A diagnosis of why digital health startups die–an old (and new) story

November 6, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/upside-down-duck.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]For years now, your Editors have championed integration of data and system interoperability–search on these terms and you’ll find a wealth of articles and views. This Editor also included how data is integrated in patient records as the Fifth Big Question (FBQ) in 2012 [TTA 8 Aug 13]. Many digital health companies, not just startups, have failed at the data integration (and security) tasks, whether with EHRs, hubs, billing and practice management systems or with other devices. (Let us not forget that the initial impetus for Continua back in 2007, the US state/regional HIXs and for HL7 now, was to have common data and interchange standards.)

So there’s no real element of surprise here by John Sung Kim’s pleading in TechCrunch re ‘integrating into legacy systems’ and the troubles his own startup DoctorBase encountered in what he tactfully puts ‘political and technical hurdles’ encountered. But then the velvet gloves come off about EHRs and their less-than-scrupulous idea of ‘partnerships’. (more…)

Integrating inexpensive lab testing, imaging to EHR–and vice versa

August 28, 2015 | by

In the Dr Eric Topol patient-driven world, personal lab testing would be walk in, keep retail hours and not even need a doctor’s order. That is the model for Theranos, a well-funded low cost blood testing company operating 43 centers in California, Arizona (no doctor order needed) and one Pennsylvania Walgreens. Their latest alliance is with EHR physician practice giant Practice Fusion, which claims about 112,000 doctors actively using its cloud-based, ad supported platform, claims to be the fastest growing US EHR with at present 100 million patient records. The Theranos reporting app, which also connects patients with doctors who can help interpret the results (MD Connect) integrates with other EHRs (though not listed) and now the results will also show in their Practice Fusion patient record. Practice Fusion is also integrating imaging center RadNet‘s results.

Since the late 2000s, Practice Fusion has historically been the game changer in cost (one of the first in the cloud) and in catering to smaller practices. They are good at managing their hype, but as Neil Versel points out, there’s been a CEO ‘change-lobsters-and-dance’, there are questions about revenue and their awaited IPO seems far away, especially given the recent market upset. Hospital EHRs Cerner, Epic and NextGen now all have lower-cost practice versions that integrate with hospital versions. An American College of Physicians (ACP) 2014 survey identified that Practice Fusion is third (and tied with others) among most used practice EHRs behind Epic and eClinical Works, though strongest in solo practices. On the polar opposite of Mr Versel’s skeptical article is this breathless Forbes piece which confuses partnerships with acquisitions. Perhaps self-made billionaire Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes may decide to buy Practice Fusion!

Unicorns to Series A–health tech funding gained in (perhaps) the nick of time

August 25, 2015 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/1107_unicorn_head_mask_inuse.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Money, money everywhere–unicorns get the headlines, but the companies are still (largely) small

Up until early August, this Editor would have assumed that our Readers would look at this funding roundup as a bracing windup to a largely positive eight months and a veritable Corvette Summer for healthcare technology funding. We may have to give back the keys a little sooner than we imagined. Will the dropping market affect digital health as 2008-9 did–‘out of gas’ for years? Or will it barely affect our motoring onward? Despite the Dow Jones average hitting an 18 month low today, we hope it’s closer to the latter than the former. though the new and big entrant to digital health investing is the country most affected, China.

Our roundup of the August Action includes ZocDoc, Fitbit, Alphabet, PillPack, Owlet and more, along with a few comments:

**ZocDoc, a NYC-based online medical care appointment service that matches patients with doctors by location and schedule, had the most sensational round with last week’s Series D funding of $130 million, giving it a valuation of $1.8 bn. It took over a year after the filing (June 2014) and was led by two foreign funds (London-based Atomico and Edinburgh-based Baillie Gifford) with additional funding from Founders Fund, which previously participated in raises of $95 million.

Though it claims 60 percent coverage in the US  and ‘millions of users’ (numbers which have been quoted for some years), ZocDoc won’t disclose profitability nor volume–metrics that would be part of any IPO.

Direction? Points given for deciphering this windy statement (quoted from Mobihealthnews): (more…)

Telemedicine: critical massing or déjà vu, dear Humans, too?

August 4, 2015 | by

A veritable blitz of telemedicine advocacy articles have appeared in the past week in leading healthcare and business publications. All of them promote telemedicine as a mix of consumer friendly (rapid care from anywhere at relatively low cost), a solution to the paucity of primary and specialty care in rural America, and contributing to quality affordable care. They both point out the increasing acceptability of the online consult (75 percent of consumers favor in a recent Cisco survey) and by doctors (60 percent). The writers are former Senator, Majority Leader and practicing surgeon Dr Bill Frist, and Dr Boxer is the chief telehealth officer of Pager and chief medical officer of Well Via. Health Affairs (Frist) and Wall Street Journal (Boxer).

