Considering 2019’s digital health investment picture: leveling off may be a Good Thing

February 7, 2020 | by

2019 proved to be a leveling-off year for digital health investment. The bath may prove to be more cleansing than bubbly.

We noted that the always-fizzy Rock Health engaged in some revisionist history on its forecasts when the final numbers came in–$7.4bn in total investment and 359 deals, a 10 percent drop versus 2018. When we looked back at our 2019 mid-year article on Rock Health’s forecast [TTA 25 July], they projected that the year would end at $8.4 bn and 360 deals versus 2018’s $8.2 bn and 376 deals. That is a full $1bn under forecast and $0.8 below 2018. Ouch!

In their account, the 10 percent dip versus 2018 is due to average deal size–decreasing to $19.8M in 2019–and a drop in late-stage deals. Their analysts attribute this to wobbliness around some high-profile IPOs, citing Uber, Lyft, and Slack, as well as the near-collapse of WeWork right before its IPO towards the end of 2019.

New investors and repeat investors increased to 627 from 585 in 2018, with no real change in composition.

The headliners of 2019 were:

  • Amazon’s acquisition of Health Navigator adding symptom-checking tools to its health offerings
  • Google’s buy of Fitbit
  • Optum’s purchase of Vivify Health, which gives it a full remote patient monitoring (RPM) suite (right when CMS is setting reimbursement codes for RPM in Medicare)
  • Best Buy’s addition of Critical Signal Technologies for RPM
  • Phreesia, Livongo’s and Health Catalyst’s IPOs. For Livongo and Health Catalyst, current share prices are off from their IPOs and shortly after: past $25 for LVGO and $31 for HCAT. Phreesia closed today at a healthy $33, substantially up from PHR’s debut at $15. (Change Healthcare, on the other hand, is up a little from its IPO at $16, which isn’t bad considering their circumstances on their financing.)

Rock Health only counts US deals in excess of $2 million, which excludes the global picture, but includes some questionable (in this Editor’s estimation) ‘digital health’ players like Peloton, explained in the 25 July article.

Rock Health’s analysts close (and justify their revisions) through discussions with VCs expecting further headwinds in the market–then turn around and positively note the Federal backing of further developments in building the foundation for connected health as tailwinds. No bubbly forecasts for 2020–we’ll have to wait.

Is this necessarily bad? This Editor likes an occasional dose of reason and is not displeased at Rock Health’s absence of kvelling.

Confirming the picture is Mercom Capital’s analysis which also recorded a 6 percent dip 2019/2018: $8.9bn with 615 deals, dropping from the $9.5bn and 698 deals in 2018. Their ‘catchment’ is more global than Rock Health, and encompasses consumer-centric and patient-centric technologies and sub-technologies. Total corporate funding reached $10.1bn.

Outcome Health’s Desai reaches settlement with DOJ, SEC

February 7, 2020 | by

Ashik Desai, the former chief growth officer of point-of-care advertising firm Outcome Health, settled the charges against him brought in Federal court by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing was on 4 February. Monetary relief and/or penalties against him will be disclosed at a later date.

Last month, Mr. Desai pleaded guilty to the charges and announced cooperation with the authorities on the criminal charges of securities fraud related to Outcome Health’s capital raises of about $1 bn during 2011 into 2017. Similarly, his former analysts Kathryn Choi and Oliver Han did the same at the end of January.

