European tours for professionals in aged & disability care (Australia)

April 10, 2015 | by

Sydney-based Community Resourcing Worldwide and CORAL (The Community of Regions for Assisted Living) have three Professional Development Tours to Europe primarily for Australian professionals. These tours are designed as professional exchanges of best practices with international experts in community aged and disability care to explore practice, policy and funding models. Visits are arranged to state-of-the-art facilities and community initiative programs that exhibit innovative approaches to service delivery, selected to showcase outstanding approaches to service delivery and innovation. Particular focus has been made on the application of assistive, enabling and operational technologies which are significantly changing the service and workforce models deployed as well as achieving greater health and social outcomes for the consumers of services.

  1. 8 June 2015, starting in Geneva and held in conjunction with the 13th International Conference On Smart Homes and Health Telematics (ICOST 2015)
  2. 15 June, Netherlands-Denmark
  3. 22 June, Catalonia

CRW website. Tour information and registration PDF. Or you may contact Elizabeth Dodd on 0457 838 570 for more information: liz@communityresourcing.com.au

The King’s Fund Digital Health and Care Congress 2015

April 7, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/DHCC_web-ad_300x145.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /] Enabling patient-centered care through information and technology. @The King’s Fund, 11 – 13 Cavendish Square, London

The two-day event will explore how the innovative use of information and technology is supporting improvements in health and social care services. The event will also showcase exciting new digital health technology, research and service delivery methods which can have a positive impact on care providers and patients.

  • Digital health projects featured at the Congress have been through a peer-reviewed submission process
  • The Exhibition Hall features new digital health applications and wearable devices. The new Innovation Hub provides opportunities for organizations to demo and showcase their digital health products.
  • Leading speakers and experts: Tim Kelsey, National Director for Patients and Information; Beverley Bryant, Director of Strategic Systems and Technology; Paul Rice, Head of Technology Strategy, all from NHS England; Dave deBronkart (better known as e-Patient Dave)

Meet and mingle with more than an estimated 500 attendees from the NHS, local government, academia, commercial providers, digital health startups, entrepreneurs and innovators. TTA readers receive a discount of 10 percent on all registration types. We are pleased again this year to be a supporter of the Digital Health and Care Congress. 

And don’t forget The King’s Fund’s commentaries on key issues in health and social care leading up to the UK General Election here.

COPD Navigator app in pilot with Mount Sinai Hospital (NYC)

April 6, 2015 | by

An app to help make life easier for a reported 24 million COPD patients in the US has been developed jointly by Mount Sinai Hospital, the affiliated National Jewish Health Respiratory Institute in New York and LifeMap Solutions. The COPD Navigator app encourages patient self-management through visualizing patient data and patterns, including symptoms, medication, treatment adherence, and quality of life, coupled with alerts about local air quality and weather which can dramatically influence risk. Patient data is transmitted to their physician, with an emphasis on fitting into office workflows. LifeMap is also tracking when the patient uses an inhaler through their self-designed Bluetooth LE device, though it uses any Apple HealthKit enabled inhaler. (more…)

Possible early detection test for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)

April 6, 2015 | by

A research study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US) presents the results of screening 14 retired professional American football players with suspected CTE. Using a tau-sensitive brain imaging agent, [F-18]FDDNP, the California and Illinois-based researchers were able to detect the abnormal accumulation of tau and other proteins, in the distinct CTE pattern, in the brains of living subjects who had received, during their playing careers, multiple concussions and head trauma. Of the 14, one had been diagnosed with dementia, 12 with mild cognitive impairment and one with no symptoms. Previous studies, such as Robert Stern, MD‘s pathfinding research at Boston University and for the NFL (see below), have been primarily post-mortem on brains donated for research, although Dr Stern’s last presentation at NYC MedTech and Inga Koerte, MD of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) have also used brain scan information on live subjects in their studies.

Where this differs is that the imaging agent injected binds to the tau  (more…)

ELabNYC Pitch Day 2015

April 4, 2015 | by

Thursday 3 April, Microsoft’s NY Technology Center, Times Square NYC

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Elab.png” thumb_width=”100″ /]The third annual Pitch Day for the now 20 startup/early-stage life science, biotech and healthcare technology companies in the ELabNYC (Entrepreneurship Lab Bio and Health Tech NYC) is a culmination of their year-long program participation in this NY Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC)-supported program. The entrepreneurs in the ELabNYC program primarily come from from the doctoral and post-doc programs from New York’s many universities, from CUNY to Columbia, from many parts of the world, and most have experience within the city’s multitude of major health research institutions from The Bronx to Brooklyn. New York is also a center of funding for life science and health tech ventures; it’s #2 with NIH awards totaling $1.4 billion. For the past few years, NYEDC has also supported these companies with finding access to capital, specialized space (e.g. wet labs such as the million square feet at Alexandria Center alone, plus Harlem Biospace and SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn) and partnerships with major companies such as Celgene, Eli Lilly, Pfizer and GE Ventures.

