June Telecare LIN newsletter published (UK)

June 26, 2013 | by

In a content-packed edition of this newsletter one 6-page item stands out for special attention. It’s Mike Clark’s ‘summary’ of telehealth, called Telehealth, how are we doing? which begins on page 17. Mike turns his laser-like attention on the UK’s telehealth issues including those arising from the WSD programme results and orders them into an easy-to-read logical sequence and draws some measured conclusions. It’s a pity it is not available as a standalone report for wider circulation. June Telecare LIN newsletter (PDF) plus separate news item list supplement (PDF)

One of the links in the newsletter is to the Department of Health’s 2013-14 Corporate Plan which includes a list of its achievements for 2012-13. Search it as much as you like for any telehealth-related keywords, you will not find any. It looks like DH has brushed it off its hands and moved on. Which, given its recent toxic-touch history may not be a bad thing.

NHS Managers Network: new website (UK)

June 25, 2013 | by | 2 Comments

We don’t usually do ‘new website’ items, but in view of the importance of the NHS Managers Network newsletter (that Roy Lilley sends out several times a week) for anyone who wants to keep an eye on what’s happening in the politics of the NHS, then it seems appropriate to flag up that the Network now has a new website “Management can be a lonely task and this is the place to compare, contrast and calibrate your views.” NHS Managers Network.

Useful 3D printer patterns?

June 25, 2013 | by | 4 Comments

3D printing is one of those technologies full of promise which has yet to prove that ubiquitous adoption is worthwhile. [Sound familiar?] The promise is that we will be able to download patterns for useful things and print them at home, saving the costs of mass production and distribution and, at the same time, enabling customisation for each user. One has the impression that most of the things produced so far have a toy-like quality but in the following item we see the green shoots of the promise becoming reality. Normal game controllers are too difficult for people with weak muscles to use and purpose-built light-touch ones are expensive, then along comes 3D printing and someone with the vision to use it to produce low cost controllers for people with muscle impairments. Building custom game controllers for the disabled (3ders.org) Hat tip to Nicholas Robinson.

The data-EHR integration hurdle spanned?

June 25, 2013 | by

The fifth of the Five Big Questions (FBQs)*–how data is integrated into patient records–may have finally been answered by Partners HealthCare. They have integrated patient remote monitoring data directly into their EHR, viewable by clinicians alongside patient charts–and also portaled to the patient. The integration was designed by Partners’ Center for Connected Health and includes data sent via Alere Connect (formerly MedApps) from various blood pressure, weight and blood glucose devices. CCH is also introducing mobile connectivity through Qualcomm Life’s 2net hub. Partners HealthCare’s EHR interestingly is an in-house system, but they are transitioning their records to Epic. Dr. Joseph Kvedar, director of the CCH, also discusses how the next step is how to make this data easier for clinicians to read and use in Mobihealthnews. It is about time. Also mHIMSS and Partners’ own press release.

* The Five Big Questions (FBQs)–who pays, how much, who’s looking at the data, who’s actioning it, how data is integrated into patient records.

DHS warning: now medical devices breached (US)

June 24, 2013 | by

Adding to the US Federal Government’s breaching distress, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notice from ICS-CERT (Industrial Control Systems-Cyber Emergency Response Team)  has warned of  “a hard-coded password vulnerability affecting roughly 300 medical devices across approximately 40 vendors. According to their (security vendor Cyclance-Ed.) report, the vulnerability could be exploited to potentially change critical settings and/or modify device firmware.” This unnerving development has not yet been exploited, according to DHS, but could affect patient monitors, surgical and anesthesia devices, ventilators, drug infusion pumps, external defibrillators, mammography equipment, and laboratory and analysis equipment. Not good news. Additional information in iHealthBeat and GovInfoSecurity. DHS/ICS-CERT notice.

Previously in TTA: VA networks breached from overseas; 20 million records affected (13 June)

Quantifying concussion and sub-concussion

June 24, 2013 | by

A short and graphical article on the impact of concussions in contact sports. The HealthWorks Collective article unfortunately only focuses on concussion when there’s mounting evidence that cumulative sub-concussive blows at 15-20Gs are just as harmful as concussions at 100Gs [TTA 5 June] and a cause of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). Hard hits in US football can go up to a stunning 150Gs.The main article is from Popular Mechanics which also describes how equipment, including shoulder pads, are being designed to distribute and detect impact. What’s also surprising is how many Gs normal activities such as hopping off a (high?) step (8.1G) and sneezing (2.9G) can be.

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Can self-tracking drive you crazy?

June 22, 2013 | by | 1 Comment

Fine weekend reading. It’s isn’t often that this Editor picks up an article headline ‘as is’ for our readers, but on this fine Saturday morning she does not want to mess with perfection! Carolyn Thomas, a previous Soapboxer and a leading Canadian women’s heart health/health ethics advocate, takes on the Quantified Selfers and, in the view of this Editor, the Digital Health Hypester Horde (D3H) with a bristling critique in The Ethical Nag. Yes, Virginia, there can be such a thing as too much chocolate and too much QSing. Do you really want to live in a heightened state of endless anxiety, with your day depending on minor result twitches? She presents an exchange between a leading heart patient/advocate, Hugo Campos, on Twitter, endlessly self-monitoring via AliveCor, who is having a PVC (skipped beat) episode that is best explained by…anxiety. One early QSer of 40 different health measurements daily abandoned her very public quest stating “Each day my self-worth was tied to the data…I won’t let it be an instrument of self-torture. Any. More.” And there is the time bomb of genetic testing–genomics, a source of endless wonder in the D3H world. A must read (any article that weaves in quotes from Deming and Serres has to be!) Also thank you Carolyn for the citation of The Gimlet Eye’s commentary on the Thomas Goetz ‘diabetic paradox’ (canary in the mine) article.