Remaining are the senior executives who have all entered pleas of  ‘not guilty’: founders Rishi Shah and Shradha Agarwal, both of Chicago, and Brad Purdy, their former COO and CFO, all in their 30s. All of them blame Mr. Desai, who is presently 26 and started at Outcome Health as an intern.  Pass the popcorn for a dramatic tale of complex and multi-layered fraud, likely in the spring. Becker’s Health IT and CIO Report, Chicago Tribune  Also TTA 17 Dec and 3 Dec

Comings and goings, wins and losses: VA’s revolving door spins again, NHS sleep pods for staff, Aetna’s Bertolini booted, Stanford Med takes over Theranos office

February 6, 2020 | by

VA’s revolving door spins again with #2 person fired, but VistA replacement implementation moves on. James Byrne, deputy secretary, was fired on 3 Feb “due to loss of confidence in Mr. Byrne’s ability to carry out his duties” according to secretary Robert Wilkie. Mr. Byrne, a Naval Academy graduate and former Marine officer, had been VA general counsel, acting deputy secretary starting August 2018, then confirmed five months ago.

Mr. Byrne’s responsibilities included the Cerner implementation replacing VistA and other IT projects (HISTalk), of which Mr. Wilkie stated in a press conference today (5 Feb) “will not impact it at all” (FedScoop). The termination comes in the wake of a House staff member on the House Veterans Affairs committee, herself a Naval Reserve officer, stating that she was sexually assaulted at the VA Medical Center in Washington (NY Times). Axios claims that the White House was disappointed in the way the VA handled the investigation. At today’s presser, Mr. Wilkie denied any connection but attributed the dismissal to ‘not gelling’ with other team members. The launch of Cerner’s EHR is still on track for late March. The turnover at the VA’s top has been stunning: four different secretaries and four more acting secretaries in the last five years. Also CNBC, Military Times.

NHS’ sleep pods for staff to catch a few ZZZZs. A dozen NHS England hospitals are trialing futuristic-looking ‘sleep pods’ for staff to power nap during their long shifts and reduce the possibility of errors and harm by tired clinicians. Most of the locations are in the A&E unit, doctors’ mess, and maternity department. They are available to doctors, nurses, midwives, radiographers, physiotherapists, and medics in training. The pods are made by an American company, MetroNaps, and consist of a bed with a lid which can be lowered along with soothing light and music to aid relaxation. The pods may cost about £5,500 each but are being well-used. Other hospitals are fitting areas out with camp beds and recliner chairs. The sleep breaks take place both during and end of shifts before returning home and average about 17-24 minutes. Everything old is new again, of course–dorm areas were once part of most hospitals some decades back and doctors’ lounges with sofas were popular snooze-gathering areas. Guardian (photo and article)

Mark Bertolini bumped off CVS-Aetna Board of Directors. The former Aetna CEO, who was the engineer of the sale to CVS Health two years ago, isn’t going quietly out the door with his $500 million either. The high-profile long-time healthcare leader told the Wall Street Journal that he was forced off the BOD. He maintains the integration of the Aetna insurance business is incomplete, contradicting CVS’ statement that it’s done. Mr. Bertolini and two other directors are being invited out as CVS-Aetna reduces its board following, it says, best practices in corporate governance. Looking back at our coverage, Mr. Bertolini had hits, bunts (ActiveHealth Management) and quite a few misses (Healthagen, CarePass, iTriage). According to the WSJ, the contentious nature of the statement plus the departure of the company’s president of pharmacy is raising a few eyebrows. And recently, an activist shareholder, Starboard Value LP, has taken a stake in the company. CVS is demonstrating some innovation with rolling out 1,500 HealthHubs in retail locations as MinuteClinics on steroids, so to speak.  Hartford Courant (Aetna’s hometown news outlet) adds a focus on how many jobs will be remaining in the city with a certain skeptical context on CEO Larry Merlo’s promises. 

Stanford taking over Theranos Palo Alto HQ space. HISTalk’s Weekender had this amusing note (scroll down to ‘Watercooler Talk’) that the 116,000-square-foot office building in Stanford Research Park will now house the Stanford medical school. Theranos had been paying over $1 million per month in rent for the facility. The writer dryly notes that Elizabeth Holmes’ bulletproof glass office remains. This Editor humbly suggests the floor-to-ceiling application of industrial-strength bleach wipes and disinfectant, not only in the lab facility but also in that office where her wolf-dog used to mess.

The LA Times reports that Ms. Holmes is also defending herself without counsel in the Phoenix civil class-action lawsuit against Theranos. On 23 January, she dialed in to the court hearing’s audio feed and spoke for herself during that hour. One has to guess that she doesn’t have much to do other than read legal briefs. (Perhaps she sees herself as a cross between Saint Joan and Perry Mason?) Last fall, Ms. Holmes was dropped by Cooley LLP for non-payment of fees [TTA 9 Oct 19]. Williams & Connolly continues to represent her in the criminal DOJ suit, where prison time looms. 

Mojo Vision’s really smart vision correcting/AR contact lenses

January 31, 2020 | by

Didn’t Novartis and Google give up on ‘smart lenses’ in 2014 or so? Instead of a drug delivery system, Mojo Vision has a more realistic view of contact lenses–vision correction and compensations for vision impairments–plus some augmented reality add-ons that could be useful not only for vision enhancement but also in hazardous situations and for service professionals.  The potential for these lenses is great, not only in the corrective ability to increase contrast or enhance color, but also in their technology which can display simple information on the lens. The display focuses light on the fovea, the central portion of the cornea which has most of the eye’s photoreceptors. The display is powered by a thin-film battery and in a future iteration will connect to your smartphone.

Mark Sullivan from Fast Company has been covering Mojo for a while and as promised at the top of the article, it’s a long read about the lenses and the developers, who for a refreshing change are not 30. It’s still unnerving to read about contact lenses with batteries and images projected on your retina, but if this ‘moonshot’ works, it could be a breakthrough in vision correction far beyond conventional lenses.

A Practice Fusion coda: an insider’s perspective on the pressure to ethically breach an ‘objective’ service for revenue

January 31, 2020 | by

From both sides: an insider at Practice Fusion, then a regulator at ONC. Mentioned briefly in POLITICO Morning eHealth is a blog posting from a former ONC (Office of the National Coordinator, HHS) official, Jacob Reider, MD, about Practice Fusion. Before he was Deputy National Coordinator of Health IT, he was CMIO of Practice Fusion circa 2009-11. His blog has some interesting insights on even ten years ago, how aggressive pharmaceutical companies were in wanting to ‘bend’ (Editor’s term) clinical decision support (CDS) in the EHR to promote a drug category, and in a young, growing, and revenue-hungry company, the temptation for ‘growth’ teams to do so. Fast forward a few years, and Dr. Reider is working to write the certification requirements for EHRs and the evidence (via citations) for CDS. His conversations with the then-CEO, Ryan Howard, about the ethics of their advertising model and their rationale illustrate the conflict between ethics and revenue–as in right up to the line and looking over. While this is familiar to any media observer–after all, why buy advertising if not to change behavior?–when decisions are being guided by an EHR, the CDS shouldn’t be rigged, visibly or invisibly. Dr. Reider places the crossing of the line after Mr. Howard’s departure with a new pharma-minded team. The evidence in the CDS lies in the citations funded by–pharma and biomed companies. The inevitable result: Allscripts, now the owner, settling for $145 million with the DOJ and having ‘kickbacks’ attached to their business. Dr. Reider is now CEO of the Alliance for Better Health in Albany, NY. Docnotes: When sponsored CDS is a crime

This is hardly the first instance of the blurring of boundaries between ethics and revenue. All those paying to get their genetic history from 23andme or Ancestry.com ought to consider that they may also be signing on to have their information used by a medtech company for research. It may be stripped of PII and ‘de-identified’, but there are ways of cross-referencing some of that information. Why else would GSK own 50 percent of the company? [29 Aug 19, 31 Oct 15] 

Allscripts’ $145 million settlement with DOJ on Practice Fusion’s ‘kickbacks’ on opioid prescribing, other charges

January 29, 2020 | by

The US Department of Justice announced on 27 February that it reached a $145 million settlement with Practice Fusion on what DOJ termed “kickbacks from a major opioid company in exchange for utilizing its EHR software to influence physician prescribing of opioid pain medications”. Allscripts, which now owns Practice Fusion, will be paying out penalties of $25.4 million in criminal fines, $113.4 million to the Federal Government, and up to $5.2 million to individual states, as well as forfeiting criminal proceeds of nearly $1 million from the ‘kickback’. The specific charges relate to two felony charges related to the Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) and for conspiring with its opioid company client to violate the AKS.

The opioid company is widely believed to be Purdue Pharmaceutical, manufacturers of Oxycontin, according to HISTalk. The high dudgeon generated in the DOJ press release is related to opioid prescriptions and physician usage which are and remain highly controversial. Apparently, Purdue wasn’t the only pharma company that benefited from this type of influence.

In this Editor’s analysis, ‘kickbacks’ is a legalism to prosecute under the AKC what marketers would term a sponsorship deal. Practice Fusion was from inception advertiser supported. What is different here from pop-up screen adverts is that Practice Fusion created sponsorship packages in which not only advertising was featured, but also clinical support decision (CDS) alerts were created, aimed at increasing prescription sales of companies’ products. In addition, Practice Fusion allowed companies to participate in the design of the CDS software. These sponsorships took place between 2014 and 2019. None of this is unusual in AdLand in general, but in pharma and healthcare which play by far stricter rules about marketing programs, this goes against the expectation (and regulation) that an EHR is unbiased.

Allscripts had ‘leaked’ this back in August on their Q2 investor call. Buried in the DOJ release after the opioid ire is the settlement of Practice Fusion’s violations of Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) regulations concerning the voluntary health IT certification program, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulations around EHR incentive programs, presumably Meaningful Use certifications and payments. This was the origin of the earlier announcement of a $145 million settlement on Allscripts’ Q2 2019 investor call, which in retrospect strikes this Editor as a nice try at minimizing far more serious charges. [TTA 14 August] CDS favoring opioid prescription is far more disturbing.  

It does seem that Allscripts bought itself a bargain basement of trouble with Practice Fusion. Mobihealthnews, TechCrunch. 

Outcome Health analysts plead guilty, cooperate with Federal prosecutors

January 29, 2020 | by

Two financial analysts who worked at Outcome Health and reported to former EVP of business operations/chief growth officer Ashik Desai, changed their ‘not guilty’ pleas to ‘guilty’ earlier this month. Kathryn Choi and Oliver Han were charged with wire fraud by Federal prosecutors. As part of their guilty plea, they will cooperate with prosecutors, as did their former boss Mr. Desai.

As reported in our earlier articles, Ms. Choi and Mr. Han are alleged to have created statements to deceive company auditors and providing advertisers with false patient engagement metrics on Outcome Health’s tablets. Both were hired in 2014 and placed on leave in late 2017. While the charges they face carry a maximum penalty of five years, their cooperation may lead to far lighter sentences.

Their change of plea was rather predictable, given that two fairly young and junior staffers faced Federal charges in a classic squeeze play to obtain further information on the big fish, former Chief Executive Rishi Shah, former President Shradha Agarwal, and former executive Brad Purdy (COO/CFO), who face real prison time and large financial penalties. All three have pleaded not guilty.

Outcome Health’s principals are charged with 26 criminal charges of fraud in their funding raises of over $1 bn from 2011 to 2017. Advertisers were defrauded for ads which never ran in medical audiences and third-party studies were manipulated to enhance their results. The indictment details deception of their investors, lenders, and their own auditors for profit and misrepresenting to advertisers their delivery of actual advertising in doctors’ offices. 

Chicago Tribune, Crain’s Chicago Business. Earlier TTA articles: 3 Dec, 12 Dec, 17 Dec

Digital triage in health service – CQC’s initial recommendations

January 23, 2020 | by

This is a brief alert to readers that the CQC has publicised its initial recommendations from its review of the use of digital triage services.

The CQC defines digital triage tools as software that tells a patient what to do or where to go next in their care pathway. It can be software that:

  • supports clinicians to make decisions
  • supports non-clinical staff to interact with patients
  • people interact with themselves

This is an important area requiring regulatory clarification as it sits at the interface between medical devices regulated by the MHRA and medical services regulated by the CQC…and patients are increasingly being impacted by it.

Key findings are:

  • care providers and local systems need better guidance and support from national bodies when they commission technology suppliers and set up contracts – a standard test of the effectiveness of triage algorithms would help providers and systems choose the best products
  • digital triage tools should help people to get care in the right place at the right time, and should not prevent this – clinicians should be able to override the recommendations from these tools when they think it is in a person’s best interest
  • people need to understand the difference between a digital triage tool that checks their symptoms and one that directs them to a regulated healthcare service – they also need clearer guidance on how to use them.
  • there is a need to understand how safeguarding can work when people are using digital interfaces instead of humans
  • technology suppliers that don’t need to register with CQC should meet all other relevant regulatory requirements when developing clinical pathways for triage tools – this area has limited assurance or regulation, reinstating the accreditation scheme from NICE or something similar would help
  • the insight and data from digital triage tools provide an excellent opportunity to improve care – there is a need to work collectively to understand how best to do this

The full report is here.

This is the first use by the CQC of the “regulatory sandbox” approach: a way of testing how best to regulate new types of services by working collaboratively to find out about them. As someone who was briefly engaged in the process, this Editor considers it to be potentially an extremely impressive way of coming up with practical regulations, and avoiding unworkable proposals.

The next step will be to develop the detailed proposals based on the above.

Calling all digital health entrepreneurs: DHACA Day on 18th March is for you!

January 23, 2020 | by

If you’re struggling with the many challenges of how to grow your digital health business fast, DHACA, sponsored by the AHSN Network, is at hand to help. Specifically on 18th March we have assembled an outstanding group of speakers to help you get to know NHSX and its priorities, to build AI into your product or service, to position yourself to benefit most from the current emphasis on longevity, to understand how the cabinet office can help, how data privacy legislation may change post Brexit, what Babylon is doing, how the AHSNs can help and much, much more. You only have to pay for lunch! You will also get to hear how you can access a wide range of in depth business services free, due to the generosity of our sponsors.

The event is being held courtesy of Baker Botts in their offices very close to Bank Tube station in London. 

Please click here to see more detail and to book.

(Disclosure: this Editor is also CEO of DHACA)

News roundup: Proteus dissolves with Otsuka, EHRs add 16 min. per patient, DrChrono mobile EHR raises $20M, CareBridge LTSS launches, ‘flyover healthtech’ soars

January 17, 2020 | by

The much-touted partnership of Proteus Digital Health with Otsuka Pharmaceutical of Japan for a digital version of Abilify has ended prematurely. Abilify MyCite was the first drug cleared by FDA with a digital tracking system in November 2017 [TTA 14 Nov 17]. Otsuka was also going to fund Proteus for further development of drug tracking.

In the payout for the Proteus license, Otsuka has the right to use Proteus’ technology for its own mental illness drug research. Proteus will abandon its research in mental illness and cardiovascular conditions and concentrate on digital meds in cancer and infectious disease. Before the holidays, we saw reports that ‘Proteus may be no-teous‘ and that layoffs and office closures were in the works. STAT reports that the Proteus-Otsuka breakup is one of several recently: Sandoz and Pear Therapeutics, Sanofi and Alphabet’s Onduo.

Where does a doctor’s time go? EHR use, for one. A study of 155,000 ambulatory medical subspecialists and primary care physicians in 2018 clocked EHR use per encounter at over 16 minutes on average, with chart review, documentation, and ordering functions accounting for most of the time (33, 24, and 17 percent, respectively). Percentages changed by subspecialty. PhysiciansWeekly,  ACP Annals of Internal Medicine (abstract only) 

Speaking of EHRs, DrChrono, one of the first mobile-friendly EHRs/practice management/revenue cycle platforms, raised $20 million in a Series B led by ORIX Growth Capital. Its total funding in nine years tops $48 million. Crunchbase, Mobihealthnews

Long term care (LTC) has been ‘about to be hot’ for at least 10 years. Where the real money may be made is in the ‘back end’. This week, a new long-term support services (LTSS) firm, CareBridge launched out of Nashville, backed with $40 million in fresh funding with a BOD helmed by a former US senator and physician, Bill Frist. Created in part through the acquisition of two other companies, HealthStar and Sinq Technologies, it will concentrate on electronic visit verification by caregivers for in-home service delivery, provide real-time sharing of clinical information, support members with enhanced tablet-based telehealth services, and is building a predictive model for service support. BusinessWire

Flyover tech soars, indeed. We note that CareBridge is in Nashville, which snobs on both coasts demeaningly call ‘flyover country’. Well, there’s gold in Middle America’s hills when it comes to health tech, with some of the choicest high flyers at this week’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference from places like Nashville, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, Denver, and Iowa. Utah alone has enough tech to earn it the nickname ‘Silicon Slopes’. Utah’s highlighted company is one this Editor found back in 2013—Owlet–still (baby) socking it to them, cutely. Others, unfortunately, are wince-worthy–the prize goes to the Ōmcare med dispenser, which makes darn sure via two Wi-Fi-enabled interactive cameras that those pills are not only being taken, but also being swallowed. Really. Observer

Femtech’s huge potential global healthcare market–but needs to connect with payers and employers

January 17, 2020 | by

‘Femtech’ is one of those newish umbrella terms that corrals health tech that enables women to manage their health better. Most of women’s health products cluster in birth control, fertility, pregnancy, and early maternity, with little outside this area or for older women. A number have gotten substantial funding rounds–in Q3, Nurx (birth control, $52M), The Pill Club ($51M, ditto), and Cleo (pregnancy and post-partum coaching, $27.5M). Rock Health

Research2Guidance has dug a little deeper in its new study,
The Global Market Of Digital Women’s Health Solutions 2017-2024  and discovered 3,000 app-based solutions, 151M annual downloads and millions of active users globally. 20 percent of US women in the femtech core demographic use a health app, and R2G projects global market revenue will reach $297 million. Global market expansion is likely to be greatest in countries like India and China

What femtech lacks, according to R2G’s Ralf Jahns, is validation. Those 3,000 companies haven’t quite concentrated on their user case and benefits which could lead to validation and payer/employer reimbursement. And strategies haven’t quite jelled yet.

Consolidation crunch time in telehealth: Teladoc acquires InTouch Health for $600 million

January 16, 2020 | by

Announced on Sunday just in time for Monday’s start of the annual, breathlessly awaited JP Morgan healthcare conference where ‘middle America’ ‘flyover’ companies are now the hot thing, was the acquisition by decidedly not-flyover Teladoc (Purchase, NY) of InTouch Health (Santa Barbara CA). InTouch is a mid-sized company for primarily hospital and health system-based telehealth. The purchase price was $150 million in cash and the remainder in Teladoc common stock, scheduled to close next quarter.

InTouch had made acquisitions of its own in 2018: REACH Health (enterprise telehealth) and TruClinic (DTC telehealth). Unusually, it also came fairly unencumbered by outside funding–only $49 million to date.

Telehealth and telemedicine are both rapidly consolidating and growing horizontally into payers (Teladoc and Aetna), corporate, and health systems.

An analysis over at Seeking Alpha emphasizes InTouch’s enterprise business as the charm for Teladoc, leading to a purchase price 7.5x revenue based on InTouch Health’s 2019 revenue of $80mm. InTouch had, with TruClinic, built itself up into a comprehensive system for over 450 hospitals reaching to the patient, but also developed specialty telehealth areas in stroke, behavioral health, critical care, neonatology, and cardiology. In their view for investors, the news is quite positive for Teladoc as–returning to JP Morgan–40 percent of hospitals expect to increase their telemedicine budgets. Release, MedCityNews

European Patient Experience and Innovation Congress (EPIC 2020) invites world health tech to Croatia

January 16, 2020 | by

European Patient Experience and Innovation Congress (EPIC 2020)
19-21 March
Valamar Lacroma Hotel
Dubrovnik, Croatia

One of our Readers from Croatia is the CEO of the Bagatin Clinic in Zagreb. In cooperation with the Cleveland Clinic, they are organizing this first-ever pan-European conference focusing on health tech and how it will impact the patient experience. This Editor has previously noted the growth of medical and healthcare tech in Central and Eastern Europe in places like Hungary and Estonia–and now, Croatia.

Ognjen Bagatin was kind enough to write me before the holidays and has since filled in some of the highlights.

  • Centered on the patient experience, it will explore the relationships among healthcare delivery, technology, private enterprise and the human beings who need and want these services.
  • Encompassing the scientific, clinical, behavioral and social perspectives, ranging from the futuristic, highly theoretical to current, best-in-class practice.
  • A high-energy, stimulating event for everyone, from c-suite executives, to clinical practitioners, clinic owners, scientists, and investors, EPIC will bring together some of the most influential physicians, med-tech startups and health professionals from Europe and beyond to the table to improve how your patients will experience healthcare in the near future.
  • As technology continues to help us achieve previously unattainable results in healthcare, the conference will bring an insiders’ look at which technologies, ideas, and innovations are improving the patient experience 
  • And, of course, there’s Dubrovnik
  • Speaker list here

Early registration closes on 19 January. More information here.

Texas Healthcare Challenge WISH-es on women in February hackathon (Dallas TX)

January 16, 2020 | by

The latest phase of the Dallas-based Health Wildcatters Texas Healthcare Challenge series is the Women in Science & Healthcare (WISH) Hackathon, taking place Friday and Saturday, 21-22 February at the Health Wildcatters office in Dallas. The program includes keynote talks, problem pitching, mixing, team forming, hacking, mentorship, feedback, idea iteration, pitch practice sessions, final presentations, judging panel, and prizes. Teams will use design thinking to create products, iterate business models, map out go-to-market strategies, and potentially build new healthcare ventures. It’s not for existing companies; you can register your group individually to form a team working on a problem that may result in a new product or company. There are several tiers of prizes, with the top prize of $1000, with four finalist teams winning $250 per team.

This women-only event is partnered with the Small Business Association and SoGal. Registration deadline is 14 February. FAQs are here. More about WISH.

News roundup for the New Year: NHS £40m diet on login times, Germany’s ‘cheesy’ health ID security, Livongo and Higi partner, MTBC picks up CareCloud

January 10, 2020 | by

NHS investing £40 million to cut health service login times, £4.5 million on digital assists for independent living. Announced by secretary Matt Hancock, the objective is to move to reduce the time to log in over the 15 systems NHS clinicians and staff may have to use with a patient. The test of a single sign-on system at Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool reduced it from 105 seconds to 10. The Department of Health and Social Care is also providing £4.5m to local authorities to fund digital programs aimed at aiding independent living for recipients of adult social care. Guardian

Germany’s health data network security is ‘swiss cheesy’. Germany’s physicians are in the process of being networked into the national health system through an electronic doctor’s card and practice ID card which identify and sign them in. Similarly, patients will have their own chipped ID card. A special research project by NDR, Der Spiegel, and  IT security experts belonging to the Chaos Computer Club (CCC), found that they could send all three to a cheese monger’s shop in Lüneburg. Looks like their security has a few ‘holes’ in it. Tagesschau.de

Livongo’s diabetes/chronic condition management platform and health kiosk Higi are partnering in 500 retail pharmacies in Michigan for a Livongo-branded health screening and tracking program, using Higi’s measurement, tracking, and Livongo’s wellness programs. Mobihealthnews

CareCloud acquired by MTBC for $17 million cash and about $41 million in total consideration such as warrants and perpetual preferred stock. Both companies are in similar businesses related to medical practice management, EHR integration, and patient communications. It reflects the deep falloff of value in the absurdly overcrowded field of EHR and practice management businesses since Meaningful Use wound up: Allscripts’ acquisition of Practice Fusion for $100 million in January 2018 [TTA 14 Aug 19] and reduced prospects for other HIT players such as Athenahealth, Watson Health and Waystar [TTA 25 Apr 19]. Total investment in CareCloud was north of $150 million in ten funding rounds (Crunchbase) which makes the price a knockdown for the investors like Norwest, Intel Capital, First Data and PNC. Seeking Alpha, MTBC release, commentary on HISTalk.

CES roundup: what happened to the excitement around ‘innovation’, robots, VR, and voice assistants?

January 10, 2020 | by

What’s missing? Some sense of excitement. It may be your Editor’s back-to-work deluge after the holiday, but it’s hard not to have a sense of Déjà Vu All Over Again when reading the reporting from CES Las Vegas. So much of it seems lukewarm, a variant of what felt exciting, new, and transformative Back When. And so little of it seems to break through to a wider market. Let’s pick through and see what a Gimlet Eye might.

AARP’s Innovation Labs had yet another showcase of technologies from largely small companies from its own Hatchery and other accelerators with which it works. This year it highlighted VR developer partnerships with Rendever, which creates experiences for LTC residents, and VRHealth’s physical therapy at home. SanaHealth has a pulsed light/sound pain reduction device and the VoiceItt speech recognition device which translates the speech of the severely impaired into intelligible language.

Robots continue to seek a market, albeit tinier and we confess, occasionally more amusing.

  • Samsung’s Ballie robot, about the size of an orange, will roll through your home minding your pets, monitoring your safety, and interfacing with your smart devices and apps to make absolutely sure you get enough exercise and track your fitness. That is, if you don’t step on it, mistake it for a tennis ball, or your dog doesn’t mistake it for a chew toy.
  • The Charmin Rollbot will deliver a pre-loaded roll when you most need it, navigating through your home, although no capability of climbing stairs in its current concept.
  • The Misty II robot is yet again one of those tabletop robots which are developer toys. This one propels itself and has a camera, a microphone and 3D sensors, and could be repurposed for fall detection, companionship, or to bring you a hot towel.
  • The Lovot is a Japanese robot at its second CES which moves around, responds, is red and quite cuddly-looking (except for that weird thing on the top of its head). This ‘happiness robot’ will set you back over ¥299,000 ($2,700) when it finally hits the market.

Babies need both monitoring and changing, and combining the two may actually happen. P&G’s Pampers and Verily Life Sciences brought to CES the Lumi smart diaper with a connected HD video monitor plus an activity sensor in the diaper. It will detect baby’s sleep, feeding and diapering patterns. (But no changing by the Charmin Rollbot)

Voice assistants are getting more ubiquitous to find a way into the home. The war between Amazon Alexa (and siblings) and Google Assistant continues with new applications in cars (a/k/a computers on four wheels) to appliances and a host of third-party devices like garage door openers. A lot of this is ‘sneaky tech’ to get past the hard core of people who have already realized that both always-on Alexa and Assistant collect a lot of behavioral data which one does not necessarily want collected, and that many of these connected devices like Nest have been hijacked through compromised passwords.

More in Fierce Healthcare 7 Jan, 9 Jan; Mobihealthnews