Of course, do you need a human doctor at the other end, or will Humans do? The University of Southern California has tested Ellie, a virtual human,who’s been successful at getting patients to report honestly to her–more honestly than to real people.  (more…)

Cerner win at Defense a crossroads for interoperability (US)

August 4, 2015 | by

Modern Healthcare’s analysis of the Cerner/Leidos/Accenture win of the Department of Defense (DoD) EHR contract focuses on its effect on interoperability. In their view, it’s positive in three points for active military, retirees and their dependents.

* EHR interoperability with the civilian sector is needed because 60-70 percent of the 9.6 million Military Health System beneficiaries—active duty military personnel, retirees and their families—is delivered by providers in the US private sector through Tricare, the military health insurance program.

* A major criticism by Congress and veterans’ groups of both DoD and VA is the lack of interoperability between these systems as well as civilian. Many military members change their status several times during service, and can cycle within a few years as active, Reserve, National Guard and inactive reserve. Records famously get lost, sometimes disastrously.

* It’s a boost to state health information exchanges (HIE) in states with large military bases and also for the CommonWell Health Alliance, an industry group which is establishing EHR interoperability standards.

Less optimistic are some industry observers who see the DoD contract as sidelining resources demanded by Cerner’s civilian hospital clients, and whether realistically they can develop a system to exchange data with every EHR, including dental, and e-prescribing system in the US (and probably foreign as well). Modern Healthcare

US Department of Defense picks Cerner/Leidos/Accenture for $4.3 bn EHR

July 29, 2015 | by

Breaking News Updated  The winner of the massive, potentially ten year contract for the Defense Healthcare Management System Modernization program is defense computer contractor Leidos, which brought in Cerner and Accenture Federal Systems.The DOD announcement mentions only lead contractor Leidos, interestingly under the US Navy Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, San Diego, California. The announcement was released just after 5pm EDT today.

This combination beat the Epic/IBM and the Allscripts/Computer Sciences/HP bids. According to the DOD announcement, “This contract has a two-year initial ordering period, with two 3-year option periods, and a potential two-year award term, which, if awarded, would bring the total ordering period to 10 years. Work will be performed at locations throughout the United States and overseas. If all options are exercised, work is expected to be completed by September 2025. Fiscal 2015 Defense Health Program Research, Development, Test and Evaluation funds in the amount of $35,000,000 will be obligated at the time of award.” Modern Healthcare attended the embargoed press conference this morning and adds in its article that only one-third is fixed cost, with the remainder as ‘cost plus’, which could conceivably run the contract to the $4.33 bn ceiling over the 10 years. The system will be used in 55 military hospitals and 600 clinics, with an initial operational test as early as 2016 (Washington Post) and full rollout by 2023.  Interoperability with private EHR systems was a key requirement (Healthcare IT News).Over the 18 year life cycle, the contract value could be up to $9 bn, according to the WaPo.

The race to replace DOD’s AHLTA accelerated with the final failure to launch a plan to create a joint DOD-VA EHR in March 2013 [TTA 27 July 13], though hopes revived in Congress occasionally during the past two years [TTA 31 Mar].

It is also widely interpreted as a blow to Epic, which has been defensive of late about its willingness to play in the HIT Interoperability sandbox with other EHRs; certainly it cannot make Big Blue, which would undoubtedly have found some way to sell Watson into this, happy.

POLITICO’s Morning eHealth had many tart observations today, mostly pertaining to the belief of some observers that Cerner will be strapped in meeting this Federal commitment and would find it increasingly difficult to innovate in the private sector.

Example–From Micky Tripathi, CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative: “My biggest worry isn’t that Cerner won’t deliver, it’s that DOD will suck the lifeblood out of the company by running its management ragged with endless overhead and dulling the innovative edge of its development teams. There is a tremendous amount of innovation going on in health IT right now. We need a well-performing Cerner in the private sector to keep pushing the innovation frontier. It’s not a coincidence that defense contractors don’t compete well in the private sector, and companies who do both shield their commercial business from their defense business to protect the former from the latter.”

