealth.London Accelerator is now open again for applications. Closing date is 12 midnight on Thursday 20 April

EHTEL have their Symposium in Brussels on 15-16 March – apply here.

The RSM is working with the IET in partnership for the third year to offer you Future of Medicine; the role of Doctors in 2027 on 18th May with the now-expected array of iconoclastic presenters telling us how different the delivery of care will be in ten years. Book here.

More shortly.

#HIMSS17 roundup: machine learning, Proteus, Soon-Shiong/NantWorks’ cancer vax, Uniphy Health, more

February 28, 2017 | by

HIMSS17 is over for another year, but there is plenty of related reading left for anyone who is not still recovering from sensory overload. There wasn’t big news made, other than Speaker John Boehner trying to have it both ways about what the House needs to do about replacing the failing ACA a/k/a Obamacare. Here’s our serving:

  • If you are interested in the diffusion of workflow technologies into healthcare, including machine learning and AI, there’s a long-form three-part series in Healthcare IT News that this Editor noted has suddenly become a little difficult to find–but we did. The articles also helpfully list vendors that list certain areas of expertise in their exhibitor keywords.
  • Mobihealthnews produced a two-page wrap up that links to various MHN articles where applicable. Of interest:
    • a wound measurement app that Intermountain Healthcare developed with Johns Hopkins spinoff Tissue Analytics
    • Children’s Health of Dallas Texas is using the Proteus Health ingestible med sensor with a group of teenaged organ post-transplant patients to improve med compliance
    • the Medisafe med management app has a new feature that alerts users to drug, food and alcohol interactions with their regimen, which is to this writer’s knowledge the first-ever med app to do this
    • Info security spending is rising, according to the Thales Data Threat Report. This year, 81 percent of U.S. healthcare organizations and 76 percent of global healthcare organizations will increase information security spending.
  • Healthcare and sports mogul Patrick Soon-Shiong presented on NantHealth‘s progress on a cancer vaccine that became a significant part of the former VP Joe Biden’s initiative, Cancer Breakthroughs 2020. Dr Soon-Shiong stated that the FDA has given approval to advance the vaccine into later clinical trials, and also unveiled Nant AI, an augmented intelligence platform to high-speed process genome activity of cancer tumors and the Nant Cloud, a cloud server which can generate bioinformatic data at 26 seconds per patient. This is in addition to the NantHealth GPS Cancer diagnostic tool used to isolate new mutations in a given tumor. HealthcareITNews MedCityNews takes a dimmer view, noting two recent cancer vaccine failures. Dimmer still is Stat’s takedown of Dr Soon-Shiong, which reportedly was the talk of HIMSS.
  • Leading up to HIMSS, Newark’s own Uniphy Health announced UH4, the latest generation of its enterprise-wide communications and clinical collaboration platform for hospitals and clinics to facilitate the ‘real-time health system’. Release

Not enough? DestinationHIMSS, produced by Healthcare IT News/HIMSS Media, has its usual potpourri of official reporting here.

Here’s Howz: now electricity consumption as elder minder (UK)

February 28, 2017 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/HOWZ-20Oct2016-668-768×576.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]Intelesant’s latest project, Howz, has added electricity consumption to the monitoring set of Activities of Daily Living. The Howz set of multiple sensors generally monitors activity in the home, home temperature, lights on/off, and exterior door opening/closing, depending on their placement, but one sensor monitors electricity consumption by directly going into the meter to determine whether appliances are being used as an indicator of activity. These activities are reported over a smartphone app to those who have permission for reports. After a trending baseline over a few days is established via algorithms, the Howz system tracks departures from that norm and alerts via the smartphone app. This bears resemblances to this Editor’s former company which developed the behavioral telecare (first and still in market) QuietCare system, but the ‘meter reader’ is a new and smart twist.

Intelesant is testing Howz in 100 Manchester homes and is scheduled to be in a pilot with dementia patients at home in partnership with the Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. In December, they also announced that they are a finalist with the EDF Energy Blue Lab Acceleration Programme.

Howz is more comprehensive (and expensive) than 3rings‘ single appliance plug which keys into specific activities (tea kettle, TV on) [TTA articles here] but the objective for family peace of mind for older adults, especially those living alone, is the same. Available consumer direct from their website in the UK only (unfortunately) from £199 for the starter kit. New Scientist, Howz video on YouTube Hat tip to former Northern Ireland Editor Toni Bunting

Telemedicine used in MS neuromodulation study at NYU Langone, with positive results (US)

February 28, 2017 | by

MS patients in a small NYU Langone Medical Center-led pilot of neuromodulation and cognitive training using telemedicine supervision experienced significant improvement in complex attention and reaction time. Non-invasive transcranial direct current brain stimulation (tDCS) was added to a previously tested cognitive training program for MS patients. Telemedicine (real-time video) was used to deliver the training, monitor patients in the program and provide follow-up support.

The study control was a cognitive training (CT)-only group. According to the abstract, “after ten sessions, the tDCS group (n = 25) compared to the CT only group (n = 20) had significantly greater improvement in complex attention (p = 0.01) and response variability (p = 0.01) composites. The groups did not differ in measures of basic attention (p = 0.95) or standard cognitive measures (p = 0.99).” These results corresponded to the stimulation area in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, according to the lead researcher Leigh Charvet, PhD.

The current used in the tDCS unit helps neurons fire more readily, versus making them fire. The tDCS unit used was likely provided by NYC-based Soterix Medical, a developer of neuromodulation systems used in clinical trials. One of the study authors, Abhishek Datta, PhD, is their CTO.

