News roundup: docs dim on AI without purpose, ‘medtail’ a mall trend, CVS goes SDH, Kvedar to ATA, Biden ‘moonshot’ shorts out, and Short Takes

Docs not crazy about AI. And Dog Bites Man. In Medscape‘s survey of 1,500 doctors in the US, Europe, and Latin America, they are skeptical (49 percent-US) and uncomfortable (35 percent-Europe, 30 percent-Latin America). Only 20 percent fess up to actually using an AI application, and aren’t crazy about voice tech even at home. Two-thirds are willing to take a look at AI-powered tech if it proves to be better than humans at diagnosis, but only 44 percent actually believe that will happen. FierceHealthcare

This dim view, in the estimation of a chief analytics and information officer in healthcare, Vikas Chowdhry, is not the fault of AI nor of the doctors. There’s a disconnect between the tech and the larger purpose. “Without a national urgency to focus on health instead of medical care, and without scalable patient person-centered reforms, no technology will make a meaningful impact, especially in a hybrid public goods area like health.” The analogy is to power of computing–that somehow when we focused behind a goal, we were able to have multiple moon missions with computing equivalent to a really old smartphone, but now we send out funny cat videos instead of being on Mars. (And this Editor growing up in NJ thought the space program was there to market Tang orange drink.) HIStalk.

Those vacant stores at malls? Fill ’em with healthcare clinics! And go out for Jamba Juice after! CNN finally caught up with the trend, apparent on suburbia’s Boulevards and Main Streets, that clinics can fill those mall spots which have been vacated by retail. No longer confined to ‘medical buildings’, outpatient care is popping up everywhere. In your Editor’s metro area, you see CityMDs next to Walmarts, Northwell Health next to a burger spot, a Kessler Health rehab clinic replacing a dance studio, and so on. The clever name for it is ‘medtail’, and landlords love them because they sign long leases and pay for premium spots, brighten up dim concourses, and perhaps stimulate food court and other shopping traffic. Of course, CVS and Aetna spotted this about years ago in their merger but are working expansion in the other direction with expanding CVS locations and on the healthcare side, testing the addition of social determinants of health (SDH) services via a pilot partnership, Destination: Health with non-profit Unite Us to connect better with community services. This is in addition to previous affordable housing investments and a five-year community health initiative. Forbes, Mobihealthnews

ATA announces Joseph Kvedar, MD, as President-Elect. Dr. Kvedar was previously president in 2004-5 and replaces John Glaser, PhD, Executive Senior Advisor, Cerner. He will remain as Vice President of Connected Health at Partners HealthCare and Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School. A question mark for those of us in the industry is his extensive engagement with October’s Connected Health Conference in Boston, one of the earliest and now a HIMSS event. ATA’s next event is ATA2020 3-5 May 2020 in Phoenix–apparently no Fall Forum this year.

The Biden Cancer Initiative has shut down after two years in operation. This spinoff of the White House-sponsored ‘moonshot’ initiative was founded after the death of Beau Biden, son of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden. Both Mr. Biden and wife Jill Biden withdrew due to ethics concerns in April. According to Fortune, the nonprofit had trouble maintaining momentum without their presence. However, the setup invited conflict of interest concerns. The Initiative engaged and was funded by pharmas and other health tech companies, directly for Initiative support but mainly for indirect pledges to fund research. Most of these organizations do business with Federal, state and local governments. Shortly after the formal announcement, Mr. Biden the Candidate announced a rural health plan to expand a federal grant program to include rural telehealth for mental health and specialized services. Politico   But isn’t that already underway with the FCC’s Connected Care Pilot Program, coming to a vote soon? [TTA 20 June]

And…Short Takes

  • Philips Healthcare bought Boston-based patient engagement/management start-up Medumo. Terms not disclosed. CNBC
  • London’s Medopad launched with Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT) in a three-year RPM deal. DigitalHealthNews
  • Parks Associates’ Connected Health Summit will be again in San Diego 27-29 August with an outstanding lineup of speakers. More information and registration here.

And in other news, Matt Hancock holds tight to his portfolio as UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in the newly formed Government under new PM Boris Johnson. Luckier than the other 50 percent!

