Prediction: big data saving big money

April 30, 2013 | by | 1 Comment

A pointer to the (US) future from the (UK’s) Emma Byrne in Forbes; four developments which will lower cost of care in the near future are big data accessible in patient data warehouses, used in personalized/predictive medicine, wellness maintenance and just-in-time medicine. No cautionary notes here about data breaches, which affect an average of 2,700 records for an average price of $2.4 million, but savings of 10 percent (or $900 per person) isn’t hay either. Scientists Save Healthcare (But They’re Not From Med School)

Update 30 April: If you are one of the many who wonder what Big Data really means, versus terminology slung like hash, endless conferences, the word ‘Hadoop’ and that worried look on your HIT department head’s face, John Loonsk, MD helps to define it in language even this Editor can understand. Start with “Specifically, big data tools facilitate pulling together great amounts of available data to support an objective whether those data were recorded specifically and narrowly for that objective or not.” Whew. Policy and implementation challenges to achieving big data outcomes (part 1) HealthcareITNews

Big Data when wayward a Big Problem: 763,000 patients at Adventist Health System’s Florida Hospital Celebration Health ER (ED) over nearly three years had their records sold by one employee with access–and the inside job continued even after he was fired. Big Lawsuit follows. iHealthBeat 

M2M revitalizing PERS, making wireless healthier

April 30, 2013 | by | 4 Comments

…is the surprising conviction of long-time observer Harry Wang of Parks Associates. He’s projecting that nearly all PERS will go M2M as households increasingly lose the land line, and as the current crop of older adults demands ‘anywhere’ coverage. While the numbers will be small in terms of shipping (400,000 in 2016), M2M will be the norm in five years:  more than 61 percent of PERS  in the US shipped in 2017 will feature M2M connectivity, versus only 15 percent in 2012. Wireless carriers are also pushing connectivity in both telecare and telehealth with key device partnerships: Orange and Sprint with IDEAL LIFE, Sprint and BodyMedia, AT&T with Vitality (and many others) and T-Mobile with self-install telecare BeClose.  Undoubtedly this article in e-Commerce Times is a preview to an upcoming study.

Philips to help health services get their act together on telehealth (EU)

April 29, 2013 | by

Philips today announced a new Advancing Care Coordination and Telehealth Deployment (ACT) program which, over the course of two years and across five European regions, will assess and implement telemedicine systems to help manage patient care in three of the largest chronic disease areas, heart failure, COPD and diabetes patients. The aim is to establish a collection of actionable best practice case studies that can be rolled out across Europe. The aim is to realise the potential to save billions of euros for healthcare systems and, as part of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Aging (EIP-AHA), to help increase the average healthy lifespan by two years, by 2020. The five European regions involved are the Basque Country and Catalonia in Spain, Groningen in the Netherlands, Lombardy in Italy and Scotland in the UK. Full details in the press release: EU-funded program to develop first “cookbook” for coordinated care and telehealth deployment.

Report: RSM event ‘Using apps to transform healthcare delivery’

April 29, 2013 | by

Many thanks to independent consultant Charles Lowe, President-elect of the Royal Society of Medicine’s (RSM) Telemedicine & eHealth Section for the following report on the one-day conference Using apps to transform healthcare delivery at the RSM, London, 18 April 2013.

Reflecting the importance of the topic, this one-day RSM conference sold out weeks in advance. The audience confirmed the growing trend for RSM Telemedicine Section-organised events to be attended principally by clinicians, in this case mainly hospital-based.

The general themes that emerged from the event included:

The need for greater connectedness among app overseers – the different players in the UK, notably NICE, MHRA, NHS Apps Library and NIHR each have different, often overlapping, concerns about apps before they are able to recommend or approve them for use. There emerged during the day a case to be made for tighter coordination among these bodies and, doubtless, others not represented at the meeting.

Big data doesn’t respond to professional users’ or patients’ needs well – apps are a great way to make big data acceptable to users. The Consent app (ascendinnovations.co.uk) demonstrated was quoted as an excellent example.