This Editor will concentrate on health tech companies–eight, up from five last year [TTA 17 Apr 14]. Each company pitched for five minutes on its concept, its current state of advancement (including pilots/customers), its team and a funding timeline. It was a very different mix from last year’s class, which focused on compliance, diagnosis, dementia and concussion. These companies focused on niches which are either not being served well or to substantially reduce costs. Nearly half the entrepreneurs were women, a substantially greater number than one usually sees in the biotech/health tech area. Short impressions on our eight, with links to their Executive Summaries on the 2014-15 ‘class page’: (more…)

A telecare device that may solve the ‘soft fall’ and unconscious problems (UK)

April 3, 2015 | by | 8 Comments
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/MonitorGO-cropped-small-232×300.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Guy Dewsbury of the eponymous Gdewsbury independent research consultancy brought to this Editor’s attention his recent commission for West Yorkshire-based MonitorGo in evaluating their new smartphone-based personal alarm. He analyzed the device’s features here in a comparison chart and writeup, versus what is commonly available in the market. If it reliably does what it says it does (our normal caveat), it could be a big step beyond the Ur-Pendant, addressing our (and Neil Versel’s) concerns earlier this week on the persistence of ‘ancient history’ PERS [TTA 31 Mar].

It goes well beyond common mPERS as well. There are 12 features, including GPS location, hard fall detection and 24/7 third-party help line monitoring (via Medvivo), but the key differentiating features are the soft fall detector, unconsciousness/inactivity detection and false alert detection/response–as well as usability as a simplified smartphone with unlimited calls to UK landlines and 250 mobile-to-mobile minutes. (more…)

“Data moves at the speed of trust”–RWJF report

April 2, 2015 | by

The report issued today by the influential Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), ‘Data for Health: Learning What Works’ advocates a fresh approach to health data through greater education on the value/importance of sharing PHI, improved security and privacy safeguards and investing in community data infrastructure. If the above quote and the first two items sound contradictory, perhaps they are, but current ‘strict’ privacy regulations (that’s you, HIPAA), data siloing and the current state of the art in security aren’t stemming Hackermania (or sheer bad data hygiene and security procedures). Based on three key themes, the RWJF is recommending a suite of actions (see below) to build what they term a ‘Culture of Health. All of which, from the 10,000 foot view, seem achievable. The need–and importantly, the perception of need–to integrate the rising quantity of data from all these devices, pry it out of its silos (elaborated upon earlier this week in ‘Set that disease data free!), analyze it and make it meaningful plus shareable to people and their doctors/clinicians keeps building. (‘Meaningful’ here is not to be confused with the HITECH Act’s Meaningful Use.)

But who will take the lead? Who will do the work? Will the HIT structure, infrastructure and very importantly, the legal framework follow? We wonder if there is enough demand and bandwidth in the current challenged system. Release. RWJF ‘Data for Health’ page with links to study PDF, executive summary which adds details to the recommendations below, more.[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Data-For-Health-Advisory-Committee-RWJF.png” thumb_width=”400″ /]

Regulatory action may strengthen telehealth take-off: PWC

April 2, 2015 | by

PWC Health Research Institute has released a Spotlight Brief on the US telehealth (read telemedicine for telehealth) regulation which states that recent regulatory action may be the catalyst to spur the fledgeling telehealth market.

Expansions in Medicare reimbursements, Government telehealth grants amounting to several million dollars and legislative action in many States are all seen as supporting new entrants as well as traditional players and growing the US telehealth market that PWC says is estimated as high as $10 billion.

Benefit to consumers is of course lower costs and easier access. Challenges mentioned are licensing, reimbursement, privacy and security. Read the full report here.

Telstra expands telemedicine offering with acquisition

April 2, 2015 | by

Following our report earlier in the month on Telstra’s success in winning the Western Australia telehealth [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Telstra-Health.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]contract, Telstra announced the acquisition of UK based Dr Foster last week. Telstra has now announced that they are acquiring Medibank’s Anywhere Healthcare platform, further expanding its Telstra Health arm.

Since 2013 Telstra has had exclusive access to Dr Foster in Australia and supplies Dr Foster products to several health services in Australia.

Anywhere Healthcare is a middleman platform with specialists signed up to provide remote consultations and GPs signed up to use the services of those specialists. When a face-to-face consultation is considered not appropriate the GP can arrange for a remote consultation via Anywhere Healthcare. Typically, this has been used to date for patients in nursing homes.

The current Anywhere Healthcare directory lists 30 specialists covering 17 specialties and it is reported that there are 1600 GPs signed up to the service. Telstra have stated that they expect to expand the service, particularly into rural patient consultations.