 

 

Events coming up soon–and in the autumn: Hunter College 13 May, Aging 2.0 London 21 May; NYeC’s November Gala, Connected Health Summit (16-18 Oct) poster call

Health Tech and the FDA: What You Need To Know, Monday 13 May, from 5-7pm is a discussion on what you need to know if your health or medtech service or device needs FDA approval. The main presentation is by Rebecca Wood, Partner at Sidley Austin LLP and former Food and Drug Administration Chief Counsel, and moderated by Charles Platkin, PhD, JD, MPH, the co-executive director of the Hunter College Center for Health Technology. Tickets are free but registration is required here (Eventbrite). Location is Hunter College, 2180 Third Avenue @ 119th Street, Main Auditorium (on 2nd Floor), NYC. Hat tip to Sonia K. Gonzalez in the Health 2.0 NYC Community.

And in London 21 May, conveniently the evening before the Digital Health and Care Congress, warm up at Aging 2.0 London to learn how age-tech “Zebras” (Z) a/k/a businesses, can take advantage of age-tech advances and hear from a panel of five from start ups, investors and government on the opportunities, challenges and realities of the UK tech business. Hurry–the website indicates only 25 tickets left. London, 21 May, 5.30 pm at Google for Startups London Campus, 4-5 Bonhill Street London.

Save the date, and plan ahead! The New York eHealth Collaborative, a regional non-profit organization that promotes the integration of health information through exchanges (HIEs), hosts an annual Gala that is one of the major events on the local New York healthcare business calendar. This year, the Gala will be the evening of 20 November at the Edison Ballroom in Manhattan. Your Editor attended in 2017 (missed 2018) and it was a memorable event. It annually honors three to four national healthcare executives who are also leaders in healthcare technology. If you are at all engaged with healthcare systems and technology in the New York metro area, it’s worth your time and fisc to attend this event to be the company of over 250 C-suite executives, leaders, and policymakers. Gala and Awards website  

Your Editor still misses their conferences, the last of which was one of the best she ever attended in (unbelievably) 2016 [TTA 17 Jan 17]. In 2014, their conference was also the site of an epic Eric Topol/Ezekiel Emanuel ‘face-off’ of radically diverging visions. That was hard to top! Their Executive Director Valerie Gray shares NYeC updates on YouTube including updates on Federal health tech initatives: TEFCA enabling nationwide health information exchange, and two similar proposed rules from CMS and ONC on interoperability, both with comment periods ending in June. 

Call for Poster Abstracts starts 27 May for the Connected Health Conference in Boston 16-18 October. Now a joint presentation of PCHAlliance and Partners HealthCare, the Call for Abstracts for Posters starts on 27 May and ends 27 June. The 2019 theme is Designing for Healthy Habits and Better Outcomes. For more information and application, see here. Winners receive a complimentary registration to the conference for the presenting author and discounted tickets for co-authors. TTA has been a past media sponsor of both the Connected Health Conference and NYeC’s Digital Health Conference.

Connected Health Conference highlights (so far): FCC’s $100 million telehealth pilot, NIH’s ‘All of Us’, MIT’s social robots integrating AI

Expanding FCC connected health programs. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in his keynote reinforced the agency’s interest and support of connected health initiatives, from rural to opioids. Most of the programs have a rural focus to bring broadband and telehealth/RPM to the ‘end of the line’ in underserved communities, something close to Mr. Pai’s heart as his parents were both rural physicians in Kansas..

  • This summer, the Connected Care Pilot Program was proposed and approved unanimously in August [TTA 9 Aug]. Funding for this is proposed at $100 million.
  • The spending cap for the rural healthcare program, which has been around since 1997’s dial-up days and now includes telemedicine and remote monitoring, was increased for 2017-2018 from  $400 million to $571 million, a 43 percent increase. The FCC has pledged to fully fund 2018 programs.
  • New initiatives were announced covering new uses for telehealth and remote patient monitoring:
    • Connected care at home via RPM as part of the Connected Care Pilot Program
    • Cancer care in partnership with the National Cancer Institute. The Launch program for rural and underserved communities aims to bring high-quality cancer care to where patients work and live through bringing together government, academia and community health providers.
    • For opioids, there are two programs. One is expanding the mapping broadband health platform to include critical drug use data. This will allow users to rapidly visualize, overlay, and analyze broadband and opioid data together at the national, state, and county level. The second is to launch a chronic pain management and opioid use challenge as part of the pilot program.  Mobihealthnews

