This Editor often casts a skeptical eye on short (2.5 month) studies and those sponsored by companies with a vested interest in the patient engagement technology being successful. In this case, the study reinforces earlier findings by the Center for Connected Health and other providers. Sending text messages to Medicaid (low income state-based health insurance program) recipients, even for a short time, proved to be effective. The targeted group was pregnant women plus families with children and teenagers in New York’s Healthfirst Medicaid managed care program. HealthCrowd, the developer, sent this group messages about prenatal care; wellness visits for children; and/or vaccinations. (more…)
Tons of app health data, bound for…third parties?
The importance of biomedical engineering
Picking up on yesterday’s post about an event on the topic in November comes a fascinating report produced by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. It gives an overview of biomedical engineering in the UK and includes case studies from UK universities and industry. It looks at the role of technology and biomedical engineers in the NHS, and makes a number of key recommendations, which would help improve healthcare in the UK and stimulate grow in the sector.
Key recommendations (more…)
Now a VC concentrating on tech for older adults (US)
Don’t call it a trend yet, but Ohio’s Link-age Ventures Inc. is launching a $26.6 million venture capital fund to invest in startup to early-stage companies targeting products, services and technologies for the 55+ market. The 50 percent partner is a familiar name to those in the US non-profit senior community sector, Ziegler Companies, along with 70 non-profit senior communities (!) as limited partners. The Ziegler Link-age Longevity Fund will look to invest about $500,000 to several million dollars apiece in 10-12 companies engaged in aging in place, care coordination, disease prevention, readmission reduction and wellness strategies. An investment announcement may come in late summer. The US heartland demonstrates a different trend than the relentlessly DH3, youth-oriented West Coast and the mixed messages out of the New York-Boston corridor. Cincinnati Business Courier
Medical Engineering Centres Annual Meeting and Bioengineering14 (UK)
On the off-chance that in the week beginning 8th September there is a reader will not be attending either the AAL Joint Programme Conference in Budapest or the Kings Fund’s International Digital Health & Care Congress (this editor is down to speak at both) how about going to the Medical Engineering Centres Annual Meeting and Bioengineering14 event at Imperial College on 10th & 11th September?
(Note that Telehealth & Telecare Aware is a proud sponsor of the Kings Fund event, enabling readers to receive a 10% discount on entry and dinner.)
MEC 2014 will apparently be the UK’s largest ever gathering of (more…)
Is this the last time the flat earth society will be celebrating? (UK WSD)
When this editor was running a telecare & telehealth programme in Surrey, there was always the dread when meeting professionals that one of the daily internet newssheets would publicise another paper about the Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) that ‘proved’ that one or other form of remote patient monitoring (RPM) cost more per QALY than a voyage on Virgin Galactic. The day was then spent unconstructively, making some or all of the points encapsulated in my original post on 22 July last year entitled “Time to bid farewell to the WSD”.
Thankfully the flow of WSD papers has since dwindled. Doubtless many hoped they had stopped for good, in view of their total irrelevance to the real world in 2014. However, on the offchance that some poor reader has found themselves being challenged about the abstract of a recent paper picked up by Pulse, on the high cost per QALY of telecare by one of the few professionals who still do not accept the value of appropriated technology, here is what you might tell them (more…)
Can startups learn from digital health’s flops?
The point may be debatable, but that doesn’t prevent Robin Raskin, founder of SilversSummit and Living in Digital Times, from making it. Keying off the summer edition of the Digital Health Summit, the CEOs of three well-known implosions–Zeo (the first big quantified self fail in sleep tracking, TTA 13 Mar 13), HealthRally(social networking/crowdfunding) and Healthrageous (personal health management, sold after it never fulfilled its promise to Humana, TTA 16 Oct 13) discussed their mistakes. Ten points plus each on video.Learning From Failure in the Digital Health Business (HuffPo)
NYDHA names eight companies for funding, shared equity
The New York Digital Health Accelerator named its second class of eight companies last week. Each, sponsored by the Partnership Fund for New York City and the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), receive approximately $100,000 in funding through a syndicate of investors in exchange for 1-2 percent in equity and access to SHIN-NY’s (Statewide Health Information Network of New York, colloquially called ‘shiny’) healthcare data. The winning companies are AllazoHealth, Clinigence, Covertix, iQuartic, Noom, Quality Review and Sense Health.In the four month program, the companies are provided with mentoring and networking opportunities with insurance companies, medical centers and hospital groups. However, a number of these companies are past the pure startup stage with real clients and business. Modern Healthcare, iHealthBeat
What happens when a medical app…vanishes?
