TTA’s May kickoff: is Oracle back from debt brink or in deeper? Deep learning AI vs. LLMs, chatbots take a whack with a PA lawsuit and AMA’s Congress appeal; ad trackers, M&A, more!

May 8, 2026 | by | No Comments

8 May 2026

AI dominated this week in multiple ways. Dr. Eric Topol opined on how validated deep learning AI use in medical imaging is hardly seeing any takeup by companies while gen AI and LLM chatbots get the funders and founders. Chatbots took a beating, with Character.AI being sued by Pennsylvania and AMA lobbying Congress for mental health bot guardrails. Is Oracle back from the debt brink with PIMCO’s bond fund financing for a data center or in deeper? Problematic ad trackers appear on state HIX websites, a buy and a Series B round it out.

Please feel free to comment on the articles and pass along this Alert. Let me know if this is worth it to you!

News roundup: Amwell narrows Q1 and full year losses, AMA urges Congress for guardrails on mental health chatbots, hospital at home study finds lower ED visits and lower hospital mortality

Character.AI sued by Pennsylvania on its chatbots posing as licensed physicians and psychiatrists

Oracle steps back from the AI debt brink with $16.3B financing for MI data center, the Project Jupiter ‘clean energy’ experiment in NM, and a major Federal DOW contract

Chutes & Ladders: Ad trackers still on healthcare websites after lawsuits, FTC; the US Navy adds WHOOPs it up and expands Talkspace; HealthVerity to buy Symphony Health; Nervonik’s $52.5M Series B

Is the health tech business neglecting validated deep learning medical AI models versus less proven LLMs and generative AI?

Last Week’s Headlines

A quickie news roundup: ChatGPT for Clinicians unveiled, UHG to invest $1.5B in AI, Aidoc raises $150M, TriFetch raises $1.9M pre-seed, Boehringer Ingelheim & Eko Health partner on canine heart murmur detection

Breaking: OpenEvidence app access terminated in the UK and EU

(Updated) Medtronic reports corporate IT systems cyberattacked. 500K UK Biobank records breached in inside job. Are med device and research organizations the new hacker happy hunting ground?

‘Behind the Emergency’–a well-done presentation about and approach to a specialized healthcare market

 * * *
Advertise on Telehealth and Telecare Aware
Support not only a publication but also a well-informed international community.

Contact Editor Donna for more information.

Help Spread the News

Please tell your colleagues about this free news service and, if you have relevant information to share with the rest of the world, please let me know!

Donna Cusano, Editor In Chief
donna.cusano@telecareaware.com

Is the health tech business neglecting validated deep learning medical AI models versus less proven LLMs and generative AI?

May 6, 2026 | by | No Comments

Eric Topol, MD answers his own startling question, contrasting medical imaging with decision support for both clinicians and patients. His recent Substack ‘Ground Truths’ article (link below, free access) will make you think harder about what is being sold as ‘medical AI’ and what has actually been validated through multiple studies. 

Imaging AI is the Undiscovered–but Mapped Out–Country. Deep Learning (DL)-based AI models developed using medical imaging have substantial validation over more than a decade, and they are accelerating. There have been multiple validated studies using information from retinal scans as predictors of future medical conditions such as Parkinson’s, heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer’s Disease. The retina is apparently a diagnostic gateway to nearly every organ; many studies have focused on it as scans are fairly routine. Other AI-assisted models have used deep learning to detect multiple health conditions: thymus, cardiovascular conditions, through mammography, colonoscopy, and importantly, detecting pancreatic and other cancers from computed tomography (CT) images done for other reasons. “Opportunistic AI” alone is being used in detection for a long list of health conditions. Dr. Topol’s point is that none of these new diagnostic methods have made it into standard practice, despite being used in other countries like China (PANDA) and with at least four companies developing uses for retinal AI to detect specific diseases.

