A mélange of short subjects for Tuesday

March 17, 2015 | by

ATA accredits American Well, Apple ResearchKit, diabetic contact lenses, Hackermania Falls on Indiana, patent trolls get a haircut, and more

The ATA (American Telemedicine Association) has gained more than 200 applications for their US-only Accreditation Program for Online Patient Consultations [TTA 17 Dec 14]. First past the post in accreditation is American Well’s Amwell virtual visit app, which will shortly be listed on the ATA consumer website SafeOnlineHealth.org. Release, MedCityNews….Stanford University, one of the five academic centers using the Apple ResearchKit, had a mind-boggling 11,000 signups for a heart health study–in 24 hours. The downside is that they may not be representative of the whole population [TTA 10 Mar, see 11 Mar update] including us Android users. 9to5Mac….The Google-Novartis glucose-measuring contact lens [TTA 17 July 14] for diabetes management just gained some Canadian competition–Medella Health in Kitchener, Ontario, founded by a team of (more…)

EHRs can’t exchange patient records? $$ in workarounds.

March 17, 2015 | by

Some of the Excedrin/Panadol Headaches (#11, #14, #23 and #54) in healthcare are around the very ‘miracle technology’ that was supposed to make it all seamless, non-duplicative, time/cost-effective and coast-to-coast–EHRs. The exchange of patient records between hospitals, within health systems between sites and with medical practices plus vice versa–works haltingly if at all. It works best within well-established, highly integrated delivery systems –the VA, DOD, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, Geisinger, Intermountain Healthcare. But once you’re away from it–good luck. Where are the problems? The closed standards of the major hospital EHRs–Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, McKesson and brethren; the extreme customization most health systems demand (nay, a major Epic selling point!); structured versus unstructured data and how handled; a lack of a secure interoperability standard are but a few. Where is the gold? Getting patient health records exchanged, accessible and transportable, among systems that were essentially designed not to speak with each other. (more…)

University of Mississippi telehealth center to expand (US)

March 16, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/ummc_aerial.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]A Baton Rouge, La.-based data company set its sights on Jackson, Mississippi, and announced on Tuesday (10 March 2015) it will build a technology center that, in part, will house one of the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s fastest growing services – telehealth, according to a news release from UMMC. UMMC entered into a lease agreement with Venyu Solutions, LLC, which will construct a stand-alone, 16,000-square-foot facility to accommodate the increase in the services UMMC’s Center for Telehealth provides to hospitals, clinics, corporations and patients across the state.

Venyu CEO Scott Thompson is quoted to have said construction would start in April or May and take a little less than a year. The hospital’s lease will begin on or around July 1, 2016. (more…)

Sweat analyzing sensor patch flies high at USAF Research Lab

March 13, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/USAF-sweat-sensor.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Call them ‘sticky sensors’, biosensor tattoos or as you like, but there’s been a lot of research happening in the past three years around gathering biometrics from skin contact. Whether it’s the John Rogers ‘skunk works’ at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign measuring ECG, EEG and cardiovascular conditions; University of California-San Diego’s lactate and blood glucose monitoring; MC10’s Biostamp for infant temperature, head impacts and neurological disorders plus NewDealDesign‘s multi-purpose implants, skin is in. Though the Apple Watch was flummoxed (for now) by biometrics due to hairy arms and sweat [TTA 18 Feb], these sensors thrive on the latter. The US Air Force (USAF) Research Laboratory has been working on sweat analytic sensors for some time now [TTA 24 Apr 14]. (more…)

State telemedicine legislation update (US)

March 12, 2015 | by

Here’s some brief updates on US telemedicine legislation scene to hit the news recently.

Florida

Florida is progressing the telehealth bill we reported on 12 Feb 2015. The Florida Senate [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Florida-House-of-Representattives.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Telehealth Policy Committee revised the draft bill on 18 Feb 2015 so the need for Medicaid reimbursements to be the same for telemedicine and face-to-face consultations is removed.

Mississippi

We have reported many telehealth initiatives from Mississippi and the state is now considered to be “a leader in telemedicine” according to a recent report in Politico. “Mississippi’s telemedicine program, ranked among the seven best in the country, has inspired neighboring Arkansas to take bigger steps in some areas of the field, and the impact of its success is making waves in Washington as well” continues Politico.