Got robot? And perhaps make $2 million. (US)

June 22, 2013 | by

DARPA’s annual Robotics Challenge (DRC) is served up again for 2013. This round they are looking for the ‘next gen’ in disaster response and performance in hazardous areas. Entries will be field tested in three stages over this year and next at increasing levels of difficulty:  The Virtual Robotics Challenge, the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials, and the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals. And as the writer put it, “you get to build a robot, designed to help people, for money.” See more and application links at Armed With Science.

Hampshire hedges its bets on telecare providers (UK)

June 21, 2013 | by | 1 Comment

TTA flagged up last July that Hampshire County Council was tendering for a ‘strategic partner’ to deliver a telecare service on its behalf and that the result would be known in May, so this by way of an update. What we learn from a Tunstall press release is that Hampshire has staked it all on the ‘Argenti Telehealthcare Partnership’ – a consortium of providers led by PA Consulting (Wikipedia) and which comprises Tunstall, O2, CareCalls, Medvivo and Magna Careline. [Just when we thought the UK telecare scene was becoming boring – it will be interesting to hear how these rivals learn to pull together to deliver the comprehensive, efficient service for which the people of Hampshire have been waiting for many years.]

Connecting mental health specialists with rural community health providers (US)

June 21, 2013 | by

A cheering development out of New Mexico is that the GE Foundation is granting $4.6 million to the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque to expand its Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) to increase mental health expertise delivered by eight selected community health centers. In this mainly rural state, there is nearly nil access to mental health and addiction services in many areas. This model of telemedicine consults between specialists and primary care providers in these centers started with treatment for hepatitis C. Unfortunately, the telemedicine consults do not extend directly to the patient. Project Expands Reach of Mental Health Providers  Hat tip to reader Ellen Fink-Samnick of Ellen’s Ethical Lens.

Innovation in large healthcare organizations: set up to fail?

June 21, 2013 | by

Are innovation-oriented internal groups or subsidiaries, designed to reinvent their large healthcare provider parents, doomed to fail? Dave Chase of Avado writing in Forbes seems to think that is the truth more often than not. “The challenge is it’s hard for a big company to take seriously a new market segment when its initial revenue impact is a tiny fraction of their existing business”. The metrics of success may not be recognized or validated, lunch is eaten by stealthy competitors, and new models/behaviors stump managements used to the old ways of what constituted success and profit. His own experience was at Microsoft, where he observed the success of Xbox (fresh blood unshackled from MSLand) contrasting with MSN, the latter processed and staffed largely by Office/Windows veterans.  In this Editor’s experience, the only part that Mr. Chase has missed is the high resistance, often personally driven, of process-oriented, bureaucratic organizations to meet outside or inside change which dooms high-minded efforts at setting up ‘skunk works’. Health orgs dooming their “innovation” to failure (Please note Editor’s comment under article is ‘called-out’)

The ‘Wild West’ of 40,000 mobile apps

June 21, 2013 | by

Following up on our 11 June article that took a stern, fingerwagging view of these 40,000 unvetted apps out there on the prairie, MedCityNews looks at them and finds good news. Healthy lifestyle helper apps plus a health coach can produce positive results–and we’ve covered those like AliveCor and WellDoc which turn a smartphone into a medical device and are regulated by the FDA. The problem remains that there’s no vetting of apps of either type to confirm for the user that they are effective. Happtique is still cited as a app curator for consumers and doctors, when by all reports they have changed direction [TTA 17 May]. 40,000 health-related apps and no easy way to know which ones work

And while we are on the subject of FDA, now they are dealing with the strong possibility of cyberattacks on the data and systems of the very medical devices they are regulating. In a 13 June communication to manufacturers and providers, “Many medical devices contain configurable embedded computer systems that can be vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches”–the introduction of malware or unauthorized access to configuration settings–made worse by internet, mobile access and the infamous cloud. Government Health IT

Beyond the bracelet; the coming ubiquity of sensor-equipped wearables

June 20, 2013 | by

Wearables are developing into the next big thing in the health tech/monitoring area, and developing beyond the bracelet form factor represented by Jawbone UP, Fitbit and Nike Fuelband. Misfit Shine of course has been touted as the major future player, but has experienced a few bumps on the road to Damascus, taking a technically-caused delay to their bracelet/pendant sensor debut now mid-July and not being compatible with Android [TTA 30 May]. But they have also entered the clothing fray with a trademark filing, according to Mobihealthnews. This article also spotlights wearables makers Zephyr, OMsignal (compression shirts); Heapsylon Sensoria socks. This Editor will be seeing and reviewing wearables such as Basis at CEWeek’s FashionWare, sponsored by Living in Digital Times, next week. Disclosure: TTA is a media partner of the Digital Health Summit, also produced by Living in Digital Times.