Not everyone has to produce apps – by opening up, publishing the APIs to your data, others with the appropriate skill might be able to do the job better than the data owner.

The day began with a presentation by (more…)

‘Wildcatting’ health tech acceleration in Texas

April 26, 2013 | by

Instead of oil wildcatting, well gushers out of ‘Giant’ and the travails of the Ewing family in Dallas, think…tech accelerator. Health Wildcatters is introducing the RockHealth-StartUp Health-Blueprint Health model to the Southwest. Executive director/co-founder Hubert Zajicek, MD announced an initial class of 15, with applications accepted in May. The program starts in late August and extends for 12 weeks. On completion, each company will receive $35,000 in seed funding in exchange for 8 percent equity. The Southwest has had some incubator action–in Texas at NTEC (where Dr. Zajicek was previously medical technology director) and Arizona’s SEEDSTART [TTA 5 Feb]–but accelerators have largely stayed glued to the poles of San Francisco/Silicon Valley, San Diego, New York and Boston. However, both Dallas and Houston are major US–and international, mainly Mexico, Central and South America–health delivery, educational and tech hubs. The Wildcatters have raised $1 million from about 30 investors, including physicians and local entrepreneurs, many of whom will also invest time as mentors. According to Mobihealthnews, they include Mike Bartlett, founder of vision test app makers Vital Art and Science and Michael Gorton, founder of telemedicine provider Teladoc; another major investor is Green Park & Golf Ventures. Co-founders and partners are Gabriella Draney (also of related Tech Wildcatters), Clay Heighten, MD and Carl Soderstrom. Dallas Morning News article. More information on their website.

The amazing lightness of Google’s Being There vs The Private Eye

April 26, 2013 | by | 1 Comment
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Perhaps it is The Google Gimlet Eye’s peevishness at this late hour, but mentioning this company in conjunction with ‘privacy’ lately makes the Eye Goggle. First there is the sheer howling irony of chairman Eric Schmidt’s interesting definition of the Digital Dark Side in this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal, a state of data mining and real-time behavioral monitoring that applies to totalitarian regimes like North Korea, Iran or (more…)

‘Tactile helmet’ for rescuers may assist vision impaired (UK)

April 26, 2013 | by

Here’s where a partner and a little seed capital could go a long way–no FDA or CE needed. Researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Sheffield Centre for Robotics (SCentRo) have developed a variation on a firefighter’s helmet containing ultrasound sensors that detect the distances between the helmet and nearby walls. When a possible obstacle is ‘sensed’, a vibration pad directionally signals the wearer. For firefighters, this is obviously useful in smoke-filled areas but a lightweight version could be used by vision impaired people as a guidance aid. After two years of research and testing, Sheffield now needs a commercial partner interested in further developing the helmet. University of Sheffield News Hat tip to TANN Ireland’s Toni Bunting

A Wi-Fi upgrade with big impact to healthcare

April 26, 2013 | by

This was probably not headline news in your home town, unless it’s Palo Alto, but the new Wi-Fi standard (802.11ac and 802.11ad for the techies), replacing 802.11n, will be out of the box at end of 2013. The new standard is much higher capacity (supposedly it is a 3:1 difference) and has great promise for wireless hospitals. It will enable bigger data–like imaging–to go to tablets, for instance, much faster. The ‘ad’ standard is also extremely short range –10 meters–which will serve best for data-heavy localized tasks like reading X-rays or MRIs on tablets. More capacity, faster speed is especially important as more MBANs (Medical Body Area Networks) enter hospitals. Latest Wi-Fi standards could boost mHealth connectivity (FierceMobileHealthcare) Techies can parse eWeek.

Sleep apnea tracking goes mobile

April 26, 2013 | by

Philips Respironics goes mobile in combining their System One PAP (positive airway pressure) device for treatment of obstructive sleep apnea with a self-management and education tool. The user can view on SleepMapper therapy feedback, set goals and access information, resources and tutorials about sleep apnea online on their PC or smartphone (iPhone and Android). Badly needed support for a major and life-threatening condition. Philips release.