Mississippi is also helping to move telehealth at a federal level. Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) introduced a bipartisan bill in July last year to expand telehealth services under Medicare. The bill called Medicare [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/mississippi-logo1.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Telehealth Parity Act 2014 starts to move face to face and telehealth consultations to be on an equal footing.

(more…)

‘Rotting In Place’

March 11, 2015 | by | 2 Comments

Laura Mitchell, who was one of the key people behind GrandCare Systems and now is a marketing consultant and healthy aging advocate, has written an interesting article on LinkedIn Pulse, now on her website, springing off an AgingInPlaceTech article by Laurie Orlov.  Like the latter’s article, it commented on the Washington Post profile of Prof. Stephen Golant, whose POV on ‘aging in place’ was mostly that AIP is oversold–that in many cases, it’s ‘rotting in place in their own homes’. It’s a highly provocative topic with equally provocative statements and Ms Mitchell does take him to the woodshed, as does Ms Orlov in a different way. Prof. Galant seems to take a more moderate tone in his book (publicity perhaps?), citing (in the Amazon summary) that “older people often must settle for the least imperfect places to live. They are offered solutions that are poorly implemented or do not respond to the totality of their unmet needs.” a statement with which this Editor finds it difficult to disagree.

This Editor will largely cite her previous LinkedIn comment with a few embellishments/edits: (more…)

3rings Plugs in to reassuring families

March 11, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/3rings-plug-default.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /] Stoke-on-Trent’s 3rings, which we noted over a year ago [TTA 6 Feb 14] as a smartphone/call/text-based family alert system based on the older person’s phone check in, has developed a plug that will do this check in automatically. It’s based on behavior–an older person turning on or off an appliance as part of their daily routine (a tea kettle or TV), based on rules that the family sets up. The plug goes into the wall outlet with the appliance plugged into it. Usage sends a wireless signal to the 3rings portal and notifies family or neighbors that the person is active and moving about. Presumably this is a small appliance–there’s no tech spec that gives maximum wattage. (The plug may short out if Dad likes to get up to ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ on his McIntosh amplifiers driving two Klipschorn floor speakers.) A subscription service at £12 per month, with the plug at laddered prices of £79 inclusive of the first month, £183 with a 12 month subscription with the plug at half price plug and £288 with a two year subscription. Interestingly this Editor received this news  (more…)

Integrating mobile apps between clinicians and patients

March 11, 2015 | by

Your Editors have noted many well-funded companies working in the wings to link up and find meaning in the hugeness of Big Data generated by a gazillion medical systems and devices (Validic, the recently seen QpidHealth at HealthIMPACT East). However what’s been scarce on the ground are companies that are front-end, point of service, integrating mobile communications between clinicians, then with consumers/patients, then with EHRs, operations and patient portals. We noted ZynxHealth at HealthImpact, interestingly part of media giant Hearst, but they confine their secure messaging to clinicians. Now spanning both worlds is an early-stage company, Practice Unite, out of New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT–metro NY-ers of a certain age remember it as Newark College of Engineering!) NJ Innovation Institute accelerator. Inspira Health Network, located in southern NJ, is adopting their single clinician/patient platform. In conjunction with Futura Mobility, this will facilitate clinician/patient secure texting, voice communications, patient-directed communications and delivery of EHR data. Practice Unite has previously developed apps for at least ten health systems and home care providers. Their three-minute demo here illustrates a very wide span among clinicians, hospital operations, home care operations and patient engagement. (This Editor will be finding out more on Friday when visiting their offices at the NJIT Enterprise Development Center in Newark.) Release.

The hypealicious, hyperluxus Apple Watch debut–what the healtherati are interested in

March 10, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]L’œil de Gimlet eyes the Apple Watch. What’s down the road is more important than Monday’s unveil. Certainly The Eye, an adorer of all things over-the-top, would love to have the $10,000-and-up 18 karat, Daddy Warbucks, Solid Gold Cadillac edition of the Apple Watch. It is the sheer hyperluxus, Mercedes-Maybach S600-ness of it all that races my pulse. Stop at $4,000? Nein! $10,000 and up lends a golden glow to all those ordinary, plastic-banded, Mickey Mouse-faced $349 and up versions for the Applepolloi that take that pulse, burp your wrist when you’re not moving enough, open the garage door, play tunes and let you draw little thingies on the face that you can send to your friends. (Urp) What’s even better than a Merc-Maybach in Conspicuous Consumption-Ville? That it will be out of date in a year, unless Apple has a trade-in policy.