Medical LLMs and Generative AI, on the other hand, are building what may be Castles In The Air.  Seemingly everyone is developing, funding, and selling a LLM-based chatbot, LLM-aided diagnosis, management, patient triage, and direct patient use. Unfortunately, they’re being sold without real, continuous evidence through rigorous studies over time. What studies there are, are generally simulations, small-scale studies, or individual case studies which need further real-world validation. The clinical trials, the infrastructure, and the monitoring for safety, effectiveness, and cost are simply not there yet, and it’s past time. (Raj Manrai quoted in Science). In addition, generative AI keeps changing making studies harder to track results over time. Dr. Topol’s conclusion: “In summary, there is very little evidence for LLMs benefiting patients or doctors for health outcomes.”

That is not to say, as Dr. Topol does, that AI won’t grow in usefulness in areas such as medical research and chart summaries, discharge instructions, translations, administrative work such as documentation of billing codes, clinical workflow, and insurance authorization. AI has already worked its way into RCM where no respectable company does not have an AI-enabled tool. The American Medical Association (AMA) study he cites indicates both current use and growing acceptance by physicians. (To this Editor, it resembles the telehealth usage graphs of a decade ago, and she expects the same progress.) 

He calls it a paradox between imaging AI and LLMs. This Editor calls it a shame that healthcare technology and investment keep chasing what’s easy, ‘sexy’, and can generate fast revenue/ROI. Not what is more difficult but proven, and that can have a potential huge impact on health outcomes.

Dr. Topol’s closing is fitting:

Let’s fix this paradox of medical AI implementation. It’s a two-fold and major undertaking. Amping up the use of medical AI where it’s proven and performing the clinical trials required to justify wide-scale adoption where pivotal evidence is lacking.

 
The Paradox of Medical AI Implementation

Even famous doctors have their identity stolen: Dr. Eric Topol “authors” an apparently fake, AI-generated paper

April 23, 2026 | by | No Comments

And now, it’s author names on research papers being spoofed. Eric Topol, MD, the noted physician, cardiologist, health tech maven, and director/founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, just experienced Grand Theft Auto on his identity. He was listed as the lead author of a paper entitled “Implementation Science for AI Integration in Digital Health Systems”, along with five other author/contributors. It was published in the “Journal of Digital Health Implementation” by Ellinger Publishing Media on 29 March.

Except, as Dr. Topol wrote in a post on his Substack blog, “Ground Truths“, he never wrote it.

From his post along with a screenshot of the ‘paper’ and a link:

“This is a FRAUDULENT paper, AI-generated. My name was used as an author and I had nothing to do with it, never saw it until today

The “Editors” Angelo Rossi Mori, David Mensah, and Zarnie Khadjesari and this “Journal” should be reported.”

Substack readers are often commenters, and your Editor is no exception. So she did some digging and commented on Dr. Topol’s post [Editor’s further notes in brackets]:

Dr. Topol, the link on your post [he provided a link to the publication] is not only going nowhere (to blank screen/’this site can’t be reached”), but also trying to reach the e-PubMed.co.uk site by entering it directly goes to the same screen. When I searched under Ellinger Publishing in Google and the same URL came to the top under them [see screenshot right below], the link equally does not work. The UK E-PubMed Central is now Europe PMC concentrating on UK/EU research and partners with the US NIH PubMed site on certain papers, from what I have read online.

Gemini came up with this about Ellinger: “Ellinger Publishing Media: An independent academic publisher specializing in open-access journals, specifically focusing on artificial intelligence, medicine, social sciences, and interdisciplinary research.” Again, links in the AI summary to e-pubmed.co.uk do not work. My conclusion is that this is a total spoof/hack using a URL similar to the former UK E-PubMed and this Ellinger Publishing is a fraud. I don’t know how you picked it up but it’s no longer reachable.

But, as they say on direct response TV…there’s more. I replied to my own comment, “The paper has a link [that goes to another website], Zenodo. It says clearly that it has been withdrawn from there too. Reason for removal—copyright infringement.”

https://zenodo.org/records/19337363

So what happened? Its withdrawal is as mysterious as its appearance.