Healthcare tech investment gone wobbly?

April 26, 2013 | by | 2 Comments

Earlier this month, this Editor riffed on David Shaywitz’s Forbes article lamenting the paucity of life sciences VCs setting their sights and putting their money on the line for digital health. While David Doherty of mHealthInsight differed, pointing out his 16 billionaires making big bets in health tech, VC action in ‘hot’ digital health is underperforming. The ironically-named MoneyTree 2013 First Quarter report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), tracks media, software, clean tech, biotech and medical devices. And the ‘Tree’ is not exactly ‘shaking’:

  • For all surveyed VC investment, 1st Quarter 2013 declined 12 percent in dollars and 15 percent in number of deals, compared to 4th Quarter 2012.
  • Medical devices and equipment are an ‘underperform’: down 20 percent to $509 million, deals dropping 10 percent to 71, 1st Quarter 2013 to the prior quarter.
  • In the prior year (2012) 1st Quarter, over $200 million more had been invested in medical device companies. Similar declines were tracked in biotech.
  • The Life Sciences sector (medical devices + biotech) declined to the fewest number of funding deals since 1st Quarter 2009. Even more shockingly, first time VC financings are at 2nd Quarter 1995 levels.
  • Software and media continued to dominate–and grow in funding.

According to investors queried by FierceMedicalDevices, reasons for weak investment in medical devices were: continued lack of transparency at the FDA about approval process, movement away from first round/early-stage to later-stage companies, a focus on companies with devices not needing FDA approval–or already having it. Unfortunate, but rational. One hopes a change of heart, or a change of cycle.  PwC/NVCA release (in FierceMedicalDevices)

Telemedicine breaking through with payers? (US)

April 26, 2013 | by

Cigna, the tenth largest insurer in the US, jumped this week on the virtual consult wagon train with earlier pioneers UnitedHealthcare (#1), WellPoint (#2) and Aetna (#5).  Cigna is partnering with MDLive to offer online video, telephone or e-mail consultations with doctors for non-urgent care as an option for self-insured employers nationwide starting 1 July for plans effective 1 January 2014. MDLive will send, via Cigna, summaries of telehealth visits to patients’ physicians. Cigna’s present telemedicine partner, McKesson’s RelayHealth, will remain for virtual consults with the patient’s own physician. Among payers, the widest coverage appears to be UnitedHealthcare with NowClinic in 22 states; WellPoint offers American Well only in California and Ohio while Aetna is piloting with Teladoc in Texas and Florida. (Just in time to buzz through ATA 2013!) InformationWeek Healthcare

TBI drug in potential trial with former NFL players’ association

April 24, 2013 | by

Breaking news in the US today on a topic we’ve been following. Maryland-based Neuralstem, a developer of neurogenic drugs, announced this morning that it is working with the National Football League Alumni Association (NFLAA) to develop a trial of their NSI-189 for treating NFL alumni members suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBI). According to their release, NSI-189 (or NS1-189, both are used) is currently in a Phase Ib clinical trial to treat major depressive disorder. Because it appears to work by stimulating neurons in the hippocampus, a region of the brain that atrophies in depression, this could also apply to brain injury. While this announcement is perhaps more than it seems–a Phase I clinical trial is ‘early days’, to make it through all four phases (I-IV) may take a decade, and now the developer is switching around the treatment condition–the drug itself has received support from DARPA and NIH which are both closely concerned with TBI. In addition, working with the NFLAA will help Neuralstem find subjects for the trials. PR Newswire via Baltimore Business Journal 

Previously in TTA on TBI and the NFL: Further sad confirmation of CTE, Brain injury research study, NFL donates $30 million to NIH, Combating TBI on the battle and football fields.

