Rounding up August’s end: ‘blended’ mental healthcare, Army’s telehealth innovation, Montefiore’s 300% ROI on social determinants, telehealth needs compliance

August 28, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”NaN” /]Our UK readers have the summer bank holiday in the rearview mirror, and our US readers are looking forward to a break over next Monday’s Labor Day holiday in the US. It’s sadly the end of the traditional summer season, though Summer, The Season lingers on for a few precious more weeks.

Here are some short takes on items of interest over the past month:

Blended care–eHealth and direct clinician care–for mental health. The NHS has been promoting online webcam and instant messaging appointments as an alternative to ease pressure and waiting times for mental health patients, but the evidence that they are effective on their own is scant. Blending digital health with F2F clinical care may be the way to go. This Digital Health News explores how the two could work together and still save time and money.

Army testing telemedicine and remote monitoring for triage. The US Army’s MEDHUB is designed to streamline communication flow between patients, medics and receiving field hospitals.  MEDHUB–Medical Hands-free Unified Broadcast–uses wearable sensors, accelerometers, and other FDA-cleared technology to collect, store, and transmit de-identified patient data from a device to a medical facility, allowing clinicians to better prepare for inbound patients and more promptly deliver appropriate treatment. The 44th Medical Brigade and Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina have already volunteered to test the system. MEDHUB was developed by two subordinate organizations within the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Army release, Mobihealthnews 

Soldier, don’t take your health tracker to the front. Or even the rear. Deployed US Army soldiers have been told to leave at home their wearable trackers or smartphone apps, government issued or otherwise, that have geolocation capability. Turns out they are trackable and heat mappable–in other words, these trackers and apps can tell you where you are. (And don’t use Google either). Mobihealthnews

Social determinants of health part of Montefiore Health System’s approach to reducing emergency room visits and unnecessary hospitalizations.  Montefiore, based in the Bronx and lower Westchester, invested in housing for the homeless through their Housing at Risk Alert System. The system noticed through their analytics that the issue was housing. Many of their ‘frequent flyers’ cycled between shelters and the ER (ED). Oncology patients were at risk for eviction. Montefiore acquired respite housing (160 days) and housing units for up to a year through organizations such as Comunilife. They claim a 300 percent return on investment. Healthcare Finance

Telehealth needs compliance health. A study from Manatt Health, a division of law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, presents what readers already know–the inconsistent statutes, regulations and guidance various states are implementing around the provision of telehealth services points out the growing need for compliance assistance. Manatt Health Update (blog) 

Fitbit’s smartwatch on track; Intel exits the game

July 25, 2017 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Fitbit-smartwatch.jpg” thumb_width=”200″ /]Fitbit’s ‘Project Higgs’ in-house designed smartwatch is, by all reports, on schedule to hit the market later this year in time for the holidays, at least in Wall Street’s expectations. To the FT (may be paywalled) CEO James Park reassured, “The product is on track to meet our expectations and the expectations that we’ve set for investors. It’s going to be, in my opinion, our best product yet.” It will be waterproof, a battery that lasts several days, have mobile payment capability (from the Coin acquisition), simple health tracking,  heart rate monitor, sleep tracking, stream music (Spotify and Pandora are rumored), and its own app store. It will be either Wi-Fi or smartphone connected. TechRadar’s agglomeration of rumors include pricing ($199 to $299 –about £231), swappable bands, a full-color screen with 1,000 nits of brightness, an aluminum body and built-in GPS. The most interesting part is the proprietary operating system which uses Javascript. Also Pocket-Lint articles 18 July and 19 July. 