At this point, we can draw only certain conclusions.

When research papers, apparently AI-generated, are being fraudulently posted with names as prominent as Dr. Eric Topol’s plus five other authors (who may or may not be real–have not checked), for content that is clearly academic-appearing (apparently a meta-analysis), anyone who publishes or has a public persona is in trouble. Big trouble. And with little defense against this happening.

But even worse, unless the Ellinger Publishing Media site itself has been hacked, this may well be a fraudulent publisher claiming open access journal status.

  • My prompt on Gemini, FWIW, indicates that Ellinger Publishing is a ‘vanity press’ for books, not a journal publisher; read for yourself here. So Gemini contradicted itself when asked the prompt differently.
  • The journal is fake as well. A search on Google on the name gives you a link to a website called Conference.Researchbib.com, but when you click on the link for the journal, it goes to the same E-PubMed UK ‘this site can’t be reached’ URL as above.

Open access journals per se are controversial enough since they exist to publish non-peer reviewed materials. For studies in progress, this is valid as a platform for further discussion and research. But it doesn’t and cannot carry the weight, the rigor of peer review. We all know that less than rigorous studies used by less than scrupulous companies have leveraged open access journals for sales/survival proof purposes.

Fraudulent open access journals on mysterious websites that spoof the names of once-authentic journal websites just take it one step further. One wonders how long has this been going on.

This Editor invites Readers to give their perspective on this matter.

After the COVID Deluge: a Topol-esque view of what (tele)medicine will look like

April 10, 2020 | by

A typically cheery view by Eric Topol, MD of what medical practice will look like after COVID is over. With the full court press to go remote in hospitals and practices worldwide, telehealth and telemedicine has gone fast forward in a matter of under two months. But what will it look like after it’s over? Most of what the good doctor is prognosticating will be familiar to our Readers who’ve followed him for years–certainly he was right on mobile health overall and especially AliveCor/Kardia Mobile— but not so on point with mobile body scanners (anyone remember VScan?)

When the high tide recedes, what will the beach look like?

  • “Telemedicine will play the role of the first consultation, akin to the house-call of yore.” (Terminology note–interesting that Dr. T still uses ‘telemedicine’ versus ‘telehealth’–Ed.)
  • Chatbots will serve as screeners–once they are proven to be effective (a ways to go here, as the Babylon debate rages on)
  • Smartphones will be the hub, connecting with all sorts of monitoring devices (the ‘connected health’ Tyto Care and Vivify Health model–which makes the Editor’s former company, the late Viterion Digital Health, even more of a pioneer that died crossing the Donner Pass of 2016)
  • Smartwatches are also part of this hub (this Editor remains a skeptic) 
  • Now is the time to harness technology by both health systems and individual practices, but multiple barriers remain. (This Editor can speak to the difficulties for both primary care and specialty practices in not only practice but also reimbursement–and acceptance by patients.) Device expense is also a problem for the non-affluent.

As to the rest, it is pretty much what we’ve heard from Dr. T before.  The Economist

Your Editor will add:

  • Easy to use, secure platforms that don’t put users through multiple security steps remain a concern for users. This Editor’s concern is that easy to use = insecure. Skype and Zoom are inherently insecure–Skype’s user unfriendliness and insecurity outside enterprise platforms and Zoom’s major security problems on its platform and user flaws are well-known (ZDNet).
  • Reimbursement, again! CMS has done a creditable job in broadening reimbursement for telehealth a/v and telephonic services, but coding remains a nightmare for practices struggling to remain open and with some lights on. After COVID, will CMS and HHS get religion, or put it right back in its rural bottle? Covered in the CARES Act passed at the close of March, $200 million sounds like a lot from the FCC to bankroll telecom equipment for providers, but these funds will go quickly. At least they are not delayed in endless rule making, as the Connected Care Pilot Program has been for two years. Mobihealthnews 

Roy Lilley’s tart-to-the-max view of The Topol Review on the digital future of the NHS

February 14, 2019 | by

Well, it’s a blockbuster–at least in length. Over 100 pages long, and in the PDF form double-paged, which will be a tough slog for laptop and tablet readers. It’s Eric Topol’s view of the digital future of the NHS and it’s…expansive. In fact, you may not recognize it as the healthcare world you deal with every day.