A status report on NIH’s All of Us. Back in January as part of setting the stage for 2018, this Editor briefly mentioned the National Institute of Health’s massive All of Us program, part of the Federal Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI). All of Us needs almost all of us–their goal is to collect data on at least one million Americans for a major leap forward on data supporting population health. Dr. Dara Richardson-Heron, All of Us’ chief engagement officer, confirmed that over 100,000 participants have registered since the launch in May, with over 65,000 completing the full protocol. She mentioned that 75 percent of signups are from groups often underrepresented in modern medical research, with 50 percent from racial and ethnic minorities. The Mobihealthnews article ends on a ‘Debbie Downer’ note of doubting whether the program will reach enrollment goals, the cost will be justified, and whether the data will be kept private as promised.

MIT’s social robots may be the future of emotional support for wellbeing. MIT associate professor Cynthia Breazeal heads up the Personal Robots Group and is working on how to integrate AI into emotional robots for pediatric patients at Boston Children’s Hospital. The robots serve as a go-between child life specialists and the patient. The initial results were positive, with higher verbal scores (as a measure of engagement) than with stuffed bears or digital avatars. Professor Breazeal wants to extend the technology to older adults for wellbeing and engagement. Running against the conventional wisdom, their research found that older adults were more open to technology than the children. Following MIT’s work are companies like Hasbro and Embodied. Mobihealthnews.

News roundup: Partners HealthCare Pivot Labs, TytoCare’s CE Mark, ISfTeH’s 2019 conference calls for presentations, three Smart Ageing Prizes awarded

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”120″ /]Partners HealthCare Pivot Labs announced before the Connected Health Conference. The 20-year-old Partners Connected Health Innovation is partnering (sic) with Pune, India-based Persistent Systems. Their joint project will create a center of excellence to develop patient-centered care delivery using digital tools. Release.

TytoCare gains CE Mark. TytoCare, a remote monitoring telehealth/video consult platform which integrates peripherals for a virtual physical exam, announced it received CE Mark approval and will be rolling out in the EU. In August, they gained Health Canada approval. For our European readers heading to MEDICA 12-15 November, they will be exhibiting and speaking (link here). This Editor also noted that Jeff Cutler, their US chief revenue officer for the past three years, has moved on to be chief commercial officer for Ada Health, an AI-powered health navigation platform and symptom checker.

The 24th ISfTeH International Conference will be 19-20 March 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal in conjunction with and hosted by the Portugal eHealth Summit. The International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth has extended its call for presentation proposals to 31 October–apply here. Multiple proposals are permitted. Submitters will be notified of acceptance 5-16 November.

Also in Portugal, €50,000 in Smart Ageing Prizes awarded at AAL Forum in Bilbao. This award recognizes companies that develop solutions that address social isolation and loneliness among older adults and facilitate real world interactions to improve quality of life. The lead winner was KOMP, a one-button computer for family communication. Other winners were PlaceCal, a partnership of community organizations, charities, social housing providers, government services, health providers, and citizens, plus Refresh by How Do I? to aid those with memory loss. The annual award is a collaboration between the Active and Assistive Living (AAL) Programme based in Belgium and Nesta’s Challenge Prize Centre. Nesta website, Release (PDF). Hat tip to Dimitra Gkivalou of OPUS for the notification.

A preview of this week’s Connected Health Conference in Boston

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/CHC-logo.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]This week’s Connected Health Conference at Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center is themed around ‘Balancing Technology and the Human Element’, and over the three days of the conference the organizers will be tackling subjects such as social determinants of health, research, rapid prototyping of devices, and the very timely subject of the Apple Watch‘s ‘fall call lite’. This year day 1 on Wednesday 17 October is an ‘Immersion Day’ with separate registration (and separately priced) mini-conferences sponsored by The Society for Participatory Medicine, ECHAlliance, the VOICE Health Summit, and PCHAlliance’s ‘deep dives’ including one from Parks Associates. Days 2 and 3 on Thursday and Friday 18-19 October are fairly standard conference fare on a variety of stages and of course with a small exhibitor floor, ending after 3pm on Friday (and a good way to segue into a fall weekend in Boston).