Georgia school telemedicine clinics to access EHRs

June 11, 2015 | by

Georgia Partnership for Telehealth which has telemedicine programs at about 60 schools in Georgia, [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Georgia-Partnership-for-Telehealth.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]has joined the Georgia Health Information Network, the state-wide Health Information Exchange, according to a recent press release. This will enable participating schools to securely exchange healthcare information with more than 3600 Georgia healthcare providers and have access to an immunisation register.
“Our Rural School-Based Telehealth Center Initiative offers a number of benefits to students and families,” Sherrie Williams, Executive Director of GPT is quoted as saying.  “Students receive quality care without having to miss class.  Parents don’t have to leave work and lose wages to take their child to see the doctor. If a specialist visit is needed, it doesn’t require hours in the car to reach a large healthcare center; the child can be examined right from the school clinic.”

What’s news at the end of the week

June 11, 2015 | by

Care Innovations harmonizes seniors, Panasonic adds diabetes, Jawbone and Fitbit bite, the first EHR/PHR Hack and Concussion in Cleveland. Converging its interests in remote patient monitoring with its long-time footprint in senior housing resident monitoring (QuietCare), Intel-GE Care Innovations is testing its Health Harmony remote patient monitoring system, partnering with two California-located Front Porch communities and the Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing. The residents selected have poor chronic condition management or have returned after a discharge from a skilled nursing facility. No disclosure on projected number or duration–and it doesn’t appear that QuietCare is part of the monitoring. Release….Panasonic just bought Bayer Healthcare’s diabetes/blood glucose monitoring device unit for $1.13 billion as Bayer continues to shed non-life science businesses. While old-school prick-and-bleed monitors are being eclipsed by continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) and mobile-based devices such as Telcare in the US and in Europe, there’s plenty of market remaining in the West, and new ones in Asia and the Middle East for simple devices. It joins Panasonic’s existing blood pressure monitors. MedCityNews….Jawbone and Fitbit continue to snap at each other in court, with the former on Wednesday filing a second lawsuit on patent infringement, specifically “a wellness application using data from a data-capable band”, with the added fillip of going to the International Trade Commission, which could ban the import of Fitbit products or component parts. The 28 May lawsuit was about Fitbit’s hiring of five former Jawbone employees who allegedly stole IP. The companies between them have hundreds of patents, and as this Editor has noted in previous IP and patent troll articles, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is not especially rigorous in ensuring that patents are not overbroad. Wonderful for the IP attorneys, but not exactly what Fitbit wants as a runup to their expected IPO next week. Wall Street Journal….Now an EHR and PHR join Hackermania Running Wild. Medical Informatics Engineering reported Tuesday that in May their server was cyberattacked, exposing PHI of patients in five clients and separately information contained in the NoMoreClipboard PHR subsidiary. POLITICO reports that this is the first recorded instance of an EHR compromise. MIE Release, POLITICO Morning eHealth….If you are in the Cleveland, Ohio area and have an interest, Concussion: A National Challenge is a free, two-day event on detection and diagnosis sponsored by the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Metro Health and Taipei Medical University. Advance registration required.

Weekend Must Read: How an EHR in a teaching hospital gave a patient a 39X overdose

April 16, 2015 | by

Weekend reading and a banquet for your consideration.

Though computers can and do improve patient safety in many ways, the case of Pablo Garcia vividly illustrates that, even in one of the world’s best hospitals, filled with well-trained, careful and caring doctors, nurses and pharmacists, technology can cause breathtaking errors.

This one began when a young physician went to an electronic health record and set a process in motion that never could have happened in the age of paper.

From The Overdose: Harm in a Wired Hospital by Robert Wachter, MD (Medium.com Backchannel), Part 1 of 4

The situation is a pediatric patient with a severe chronic illness, with multiple symptoms requiring multiple medications to control, admitted to University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The article is a case history of the chain of events, both technological and human, that led to an severe overdose of a routine antibiotic medication, which the patient had already been maintained on for years, nearly killing the child. You will see, with horror, how every check-and-balance failed in the prescribing and dispensing procedure, and why.

Dr Wachter is not only chief of the medical service and chief (more…)

HIMSS’ last full day highlights company partnerships

April 15, 2015 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/himss_chicago_2015-588×337.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]It’s almost time to Say Goodbye to Sinatra’s ‘My Kind of Town’, but there’s still news: Samsung+Partners Healthcare, IMS Health, AliveCor, Interoperability≠Humana, Panasonic+Cisco

  • Samsung and Partners HealthCare announced a direct-to-mobile partnership to develop chronic care management mobile software that monitors vital signs such as blood pressure, blood glucose and weight, as well as delivers mobile patient engagement, medication adherence and wellness self-management. Clinical trial is scheduled for June. Partners has always been a pioneer in the mHealth area, but playing with Samsung, Partners is flying at a slightly higher level than with Wellocracy and certainly the late Healthrageous. Partners release, Mobihealthnews (more…)

GE moving out of the hospital EHR business–and healthcare lending?

