[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/lavender_set_34.jpg-buddi.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]buddi, a well-known UK personal tracker/tagger company, announced over the weekend that they have signed two contracts worth £20 million ($25.1 million). The first and most of interest is with Intel-GE Care Innovations for their new, quite attractive wrist-worn fall detector/two-way emergency alert/activity monitor. According to the Telegraph, it was designed by Sebastian Conran (left) and was ‘fully certified by the US government in recent weeks’ which may mean that it gained FDA clearance. The second was for their ‘Smart Tag’ used in criminal tracking with the New South Wales, Australia government. Care Innovations adds another consumer-facing device to the Lively activity tracker and iHealth fitness and telehealth devices. Timing for availability is not disclosed. (more…)
Breaking news out of the mHealth Summit
mHealth Summit this year had an abundance of digital health company news announcements, not only from the conference but also timed to coincide with the heightened interest around it. Your Editor looks over the most interesting of them, briefly. Thanks to Ashley Gold of Politico’s Morning eHealth (@ashleygold, daily reports archived here), Stephanie Baum of MedCityNews (@stephlbaum) and Anne Zieger of Healthcare Dive for their coverage and their company in the press room!
Partners HealthCare researches, Validic expands, AliveCor and Omron ally, Happtique sells out, Doctor on Demand is telemental, Orange goes dental, VA Innovation Rocks
- Partners HealthCare/Center for Connected Health’s cHealth Compass will use panel and other research to help companies, device manufacturers, startups and investors determine what end users–consumer and provider–want out of personal health tech. Focus groups, interviews and usability testing will help to determine product design, evaluation, assess applications and feasibility as well as interim/final product testing. Partners is already organizing in Massachusetts a 2,000-patient database which rewards participants $50 on registration and $110 annually to be in a monthly survey panel. cHealth Compass website, BetaBoston (Boston Globe)
- Health data connector/aggregator Validic demonstrates the attractiveness of Anything Big Data on with new clients including the Everyday Health consumer/professional website and the adidas Group’s sport and fitness apps. Recently they added WebMD, Pfizer, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), NexJ Health and MedHost to their client list. The company claims that their ‘ecosystem’–probably the most popular buzzword at this year’s conference–of healthcare companies and tech developers now reaches over 100 million people with devices such as Omron, Alere, Qardio, Telcare, Jawbone and Withings. Release
- AliveCor accentuates the retail with Omron. AliveCor, which developed the first FDA-cleared ECG for smartphones and gained clearance for an atrial fibrillation algorithm in August, is collaborating with Japanese device manufacturer Omron on developing its retail presence. Omron’s devices are available in major drugstores such as Walgreens, RiteAid and Walmart so certainly AliveCor is due to benefit. AliveCor is also part of a revived QualcommLife (more on this in an upcoming article) Release, Mobihealthnews (Your Editor had the pleasure of meeting at last AliveCor’s CMO and founder Dr. Dave Albert.)
- Happtique sold to SocialWellth. Last year’s floor talk was about Happtique’s first class of certified apps and a security expert’s untimely discovery of major flaws (more…)
The ethical quandary of public, searchable data
An impressive article written by a young doctor poses the problem of social sharing, data we don’t know we’re generating and how that data is being processed in ways such as tracking programs to predict and analyze our behavior. The example he gives of the Samaritans (a non-profit social services group in UK with a mission to prevent suicide) design of an app to be used with tweets of people we follow to alert you of worsening mood changes so that you could intervene. Some felt it was beneficial, most considered the possibilities for misuse or cyberstalking, and it was pulled. The other, rather chilling example was how a PHR could pick up EHR patient evaluation notes data not meant to be seen by the patient. Data insecurity with devastating consequences. Read the article for what UK family GPs are being asked to do by the Government. When data gets creepy: the secrets we don’t realise we’re giving away (Guardian). Hat tip to reader Mike Clark.
NYeC Digital Health: two diverging visions of a connected future (Part 1)
The New York eHealth Collaborative’s fourth annual Digital Health Conference is increasingly notable for combining both local concerns (NYeC is one of the key coordinators of health IT for the state) and nationally significant content. A major focus of the individual sessions was data in all flavors: big, international, private, shared and ethically used. Another was using this data in coordinating care and empowering patients. Your Editor will focus on this as reflected in sessions she attended, along with thoughts by our two guest contributors, in Part 2 of this roundup.