Our UK readers may not be so familiar with Dr. Topol, but here you can get a good strong dose of his vision for the NHS’ future as delivered (electronic thunk) to Secretary Hancock. I haven’t read this, but Roy Lilley has. You should read his 12 February e-letter if you haven’t already.

Here is a choice quote: It’s a mixture of science faction, future-now-ism and away-with-the fairies.

Here’s some background. The Vision’s been around for awhile. Dr. Topol thinks and talks Big Picture, in Meta and MegaTrends. His view is patient-driven, self-managed, with their genomic sequenced and at their fingertips, with the doctor empowered by their records, his/her own digital tools for physical examination, with AI to scan the records and empower a partnership model of decision-making.

Topol In Person is quite compelling. This Editor’s in-person take from the 2014 NY eHealth Collaborative meeting is a review of vintage Topol. His expansive, hopeful view was in contrast to the almost totalitarian view (and it is fully meant) of Ezekiel Emanuel, with his vision of the perfectly compliant, low choice patient, and squeezed like a lemon medical system. At that time, I concluded:

One must be wary of presenters and ‘big thinkers’–and these doctors define the latter, especially Dr Emanuel who looks in the mirror and sees an iconoclast staring back. Fitting evidence selectively into a Weltanschauung is an occupational hazard and we in the field are often taken with ‘big pictures’ at the expense of what can and needs to be done now. Both Drs Topol and Emanuel, in this Editor’s view, have gaps in vision.

A year later, I reviewed his article The Future of Medicine Is in Your Smartphone which came out at the time of ‘The Patient Is In.’ which was quite the succès d’estime among us health tech types. “The article is at once optimistic–yes, we love the picture–yet somewhat unreal.” It seemed to fly in the face of the 2015 reality of accelerating government control of medicine (Obamacare), of payments, outcomes-based medicine which is gated and can be formulaic, and in the Editor’s view, a complete miss on the complexities of mental health and psychiatry.

Back to Roy Lilley:

There is an etherial quality to this report, spiritual, dainty. The advisory panel is 70 strong.

Studies and citations galore, from the world’s top research organizations. The advisory board–I believe well over 70–there’s not a soul down in the trenches running a hospital. Government, academics, and a few vendors (Babylon Health, natch). A lot of emphasis on AI, genomics, and training for ‘collective intelligence’. After reading but a few dizzying, dense pages, I admire the vision as before, but wonder again how we get from here to there.

Roy’s essay is a must read to bring you back to reality. 

Digital health versus eHealth: ‘here we go again’ with the confusion and the differences. Plus Women in eHealth (JISfTeH)

February 7, 2019 | by

Editor Donna (and Editor Steve before her) always likes a good dust-up about terminology. One of the former’s pet peeves is the imprecise usage of telemedicine (virtual visits) versus telehealth (remote patient monitoring of vital signs); she will concede that the differences have been so trampled on that telemedicine has nearly faded from use.

The Journal of the International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (JISfTeH) makes a grand attempt to parse the differing definitions of digital health and eHealth in their opening editorial of this month’s (24 Jan) issue. eHealth has fallen so far from use that the few times one does see it is in associations such as ISfTeH and the New York eHealth Collaborative. Even the World Health Organization, which has always been a fair arbiter for the industry, defined eHealth back in the salad days of 2005 as “the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for health”–broad, but workable. After a witty aside in defining digital health as “an area of healthcare focused entirely on fingers and toes” (plus), and examining the overly broad definitions of Eric Topol and Paul Sonnier, the authors Richard E. Scott and Maurice Mars seem to settle on this: that while digital health is given a  much broader but nebulous definition (to the point of linguistic absurdity cited in Mesko et al.), and may incorporate related technologies like genomics (another poorly defined term) and ‘big data’, it would not work without that ICT. And that at least there’s a settled definition for eHealth, as stated above, for which this Editor assumes we should be happy. In the author’s closing, “Will we be sufficiently motivated to rise to such a challenge-globally agreed universal definitions? If not ……here we go again …..”

