Telemedicine in the TIME Swampland

September 17, 2013 | by | 1 Comment
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/blue-blazes.jpg” thumb_width=”175″ /]TIME’s ‘Swampland’ section may be referring to the original siting of Washington, DC on reclaimed swamp land off the Potomac River, but this swampy article ultimately struggles to solid land. You will have to meander through the UVA Center for Telehealth, the Center for Connected Health Policy, WellPoint, the Institute for e-Health Policy and of course Partners Healthcare’s cardiac program [TTA 27 Aug] before addressing the real problem: the desirability of broader telemedicine reimbursement and a consistent policy in US Federal programs such as Medicare and Federally-subsidized Medicaid administered through the states. Currently Medicare reimbursement is restricted to specific rural areas, Native American territories/Indian Health Service, and of course the often-mentioned mess of cross-state physician licensing. However, the Accountable Care Act is not going to be the savior as its implementation is hardly going smoothly. Earlier CMS policies on 30-day same cause readmissions have had far more impact. There is the to-be-expected muddling of telemedicine (virtual consults) and telehealth (monitoring)–and robotics gets a ‘say wot?’ mention. The kicker is the headline and accompanying picture:

“Saving U.S. Health Care With Skype”

Skype, while used in ‘telemental health’ [TTA 11 May], is not HIPAA-compliant for patient privacy.  Were TIME’s famed fact-checkers asleep? 

Hat tip (and thanks) to reader Bob Pyke.

Ageing Well – how can technology help?

September 16, 2013 | by

This year’s Telemedicine & eHealth conference, on 25th & 26th November, at the Royal Society of Medicine at 1 Wimpole St, London will focus on how technology can help people to age well. It will cover a wide palette of issues relating to technology and ageing, including both physical & mental conditions, and the importance of social & spiritual considerations too.

Keynote speakers include Jon Rouse (more…)

Medical identity theft hits new highs

September 14, 2013 | by

August ended with the report of the second highest-ever identity breach traced to a healthcare provider–4 million patient names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and clinical information, contained on four unencrypted Advocate Health System (Illinois) office computers. It was a ‘behemoth breach’ in Healthcare IT News‘ words and has led to the filing of a class-action lawsuit (Privacy Rights Clearinghouse). Now security consultant Ponemon Institute’s latest report, released yesterday, increases the breach anxiety level with its 2013 Survey on Medical Identity Theft: (more…)

NY eHealth Collaborative Digital Health Conference 2013

September 13, 2013 | by

14-15 November 2013,  Hilton New York, New York City

This year’s NYeC Digital Health Conference brings together a diverse group of professionals for two days of lively intellectual exchange. Healthcare providers, IT innovators, health leadership, start-ups, hospital officials, group practice managers, investors, and entrepreneurs will gather to hear insights, ideas, and analysis from leaders in the health IT community. Early Bird discount expires 20 September. Information, registration

How startups are being damaged by patent trolls–and turning the tables

September 13, 2013 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/TROLLS-1992-008.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]In February and for a few months, this Editor was on a tear about the quaintly dubbed patent trolls–primarily (but not always) non-practicing entities (NPEs) which don’t create or market products, but buy up other people’s/companies’ patents and then seek out opportunities to license them. These NPEs target and challenge vulnerable startups and early-stage companies to defend their patents and systems; the suit for royalties, the financial threat, the papers filed, the attorneys called, the money spent and the eventual settlement (or licensing) is in reality just a form of what’s called in Latin America la mordida. It becomes cheaper to settle than to fight–and the cost can be six or seven figures. 

The shots over the bow were in 2012: Bosch’s February lawsuits against Waldo Health, ExpressMD/Authentidate and MedApps (now Alere Connect) [TTA 16 Feb 2012] and then the strange practice of PHR developer/patent accumulator MMRGlobal [TTA 23 Oct 2012] in sending hundreds, perhaps thousands, of letters out to EHR/EMR users to advise them of possible patent violations and demanding licensing. This Editor observed then and during the spring this year that it was only a matter of time that NPEs would pounce on healthcare tech as investment action accelerated. Yet discussions by this Editor with companies in some public venues indicated a certain level of obliviousness to the threat–that there were not enough assets to go after, thus healthcare startups made poor targets–though side conversations with IP specialist attorneys indicated otherwise.