CHC is organized by PCHAlliance, a non-profit formed by HIMSS, and incorporates the Boston conference previously organized by Partners HealthCare. Mobihealthnews offers a preview in an interview with  Senior Director of Connected Health Innovation at Partners HealthCare Kamal Jethwani, and Tufts University School of Medicine Associate Professor and Recycle Health founder Lisa Gualtieri. There is still time to register here (though hotel rooms are, as usual, scarce). (Unfortunately, Editor Donna can’t attend as she did in previous years due to other commitments.)

Late summer and early autumn event updates: Save 20% on Connected Health Summit, SEHTA Health + Space, Lilley’s talk with Ali Parsa, PATH Summit, Connected Health Conference, HealthIMPACT

It’s always a little sad to realize that summer is winding down. Some (like your Editor) stretch the summer past Labor Day (the DMZ in the US) into early autumn, taking the philosophy that woolies are way too warm till November. Here are eight substantial events on your calendar to look forward to:

Connected Health Summit, 28-30 August next week, San Diego–Readers Save 20%!

Parks Associates have offered our readers 20% off registration at ‘Connected Health, Independent Living and Engaging Consumers’, the fifth Connected Health Summit organized by Parks Associates. The conference will analyze the roles of connected health technologies and innovations in driving changes in consumer behaviors and business models. Lead speakers are from IBM Watson Health, Alarm.com, Uber Health, and Qualcomm Life. More information and registration here. As a preview, download their latest white papers:  Market Snapshot – Consumer Health Attitudes and IoT Home Living Features and Sleep Tech and IoT. #CONNHealth18

Healthcare and Space Funding Call Brief, 4 September, Cocoon Networks, 4 Christopher Street, London, EC2A 2BS, 10:00 – 13:00

Sponsored by SEHTA, The Knowledge Transfer Network, and MedCity, this will cover funding opportunities for converting innovation from the space sector, from exploration to satellite communications, to new solutions for the health sector and medical applications that improve NHS treatment and care. At this event attendees will hear about them plus have the opportunity to network with organizations from both the health and space sectors. This event is part of the MedTech London programme supported by the GLA. For further information, contact Clare Ansett, Head of Communications, SEHTA

Health Chat with Ali Parsa of Babylon Health, 10 September, RSM, 1 Wimpole Street, London (new venue!)

This Health Chat conducted by Roy Lilley of nhsmanagers.net promises to be eventful. “Has the tide turned in primary care? What effect might Babylon produce? Who are the beneficiaries? What is the future for the traditional primary care GP model?” Tickets are a modest £19.95 – £39.95 and are going quickly. Sponsored by UK HealthGateway, the publishers of nhsmanagers.net. Register here.

PATH Summit, 30 September – 2 October, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington DC

Those of us who wondered what long-time CEO Jonathan Linkous of the American Telemedicine Association has moved on to now have their answer: CEO of PATH, the Partnership for Artificial Intelligence and Automation in Healthcare. Their first Summit will attempt to answer questions like: “Is artificial intelligence, automation, robotics and sensors the future of healthcare or a passing fad?” It will cover AI innovations, best practices, and barriers to beware (boo!) Find out more and register here, but this Editor’s advice (not that it will be taken) is to drop the silly home page quote from the buffoonish and irrelevant Mark Cuban. 