This month’s journal theme is also Women in eHealth, with articles on Brazilian eHealth distance education, digital technology in midwifery practice, and how online social networks can work for drug abuse treatment referral. There’s also a change in format, with article links opening to full PDFs of each article.

Babylon as AI diagnostician that is ’10 times more precise than a doctor’

January 18, 2017 | by | 2 Comments

The NHS announced at the top of this month that it would test Babylon Health‘s ‘chatbot’ app for the next six months to 1.2 million people in north London. During the call to the 111 medical hotline number, they will be prompted to try the app, which invites the user to text their symptoms. The app decides through the series of texts, through artificial intelligence, in minutes how urgent the situation is and will recommend action to the patient up to an appointment with their GP, or if acute to go to Accident & Emergency (US=emergency room or department) if the situation warrants. It will launch this month in NHS services covering Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey, and Islington, London. TechCrunch.

The NHS’ reasons for “digitising” services through a pilot like Babylon’s app is to save money by reducing unnecessary doctor appointments and pressure on A&Es. It provides a quick diagnosis that usually directs the patient to self-care until the health situation resolves. If not resolved or obviously acute, it will direct to a GP or A&E. The numbers are fairly convincing: £45 for the visit to a GP, £13 to a nurse and £0 for the app use. According to The Telegraph, the trial is facing opposition by groups like Patient Concern, the British Medical Association’s GP committee, and Action Against Medical Accidents. There is little mention of wrong diagnoses here (see below). The NHS’ app track record, however, has not been good–the NHS Choices misstep on applying urgency classifications to a ‘symptom checker’ app–and there have been incidents on 111 response.

Babylon’s founder Ali Barsa, of course, is bullish on his app and what it can do. (more…)

The global ‘state of telehealth’ according to Dr Topol: work in progress

July 20, 2016 | by

Are we approaching a ‘tipping point’ in telehealth and telemedicine within 5 to 10 years? While telemedicine (doctor-patient, hospital-hospital video consults) and even telehealth (patient monitoring generally at home) are becoming more common, Drs Eric Topol and E. Ray Dorsey see the tip coming within the decade in their New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM July, subscription required) article, moving from the early adopters to the majority. But there are still substantial barriers: interstate licensing, fragmented care, spotty state and Federal reimbursement including Medicare, wireless coverage enabling mobile monitoring, the future of the doctor-patient relationship, even the potential for narcotic abuse. They also need to move into the private sector. Somewhat misleading are the 2 million telehealth visits counted by the Veterans Health Administration; it includes the larger programs in store-and-forward information transfer and clinical video consults versus in-home telehealth.

Three trends they see paving the way to ubiquity:

  1. Moving beyond providing access to being driven by convenience and reducing cost
  2. Not just for acute conditions, but for monitoring chronic and episodic conditions (although vital signs monitoring, which is the core meaning of telehealth, has been doing so since the early 2000s)
  3. Migration from hospitals and satellite clinics to in-home and mobile applications

While the two doctors caution on risks, including breaches, they see telemedicine and telehealth increasing the delivery of care in the next ten years and spreading globally. Healthcare Informatics, Qmed

A weekend potpourri of health tech news: mergers, cyber-ransom, Obama as VC?

July 1, 2016 | by

As we approach what we in these less-than-United States think of as the quarter-mile of the summer (our Independence Day holiday), and while vacations and picnics are top of mind, there’s a lot of news from all over which this Editor will touch on, gently (well, maybe not so gently). Grab that hot dog and soda, and read on….