Intel, however, is giving up the smartwatch and fitness tracking chase. In 2014 they acquired Basis in a well-publicized move and enlisted hip celebrities like 50 Cent to endorse their products versus the likes of Apple and Fitbit. In November about 80 percent of the group was let go, according to CNBC, and entirely eliminated this month. The New Technologies Group is now focusing on augmented reality. CNBC

Google X develops health tracker–for research and clinical trials only

June 27, 2015 | by

And it’s not for sale. The life sciences group within Google X is testing on small groups a wrist-worn device which can sense with high accuracy pulse, heart rhythm, skin temperature and environmental information like light exposure and noise levels. Bloomberg News, which appears to have broken the story, quotes Andy Conrad, head of the life sciences team at Google: “Our intended use is for this to become a medical device that’s prescribed to patients or used for clinical trials.” Obviously it will be more accurate both in hardware and in back end algorithms than what’s currently marketed via Android Wear for smartwatches. Perhaps this is meant for the ‘superusers’ of healthcare services at the top 5 percent using 50 percent of spend, the new ‘It Girls’ of healthcare, TTA 28 May)? However, he’s also projecting out 20-30 years, so health systems and researchers, do not hold your breath waiting for this to become reality. (This is also a counter to Apple’s ResearchKit.) Also Yahoo Finance and The Verge, which has a gigantic photo of a smartwatch but no caption attribution. The Verge also mentions their research in MS. Gizmodo also adds that Mr Conrad is directing the Google X Baseline project, which is doing human testing and crunching data to develop a baseline of normal human health.

More about Google X in this video interview on Tested with Astro Teller (for real), ‘captain of moonshots’ for the company, on ‘thinking big and failing quickly’. (24 minutes)

Much ado about Airo: the denouement

November 23, 2013 | by

Like the Maltese Falcon, ‘the stuff that dreams are made of’?

The madly touted Airo fitness band, with its claimed mini-spectrometer built into the band to detect nutritional blood metabolites for passive sensing of food consumption [TTA 30 Oct], has, after a firestorm in the industry press, conceded it lacked proof that it would ‘work as advertised’ and refunded money to its early backers. Very rarely have we seen mass disparagement in health tech, but the fact that the developers ginned up a lot of breathless publicity over a device without a working prototype and no studies to back a future design made it all too easy. (more…)

Much ado about Airo

October 30, 2013 | by

A flurry of publicity has descended like early snow in the Rockies promoting the AIRO fitness band. Developed by three graduates of Canada’s University of Waterloo, it is building pre-delivery excitement (and pre-orders) around the band’s claimed unique capability to analyze post-eating effects and make recommendations. A mini-spectrometer built into the band uses light wavelengths to look into a person’s blood stream and detect the metabolites released during and after eating. Their program then analyzes the information and makes nutritional recommendations on your smartphone without any separate input of foods or calories. As far as this Editor knows, this is a first, along with using heart rate and caloric burn to measure exercise intensity and recovery. The ‘only health tracker you’ll ever need’ cuff also measures and reports on stress and sleep. The company is taking pre-orders at $149 in advance of the full DTC price of $200 (not sure if in Canadian or US dollars), but according to the FAQs delivery will not be until Fall 2014. For iPhones and Android.

Could Fitbit and Jawbone Up be getting the treatment they meted out to Zeo within a year? Will the spectrometer and blood analysis mean that the device will need FDA and Health Canada clearance? Inquiring minds want to know. Website, video, Business Insider article, CBS-TV Cleveland. (Editor Donna note that the pre-sale over a year in advance is essentially a crowdfunding strategy, but standalone it feels ‘take the money and run’ dodgy.)  Hat tip to reader Lois Drapin of The Drapin Group, New York.

Update 31 October: The somewhat sketchy credibility of this device has increased exponentially, in this Editor’s opinion, since the revelation that there is not a working prototype (due in December, according to the founder) and the spectrometer’s capability and accuracy of detecting blood metabolites non-invasively at the wrist may resemble junk science (MedCityNews). Brian Dolan concludes that as of this point, Airo cannot be what it’s cracked up to be in Mobihealthnews.

In smartwatch 2014 deluge news, Google is also nearing its smartwatch launch within months, according to The Wall Street Journal. The watch will incorporate the Google Now personal assistant.