Well, the trolls have reared their fuzzy heads again, uglier than ever, in this drama-laced article in Wired. (more…)

Quantified selfing: elitist and privacy invading

September 13, 2013 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The last place you’d expect to see a populist view of Quantified Selfing, outside of the retrograde publications perused by The Gimlet Eye, is Wired. All these Fitbits, Jawbone UPs, Misfit Shines, baby monitors and of course Google Glass cost, cost, cost–upfront and especially for the ongoing subscription services. Even wearables, at this point, are nowhere near cheap and cheerful nor will be for some time. Is QS a luxury of the residents of Elysium? Wired’s Quantified Man, Chris Dancy, toting up his five-sensor/system cost, pays $400-$1,000 per month. The Eye tears up at the effect on the exchequer. But the most painful point for the article’s writer is less elitism than privacy: all the data churned out, existing somewhere to be mined, and all those ad messages waiting to be served up on Glass. PPG–pay per gaze–indeed. Your ‘Quantified-Self’: Are Wearable Technologies Just a Luxury for the Upper-Class? 

Is ‘disruption’ the dog that didn’t bark?

September 13, 2013 | by

Is the disruption in healthcare that we think is going on, have been told is going on, make assumptions on, not really on? This is the contrarian argument posited by Dan Munro:

  • Training of doctors, supply and demand is as it was. Training of US doctors is expensive, and doctors tend to go to the better paid specialties in order to pay down education debt faster. And patient demand for acute procedures will always outstrip doctor supply.
  • Squeezing down the small stuff doesn’t radically impact demand. In the US we have been pounding down insurers (6 percent) and low-acuity/primary care, but ignoring the heavy spend on hospitals (31 percent) and clinical services (20 percent).  Are the big slices of the pie resistant or too controversial to cut?
  • Startups aren’t a good source of disruption.  (more…)

From ‘Big Data’ to Collective Wisdom – SIHI conference report

September 12, 2013 | by

This year’s Southern Institute for Health Informatics (SIHI) conference, in Portsmouth on September 11th, was a hugely impressive event featuring a well-chosen array of excellent speakers. As one who has often struggled to get excited about the finer points of coding, this was a revelation: I was converted.

Just what can be achieved in the NHS when technology, culture and organisation are in harmony was breathtaking (more…)

Doro 2.0 smartphone QSs with Withings (EU)

September 12, 2013 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Doro-Liberto-810.jpg” thumb_width=”100″ /]Doro’s unveiling of their second smartphone, the Doro Liberto 810,  along with its ‘privileged access’ to two Withings devices–the Smart Body Analyzer (weight, body fat, heart rate) and Pulse Smart Activity Tracker–continues their moves into older adult-appealing mobile telecare/telehealth offerings, as tracked by founding Editor Steve since at least 2009.  Doro’s assertive move into Quantified Selfing as part of what they call ‘the world’s most liberating smartphone’, is more fully featured and was predicted by David Doherty earlier this year [TTA 25 Feb]. It is also not Doro’s first big alliance; late last year, Bosch Healthcare announced that Doro would be the mobile platform for telecare offerings in Germany and Sweden [TTA 16 Nov 2012]. Both the release and Mobihealthnews indicate that this offering will roll out to select European markets initially, but the latter states that a similar offering will debut in the US by early 2014. (For US readers, Doro is equivalent to GreatCall’s Jitterbug line) According to Mobile, the Liberto will be available in the UK in October.

Risky Business 2 (Australia): ‘This time it’s personal….’

September 11, 2013 | by

26-27 June 2014, Hilton Hotel, Sydney, Australia

This annual international conference on changing the care models around dementia, possibly the only one focused solely on this topic, discusses two questions which telehealth and telecare can answer at least in part: How do we support people with dementia to live their lives well? Are we really delivering care that is personal to the person with dementia and their carer?  Call for papers closes 18 October 2013 (video on submitting here) and registration for the conference opens 2 December. Organized by The Dementia Centre, HammondCare-An Independent Christian Charity and the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. More information.

The ‘ginormous’ hype around forecasts

September 10, 2013 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/blue-blazes.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Our readers may have noticed that your Editors of late have skipped the relentless tracking of eHealth/mHealth/digital health/wearables forecasts, save Editor Charles nominating research2guidance’s latest for ‘What in the Blue Blazes’. Yet r2g’s $26 billion by 2017 forecast for the category was but a lagniappe* compared to MarketsandMarkets‘ puffy $59.7 billion by 2018. Laurie Orlov has artfully skewered the relentless forecasting (she is a recovering veteran of Forrester Research) with the sobering comparison of the current D3H**-fed bubble to the fluffy eCommerce forecasts circa 2000. And we all know how that ended. Do not miss her tale of “mythical John and the XLife Preserver” and how it attracts a VC named Head, Clouds, Smoke and Vapor (HCS & V), located down the hill from a Napa winery. (Presumably the product flows downhill?) The Wireless Health market is ginormous — so forecasters say (Aging In Place Technology Watch)