Split decision probable for US insurer mergers. The Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna mergers will reduce the Big 5 to the Big 3, leading to much controversy on both the Federal and state levels. While state department of insurance opposition cannot scupper the deals, smaller states such as Missouri and the recent split decision from California on Aetna-Humana (the insurance commissioner said no, the managed care department said OK) plus the no on the smaller Anthem-Cigna merger are influential. There’s an already reluctant Department of Justice anti-trust division and a US Senate antitrust subcommittee heavily influenced by a liberal think tank’s (Center for American Progress) report back in March. Divestment may not solve all their problems. Doctors don’t like it. Anthem-Cigna have also had public disagreements concerning their merged future management and governance, but the betting line indicates they will be the sacrificial lamb anyway. Healthcare Dive today,  Healthcare Dive, CT Mirror, WSJ (may be paywalled) Editor’s prediction: an even tougher reimbursement road for most of RPM and other health tech as four companies will be in Musical Chairs-ville for years.

‘thedarkoverlord’ allegedly holding 9.3 million insurance records for cyber-ransom. 750 bitcoins, or about $485,000 is the reputed price in the DeepDotWeb report. Allegedly the names, DOBs and SSNs were lifted from a major insurance company in plain text. This appears to be in addition to 655,000 patient records from healthcare organizations in Georgia and the Midwest for sale for 151 – 607 bitcoins or $100,000 – $395,000. The hacker promises ‘we’re just getting started’ and recommends that these organizations ‘take the offer’. Leave the gun, take the cannoli.  HealthcareITNews  It makes the 4,300 record breach at Massachusetts General via the typical unauthorized access at a third party, once something noteworthy, look like small potatoes in comparison. HealthcareITNews  Further reading on hardening systems by focusing on removing admin rights, whitelisting and endpoint security. HealthcareDataManagement

Should VistA stay or go? It looks like this granddaddy of all EHRs used by the US Veterans Health Administration will be sunsetted around 2018, but even their undersecretary for health and their CIO seem to be ambivalent in last week’s Congressional hearings. According to POLITICO’s Morning eHealth newsletter, “The agency will be sticking with its homegrown software through 2018, at which point the VA will start creating a cloud-based platform that may include VistA elements at its core, an agency spokesman explained.” Supposedly even VA insiders are puzzled as to what that means, and some key Senators are losing patience. VistA covers 365 data centers, 130 separate VistA systems, and 834 custom installations, and is also the core of many foreign government systems and the private Medsphere OpenVista. 6/23 and 6/24

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Overrun-by-Robots1-183×108.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Dr Eric Topol grooves on ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ of robotics and AI. (more…)

NIH funds in vivo CTE research with $16 million–$0 from NFL; “Concussion” released

December 23, 2015 | by

CTE research funded–and at a US theater near you Christmas Day

In the run-up to the holidays, our Readers may have missed another gift to those concerned with brain health–the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarding of a major grant to fund research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) to diagnose victims in vivo (while still alive). Awarded by NIH in conjunction with the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke, the $16 million will go to researchers from Boston University, the Cleveland Clinic, Banner Alzheimer’s Institute (Arizona) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Leading the team is Robert Stern MD, Boston University professor and director of clinical research for BU’s Alzheimer’s disease and CTE centers, and a researcher we’ve followed since his June 2013 presentation at NYC’s German Center. According to a report in sports network ESPN’s ‘Outside the Lines’, the National Football League (NFL) refused to fund this research from their long term $30 million grant to the NIH due to Dr Stern’s alleged lack of objectivity; according to ESPN, a NIH official told ‘Outside the Lines’ that “the NFL’s $30 million gift was contingent on the league being able to veto decisions on projects that the money was funding.” Seemingly outside this research is another area of interest to Dr Stern–why some athletes have CTE, and others do not, as discussed in the May 2014 NYC MedTech ‘Brain Games’ presentation attended by this Editor.  Medical-Net (BU release), New York Times

