Rounding up what’s news: LindaCare, TytoCare funding; Medicare telehealth parity, Norway’s big cyberhack, Virta reversing diabetes, DARPA’s 60th birthday

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”100″ /]Your Editor’s been away and then largely out of pocket over the past two weeks. Here’s our roundup/catchup beyond the bombshells:

In remote patient monitoring for chronic disease, Philips, PMV, and other investors invested €7 million ($8.6 million) in Belgium’s/Hartford CT’s LindaCare. The Series B funding will accelerate its US expansion of OnePulse for remote monitoring of chronic heart failure and cardiac arrhythmia patients with Cardiac Implanted Electronic Devices (CIED). It is in use in major European hospitals and in US trials, though there is no mention in the release or on their website on CE Marking or FDA clearance/clinical trials. Previously from its 2013 founding, it had €1.6 million in funding. Also Mobihealthnews.

TytoCare, a remote monitoring telehealth/video consult platform which integrates peripherals for a virtual physical exam, raised $25 million in a Series C round led by large Chinese insurer Ping An via their Global Voyager Fund plus Walgreens, Fosun Group, OrbiMed, LionBird, and Cambia Health Solutions. Release. Their total raise is $45.6 million since 2012 (Crunchbase). Their most current partnership is with Long Island-based Allied Physicians Group which is featuring at-home telehealth visits at its pediatric practice in Plainview.

More favorable Medicare reimbursement for telehealth is the subject of four US Congressional bills. The one furthest along is the ‘Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic Care Act of 2017’ (S.870), which aims to improve at-home care, increases Medicare Advantage flexibility, gives ACOs more options and expands telehealth capabilities for stroke and dialysis patients. It passed the Senate in September and now goes to the House Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. The effect of all four is on Medicare payment parity with in-office visits, which does not currently exist and is not affected by the various state parity bills on insurance for those below 65. American Well touts a 10-fold growth in revenue, but the likelihood of any of these four bills being signed into law is small, particularly with a pending report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Becker’s Hospital Review

Norway released at end of January news on an “advanced and persistent” 8 January cyberattack on Health South East RHF. This has both a health breach and military twist.

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More UK older adults are now going online

Telehealth and telecare applications can often depend on the willingness of the users to use the [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ofcom-logo.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]internet and that is not to be taken for granted with older users. On the other hand it is indeed the older people who can most benefit from these technologies. Recent research in the UK shows encouraging results in this respect.

Ofcom, the UK telecoms regulator, has a duty to promote media literacy and to carry out research to measure the usage of all forms media. The results of the most recent surveys commissioned by Ofcom were published on Tuesday. Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report 2014 is an encouraging report showing that the use of the internet by over-65s has increased by over a quarter over the past 12 months.

“The proportion of people aged over 65 that are accessing the web reached 42% in 2013, up nine percentage points from 33% in 2012. One reason found for this is an increase in the use of tablet computers by older people aged 65-74 to go online, up from 5% in 2012 to 17% in 2013. This has helped to drive overall internet use up from 79% of all adults in 2012 to 83% in 2013” say Ofcom.

“However, older people spend significantly less time surfing the web than younger people (16-24 year olds), who on average spend more than a whole day (24 hours 12 minutes) each week online. This compares to an average 9 hours 12 minutes online per week among adults over 65.”

Although these results are for the UK, they probably broadly represent the trends in most developed countries.

Internet training for older people vs works-out-of-the-box mobiles

Echoing last week’s “the world has moved on” post on the WSD, the 3G Doctor (David Doherty) has an excellent opinion piece on how AGE UK should spend the money given to it by Google for making it to the final six in the Global Impact Challenge that supports British non-profits using technology to tackle tough problems.

In discussing Age UK’s current plans to use the money to teach older people about the internet he says: “For the £500,000 AGE UK would spend on training 16,000 seniors they could give away (at retail price!) 10,000 of the latest designed for senior 3G CameraPhones from Doro. Works straight out of the box. No training required.”

Elsewhere on his site he has an interesting take too on the reasons behind O2’s announcement last week.

Digital economy twice the size the government thought it was (General interest)

The FT reports that the National Institute of Economic and Social Research conservatively estimates that there are 270,000 digital companies compared to less than half that estimated by the government.

The report, just out, supported by Google, is entitled Measuring the UK’s Digital Economy With Big Data.  As the title suggests, it makes a strong case for the use of extensive data analysis in determining that the digital economy  has spread into every sector of the economy.

Hal Varian, Chief Economist of Google, wrote the foreword which includes the only reference to ‘biotech’ specifically in the report: “The UK is one of the world’s strongest internet economies yet the myth persists that it consists largely of tiny dotcom or biotech startups in a few high technology clusters that quickly bubble up and often go bust.”