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Tim-Cook-previews-the-App-008.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /] Cue Tim Cook and the Happy Dance of the Watches. (Photo: Zuma/Rex via Guardian)

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Apple-Goldfinger.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]Cue Shirley Bassey. (Gigaom via Twitter)

Ah, but let us get down to business and cut our swathe through the fog d’hype. (Editor Donna just walked in the door…)

As predicted and projected, the Apple Watch in stores 24 April in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, UK and US goes light and standard on health measurement features: accelerometer, heart rate sensors, running and weekly activity reports. What’s different? Wrist burps you if you’re a lazy, sitting sod. (Not a great feature for deep meditators or napsters.) The leak from two weeks ago feinted health through downplaying the functionality of the Watch. Back in September, claims included blood pressure and stress monitoring. [TTA 18 Feb]

Now for the right cross. It’s not the Watch, it’s the ResearchKit. Apple gets serious in health apps beyond HealthKit, partnering with the stars in the medical research firmament. As reported: (more…)

MWC 2015 Part II – a few companies, some of potential interest

March 9, 2015 | by

The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona does, as the name suggests, cover the whole mobile world. It can come as a disappointment then to find quite how insignificant Health is when compared to items like hardware, payment or even ‘4G backhaul’ (whatever that is). There certainly now seems to be a case for a sparate health stream, as finding the pearls proved very challenging for this reviewer. Relying on the search engine on the site too often revealed a company where too many boxes had been ticked. There was also an alarming number of healthtech ‘no shows’ on the when I reached the country stands of eg Finland, Greece & Italy.

However, there were a few exciting finds. These included:

Coros which are offering incredibly low-priced wearables: washable vests that do HR, respiration, temperature & ECG. If the prices I was quoted by Ethan Wu, Sales Director of a few $10s are good, and the kit works, they’ll be struggling to meet demand.

Dr Security offers an app that enables you to track all the people in your party, call for help, find your mobile device and more. Impressive and I’d have thought most welcome particularly for teachers with school parties or those with really any large outings.

Essence is an Israeli company that has been around for 20 years that offers an activities of daily living (ADL) monitoring service similar to (more…)

New alliance for m-health in Europe

March 7, 2015 | by

Swedish telecommunications company Tele2, with operations in nine European countries, has announced that it is to partner with HCL Technologies to develop Machine to Machine (M2M) [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Tele2.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, particularly those within the m-health [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/HCL.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]market. In an announcement on their website, HCL Technologies, which employs over 100,000 people worldwide, said “by focusing on the Healthcare segment in Europe, the two companies will jointly address one of the fastest growing areas of the M2M/IoT market. For example, in healthcare the two companies are planning to develop remote patient monitoring systems that are enabled through smartphones. HCL and Tele2 will work together in an effort to reduce transactional and operational costs for their partners, whilst tapping into the lucrative revenue opportunities that exist within the European IoT/M2M market.”

The news article continues “HCL will be responsible for the implementation, integration, roll-out and ongoing support of M2M/IoT solutions, in addition to device connectivity through its flagship Device Gateway product – Aegis. This becomes feasible through Tele2’s Control Center, which is the market leading M2M/IoT connectivity platform in the world.”

Participate in the 2015 Global mHealth App Developer Economics Study

March 5, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2015-mHealth-App-Developer-Economics-study-banner.jpg” thumb_width=”250″ /]TTA readers are invited to participate in the fifth annual mHealth App Economics survey, sponsored by research2guidance in collaboration with mHealth Summit Europe and HIMSS. The study will look at the mHealth app market, how apps generate revenue, how behavior could be changed by apps, the use of APIs and sensors as well as other related topics–and is the largest industry survey on mHealth app development.