Connected Health Conference, 17-19 October, Boston

The second year of the combined PCHAlliance Connected Health Conference and the Partners Connected Health Symposium at the impressive Seaport World Trade Center kicks off with co-located conferences followed by two full days of events and expo. Preview it and register here

HealthIMPACT has three events from September into December:

HealthIMPACT Midwest – Rev1 Ventures, Columbus, OH, September 27

NODE.Health Evidence in Digital Medicine Roundtable – Microsoft Technology Center Boston – October 16

NODE.Health Digital Medicine Conference – Microsoft Technology Center, New York, NY – December 5-7

CES Unveiled’s preview of health tech at CES 2018

CES Unveiled, Metropolitan Pavilion, NYC, Thursday 9 November

The Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) press preview of the gargantuan CES 9-12 January 2018 Las Vegas event was the first of several international preview ‘road shows’. It’s a benchmark of the ebb and flow of health tech and related trends on the grand scale. Gone are the flashy wearables which would change colors based on our sweat patterns and heart rate, or track the health and movement of pets. Now it’s the Big Issues of 5G, AI, machine learning, AR/VR, and smart cities. Entertainment, especially sports, are now being reinvented by all of these.

The developments this Editor gleaned from the mountain of information CEA plies us keyboard tappers that are most relevant to healthcare are:

  • Wireless 5G. As this Editor has written previously from Ericsson and Qualcomm, 5G and 5G New Radio will enable amazingly fast mobile speeds and hard-to-believe fast connectivity by 2019. It will enable IoT, self-driving cars, cars that communicate with each other, reconstruction of industrial plants, electric distribution, multimodal transport, and perhaps the largest of all, smart cities. The automation of everything is the new mantra. Accenture estimates the impact will be 3 million new jobs (nothing about loss), annual GDP increased by $500bn, and drive a $275bn investment from telecom operators.
  • AI.  Society will be impacted by machine learning, neural networks and narrow (e.g. calorie counting, diagnostics) versus general AI (simulation of human intelligence). This affects voice-activated assistants like Echo, Alexa, and Google Home (now owned by 12 percent of the population, CES survey) as well as robotics to ‘read’ us better. These conversations with context may move to relationships with not only these assistants but home robots such as from Mayfield Robotics’ Kuri (which this Editor attempted to interact with on the show floor, to little effect and disappointment). Oddly not mentioned were uses of AI in ADL and vital signs tracking interpreted for predictive health.
  • Biometrics. This will affect security first in items like padlocks (the new Bio-Key Touchlock) using fingerprint recognition and smart wallets, then facial recognition usable in a wide variety of situations such as workplaces, buildings, and smartphones. Imagine their use in items like key safes, phones, home locks, and waypoints inside the home for activity monitoring.
  • AR and VR. Power presence now puts viewers in the middle of a story that is hard to distinguish from reality. The pricing for viewers is dropping to the $200-400 range with Oculus Go and Rift. At the Connected Health Conference, this Editor saw how VR experiences could ease anxiety and disconnectedness in older people with mobility difficulties or dementia (OneCaringTeam‘s Aloha VR) or pain reduction (Cedars-Sinai tests). The other is Glass for those hands-on workers [TTA 24 July] and heads-up displays in retail.

CES is also hosting the fourth Extreme Tech Challenge. Of the ten semi-finalists showing down on 11 January, three are in healthcare: Neurotrack to assess and improve memory; Tissue Analytics that uses smartphone cameras to assess wounds and healing; and (drum roll) the winner of TTA’s Insanely Cute Factor competition, the Owlet smart sock for baby monitoring [TTA’s backfile here]. One of the judges is Sir Richard Branson, who will host the finalists on 28 February on Necker Island (which hopefully will be rebuilt by that time).

After the nearly two-hour briefing, CEA hosted a mini-show on the ground floor of the Metropolitan. (more…)

Counting down to the Connected Health Conference–readers save $100!

Connected Health Conference
25-27 October, Seaport World Trade Center, 200 Seaport Boulevard, Boston

The eighth annual Connected Health Conference, presented by the Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHAlliance) in partnership with Partners Connected Health, is coming up in just a few days.

Wednesday is packed with special sessions that cover the state of the market in wearables, artificial intelligence (AI), voice-activated technologies, the smart home (hosted by Parks Associates) and the innovation economy.

  • The Life Sciences and MedTech Roundtable will explore the emerging category of digital therapeutics, the evolution of traditional pharma and med tech business models and the impact on relationships with patients, providers and other stakeholders in healthcare.
  • Europe Meets North America will exchange views and strategies on issues like interoperability and the free flow of data across borders in an all-day workshop hosted by the ECHAlliance. (For more on the PCHAlliance’s EU efforts to ensure consistent regulations governing digital health with the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), see this release.)