April 15, 2015 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/2000px-General_Electric_logo.svg_.png” thumb_width=”100″ /]Updated. Spring cleaning at GE continues that may affect healthcare more than EHRs. Neil Versel catches at HIMSS, if not an exclusive, close to it, by finally getting a GE exec to admit the awful truth–that they are phasing out their Centricity Enterprise (hospital) EHR. Versel: “It’s now helping customers with a “graceful transition over a number of years,” said Jon Zimmerman, general manager of clinical business solutions at GE Healthcare.” Even more remarkable, that decision was made three years ago. MedCityNews also updated their article to highlight some of their recent problems with Intermountain Health; we’ve also noted that UCSF converted to Epic after 12 years (see our Weekend Must Read).

The GE Capital exit may affect healthcare too. The other and more major part of the spring cleaning–their exit from GE Capital with the sale/spinoff of assets over the next two years–was announced over the weekend (Bloomberg). Their Healthcare Financial Services lends to healthcare entities including hospitals, life science and in senior housing/health facilities. It also houses the Healthymagination Fund, the capital source for GE Ventures, its early stage developmental arm for healthcare, software and energy. According to The Wall Street Journal, GE will retain healthcare financing to support what it makes in its GE Healthcare unit: ultrasound, imaging, patient monitoring and diagnostics industrial equipment, down to the Vscan (yes! it’s still there). We would bet that GE Ventures is safe. But does this mean that its healthcare real estate unit within Healthcare Financial Services, which lends to senior housing, skilled nursing and other medical properties, is on the block, especially as GE this weekend completed the sale of its real estate holdings? What else, we wonder, will GE sell at the right price to pull up share price–and in the longer term, the future of its manufacturing in areas like major healthcare equipment which have been facing a declining and heavily competitive US market?

Exiting the hospital EHR business makes sense for GE, but what else will it entail? While it retained a solid footprint of vendor loyalty and satisfaction (more…)

30 ways mHealth is impacting healthcare–and EHRs need to be

April 10, 2015 | by

If EHRs were perfect, there wouldn’t be so many companies developing communication workarounds. And why does a HIT consultant play Blame The Doctor?

Practice Unite, an early-stage company fresh out of Newark (cross the Hudson, head south) that knits together patient and clinician communications in highly customized app platforms for healthcare organizations [TTA 11 Mar], has put together a thought-provoking and fully attributed list of 30 ways mHealth is impacting healthcare: the value for patients and clinicians, the need for mHealth apps as part of collaborative care platforms and communication, plus the investment trail towards digital health. Hat tip to @PracticeUnite via Twitter.

One notable point is the difficulty current systems have in integrating data and the increased administrative load (+10 percent more) physicians experience with EHRs versus paper patient records. Confirming this are two items in Thursday’s POLITICO Morning eHealth: one, the privately-driven workaround for universal health data interoperability that the CommonWell Health Alliance is seeking as a non-profit trade alliance. and two, what happened when the GE Centricity EHR used by MedStar Health group’s DC and Baltimore-area outpatient clinics crashed after a weekend upgrade and stayed down through Tuesday night. Weekend data was lost. One doctor’s reaction:

“They kept saying it would be back up in an hour, but when I left work Tuesday night it was still down.” This doctor told us that the outage was “disruptive and liberating at the same time. I wrote prescriptions on a pad for two days instead of clicking 13 times to send an e-script. And I got to talk to my patients much more than I usually do. But of course we didn’t have access to any notes or medication history, and that was problematic.” 

Now this observation is neither petty nor isolated. Last Fall we noted a JAMA study of internal medicine physicians finding that for both experienced physicians and trainees, there was a loss of time across the board in taking notes, reviewing patient data and at least one data management function was s-l-o-w-e-r. [TTA 12 Sept 14] Houston, we have a problem.

Yet there are still the ‘nothing to see here, move along’ types sailing down A River in Egypt. Others blame the victims, as in the doctors, for their cloddish unwillingness to Get With The HIT Program. (more…)

EHRs: now safety, info exchange concerns (US, AU, CA)

April 1, 2015 | by

What’s this? EHRs reducing, not increasing, safety? Reports from both the US and Australia seem to indicate another spanner (US: wrench) in the EHR works, aside from the laggardness in achieving the HITECH Act’s goals [TTA 27 Mar].