Sports CTE and brain injury is back on the front pages with the release of the film ‘Concussion’, starring Will Smith as foundational researcher Bennet Omalu MD, the then-Pittsburgh forensic pathologist who uncovered CTE after performing a detailed brain examination of Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who died of a heart attack aged 50 in 2002. His 2005 case report with others from University of Pittsburgh in Neurosurgery was the kick-off (so to speak) and so enraged the NFL that they attempted to have it withdrawn from the journal. In this interview with Medscape EIC Eric Topol MD, Dr Omalu discusses (more…)

Silicon Valley’s betting on ‘citizen doctors’, ‘citizen science’ and useful data

December 23, 2015 | by

A fascinating and slightly cynical overview of Silicon Valley’s ideological view of health tech that will fix our ‘deeply flawed healthcare system’ and what is getting funded (or not) is in next month’s San Francisco magazine. It profiles the ‘citizen doctor’ founders of vital signs ‘tricorder’ Scanadu (Sam–who’s not often mentioned–and Walter De Brouwer), bacteria tracker uBiome, ‘personal data recorder’ and experience charter We Are Curious (founded by Linda Avey, a long-departed co-founder of 23andme) and touches on the Theranos debacle. While these stories are bracing and in the instance of the De Brouwers, courageous, the notion of ‘citizen science’ (defined as direct-to-consumer health data) and its companion, Dr Eric Topol’s patient-centered/controlled medicine, has its drawbacks, viewed through the slightly gimlety ‘digital doctor’ eye of UC San Francisco’s Dr Robert Wachter. “The overarching message—not just from Theranos but from other companies struggling to get a toehold—is that, ultimately, the laws of economic gravity hold. The companies will have to produce products that add real value, either to patients or to payers. If they don’t, the market—or the regulators—won’t treat them kindly.” Flatly, there aren’t enough Quantified Selfers right now to support these companies. And Mr Market is a hard master. 23andme is back in the good graces of the FDA after a two-year scuffle and back doing direct response TV here in the US. Scanadu’s two products, Vitals (formerly Scout) and Urine are still not through the long slog of FDA clearance. The jury’s out on Theranos. And all these companies, including ‘unicorn’ Theranos, are bleeding cash and nowhere near turning a profit. ModernLuxury. Hat tip to Dr Topol via Twitter, who had a patient-centered conversation with Dr Wachter that we covered back in September.  Another recent podcast with Dr Wachter is here (Community Health Center radio).

Update: ‘Citizen science’ is nothing new, as revealed by the Science Museum (London)–it’s over 300 years old. While it entered the OED in 2014, ‘in 1715, Edmund Halley used Philosophical Transactions to ask colleagues to help him observe a total solar eclipse, prompting observers from all over the country to respond.’ Other examples are from Benjamin Robins in the same publication in 1749 on fireworks, Charles Darwin and evolution, to the present day. The difference is the flow–similar to what we now call crowdsourcing versus the individual using the data to affect their care.

 

Taking our own transformation medicine: how to integrate digital health into healthcare

October 8, 2015 | by

An antidote to Dan Munro’s top-down and pessimistic vision of healthcare transformation (having much in common with Ezekiel Emanuel’s, see below) are two parallel prescriptions on integrating digital health into our healthcare systems and maybe, just maybe, transforming it.

The first acknowledges basic reality: we have all the health tech and funding we need right now. We are way beyond the fictional one device, app or service that will deus ex machina and transform healthcare. What we in the field need to do is integrate them, measure (and integrate) the data, get these systems and services into the home and–interestingly–seek out atypical early adopters. Your users/patients may not be the sexiest market for cocktail party chatter–older adults, the developmentally or cognitively disabled–and you’ll have to think beyond smartphone apps, but here is an opportunity to make an impact on a real, large, high-need and open market which can improve care, outcomes and reduce/redistribute cost over time. How The Digital Health Revolution Will Become A Reality (TechCrunch) Hat tip to reader Paul Costello of Viterion Digital Health.