The research is also promising in helping to deliver therapy to MS patients at home, reducing the travel need on both sides, and to develop analytics to optimize medication. In future, the researchers hope to expand the study group to Parkinson’s disease patients. MedCityNews, Neuromodulation (the official journal of the International Neuromodulation Society; abstract only, full study requires additional access)

Utah telehealth expansion bill passes Senate and House

February 27, 2017 | by

The bill to expand telehealth in Utah, which was amended by a [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Utah-Capitol-410372_1920.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Utah Senate committee on February 14th (see previous TTA article) has now been passed by both the Senate and the House of Representative in the state. The amended bill was passed by the Senate on Thursday last week and by the House the next day according to the Utah government website.

The original bill, HB154, sponsored by Rep. Ken Ivory, had a controversial clause restricting the prescription of abortion medication during a telemedicine consultation. The amendment removed this restriction on the basis that such restrictions have been successfully challenged in the courts in other states.

The bill is now being “enrolled” and is expected to be signed into law in due course.

HIMSS17 dispatches: Mayo maps neonate telemedicine, Amwell-Samsung, Samsung-T-Mobile

February 23, 2017 | by

Mayo maps out an enterprise telehealth (telemedicine) support structure. Here’s how the Mayo Clinic deployed neonatology remote telemedicine to their sites in Minnesota, Arizona, and Florida. There’s plenty of flow charts and summary points in this presentation deck around team building, staffing consistently and reporting that improves processes. Hat tip to our HIMSS correspondent on the scene, Bill Oravecz of Stone Health Innovations. Update: If you are using Chrome, you may have difficulty downloading session handouts from the HIMSS17 website Schedule pages. Try another browser. If you are interested, you may be able to obtain through contacting the two session presenters, Susan Kapraun and Jenna A. Beck, MHA, directly.

American Well and Samsung are partnering on integrating care delivery. Their joint release is low on details, but towards the end there’s an indication that American Well, its partners, and other providers and payers will be able to offer their services to Samsung customers. Other reports (Healthcare Dive) indicate the partnership is destined to enhance Amwell’s Exchange platform between payers and providers. Partners listed are Cleveland Clinic, New York-Presbyterian Medical Center and Anthem (undoubtedly resting after sparring with Cigna). Also Healthcare IT News.

Separately, Samsung also announced a partnership with T-Mobile for developing IoT in the senior care space. This would pair Samsung’s ARTIK Cloud with T-Mobile’s cellular network for Breezie, a social engagement for seniors interface built on a Samsung tablet which has apps and connects to various peripherals for post-acute care and daily living. It sounds interesting, but once again the release hampers the reporter by being as clear as mud in what it’s all about. See if you can decipher this: ARTIK Cloud permits “Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings, iHealth Feel Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor and the Pulse Oximeter – to intelligently communicate with each other.” “Each Breezie interface has more than 40 preconfigured accessibility settings and sensor driven analytics to adjust for different levels of digital literacy, as well as physical and cognitive ability.” The Breezie website is far more revealing. Healthcare Dive also takes a whack at it towards the end of the above article.

The Theranos Story, ch. 37: the Object Lessons for future healthcare entrepreneurs

February 22, 2017 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/jacobs-well-texas-woe1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]There’s an interesting take on the Theranos debacle in Entrepreneur by management consultant/author Steve Tobak. He takes a step back from the healthcare technology that didn’t work, the big money lost and the puffery, where most of us have concentrated. Mr Tobak instead sketches a case study of a Startup House of Cards as an Object Lesson in how entrepreneurialism is NOT supposed to work.

Theranos was a Top Ten List of fatal errors. This Editor’s summary:

  1. They generated no revenue. In just over a decade, Theranos blew through hundreds of millions in funding (he says $700 million, the WSJ has estimated $900 million).
  2. They weren’t anywhere near break-even. By the time Theranos was in 40 Walgreens Wellness Centers, it should have been on a road to break-even and scalable.
  3. The company was built as a fraud from the start or near-start, much like Enron and WorldCom
  4. The company was doomed by a culture of utter secrecy (Editor’s note: none of their technology was peer reviewed, tested or published)
  5. The company was doomed by Ms Holmes’ falsity and hubris in not having a backup plan; black turtlenecks aren’t it
  6. The company was doomed by its own hype: a PR machine AND gullible press, who created a Steve Jobs-esque icon sans accomplishments out of Ms Holmes
  7. The company sold a bill of goods to EVERYONE, including multiple Federal regulators, patients and the public (Editor’s note: he doesn’t mention the Board of Directors and Stanford University!)
  8. Investors, swept up in the private equity bubble, didn’t do their due diligence (though some did)
  9. Ms Holmes had no ability to run this business, but she controlled it 100 percent so no one said boo
  10. “This is what happens when people treat ventures so casually and callously that risk becomes immaterial.”–Mr Tobak

Perhaps we should be grateful that the Edison lab didn’t actually work with all these dysfunctions on parade!

The close to this article is sobering: “Today, there are 186 venture-backed startups valued at $1 billion or more and countless companies valued above $100 million, according to CB Insights. Not too long ago, Theranos was near the top of that unicorn list with a valuation of $9 billion. We still have no idea if it’s a one-off or the beginning of a trend. Remember the Theranos saga as a cautionary tale. Nothing about it is the way business should be. Nothing.” And it will continue, because $900 million makes Theranos a Big Cautionary Tale. Hat tip to our Eye on Theranos, Bill Oravecz of Stone Health Innovations.

See here for the 36 previous TTA chapters in this Continuing, Consistently Amazing Saga