Supporting People funding reductions – telecare panic (UK)

April 23, 2013 | by | 3 Comments

The situation described in the following article in the Liverpool Echo can be looked at in a number of ways and we wonder what other takes readers will have…

One has to wonder, given that the reduction in the Supporting People funding from April has been known about for a long time, what planning has been done between the council, the housing providers and the telecare service provider to prevent this situation arising. One could also wonder what alternative, less expensive, systems have been investigated and ponder the ethics of removing from people’s homes something which is potentially life saving (and cost saving further down the line). Ultimately, if substantial numbers of people are saying they will not pay an extra £2.99 per week [interesting number] then perhaps they are saying that the service and the much-trumpeted reassurance it provides is not, in reality, so important to them. Liverpool elderly could be at risk from loss of £500,000 funding for emergency care alarms. Check out the comments too.

Readers may want to compare that with the ongoing publicity in nearby Trafford which is encouraging people over 80 to take up a year’s free telecare trial. Events held to promote free telecare for Trafford’s over 80s.

Electronic paper and tactile robots

April 23, 2013 | by | 3 Comments

E Ink technology, popular on e-books like the Kindle and on displays, is now showing up as a highly readable, lightweight (80g), low power display (one week life) phone.  A prototype E Ink-only Android phone was demo’d at Mobile World Congress. The tradeoff is full color for great readability and simplicity in any light. Kind of like silent movies. Watches, anyone?  Springwise Hat tip to TANN Ireland’s Toni Bunting.

Robots with tactile sensors for pressure and adjustable gripping are necessary but at present don’t come cheap–sensors are about $16,000 for a robot hand. The cutely named TakkTile, developed by grad student Leif Jentoft and postdoctoral fellow Yaroslav Tenzer at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, may be the answer. “At the heart of the device is a tiny air pressure-sensitive digital barometer, of the type already commonly used in things like cell phones and GPS units. A layer of rubber is vacuum-sealed onto it.” Beyond robots, uses envisioned are toy animals that respond to being petted and medical devices that assist with surgery. New sensor designed to give robots a gentler touch – on a budget (Gizmag)

Helping the ‘beleaguered caregiver’

April 23, 2013 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/60344-1-lg.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Medication organizing/sharing apps, geotracking, learning programs and texting are helping caregivers of those with Alzheimer’s, heart conditions and autism better cope with family conditions.   The National Alzheimer Center, a division of Hebrew Home at Riverdale in Bronx, NY, developed the Balance $3.99 app that has multiple features: Pill Box (med management), Learning (sharing info about the disease), Caregiving, Schedule (sharing calendars), Doctor Diary (tracking physical and emotional changes in the patient and sharing them with the doctor/s) and News (Arutz Sheva/Israel National News; release with photos). Available currently on iTunes; Android version to come. The Alzheimer’s Association offers Comfort Zone, which uses GPS to track the person with Alzheimer’s within a pre-set geographic area, for about $43 a month. For heart patients, Mended Hearts will be starting a program of texted tips for caregivers. Autism Speaks has collected learning websites and apps for tablets which families have used successfully with autistic children, and has given away over 800 to low-income families.  None are pricey, all serve growing populations–and none will generate buzz at industry cocktail parties. Beleaguered caregivers getting help from apps (SacBee/AP)

Mobile visits in the medical home

April 23, 2013 | by | 1 Comment

This presentation by William C. Thornbury, MD  summarizes his two-year research on ‘virtual patient visits’ in the primary care area. In patient-centered medical homes (PCMH), telemedicine virtual visits fit extremely well with an e-commerce minded, ‘gone mobile’ patient group and their needs for convenience and rapid response. It also fits with patient engagement, superior care delivery and cost efficiencies. This presentation is a lengthy 1 hour 28 minutes (including Q&A, which is also interesting) so you may want to bookmark for the weekend. It frames the essentials of disruptive innovation as it applies to mHealth telemedicine. From a webinar presented by MeVisit and the PCPCC’s Care Delivery and Integration Stakeholder Center via HealthShareTV.

[This video is no longer available on this site but may be findable via an internet search]