The second analyzes a key point often neglected in healthcare discussions but well-known to students of behavior, like marketers: the patient’s perception of value. (more…)

Digital agenda items: past and future

June 29, 2015 | by

There’s much to learn about future digital trends from an analysis of what’s happening in South Korea. For this, the Korea Communications Report provides fascinating reading. For example, the bar charts on page 56 (yes it is worth scrolling that far) demonstrate the huge surge in video usage towards hte end of last year as 4G became established. As Prof Mike Short (for whom I am grateful for this and other pointers in this post) commented “It may prompt some ideas about Broadband and higher speed Mobile could help in Healthcare – eg the Dr will see you now”.

Another really interesting resource is the EU’s Digital Agenda Scoreboard 2015: Strengthening the European Digital Economy and Society which enables you to explore all sorts of statistics about European life, and then visualise it in a variety of different ways. It will be a real help for those ‘scene setter’ slides at the start of a presentation. Highly recommended.

Another interesting pointer was the FT which had a major supplement on digital health (more…)

Scanadu raises $35 million in Series B, develops for China market

April 29, 2015 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Scanadu-Scout.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Eric Topol’s Doctorless Patient takes one step closer to reality. The Scanadu ‘tricorder’ vital signs diagnostic ‘hockey puck’ received a major vote of confidence on Monday where it counts–funding. Their Series B of $35 million came from nine investors, led by Tencent Holdings, Fosun International and including Three Leaf Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Redmile Group, Relay Ventures, I Globe Partners, Fenox Venture Capital and CBC Capital. Three Leaf, AME and Relay also invested in their Series A. Tencent, Fosun and CBC are Chinese; I Globe is from Singapore. Why the Asian interest? It turns out that China is extremely interested and forward thinking in mobile healthcare–it has a lot of rural area to cover, all health-underserved, as is the rest of Asia. The introduction of the company was made by Jerry Wang, a Yahoo founder and former CEO.

Scanadu is also nearing market: Fortune reports that a $199 consumer version of the Scanadu Scout will be released in 2016, pending FDA approval, and in development is a urinalysis test, Scanadu Urine, an app that would analyze the color of a testing stick. (more…)

The NHS, tech, and the next 10 years – soapbox, event & call for posters

February 22, 2015 | by

As a distraction from the things that, before the advent of handheld technology, little boys used to do in the school playground when this editor was young, once in a while we would engage in the pointless debate of what would happen if an irresistible force met an immovable object.

Those debates came to mind when Graham De’Ath kindly drew this editor’s attention to the recently published Labour Ten Year Plan for Health & Care. Now Telehealth & TelecareAware knows better than to indulge in politics, however the document was notable in that it did not make any significant reference either to the demographic reality of the next ten years, or the likely role of ‘technology’ in assisting with the resultant increase in care required (the word is mentioned just once, in the commitment to: “Set up a wide–ranging review of NICE which will look at reforming the  NICE technology  appraisal process…” [actually already underway by the NIB]).  The Labour Party is far from being alone in this – readers with long memories will recall our amusement as the RCGP’s ten year forecast of the changes in GP practice where the biggest role technology was expected to play in 2022 was in remote delivery of test results.

The reality, TTA believes, will be very different: (more…)

Smartphone lab attachment detects HIV, syphilis

February 4, 2015 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/85986-1024×546.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]Starting in 2010, your Editors have been writing about the work of UCLA’s Aydogan Ozcan and associates in miniaturizing microscopes (LUCAS) and labs that clip directly on smartphones. Examples: assaying food for allergy-inducing ingredients with the iTube [TTA 13 Dec 12] and accessories that run ‘analysis on a chip’ [21 Jan 13]. Columbia University researchers have now devised and tested a palm-sized device using microfluidics to run initial tests on HIV and syphilis with results in 15 minutes. It was tested on pregnant women in Rwanda, according to a study published this week in the journal Science Translational Medicine. (more…)