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Topol-Compressed.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The NYeC Conference was unique in presenting two divergent views of ‘Future IT’ and how it will affect healthcare delivery. One is a heady, optimistic one of powerful patients taking control of their healthcare, personalized ‘democratized medicine” and innovative, genetically-powered ‘on demand medicine’. The other is a future of top-down, regulated, cost-controlled, analyzed and constrained healthcare from top to bottom, with emphasis on standardizing procedures for doctors and hospitals, plus patient compliance.
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Topol-tech-adoption-compressed.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]First to Dr Topol in Monday’s keynote. The good side of people ‘wired’ to their phones is that it is symptomatic, not of Short Attention Span Theatre, but of Moore’s Law–the time technology is now taking for adoption by at least 25 percent of the US population is declining by about 50 percent. That means comfort with the eight drivers he itemizes for democratizing medicine and empowering the patient: sensors, labs, imaging, physical examination, records, costs, meds and ‘Uber Doc’.
Data streams of the future analyzed at NYeC Digital Health
Guest columnist Sarianne Gruber (@subtleimpact) also attended the NYeC Digital Health Conference and reflects on what to do with all that data patients and devices are generating–a natural for her as she is a consultant in data analytics for Encore Health Resources.
The New York eHealth Collaborative hosted its fourth annual Digital Health Conference at New York City’s Chelsea Piers on November 17 and 18. There I was joined by 850 health-related professionals to listen, engage and see how life science meets digital technology. No doubt we have become a digital culture. Even seated on an airplane, I noticed the gentleman next to me wearing a Fitbit, and we strike up a conversation on step and sleep data and our dislike of the new dashboard. At the conference, Keynote Speaker Dr. Eric Topol, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist and a leading practitioner of digital medicine, shared with us his thoughts on what it means be a part of this digital revolution as a patient and a doctor. Technology changes the scope of individual care. Advances in genomics now gives us answers based on our DNA that will genetically determine the success of medications and treatments. Epigenomics, a molecular diagnostics company, can prescreen an unborn baby of a mother with cancer with a simple blood test, sequencing the DNA, to manage her therapy. I was fascinated to hear that a genomic signal sensor can detect heart attacks and warn you of this possibly fatal event, and that necklace for heart failure patients can monitor fluid status averting repeated readmissions for these patients. Dr. Topol believes that digitized 24/7 patient health data will shift the patient–doctor relationship. Bringing in your self-monitored data, eliminates “the how are you feeling questions” and instead the doctor can confirm diagnosis and start treating the patient. “Patient owning data is a foreign concept and the digital revolution ushered this in.“ (more…)
Swasthya Slate: the Indian tricorder?
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Swat-Slate-devices2.png” thumb_width=”150″ /]Just coming to this Editor’s attention — and wondering why it hasn’t received more — is the Swasthya Slate, a diagnostic tablet pre-loaded with 33 diagnostic tests, procedural apps and diagnostic devices for health workers who have basic medical training. It was developed by an Indian startup headed by a former member of Arizona State University’s department of biomedical informatics, Kanav Kahol. He returned home to New Delhi three years ago frustrated in his desire to develop an inexpensive, simplified diagnostic tablet for use in remote areas, using the same sensors that far more complex devices used. The ruggedized tablet, in addition to the pre-loaded tests and artificial intelligence-based apps, incorporates a four-lead ECG, medical thermometer, water-quality meter, heart-rate monitor, 12-lead ECG and sensors for blood pressure, blood sugar, heart rate, blood haemoglobin, urine protein and glucose. (more…)
Why a smartwatch may feel…de trop
De trop —French, adjective, meaning too much, too many, unwanted
Have you noticed that many early adopters have skipped smartwatches? Other wearables such as fitness trackers have taken their place successively on the wrists of your favorite Quantified Selfer or weekend warrior. (A sign: they are now mass market at drug stores like CVS and sports stores for the holiday.) But how many people are looking forward to a special delivery of an Apple Watch, Samsung Gear S or even the well-reviewed and well-priced LG G Watch R in Santa’s pack? Having just returned from the NYeC Digital Health Conference, I saw few on the wrists of DH mavens. Smartwatches (and clothing wearables) also faded out at CES Unveiled [TTA 21 Nov], a complete turnaround from June’s event.