Click here to go to our exclusive link and participate in the survey. The survey is available till 26 April. Share your opinions and experience on how mHealth apps impact healthcare delivery now and in the next five years. Plus, every participant will receive the chance to win one of five free entry tickets to the mHealth Summit Europe in Riga, Latvia 11-12 May, where the results will be presented; a free copy of the 2015 report as well as the possibility to see initial results after completing the survey. Download link for the 2014 study (PDF).

TTA is a media partner of the 2015 Global mHealth App Developer Economics Study, and was a media sponsor of this year’s US mHealth Summit.

MWC 2015 part 1: in search of S Health

March 5, 2015 | by | 1 Comment

2015 was this editor’s first visit to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Though well prepared for the experience by seasoned visitors, the sheer size of the event is simply breath-taking. 15 minutes to walk fast from the entrance to the end of Hall 8.1 suggests the site is getting on for a mile long, and five minutes to walk from one end of Hall 3 to the other suggests it’s pretty wide too.

The sheer volume of people attending is astonishing – nearly 90,000 expected this year, which must be the largest single alien invasion of the city. It certainly tells, with long queues to get on the train to the Fira Gran via site in the morning, and a 25 minute wait to get on a train back for those making the mistake of hanging on to closing time early in the week, to indulge in the hospitality that breaks out on many stands as the sun passes the yard-arm.

Organisation is stunning too – there are helpful people way back in the metro system pointing the way, and throughout the site. Ask them and they’ll almost certainly know the answer, or know someone who does.

The contrast therefore with the Congress’s largest exhibitor – Samsung – is (more…)

Smartphone health data, privacy concerns rear head at MWC

March 5, 2015 | by

As Editor Charles is chronicling at the world’s largest mobile event, Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has a great deal of focus on healthcare–and that includes healthcare data security. Both telehealth monitoring and telemedicine virtual consults are increasingly phone-based. That data transmitting via and in virtual storage a/k/a The Cloud, including personal health records (PHRs), is overly assumed to be secure, but security protocols vary. “We are at the mercy of who the app providers are and how well they secure the information, and they are at the mercy sometimes of the cloud providers.” according to Kevin Curran of the IEEE. This article also points out that there’s real consumer concern that insurance companies will access their personal identified data via various databases, (more…)

66% of ‘tech-savvy seniors’ dissatisfied with current health tech

March 5, 2015 | by

Yes, those same people who–gee whiz–designed computers, did their own programs in MS-DOS and went from Palm Pilots to BlackBerries to iPhones, are already over or hitting 65 (3.9 million in US in 2015)–and they aren’t happy with what’s being served up to them in healthcare tech. The Accenture study across 10 countries and over 10,000 adults points out the demand–67 percent–and the dissatisfaction–66 percent. They want independent self-care tools, wearables to monitor themselves, online communities like PatientsLikeMe, patient navigators and health record tools. Moreover, the more comfortable they are with and value technology, the more likely they are already using technology for tracking weight and cholesterol levels. Couple this with the ‘Drawn and Quartered’ Parks Associates research [TTA 11 Aug 14] and moving past the mHealth hype earlier this week, the study points out a strong market for apps, online tools and other digital health–but designed not for a peer group of most designers, nor to be ‘cool’. Helloooo designers! Wake up! Laurie Orlov does point out on AgeInPlaceTech that there’s not much new here, but that we shouldn’t move on. Accenture release, Modern Healthcare, Fred Pennic in HIT Consultant, Stephanie Baum in MedCityNews

Fitbit accurate in measuring energy expenditure: AHA presentation

March 5, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/acitivity-trackers_wellocracy_chealth-blog-kvedar.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The current judgment on commercial fitness monitors is that they are worthwhile directionally, but accurate–not so much [TTA 10 May 14]. This may be changing, albeit on a specific, non-clinical measurement. A Columbia University Medical Center (New York, NY) team tested the Fitbit One and Fitbit Flex for tracking energy expenditure during treadmill walking and running exercise, versus energy expenditure assessed by indirect calorimetry, and found themto be valid and reliable devices. Correlation between measurements was 0.95 – 0.97. These devices were interestingly placed on wrists and hips; perhaps a user can enlighten me.  Poster presentation/Abstract MP11 published in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation.