More and more into the (data) breach: 3X more patient records in Q2, UnityPoint’s breach balloons to 1.3M

August 9, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Hackermania.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]And we thought Healthcare Hackermania was following the Hulkster into retirement. After a quiet Q1, data breaches and hack attacks blew up both in Q2 and now in this quarter.

Data compliance analytics firm Protenus’ Breach Barometer (with DataBreaches.net) has been tracking healthcare data breaches for years. It was quiet last quarter with 1.13 million patient records affected in 110 separate health data breaches. But last quarter was a true triple threat with patient records up three times to 3.14 million, 142 separate breaches–which means more per breach on average. What is also distressing is that 29.71 percent are repeat offenses among employees, up from 21 percent in the previous quarter.

  • 36.6 percent of breaches were due to external hacking, nearly double that of Q1.
  • 30.99 percent were due to insiders, either through deliberate wrongdoing (theft) or insider error. Insider wrongdoing was led by family members snooping on other family members’ records. Not Russians, Chinese, NoKos, or Bulgarians bashing about. 
  • In contrast to Q1, where the biggest data breach was a network hack of an Oklahoma-based health network (reportedly the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences), compromising nearly 280,000 records, Q2’s Big Breach was a physical burglary of the California Department of Developmental Services in Sacramento affecting over 581,000 records. After the usual ransacking and theft, the burglars started a fire before they left and the sprinklers did the rest.

It routinely takes nearly forever from when a breach occurs to when it is discovered: in Q1 244 days, in Q2 204 days. In Q2 the longest discovery time was over five years –2013 to 2018. This indicates that insiders may be good at covering their tracks, and/or IT staff don’t get around to detecting and policing breaches.

Protenus and DataBreaches.net compile incidents disclosed to HHS and reported in the media, and are now adding their own proprietary, non-public data on the status of health data breaches nationwide, including a review of tens of trillions of individual
accesses to EHRs which Protenus audits as part of their healthcare systems services. More detail in Protenus Q2 and Q1 full reports, HealthITSecurity (Q1)

Certain to lead their Q3 report is the 1.4 million patient record breach at UnityPoint Health, an Iowa-based health system. In May, a small phishing breach compromised 16,000 records. This cyberattack also started with email phishing and spread through employee networks. “The phishing campaign tricked employees into providing confidential login information, which hackers used to infiltrate email accounts and access data contained within.” Were the hackers after patient data? According to UnityPoint, “The phishing attack on UnityPoint Health was more likely focused on diverting business funds from our organization.” Healthcare Analytics News

You may not want a cyberattack, but cyberattacks and hacking want you….

The Theranos Story, ch. 54: cue up ‘Tainted Love’ in the courtroom

August 2, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rock-1-crop-2.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Tainted Love, Labs, and Lucre Indeed. Drop the needle on the Gloria Jones version from 1964 or the Soft Cell version from 1981.…

Consider that the very fates of Ms. Elizabeth Holmes, the now not-so-Sunny Balwani, and the formerly $9 bn Unicorn Theranos may hinge on the nature of their personal relationship and its influence on the governance of the company.

There are two legal actions against the company and the two principals, one by the DOJ for criminal fraud [TTA 16 June] and by the SEC on (civil) securities fraud [TTA 15 March].  Both are out on $500,000 bail on the DOJ charges. The possibilities on the latter can be up to 20 years in Club Fed, plus $250,000 in fines and clawing back of investor funds, if any can be found.

While Ms. Holmes settled with the SEC, paying a fine and exiting the company, Mr. Balwani did not and is fighting the charges, though this declaration was made before the DOJ charges.

Bloomberg Markets brings up an interesting set of dynamics which can play well with potential jurors and make the prosecution’s case far more convincing for a Northern California jury. To wit, in 2009 when she started running out of money, Ms. Holmes turned to Mr. Balwani, her boyfriend, for a $12 million line of credit. In return, he became president and COO. The nature of their relationship was kept strictly hush-hush to the board and investors. Secrecy was ratcheted up at the company and management started to break down. And the timing: a week after Mr. Balwani left, the news of bad patient test results and problems with their lab started to break big.

Jurors, even in Silicon Valley, love drama and personal intrigue–especially the type that underscores deception and $900 million in fraud perpetrated by a Stanford dropout who clumsily attempted to channel Saint Jobs and a somewhat schlubby dude who Should Have Known Better. Far more than gullible corporate suits at Walgreens and hedge funds….add to it the personal stories of patients harmed by bad Theranos tests and you get an emotional story worthy of Law & Order.

Do expect Ms. Holmes to bring up her Saint Joan if not a female Saint Sebastian analogy. Burning at the stake versus being shot full of arrows are too memorable images which she’ll try out. Add a #MeToo spin of a young woman coerced by an older man–a tale of at least tit-for-tat to get the $12 million. 

The rompin’ soap opera is likely to start next year. Stay tuned…. 

Telemedicine changing Texas rural health and emergency medicine

August 2, 2018 | by

The expanded use of telemedicine in Texas–controversial and delayed by the state medical society, despite its use in distance medicine and prisons–is slowly starting to change rural health in the state. SB1107 passed the Texas legislature in 2017, removing the previous requirement for an in-person medical consultation. Texas, like many Western states, has an acute shortage of primary care doctors in 184 of 254 counties, according to the state health service.

Where telemedicine fills that gap is in areas such as emergency rooms in rural hospitals. In Van Horn, population 2,000, with the next hospital 90 miles away, telemedicine enables the ER  to operate two trauma rooms and for the state, have a doctor there well within 30 minutes away which is the state requirement for a basic-level trauma facility. The ER connects with an office building in Sioux Falls, SD to a nurse and doctor on immediate call to help oversee care via the Avera eCare telemedicine system.

Universities have also worked to diversify telemedicine use in other settings. Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center has pioneered its use in ambulances and schools. The regional TexLa Telehealth Resource Center helps anyone looking to start a telemedicine project. By 2020, the University of Texas will have telemedicine fully implemented on campus. Houston Chronicle

Rounding up July: Teladoc’s new name and earnings, Hitching a Lyft, GlobalMed with FCC, Proteus and HIV sensing, Parks Associates, Welbeing

August 1, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /] [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/teladochealth_logo_plumaqua_rgb.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Telemedicine giant Teladoc today formally unveiled its name and logo change to Teladoc Health. Citing its worldwide reach and a broad portfolio of services, CEO Jason Gorevic stated “…we will further accelerate the adoption of virtual care and enhance our technology-enabled services to make high-quality healthcare a reality for more people and organizations around the world.” The name will officially change on 10 August but there is no change in their NYSE ticker symbol TDOC. Release on MarketWatch  Their earnings call on Wednesday reported a second quarter loss of $0.37 per share which was substantially less than the projected $0.43. Revenue was $94.56 million for the quarter ended June 2018, more than double that of CY 2017. Zacks.com

The burgeoning area of non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) got a Lyft with the publishing of two studies indicating reductions in costs and no-shows. Lyft rideshare partner Hitch Health which integrates EHR data, to identify patients, worked over 12 months with the Hennepin Healthcare internal medicine clinic in Minneapolis. The no-show rate dropped from 31 percent to 22.5 percent, with an estimated increase in revenue of $270,000. In Camden, NJ, Rideshare worked with a branch of the MD Anderson Cancer Clinic to schedule on-demand transportation, reducing direct transportation costs by 30 percent with the service and no-show rate down to four percent. Mobihealthnews

GlobalMed, a previous Perspectives contributor, was represented by its CEO on a four-person panel discussing the FCC ‘s proposed Connected Care Pilot Program, a new $100 million program to support telehealth for low-income Americans, attended by  FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. Here’s a video from the 24 July meeting. Hat tip to Marcia Rhodes of Amendola Communications

Proteus Digital Health’s sensor-equipped pills, transmitter patch, and app may have a new market with prophylaxis (PrEP) treatments for the prevention of HIV transmission. A study by University of California, San Diego researchers with Truvada (Gilead Sciences) found that the sensor-equipped drug was well-received by most users and pharmacokinetically equivalent to Truvada alone. Proteus is the first FDA-approved digital ingestion tracking system with Abilify MyCite [TTA 14 Nov 17]. Mobihealthnews

Parks Associates has two upcoming opportunities for speakers at their hosted events at two large conferences. Click on the links for more information:

CONNECTIONS Europe: Strategies for Smart Home & Consumer IoT – Deadline: 1 Sept
Amsterdam – 13-14 Nov 2018  Event website

CONNECTIONS Summit at CES – Deadline: 15 Sept 2018
Las Vegas – 8 Jan 2019  Call for papers and more information.  

Welbeing in the UK announced on Wednesday 1 Aug their Rehabilitation Project in Cumbria. The program is designed to help patients who have had a fall or similar trauma leading to a hospital stay. When they are discharged, patients can now receive Welbeing’s alarm service for up to 13 weeks, free of charge. The service is being funded by Eden District Council. Welbeing recently acquired Eden Housing Association’s alarm and response services in Eden and Carlisle. (Link to press release to come)

Healthcare cybersecurity breaches multiply like measles as far away as Singapore. Is it a matter of time before hacking kills someone?

July 26, 2018 | by

Even if you are the Prime Minister of Singapore, you can be hacked. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong joined 1.5 million of his fellow Singaporeans in what they have termed an unprecedented data breach of SingHealth, considered to be a world model. There are the usual state actor suspects: Russians, Chinese–and North Koreans–starting less than two weeks (27 June) after hosting the meeting between President Donald Trump and Maximum Leader Kim Jong Un. (That is hardly a gracious thank you if it’s them (s/o).  POLITICO Morning eHealth reported on Monday 23 July. 

What’s happened since: Singapore banks have been instructed to tighten data procedures and use additional verification methods. The government believes 1) they are next and 2) that the healthcare breach data could be used to impersonate customer identities. SingHealth records include full name, national identification number, address, gender, race, and date of birth. (ZDNet)

The National (UAE) reported that the hack specifically targeted the PM. Their angle was that Singapore has ambitions to host a ‘smart city’ as does the UAE and testing Singapore means that the UAE may be next. Singapore is covering a different angle–the ‘inside job’ one. They moved to disconnect computers from the internet at public centers which may inconvenience patients and healthcare staff but which weakens data collection for this very busy centralized system. (Reuters) Watch the government press conference here.

Will the next WannaCry or NotPetya kill someone? That is the premise in this article in ZDNet and one we’ve discussed previously. It’s not a targeted attack on a particular life, but could be an infrastructure failure–for instance, an industrial control for electricity that destroys systems including those to dependent homes or hospitals. What this article doesn’t include are all those aging hackable connected devices in operating rooms, hospital rooms, and in-hospital Wi-Fi powering tablets and other connected devices. KRACK can be very wack indeed! [TTA 18 Oct 17]

Who’s available? A user training professional with experience in security, social alarm, and telecare control rooms

July 26, 2018 | by

Mr. Paul Dixon has taken advantage of our open offer to Readers who are available to lend their talents to new or established companies in the healthcare or healthcare tech field. 

I am a “tech-savvy” and experienced user training professional with extensive experience in providing training in a broad range of contexts and environments. I am specifically experienced in security, social alarm and telecare control rooms. As I also have a background in management and leadership, one of my key differentiators is that I focus on behavioural change in staff, not just on “mechanical” user processes.

In addition to training, I can create a full range of user-focused training materials.

Mr. Dixon was kind enough to include a comprehensive overview of how he can contribute to a company. He’s available for short and medium term projects as a freelancer, or on-going user training on an ad-hoc or retainer basis. Contact him on (m) 07734 600950 (UK) or paul@pauld.pro.  He’s on Twitter at @PaulWBM.

Will Matt Hancock be a refreshing change for NHS? Or another promise unfulfilled? (updated)

July 26, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/matt-in-a-binder.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]Matt In A Binder? With the sudden departure of Jeremy Hunt from the Department of Health and Social Care in the Cabinet’s ‘change partners and dance’, the new Secretary of State Matt Hancock comes over from heading Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. A couple of weeks in, it can be determined that he is a big advocate of technology and looking forward, not back (which Mr. Hunt spent a great deal of time doing):

Technology has a proven ability to radically change the world for the better – be it in finance, in education and in transport. But nowhere does technology have greater potential to improve lives than in healthcare. (Statement on Gov.UK/Health Service Journal 12 July )

And he glows again about increasing the use of apps within the NHS, though Digital Health goes a little overboard in calling the Rt Hon Mr. Hancock ‘app-happy’ even though he’s built his own this year so that his West Suffolk constituents can keep track of his activities. 

In his maiden speech, Mr. Hancock promoted a drive to replace pagers with smartphone apps as part of a £487 million funding package and connecting Amazon Echo with the NHS Choices website. It was overshadowed by a seeming walking back of the 95 percent four-hour A&E treatment target. Telegraph

Much of the criticism comes from those who see his appointment as yet another step in the privatization and regional devolution of the NHS due to campaign donations from the chair of pro-market group the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). However, Mr. Hunt faced the realization that NHS trusts are $1.2bn in debt and sought workarounds such as adoption of an ACO-type model (which in the US has a strong element of public incentive) and increased use of private health insurance to cost-shift. He wasn’t a technophobe, having inked a deal with the UK Space Agency to repurpose space tech for health tech and funding innovators in this conversion up to £4 million–which can be said to be ‘out there’.

Mr. Hancock also announced this week the £37.5 million funding of three and five ‘Digital Innovation Hubs’ over the next three years. These will connect regional healthcare data with genetic and biomedical information for R&D purposes.

Will he last? Will there be positive changed fueled by technology? Will the May Government last? Only time will tell.

What are your thoughts? (If you’d like to post anonymously, write Editor Donna in confidence)

Here’s select opinion from across the spectrum:

Don’t be fooled, Matt Hancock will be no better for the NHS than Jeremy Hunt was (The Independent)

New health secretary Matt Hancock received £32,000 in donations from chair of think tank that wants NHS ‘abolished’ (The Independent)

Roy Lilley’s always tart take on things NHS extends to the new Secretary dubbed ‘No18’. A deft wielding of Occam’s Razor and a saber on reflexive phraseology such as ‘driving culture change’ (it can be cultivated not driven–this Editor agrees but the tone and structure need to be set from the top), dealing with suppliers, and the danger of creating an electronic Tower of Babel due to lack of interoperability. (Does this resonate in the US? You bet!) (See NHSManagers.net if the link does not work.)

Margaret McCartney: Health technology and the modern inverse care law (BMJ) — to paraphrase, that the greatest need for healthcare is by those least likely to have the right care at the right time available. She points to Babylon Health, which counts Mr. Hancock as a member, as not only unproven, but also not needed by those able to afford other options. (But didn’t we know that already?)

The Theranos Story, ch. 53: No more blood to squeeze out of this particular rock

July 24, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Rock-1-crop-2.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Rock. On. The latest chapter in the Last Throes of Theranos is the action by plaintiffs Robert Colman, Hilary Taubman-Dye, and other indirect Theranos investors to settle their lawsuit before there is nothing left. The settlement was made late last week in the US District Court of Northern California for an undisclosed amount.

The plaintiffs originally proposed a class action which would have included about 200 other individuals investing through various funds.This was denied by the District Court in early June, but the ruling permitted individual lawsuits. The class action would have been under California state law, as indirect investors are not eligible through Federal securities law.

Mr. Colman was an early (2013) investor through Lucas Venture Group and Ms. Taubman-Dye was a third-party investor through SharesPost in 2015 [TTA 30 Nov 16]. Their charges centered around Theranos’ false and misleading statements made by the company, They were excluded from the share buyback a few months later when there were still some funds in the company [TTA 29 Mar 17] and before Fortress Investment Group put in their funding (December). Their legal action was brought not only against Theranos, former COO Sunny Balwani, and former CEO/founder Elizabeth Holmes but also–interestingly–the SEC (Law360). 

A sidelight to this is that there is an HBO documentary about Theranos in progress. The filmmaker Alex Gibney has sought to make public video depositions from two Theranos cases, according to the WSJ (paywalled). Judge Cousins ordered Theranos to work with Mr. Gibney’s lawyer to determine what excerpts of recordings will be released. Mr. Gibney better get his skates on while there’s still interest in the barely-breathing Theranos–or Ms. Holmes pulls the full Saint Joan reenactment in a Home for the Very, Very Nervous. MarketWatch, Bloomberg, Becker’s Hospital Review  Our TTA coverage is indexed here.

Can equipping care homes with telehealth save the NHS £1bn? (UK)

July 19, 2018 | by | 1 Comment

Well, every little bit helps the budget shortfall and the new Health Secretary. A five-year study of care homes run by NHS Calderdale (Yorkshire) Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), equipped with sensor-based equipment (telehealth and telecare) plus a multidisciplinary nursing team available to support residents, saved on bed days, hospital admissions, and even GP visits to care homes. Admissions relating to falls decreased by 7.7 percent in the past year, resulting in an annual saving of more than £200,000.

The 383,500 UK care home residents with complex long-term conditions represent just 0.7 percent of the population, yet they account for a disproportionate amount of the NHS budget. The Calderdale study saved 7,000 hospital bed days in its first two years alone and GP visits to care homes reduced by 45 percent. 50 percent of care homes reduced falls by least 10 percent.

The Quest for Quality in Care Homes initiative co-sponsored by Tunstall Healthcare extrapolated from the Calderdale results that the NHS could nationally save £1bn, avoid some 226,000 hospital admissions. and release 2.5 million bed days. Digital Health, Tunstall Healthcare study page

News roundup: Walmart and Microsoft AI, are derm apps endangering public with 88% skin cancer diagnosis?

July 19, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Walmart and Microsoft partner to change the retail experience via AI. The five-year agreement will switch over applications to the cloud and will affect shipping and supply chain. It’s projected in Healthcare Dive that the impact will be in healthcare as well. Microsoft announced last month that it is forming a unit to advance AI and cloud-based healthcare tools. The landscape is under extreme pressure in retail and healthcare delivery, and Walmart needs to ready for future moves which will certainly happen. Walmart is rumored to be interested in acquiring Humana and is currently working with Emory Healthcare in Atlanta. Then there is CVS-Aetna, Cigna-Express Scripts, Google, and (looming above all) Amazon. (Though you can tuck all the years of Amazon’s profits into one year of Walmart’s.)

The ITV News headline grabs attention — but are dermatology apps really endangering the public when teledermatology can help diagnose 88 percent of people with skin cancer and 97 percent of those with benign lesions? A University of Birmingham-led research team did a metastudy of the literature and found three failings: “a lack of rigorous published trials to show they work and are safe, a lack of input during the app development from specialists to identify which lesions are suspicious and flaws in how the technology analyses photos” particularly for scaly or non-pigmented melanomas. But did access to these apps encourage early diagnosis which can lead to up to 100 percent five-year survival? Of course review is required as recommended by the study, but this last factor was not really examined at the British Association of Dermatologists’ annual meeting in Edinburgh. University of Birmingham release with study abstract

Highlights of The King’s Fund Digital Health and Care Congress 2018

July 18, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/kf-digital-health-2018-300×145.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]As The King’s Fund itself pointed to these two Digital Health articles, this Editor (who did not attend) will summarize their findings on the two days. Surely more to come!

Day One: digital transformation was not just about patient and clinician tools, but also about culture and partnerships

  • The King’s Fund’s researchers presented findings from their recently released report, ‘Digital change in health and social care’ where local organizations can speed change faster than nationally (more detail here)
    • Tight collaboration is necessary to bring change, not only within organizations, but also with providers and suppliers
    • The culture gap is significant between technology and clinical and must be overcome
    • Technology may be the only way “by which the NHS would be able to face “long-term pressures” facing the healthcare system”
  • What are lessons learned from national and regional NHS digital transformation projects?
    • How do you bring data together on a large scale?
    • Primary care practice is the obvious place to engage people with technology
  • No ‘post code lottery’–All patients should have access to digital services (the standard criticism of Babylon Health)

Day Two: build the technology around the patient

  • Put the patient first–some technology does not
  • The paramount importance of safeguarding the patient
  • Patients should be involved continuously with technology–and patients inspire technology

TTA is a media partner of The King’s Fund digital health conferences and was pleased to be a supporter this year.

Care Innovations sells off Validation Institute. But is there more to the story? And a side of Walmart Health action.

July 17, 2018 | by

The Health Value Institute, part of Woburn, Massachusetts-based conference organizer World Congress, announced late last week the acquisition of the Validation Institute from Care Innovations. Terms were not disclosed. The Health Value Institute and the Validation Institute recently partnered to validate the outcomes for the Health Value Award finalists and awards this past April at the 15th Annual World Health Care Congress. According to both parties, the acquisition will help to expand the membership of validated companies, and the present offerings for HR, broker, and benefit executives. Release.

The Validation Institute was launched with fanfare back in June 2014, when GE still had a chunk of the company and during the 2 1/2 year repositioning (revival? resuscitation?) led by Sean Slovenski from the doldrums of the prior Louis Burns regime. Mr. Slovenski departed in early 2016 to be president of population health at Healthways/Sharecare, which lasted a little over a year. However, this week Mr. Slovenski made headlines as the new SVP Health & Wellness of Walmart, reporting directly to the head of their US business.  The hiring of a senior executive with a few years at Humana and a short time at Sharecare, another Walmart partner, coupled with several years in healthcare tech and provider-side is certainly indicative of Walmart’s serious focus on healthcare provision. It’s a fascinating race with Amazon and CVS-Aetna–with the mystery of what Walgreens Boots Alliance will do. Also Healthcare Dive.

But back to Care Innovations. Signs of a new direction–and a loss. The case can be made that the Validation Institute, the Jefferson College of Population Health, and validating individuals and companies was no longer core to their business which is centered around their RPM platform Health Harmony (with QuietCare still hanging in there!) However, this Editor notes the prominent addition of  ‘platform-as-a-service’ advisory services for those who are developing health apps, which appears to be a spinoff of their engineering/IT services. Vivify Health, a competitor, already does this. There is a vote of confidence; in June, Roche signed on with a strategic investment (undisclosed) as well as integration of the mySugr integrated diabetes management/app solution (release).

Looking around their recently refreshed website, there is an absence–that of the two or three pages previously dedicated to the Veterans Health Administration (VA) and the press release of the VA award. This tends to lend credence to the rumors that there was a second company that did not pass the Trade Adjustment Act (TAA) requirements that knocked out Iron Bow/Vivify Health from the VA, or for another undisclosed reason CI bowed out of a potentially $258 million five-year contract. If so, that leaves for the VA Medtronic and 1Vision/AMC Health. It’s certainly a limited menu for the supposedly growing numbers of veterans requiring telehealth and a limited choice for their care coordinators–and not quite as presented to the public or the 2015 competitors in the solicitation. Who benefits? Who loses? (Disclosure: This Editor worked for one of the finalists and a VA supplier from 2003, Viterion.)  Hat tip to one of our ‘Industry Insiders’, but the opinions expressed here are her own.

A finger-prick, 10 minute CBC test which actually works from Sight Diagnostics (Israel)

July 14, 2018 | by

The Theranos Effect may have tainted innovation investments (versus easy puzzle-piece fits), but complete blood count (CBC) via small blood samples is hardly a dead idea. It’s very much alive with the scientists who founded Sight Diagnostics, an Israeli startup with a fit-on-a-desktop lab, Olo, which can run multiple CBC counts. Blood can be taken from a traditional or finger-stick draw, with the usual caveats on capillary blood. The technology works via machine vision to take images of the blood sample to identify and count the different types of cells with AI to do the analysis. The goal is to be able to install a lab in a doctor’s office and run the test in 10 minutes, not five days.

Sight was founded by Daniel Levner, an artificial intelligence expert who was a scientist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (not a Stanford undergrad dropout), and Yossi Pollak, previously at Mobileye, an automotive computer vision developer that Intel bought for $15.3 billion last year–the largest Israeli tech exit ever. Oh, and they have an advisory board of Real Scientists.

Adding to Sight’s credibility is their CE Mark gained for Olo and completion of a 287-person clinical trial at Israel’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, both announced this week. Webwire

The company is up to a Series B and has raised over $25 million since 2010 (Crunchbase)–a drop compared to Theranos, a subject where the founders are a little bit touchy, based on this Editor’s read of the Forbes article. While Olo is investigational in the US, their malaria test Parasight – which detects malaria using digital fluorescent microscopy and computer vision algorithms–has already sold over 600,000 units in 24 countries across Europe, Africa, and Asia–another major difference from Theranos. A significant investor is Eric Schmidt, formerly of Google, and head of Innovation Endeavors (SF Business Journal, slightly paywalled).

Video (01:56)

https://youtu.be/G1iSO1KaJ-Y

News roundup: FCC RPM/telehealth push, NHS EHR coding breach, unstructured data in geriatric diagnosis, Cerner-Lumeris, NHS funds social care, hospital RFID uses

July 13, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”125″ /]FCC backs post-discharge RPM plan. The “Connected Care Pilot Program” proposed by FCC commissioner Brendan Carr would provide $100 million for subsidies to hospitals or wireless providers running post-discharge remote monitoring programs for low-income and rural Americans such as those run by the University of Mississippi Medical Center. The goal is to lower readmissions and improve patient outcomes. The proposal still needs to be formalized so it would be 2019 at earliest. POLITICO Morning eHealth, Clarion-Ledger, Mobihealthnews

NHS Digital’s 150,000 patient data breach originated in a coding error in the SystmOne EHR used by GPs. Through the error by TPP, SystmOne did not recognize the “type 2 opt-out” for use of individual data in clinical research and planning purposes. This affected records after 31 March 2015. This breach also affects vendors which received the data, albeit unknowingly, but the duration of the breach makes it hard to put the genie back in the bottle, which NHS Digital would like to do. Inforisktoday, NHS Digital release

Unstructured data in EHRs more valuable than structured data in older adult patient health. A new study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society compared the number of geriatric syndrome cases identified using structured claims and structured and unstructured EHR data, finding that the unstructured data was needed to properly identify geriatric syndrome. Over 18,000 patients’ unstructured EHR notes were analyzed using a natural language processing (NLP) algorithm.

Cerner buying a share in population health/value-based care management company Lumeris through purchasing $266 million in stock in Lumeris parent Essence Group Holdings. The angle is data crunching to improve outcomes for patients in Medicare Advantage and other value-based plans. Lumeris also operates Essence Healthcare, a Medicare Advantage plan with 65,000 beneficiaries in Missouri. Fierce Healthcare

NHS Digital awarding £240,000 for investigating social care transformation through technology. The Social Care Digital Innovation Programme in 12 councils will be managed by both NHS and the Local Government Association (LGA). Projects to be funded span from assistive technologies to predictive analytics. Six winners from the original group of 12 after three months will be awarded up to a further £80,000 each to design and implement their solutions. New Statesman

Curious about RFID in use in healthcare, other than in asset management, access, and log in? Contactless payments is one area. As this is the first of four articles, you’ll have to follow up in Healthcare IT News

A mHealth refutation of ‘Why Telemedicine is a Bust’

July 13, 2018 | by | 1 Comment

Worth your time over a long coffee is David Doherty’s lengthy analysis of a recent article published on the CNBC website on the ‘failure’ to date of what was supposed to revolutionize healthcare, the telemedicine ‘video visit’. Mr. Doherty counters point-by-point that the concept of telemedicine is already out of date–that the future of healthcare is with mobile devices, such as the EKG-taking KardiaMobile. He points to the distrust of large telemedicine companies such as Doctor on Demand and American Well as being heavily wedded to health insurers (the prevalent business model), selling/trading patient information, and breaking the individual doctor-patient relationship.

Mr. Doherty sees the future of telemedicine enabling individual doctors to better serve their patients on several levels–video consults, monitoring, and via high-quality apps–seamlessly.  But the insurer-employer-practice model is hard to break indeed, as American Well, Teladoc, and Doctor on Demand–all of which started with a DTC model–found out. And reimbursement is improved, but discouraging. mHealth Insight

Department of Justice won’t challenge CVS-Aetna merger: report

July 13, 2018 | by

DOJ, stay away from our doors! The $69 bn CVS Health and Aetna mega-merger looks like it will go sailing down that river, if Mr. Market is right. Shares in both companies enjoyed a nice bump on today’s report that the DOJ won’t challenge this merger. The local Hartford Courant is relieved that Aetna plans to stay in their longtime HQ city (since 1853), conveniently omitting their long-standing plan to set up a big shop in NYC. CNBC

What a difference from a year ago when two mega-mega-mergers, Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna, were shot d0wn–nay, riddled with bullets–in the Senate and in two courts [TTA 9 Feb 17]. Cigna is still living with the hangover of their bad breakup with Anthem, with a fight over a nearly $1.9 bn breakup fee [TTA 17 May 17] continuing in the Delaware Chancery Court in 2019.  Cigna nixed any other insurers in a horizontal merger and sought out Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM) which was reeling a bit after its largest client (coincidentally) Anthem departed. Anthem sued its PBM, Express Scripts, for $15 billion, alleging the PBM overcharged it by $3 billion annually The merger will cost them over $550 million in transaction cost and that is just the beginning. That $1.9 bn would sure come in handy. Modern Healthcare