 

Fitness/wellness trackers have amazing potential–to annoy

April 2, 2015 | by | 2 Comments
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/keep_calm_and_smash_watch.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Your Editors have previously noted some interesting personal experiences with fitness bands/trackers. Editor Charles, at last report, was on his third Jawbone Up in a year; this Editor has remained immune to their mostly clonky charms (tempted by the classic Swiss watch looks of Withings Activité [TTA 26 June 14], put off by the $450 price, but now notes that the sporty, analog Activité Pop is available in the US at $150.) Even if not among the Quantified Self avant-garde, we who write about tech can deal with most of it without blinking too much. Over at FierceMobileHealthcare, Judy Mottl, a regular writer for their FierceHealthIT website, took “the plunge into the wearable device pool” and hit her head on the bottom. Her experience of mostly frustration with the app, bad data generation, inability to sync with the smartphone, saying you’re awake/sleeping when not and so on indicates that this is one wearable she should have returned to the store–or treated according to our picture. Is this one isolated example or a more common experience than the healtherati who adore wearables let on?

There’s some evidence that the leaders in fitness bands realize their shortcomings on the app side. Fitbit acquired fitness coaching app developer, FitStar, for at least $17.8 million. Mobihealthnews

Update 2 April: Editor Charles reports on his third Jawbone Up, and his daughters’ experience:

I took to wearing the third Jawbone UP the other way round – i.e. with the two ends in line with the back of my hand, and the thicker bit in line with the inside of my hand and that seems to have done the trick. However my older daughter (more…)

Can State medical boards legally prevent telehealth activity?

April 1, 2015 | by

This is the question that arises out of a recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court, not on anything related to telehealth but on teeth whitening!

The case was between the North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners and the Federal Trade Commission. The Board had requested non-dentist teeth whitening practitioners to desist from carrying out these activities and was challenged on the grounds that the Board did not have authority to do so and was acting in an anti-competitive way. The challenge went all the way to the Supreme Court which upheld the lower court decision on the grounds that even though the Board is, in fact, an agency of the State its action must still be supervised by the State in order to enjoy anti-trust immunity. This is analysed by Eric M Fraser in the SCOTUS blog.

It is thought that the State Medical Boards in the United States also have similar rules of governance and therefore do not qualify for immunity from anti-trust law that some State agencies have. This has led to speculation that any restrictions imposed by a State Medical Board on a licensed medical practitioner with regard to the use of telehealth could be considered an anti-competitive action. (more…)

EHRs: now safety, info exchange concerns (US, AU, CA)

April 1, 2015 | by

What’s this? EHRs reducing, not increasing, safety? Reports from both the US and Australia seem to indicate another spanner (US: wrench) in the EHR works, aside from the laggardness in achieving the HITECH Act’s goals [TTA 27 Mar].

  • The Joint Commission, which is the chief US accreditation and certification body for healthcare organizations and programs, and thus to be taken very VERY seriously, released a Sentinel Event (Patient Safety Event) Alert yesterday. It warned of EHR-related adverse events affecting patient health, resulting from incorrect or miscommunicated information entered into EHRs. Interfaces built into the technology can contribute and studies have documented mixed results in the systems’ ability to detect and prevent errors. It identifies eight key factors,led by human-computer interface, workflow and communication and clinical content, that can lead to a sentinel event and three major remedy actions. While the JC does take pains to confirm the positive effects of well-designed and appropriately used EHRs, with strong clinical processes in place, it is the first ‘red flag’ this Editor can recall (more…)

The traditional PERS as ‘ancient history’

March 31, 2015 | by | 2 Comments

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Fallen-woman.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Something to think about. How many families and older adults are aware that the traditional PERS emergency pendant, which has been around for at least 40 years, is sadly outdated and in fact inadequate for those at greatest risk? While major advertisers on US media such as Life Alert, Life Call, ADT and Philips Lifeline present crisis situations where the older person is on the floor and is rescued after pressing the pendant button, they barely advertise their other available products that incorporate passive fall detection and cellular, even if somewhat inadequate for soft falls or unconsciousness. Families unwisely feel ‘protected’ when paying for traditional PERS, not realizing that more advanced technology is readily available and not that much more expensive. Moreover, and only mentioned in the context of his grandmother’s fall while in senior housing, there is a distinct recalcitrance of senior housing executives to rid their apartments of the (cheap) old pendants and replace them with (pricier) passive/cellular assistance systems, much less more advanced wearables/RFID systems or mobile/watch combinations. This Editor also notes that the major drugstore chains also sell PERS; while they trumpet wellness in their advertising, they are as behind the curve in this area as senior housing. Neil Versel in MedCityNews.