Another factoid from the M&M report: Mobile apps alone by 2018 will be valued at $20.7 billion from $6.3 billion now. Yet 90 percent are currently free and the rest are $1-2, except for medical apps targeted to professionals. The Gimlet Eye is still trying to compute this one in Monopoly® money, and is requesting a large bottle of Panadol (Tylenol). Drug Store News

* Lagniappe: something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure (Merriam-Webster)–American French by way of New Orleans   **D3H=Digital Health Hypester Horde

Owlet baby monitor sock exceeds funding goal

September 10, 2013 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Owlet-closeup-small.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]In late August, we followed up on the major league cute ‘n’ useful Owlet monitoring sock and its effort to self-fund development. It’s now exceeded its $100,000 crowdfunding goal at over $121,000 with 721 pledged supporters. Along with this of course is the obligation to deliver products in November. What this points to is the appeal of a product addressing the powerful concern of baby wellness and sleep–a ‘job to be done’–and that it can be done outside of the usual East/West Coast accelerator, cocktail party and D3H hype loop in decidedly unfashionable, abstemious Utah. Congratulations in order! Website/pledge tracker.

There’s a bit of a boomlet in baby monitoring products, with Mobihealthnews lining up the Rest Devices’ Mimo onesie plus ‘turtle’ monitor, Croatia’s iDerma Teddy the Guardian teddy bear [TTA 22 July], Pixie Scientific’s Smart Diapers which not only detects wetting but also UTIs or kidney problems and the simpler Huggies Tweet Pee that alerts to changing (and reminds to buy diapers) which is in test in Brazil but reportedly will launch this month. Baby showers and their concomitant oohing and aahhing will never be the same. 6 baby activity trackers announced this summer

Poll shows why we need to promote assistive technology

September 10, 2013 | by

A survey of 2069 adults in the UK by YouGov, commissioned by charity Carers UK and supported by Tunstall Healthcare (UK), makes a strong case for the better promotion of telehealth & telecare, as we argued for in our recent post on the future of 3millionlives.

The Carers UK report, Potential for Change: Transforming public awareness and demand for health and care technology, draws an intriguing contrast between (more…)

An infographic that tackles medication adherence well

September 10, 2013 | by

This Vitaphone item does a most creditable job of getting behind the common misperception, covered in previous posts, that people don’t take medicines because they forget.

For me it doesn’t however address the issue of beliefs quite strongly enough though. To give an extreme example, when I worked in Newham there were people who believed that illnesses were supernaturally visited on them because of things their forefathers had done. To expiate those things, they had to suffer stoically.  The end result was that, even when diagnosed, medication prescribed and lifestyle advice given, some patients allowed eminently treatable conditions such as diabetes to deteriorate rapidly, unless those beliefs were addressed effectively.

Engaging patients from the top down

September 10, 2013 | by

Neil Versel’s first major national magazine story just appeared in US News & World Report on the always engaging topic of…patient engagement. He explains to a general audience how healthcare reform might not change individuals’ behavior right away, but surely it is changing providers’ behaviors in relating to and engaging their patients. It covers EHRs, PHRs, online communications, aging in place, social networking and even doctors speaking with patients in understandable language. Well, Neil certainly does get it….it’s a clear article which we hope will be one of many written by Neil for a general audience. He is also speaking Tuesday at ATA’s Fall Forum in Toronto. Helping Patients Stay Engaged in their Own Care

Engaging patients (sideways?) is a new partnership announced by Bosch Healthcare and New York-based Remedy Health Media to add web-based solutions to its current health management programs delivered through their Health Buddy and T400 devices. The release and coverage (Mass Device, mHealth News)  implies that monitoring will part of the patient engagement with “a suite of innovative web-based products for remote patient monitoring” available later this year. Does it mean that the hubs are on their way to the scrapheap? Hat tip to reader Bob Pyke.

AAMI/FDA Summit on Healthcare Technology in Nonclinical Settings (US)

September 10, 2013 | by

9-10 October 2013, Hyatt Dulles Hotel, Herndon VA

The Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have organized a conference on improving the safety and effectiveness of medical technologies used in homes and other nonclinical settings, such as telehealth and mHealth. There are risks and challenges to consider as technology is placed in nonclinical environments, in the hands of individuals who are not medical professionals. There is an impressive roster of supporting international organizations, including the British Standards Institution (BSI), the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance (WLSA), the Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) of LeadingAge, The Joint Commission and Continua Health Alliance. Information, agenda, registration. Hat tip to reader Rob Turpin of BSI Standards Limited.