You have just entered The App Twilight Zone…. Our readers know that concussion and diagnosis have been a focus of this Editor’s, and validating apps a focus of Editor Charles’, who brought this to my attention. The app’s name: The Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 2 (SCAT2). The news report states: “It contains all the essentials you would want in a concussion app: a graded symptoms checklist, cognitive testing, balance testing, Glasgow coma scale, Maddocks score, baseline score ability, serial evaluation, and password protected information-sharing via email.” The plot: it was deactivated without warning or notice by the developer, Inovapp (link to sketchy CrunchBase profile) yet still listed on the iTunes store.
What happened? There was a modified standard (SCAT3) developed in 2012, which updated SCAT2 with non-critical additions: indications for emergency management, a slightly more extensive background section, a neck exam and more detailed return-to-play instructions. SCAT3 is only available on (inconvenient) paper. No word from Inovapp on why it discontinued the app nor any plans for updating.
The SCAT2 had gained, in a short time, a following among coaches and sports medical professionals because it was the first app based upon the international standard (Zurich, 2008, 3rd International Conference on Concussion in Sport) transferring a paper assessment tool to an easy to use app. In fact, the NHL (National Hockey League) has its own version. The revised 2012 standards Users have a right to be upset, but moreover, this points to a glaring shortcoming of medical apps–their developers vanishing into the night without a by-your-leave. And read the comments by (mainly) doctors on securing patient information after the app is used (HIPAA standards) and one physician’s criticism of apps such as this as a ‘crutch’. A Pointer to the Future we don’t want to see. The authors Irfan Husain and Iltifat Husain, MD are to be congratulated. Popular app being used to manage concussions fails, failing patients (iMedicalApps)
That comfy sensor patch gets a bit closer (US/BE)
Your Friday robot fix: We need robot caregivers
I can, and do, write prescriptions for her many medical problems, but I have little to offer for the two conditions that dominate her days: loneliness and disability. She has a well-meaning, troubled daughter in a faraway state, a caregiver who comes twice a week, a friend who checks in on her periodically, and she gets regular calls from volunteers with the Friendship Line.
It’s not enough. Like most older adults, she doesn’t want to be “locked up in one of those homes.” What she needs is someone who is always there, who can help with everyday tasks, who will listen and smile.
What she needs is a robot caregiver.
—Louise Aronson, MD
From a medical practitioner and geriatrician is a view on robots as not dehumanizing, but a source of companionship, comfort and ‘always on’ emergency assistance for older adults and the disabled, particularly those who live alone. Dr Aronson also advocates assistance robots for everyday tasks such as bed transfer, lifting and dressing assistance. Mentioned favorably: PARO the Japanese ‘seal’ robot, MOBISERV Kompaï, Sweden’s GiraffPlus but notable by omission GrandCare Systems, the GeriJoy tablet-as-pet companion and (perhaps too new) the JIBO ‘family robot companion’ [TTA 18 July]. She also makes the apt point that those of us who’ve spent most of our adult lives interacting with machines will be quite comfortable with robotic companions. The Future of Robot Caregivers (New York Times) Also Katy Fike PhD from the Aging 2.0 group takes a look in their blog at Dr Aronson’s insights as well as JIBO.