For our Readers: can we compare/contrast how the UK, EU and US are still wedded to traditional PERS after 40 years, and if more advanced forms are starting to take hold? Click on the headline to see comments, including this Editor’s opining on traditional PERS as ‘cash cow’.

Another go at a joint DOD-VA EHR? (US)

March 31, 2015 | by

As this Editor was Pondering the Squandering last week of $28 billion HITECH Act funds meant to achieve EHR interoperability but falling well short, we recalled another Big EHR Squander: the integration of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) AHLTA with the Veteran Affairs’ VistA, an iEHR effort which collapsed in February 2013 at a mere $1 billion, in addition to dysfunctional or failed upgrades in both systems at just under $4 billion [TTA 27 July 13]. For civilians, this may not sound like much for concern, but for active duty, Reserve and National Guard service members transitioning from active to civilian status (and back as they are activated), often with complicated medical histories, it means a great deal.

At least one Congressman who also happens to be a physician, Representative Phil Roe, MD (R-TN) wants to try, try again. According to Politico’s Morning eHealth of last Wednesday, his bill will offer “a $50 million prize to the creator of an integrated military-veteran medical records system.” plus another $25 million over five years to operate it. DOD is moving forward with an $11 billion bid for a new EHR, but Rep. Roe’s staff issued a statement that differs with the DOD’s–that the new EHR still has no provision for secure and relatively seamless interoperability with the VA system to streamline the transfer of claims. We wish the best to Rep. Roe, and hope he can overcome Congressional inertia and two huge bureaucracies amidst doubts on the DOD’s EHR award process. FierceEMR on Roe bill, award process and adoption concerns by GAO and others. Also Anne Zieger in Healthcare Dive, iHealthBeat.

Set that disease data free! A call to break down those data silos.

March 31, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/BlueSiloCollapsing-41.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]Awash in a rising sea of data generated by devices and analytics–around treatments, population health, costs–there’s a struggle to make sense of it. We’ve noted the high value and merchandisability of 23andme‘s genomic data (gained by individual user consent) [TTA 5 Mar], but our healthcare institutions which should be codifying and sharing disease and treatment data, largely do not. Those with rare or ‘orphan’ diseases struggle to find information, diagnosis, fellow patients, treatments. They sometimes win breakthroughs by, believe it or not, blogging, and having their articles widely disseminated. Reasons why? According to David Shaywitz in Forbes, they are:

  • Hospitals, even research based centers, struggle to codify their genotype and phenotype data of their patients in a meaningful way that would be usable for clinical decision making. We’ve also noted (oddly not Mr Shaywitz) the long implementation process of IBM Watson cognitive processing/decision making tools in healthcare, the concentration on single diseases and their spread into other industries plus third-party integration outside of healthcare [TTA 9 Oct 14].  (more…)

RSM’s Medical Apps one-day conference 9th April – last call

March 30, 2015 | by

The next RSM event, entitled “Mainstreaming medical apps; reducing NHS costs; improving patient outcomes” is on 9th April, where there are still a few spaces left. This one-day conference will build on the last two years’ sell-out one-day conferences on medical apps at the RSM.

This year as medical apps are coming of age, the focus is on the critical aspects of mainstreaming them, in particular the various UK and EU regulatory issues that need managing in order to enable apps to be recommended or prescribed with confidence by clinicians. This will also include examples of ground- breaking medical apps as well as the use of electronic games to promote health and wellbeing.

Speakers on the regulatory side include, from the UK Professor Gillian Leng, Deputy Chief Executive of NICE, and Jo Hagan-Brown & Dr Neil McGuire from the MHRA, and from the European Commission Pēteris Zilgalvis, Head of Unit for Health and Well-being. Julian Hitchcock from lawyers Lawford Davies Denoon will give another of his excellent talks summarising the regulatory position from a user’s point of view, Dr Richard Brady will update us on bad apps and Julie Bretland will describe progress on the National Information Board’s work on how best to evaluate medical apps.

From the patient perspective, Alex Wyke will be talking about developing guidelines for good practice in health apps and Dr Tom Lewis from Warwick (in place of Prof Jeremy Wyatt now sadly unable to attend) will be talking about how best to evidence benefits from apps.

Describing some novel apps will be Professor Ray Meddis, on how to make an iPhone a hearing aid, Professor Susan Michie from UCL on gamification of smoking cessation, Ileana Welte from big White Wall on why mental health is such fertile ground for apps, and Ian Hay describing the challenges of using Android apps to deliver artificial pancreas-like functionality for the GSMA Brussels to Barcelona bike ride.

Should be a great day, and at the RSM’s rates, a tiny fraction of the cost of a commercially-run event!

Book here

Supplier offer

For £50/table, the RSM is also offering SMEs the opportunity to demonstrate their medical apps to the professional audience during refreshment breaks and at lunch (for more information on this offer contact Charlotte on 0207 290 3942). There are just four tables left now.