  • The Joint Commission, which is the chief US accreditation and certification body for healthcare organizations and programs, and thus to be taken very VERY seriously, released a Sentinel Event (Patient Safety Event) Alert yesterday. It warned of EHR-related adverse events affecting patient health, resulting from incorrect or miscommunicated information entered into EHRs. Interfaces built into the technology can contribute and studies have documented mixed results in the systems’ ability to detect and prevent errors. It identifies eight key factors,led by human-computer interface, workflow and communication and clinical content, that can lead to a sentinel event and three major remedy actions. While the JC does take pains to confirm the positive effects of well-designed and appropriately used EHRs, with strong clinical processes in place, it is the first ‘red flag’ this Editor can recall (more…)

Another go at a joint DOD-VA EHR? (US)

March 31, 2015 | by

As this Editor was Pondering the Squandering last week of $28 billion HITECH Act funds meant to achieve EHR interoperability but falling well short, we recalled another Big EHR Squander: the integration of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) AHLTA with the Veteran Affairs’ VistA, an iEHR effort which collapsed in February 2013 at a mere $1 billion, in addition to dysfunctional or failed upgrades in both systems at just under $4 billion [TTA 27 July 13]. For civilians, this may not sound like much for concern, but for active duty, Reserve and National Guard service members transitioning from active to civilian status (and back as they are activated), often with complicated medical histories, it means a great deal.

At least one Congressman who also happens to be a physician, Representative Phil Roe, MD (R-TN) wants to try, try again. According to Politico’s Morning eHealth of last Wednesday, his bill will offer “a $50 million prize to the creator of an integrated military-veteran medical records system.” plus another $25 million over five years to operate it. DOD is moving forward with an $11 billion bid for a new EHR, but Rep. Roe’s staff issued a statement that differs with the DOD’s–that the new EHR still has no provision for secure and relatively seamless interoperability with the VA system to streamline the transfer of claims. We wish the best to Rep. Roe, and hope he can overcome Congressional inertia and two huge bureaucracies amidst doubts on the DOD’s EHR award process. FierceEMR on Roe bill, award process and adoption concerns by GAO and others. Also Anne Zieger in Healthcare Dive, iHealthBeat.

Pondering the squandering redux: $28 billion gone out the HITECH window

March 27, 2015 | by

In 2009, the US Congress enacted the HITECH Act, as part of a much broader recovery measure (ARRA or ‘the stimulus’), authorizing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to spend up to $35 billion to expand health IT and create a network of interoperable EHRs. Key to this goal of interoperability and seamless sharing of patient information among healthcare providers was achieving stages of ‘meaningful use’ (MU) with these EHRs in practice, to achieve the oft-cited ‘Triple Aim‘ of improved population health, better individual care, delivered at lower per capita cost. Financial incentives through Medicaid and Medicare EHR programs were delivered through multiple stages of MU benchmarks for hospitals and practices in implementing EHRs, information exchange, e-prescribing, converting patient records, security, patient communication and access (PHRs).

Five years on, $28 billion of that $35 billion has been spent–and real progress towards interoperability remains off in the distance. This Editor has previously noted the boomlet in workarounds for patient records like Syapse and OpenNotes. Yet even the progress made with state data exchanges (e.g. New York’s SHIN-NY) has come at a high cost–an estimated $500 million, yet only 25 percent are financially stable, according to a RAND December 2014 study. (more…)

EHRs can’t exchange patient records? $$ in workarounds.

March 17, 2015 | by

Some of the Excedrin/Panadol Headaches (#11, #14, #23 and #54) in healthcare are around the very ‘miracle technology’ that was supposed to make it all seamless, non-duplicative, time/cost-effective and coast-to-coast–EHRs. The exchange of patient records between hospitals, within health systems between sites and with medical practices plus vice versa–works haltingly if at all. It works best within well-established, highly integrated delivery systems –the VA, DOD, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser, Geisinger, Intermountain Healthcare. But once you’re away from it–good luck. Where are the problems? The closed standards of the major hospital EHRs–Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, McKesson and brethren; the extreme customization most health systems demand (nay, a major Epic selling point!); structured versus unstructured data and how handled; a lack of a secure interoperability standard are but a few. Where is the gold? Getting patient health records exchanged, accessible and transportable, among systems that were essentially designed not to speak with each other. (more…)