Patient engagement meets ‘palliative care’
Restoring the ‘human connection’ in patient engagement. Pre/post-procedure education and monitoring service VOX Telehealth [TTA 23 May] is partnering with spiritual care counsel provider HealthCare Chaplaincy Network [TTA 2 Apr] and clinical teams from Northwestern University (Illinois) and the Princeton (New Jersey) Medical Center to develop the PalliativeCare Program. The VOX program is designed to blend health education and coordination support not only around a care plan for a specific disease but also for decision making, caregiver coordination, and necessary spiritual support and social services. It’s an interesting approach that combines online/mobile communications, telehealth and social services/ministry. HCCN’s inclusion in the program is not surprising as they have been transforming from a chaplain training resource for those ministering to patients and families in hospitals to providing spiritual care and resources directly online (via ChaplainsOnHand) for the seriously/chronically ill and their families. VOX release [Disclosure: Editor Donna is a volunteer on the HCCN’s marketing advisory council.]
Getting sleepy behind the wheel? Your seat will tell (ES)
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/heartbeat-sensor-seatbelt.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Finally something useful in automotive biometrics! Researchers from Spain’s Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia (IBV) have integrated sensors into a car seat and seat belt to continuously track the driver’s heart beat and respiration, with the aim of warning a drowsy driver. Data is gathered through a signal-processing unit (SPU) in real time, then sent to a computer program which through modeling patterns of fatigue in these two metrics, determines whether the driver is drowsy. It’s in working prototype save the proactive warning part, which does present a design challenge. (An electric shock? A VC10 at takeoff? Jimi Hendrix or Queen at 80 dB?) It’s appropriately dubbed The Harken Project. A potential life-saver far more useful than Ford SYNC/IMS’s Allergy Alert. Press release. Medgadget Hat tip to reader David Albert MD @DrDave01 via Twitter (!)
Eimo UK telehealth device fundraising via Kickstarter
Update: Laurie Orlov picks up iMonSys’ local roots in Staithes in her post on Boomer Health Tech Watch linking to an article in the Whitby Gazette. Founder and developer Graham Priestley’s original concept resembled the ‘black box’ on an aircraft to monitor a soldier’s vital signs, with the original research under the aegis of the (UK) Ministry of Defence but shelved around 2008. He picked this up two years later with the assistance of the University of Hull, and is currently seeking to
Our readers can help spread the word on this UK product on Kickstarter!
Soapbox: Kicking the ‘Tweet the Meeting’ habit
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/twitterban-590×330.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]It’s time to go cold turkey. One of the hallmarks of being active on healthcare tech or digital health scene is Twitter. Even more than LinkedIn groups, websites and blogs, it’s how increasingly we communicate with and acknowledge each other in the field. But it has its shortcomings. It’s become a chore to follow the tweetstream in my (deliberately limited) account, because there’s all that filler. I have to scroll…and scroll…to find the ‘wanna read’ nuggets by those who post ‘the good stuff’ (and you know who you are).
The volume increases dramatically during conferences. There’s good links and photos, but increasingly it’s become a festival of incidental remarks about speakers being on (sans content links), tweets about going here and there, social pictures of lunches and dinners, selfies. Increasingly, no one puts down their phone! At sessions, instead of being riveted (or not) on the speaker, attendees are glued to their phones, furiously keyboarding and tweeting…whatever. It’s insulting to the speaker who’s trying to engage with the audience, for starters. Then there are the meetings with the tweetstream posted to the side of the stage–another distraction. Most of all, by furiously fingering, aren’t you cheating yourself of the conference experience for which you or someone has paid dearly? Isn’t the point of being there human contact and time off the screen?
Carolyn Thomas, Canada’s own ‘Ethical Nag’ and ‘Heart Sister’, describes kicking Obsessive Live-Tweeting at Conferences far more wittily in How we got sucked into live-tweeting at conferences. An excerpt:
For too long, I’d been telling myself:
–that live-tweeting isn’t a problem for me
–that I could quit anytime
–that the tweets I send to my Twitter followers while listening to a conference speaker onstage are actually interesting, high-quality messages
–that it must be okay because everybody else in the audience is doing it, too
But now I know that it’s time to quit cold-turkey.
Sensor-laden smart bandages monitor vital signs
A bandage-like system that wirelessly transmits data from a patients vital signs is being developed by an interdisciplinary team at the National Taiwan University. The system called Bioscope allows various sensors to be stacked on top of the bandage, depending on which vital signs need to be monitored. Read more: New Scientist
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