If you’ve been wondering too, you’ll be nodding like a bobblehead at John Nosta’s blog post in Nuvium, The Death of Wearables. (more…)
Soapbox: Why an app isn’t like a book
The suggestion has been made recently at a couple of events that this editor attended that there is an unnecessary fuss over regulation of medical apps because they are just like medical books; as there is no regulation of books, why the need to regulate medical apps? . In order to try to move to a consensus, this post puts the opposite point of view, to stimulate debate. In summary the arguments of why they are different are:
- We are familiar with books and have worked out how to deal with them;
- Books give formulae and leave users to compute; apps do it all, often without showing their working;
- Tablets and, especially, smartphones have screens that are smaller than books so require a different design.
This issue of course only relates to serious medical apps – something like 99.5% of all health apps available are very unlikely to do serious harm, helping people as they do record things like their fitness and their weight, and so do not require such detailed scrutiny. It is the ones that get close to, or meet, the test of being a medical device that are of particular interest here. The goal is that once clinicians are comfortable prescribing medical apps, and patients are comfortable using them, the NHS will save substantial sums by, for example replacing drugs with apps for a range of diseases where both are effective and apps are far cheaper. There are also huge benefits for clinician-facing apps – properly certified medical apps like Mersey Burns and Mersey Micro are already massively improving patient outcomes and significantly reducing NHS costs.
In more detail, books have been with us for many centuries so we are familiar with their structure, with the processes for their removal from publication if they give dangerous advice, and with the idea of specialist publications accessible by appropriate experts only – the same is not true of apps. In the event that advice in a book was dangerously wrong, (more…)
TSA Conference a great success (UK)
The two day 2014 TSA conference held at the Celtic Manor proved to be a great success for their new Chief Executive Alyson Bell who masterminded the event.
That this was to be a conference like no other was very apparent from the start when a solo performance from Gracie of the Zimmers opened the conference, followed by a performance by the whole group. Plenary sessions by luminaries in the digital health and care world followed, interspersed by refreshment breaks and a breakout session. Sir Bruce Keogh was sadly unable to attend in person though gave a hugely inspiring talk to camera encouraging all to use technology to deliver better care, more efficiently. (In a show of hands however, responding to a question from the conference chair, Nick Goodwin, the audience did not agree that Sir Bruce’s “fertile permissive environment for technology” was in place).
The other standout of the first afternoon was (more…)
Care Innovations harmonizes and validates
Updated 27 November
In what seems to be a repackaging and repositioning of their remote care management/telehealth services, Intel-GE Care Innovations is now orchestrating Health Harmony. It appears on their promotional web page to be a bundling into that latest rave, the care continuum, but also a refreshing of separate systems developed since 2011: for the patient, an in-home tablet hub/portal for monitors and PC-based content portal once known as Connect; and for the clinician or caregiver, what was formerly called the Intel-GE Care Innovations Guide (which succeeded the Intel Health Guide). According to the CI website and press release from earlier this month, Health Harmony is an ‘optimized experience” that promotes collaboration among the patient, family, friends and care professionals and will “organize caregiving tasks, coordinate schedules, track medications, monitor vital signs and crucial health information, and quickly share information.” The release gives the impression of a launch but no information on cutting over current clients to the new system.
Update: A test of the Health Harmony system in a hospital environment to reduce readmissions is underway with liver transplant patients at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. The shocking fact is that 50 percent of transplant readmissions occur within seven days of discharge. Instead of being discharged with a booklet and an exam one week later, the patients daily self-monitor vital signs (blood pressure, glucose, temperature), pain level and answer programmed questions. The clinical team reviews their data for 90 days post-discharge and can also do video consults. Currently eight patients are being monitored in the program with up to 20 projected through April 2015. Liver transplant bundled payments are approximately $250,000 with surgery being $180,000 of it, so there is an immediate benefit to the hospital system.