Recent additions to the main conference on Thursday and Friday:

  • A new fifth track focusing on health system innovation projects, outcomes and processes with the leading partnerships that are disrupting and redesigning healthcare delivery, including Healthbox and Intermountain Healthcare, Brigham Digital Innovation Hub, Johns Hopkins Medicine Technology Innovation Center and MITRE sharing their work with Dana-Farber.
  • The new Innovation Lounge will showcase provider, industry and institutional innovation centers and novel collaborations. The Innovation Lounge stage will present groundbreaking initiatives from Intel, IBM, MDRevolution and Becton Dickinson, HHS Idea Lab, data from the IPSOS Digital Doctor Survey, and results of a recent connected health survey. Dr. Joseph Kvedar will share a preview of his new book, The New Mobile Age, How Technology Will Extend the Healthspan and Optimize the Lifespan. (more…)

Connected Health Conference 25-27 October, Boston–save $100! (updated)

Connected Health Conference, 25-27 October, Seaport World Trade Center, Boston Massachusetts

The eighth annual Connected Health Conference, is now presented by the Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHAlliance) in partnership with Partners Connected Health, with a combined and rebooted annual meeting in Boston. The largest global conference in connected health has surfed many changes from the time it was started as the mHealth Summit (and Telecare Aware was one of the first media sponsors) in Washington, DC. This year’s theme, The Connected Life Journey: Shaping Health and Wellness for Every Generation, is centered around the future of technology-enabled health, wellness and what innovation means for over 2,000 providers, researchers, healthcare executives, and developers. CHC17’s location is now in Boston’s Innovation District versus a fairly remote part of Foggy Bottom–and early fall! (For more on CHC’s evolution, see here.)

Wednesday the 25th has a full day of pre-conference specialized sessions here, such as the Society for Participatory Medicine and Parks Associates‘ workshop, with the full conference and open exhibit hall on Thursday and Friday. Continua has a running Plugfest for those involved with Continua standards on Thursday and Friday. Also on those days is CHC’s own Health Tech StandOut! Competition featuring a group of ten finalists, free for conference registrants and the Connected Health Innovation Challenge (CHIC) (information here).

For the main website and for registration, click on the ad in the sidebar. TTA Readers save $100 on registration–use code CHC17TELE100. TTA is a media sponsor of CHC17. For updates, see on Twitter #Connect2Health and @PCHAlliance

Update: The PCHAlliance published today a research paper, Personal Connected Health: The State of the Evidence and a Call to Action. This is a meta-study of 53 studies and trials for setting an initial baseline for evidence in personal connected health. The key findings on the current state will come as no surprise–that better studies are needed that show evidence in clinical trials and real-world use. Release, study (download links)

mHealth Summit now HIMSS Connected Health Conference

Another sign that mHealth is now in our rear view mirrors [TTA 24 July] is that one of the main conferences on the US and international conference calendar is changing its name. Since 2009, the mHealth Summit has closed the year. Its organizing groups have changed and it’s gone international to Europe (the recent summit in Riga). Now it has been renamed (though not on the website yet) the HIMSS Connected Health Conference-an umbrella event comprising the mHealth Summit (including the Global mHealth Forum), and two new conferences:  the Cyber Security Summit and Population Health Summit.

The shift in the industry and new concerns are clearly reflected in this reorganization. Transitions were visible last year to this Editor in covering the sessions, speaking with exhibitors and attendees. It’s not about the tech anymore, but how it fits into care models, saves money/avoids costs, improves care, improves the experience–all population health metrics–and fits with other technology and analytics. (It’s also how it fits into government payment models, an endlessly changing equation.) What is surprising is the lifting of cybersecurity to equal status, given the Hackers’ Holiday that healthcare is now (see TTA here). (Also this Editor notes that last year’s Big Buzzwords, Big Data and Analytics, has faded into where it should be–into facilitating population health and we should expect, inform data security. We also note that HIMSS has stepped forward as the organizer. HIMSS release  Telehealth & Telecare Aware has been a media partner of the mHealth Summit for most years since 2009.