Another interesting development in Roseville, California is the expansion of the CI Validation Institute, announced in June, (more…)
CES Unveiled New York
11 November, New York
The annual event that is CES Unveiled in New York City is meant to be a nanoparticle-scale preview of International CES in Las Vegas, 6-9 January. It’s a smörgåsbord of what used to be called ‘consumer electronics’ and now is all about innovation–a taste of everything from ever-smarter video and audio to sensors, smarter homes with IoT (the cutely named Internet of Things), Big Data, robotics and (drum roll) Digital Health and the Quantified Self (QS). This Editor regrettably missed the opening briefing by Shawn DuBravac, CEA’s Chief Economist and Senior Director of Research which would likely touch on his areas of the innovation economy and disruption along with the other four 2015 trends to watch: big data analytics, immersive entertainment content, robotics and digital health. (CEA helpfully provides the 30-page white paper here.)
The exhibitors at the Metropolitan Pavilion did not fully represent the trends, however. (more…)
Wearables blog – update
Since this editors’ piece on wearables four days ago there has been a stream of news about interoperability of various apps, resulting in frequent updates to the original blog, to the point where it was beginning no longer to resemble the original.
Chris Bergstrom of WellDoc has now kindly pointed me to the Mobihealthnews item on Samsung’s digital health partners announcement, and to his company’s specific interoperability announcement with Samsung, enabling activity and other data to be obtained from other Android apps to help those with diabetes to manage their condition better.
WellDoc of course developed the first prescription app – this item from mHealthWatch in turn based on a Telegraph article that suggests that GPs in the UK will shortly be prescribing apps for patients in large quantities. The source of the Telegraph’s intelligence is none other than Personalised Health and Care 2020, the recently published NHS document that we covered extensively yesterday, which was perhaps a tad less optimistic about medical app take-up.
Personalised health & care 2020 – required reading! (UK)
The NHS’s National Information Board (NIB) this week published its long awaited document on its plans for personalising health and social care activities, with a strong England focus. It breaks new ground for such a document in many ways (not least that when you put ‘apps’ or ‘telehealth’ or a myriad of other terms into the search engine, you get many hits!).
Before describing at some length why this editor considers the document to be so important, it is of course important to recognise that there will be an election in six months’ time so both the funding and the priorities of the NHS may well change before it has even got beyond the very first set of commitments. A further point is that, were the NHS to meet all the commitments it has made, even in recent years, it would be a very different organisation to that that it is: commitment do not necessary result in delivery.
The document is subtitled “A framework for action” which is a good description. it contains many individual commitments. However few are are sufficiently (more…)
Friday fun spot (UK)
In case any UK reader is unaware of the NHS Networks Editor’s Blog, we just thought we’d draw your attention to this Friday’s excellent example. Every week Julian Patterson comes up with a wonderfully amusing take on some aspect of the NHS; this week’s is particularly good. Sadly the intricacies and absurdities of the UK’s NHS are so great as perhaps to make many of the references incomprehensible to those from overseas (for this week, a working knowledge of the BBC’s internationally-viewed Dr Who series helps as well).
The item is nothing directly to do with telecare or telehealth (where there’s been enough excitement elsewhere this week), although occasionally, if you sign up for the NHS Networks weekly letter, you will catch a useful item on some aspect of digital health…as well as not missing next week’s Editor’s Blog.
Are wearables starting to deliver?
If you caught the recent Wired article entitled Wearables Are Totally Failing the People Who Need Them Most, you may have felt a sense of deep depression that a sector growing as strongly as it is is apparently delivering so little real health benefit (you may also be depressed to see the world of apps developers described as “From Silicon Valley and San Francisco to Austin and MIT…” although remember the North American-based Major League Baseball is called the World Series). The thrust of the article is that young people are developing wearables for people like them, who are then stopping using them within a few months, whereas those with long term conditions (LTCs) who are not the target customers are actually the ones using wearables consistently. As they say: (more…)
New TSA Chief Executive appointed shortly before their conference begins (UK)
The TSA has provided us with the following announcement this morning:
“TSA GEARS UP FOR EVOLVING SECTOR WITH NEW LEADERSHIP
Telecare Services Association is excited to announce that Alyson Bell will be taking over leadership of the industry body, as part of radical changes to lead, represent and promote the evolving sector.
After 4 and a half years of leading TSA, its current Chief Executive Trevor Single, will be leaving to pursue other opportunities. Trevor commented: “The organisation (more…)
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