Babylon’s ‘GP at hand’ has thousands of London patients in hand

January 12, 2018 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Babylon-NHS-tube-advert.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Apparently Babylon Health’s ‘GP at hand’ is a hit with Londoners, despite the requirement to shift GP practices. The Evening Standard reports that the Lillie Road Surgery in Hammersmith, one of the five London practices in the program (plus Victoria, Poplar, Euston, and Fulham), increased its patient list by nearly 7,000 (4,970 in November to 11,867 last month). (Was it the Tube adverts?–Ed.) No information is available on increases at the other surgeries. 

Helping matters may be the UK flu epidemic, where the incentive to stay at home and have a video consult would be great (and helpful in stemming the spread). These consults on average are available 2 1/2 hours after booking, which to us Yanks used to independent services seems a great delay. One-third are reportedly out of office hours. Duration of the visit is about 10 minutes, which is standard for in-person. What is suspected is that many do not realize that the GP at hand signup also changes your GP to the program. The GP partner quoted in the article claims that homeless people, those with mental health and multiple chronic conditions–not just the young and mobile-savvy–have signed up. 

This Editor will concur with others that it’s time for telehealth to be integrated into the NHS, but the tying of it to specific practices which alters capitation is a large wrinkle which needs ironing out. Our earlier coverage here. Hat tip to Roy Lilley.

Rounding up the roundups in health tech and digital health for 2017; looking forward to 2018’s Nitty-Gritty

December 29, 2017 | by | 2 Comments

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Lasso.jpg” thumb_width=”100″ /]Our Editors will be lassoing our thoughts for what happened in 2017 and looking forward to 2018 in several articles. So let’s get started! Happy Trails!

2017’s digital health M&A is well-covered by Jonah Comstock’s Mobihealthnews overview. In this aggregation, the M&A trends to be seen are 1) merging of services that are rather alike (e.g. two diabetes app/education or telehealth/telemedicine providers) to buy market share, 2) services that complement each other by being similar but with strengths in different markets or broaden capabilities (Teladoc and Best Doctors, GlobalMed and TreatMD), 3) fill a gap in a portfolio (Philips‘ various acquisitions), or 4) payers trying yet again to cement themselves into digital health, which has had a checkered record indeed. This consolidation is to be expected in a fluid and relatively early stage environment.

In this roundup, we miss the telecom moves of prior years, most of which have misfired. WebMD, once an acquirer, once on the ropes, is being acquired into a fully corporate info provider structure with its pending acquisition by KKR’s Internet Brands, an information SaaS/web hoster in multiple verticals. This points to the commodification of healthcare information. 

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/canary-in-the-coal-mine.jpgw595.jpeg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Love that canary! We have a paradigm breaker in the pending CVS-Aetna merger into the very structure of how healthcare can be made more convenient, delivered, billed, and paid for–if it is approved and not challenged, which is a very real possibility. Over the next two years, if this works, look for supermarkets to get into the healthcare business. Payers, drug stores, and retailers have few places to go. The worldwide wild card: Walgreens Boots. Start with our article here and move to our previous articles linked at the end.

US telehealth and telemedicine’s march towards reimbursement and parity payment continues. See our article on the CCHP roundup and policy paper (for the most stalwart of wonks only). Another major change in the US is payment for more services under Medicare, issued in early November by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in its Final Rule for the 2018 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. This also increases payment to nearly $60 per month for remote patient monitoring, which will help struggling RPM providers. Not quite a stride, but less of a stumble for the Grizzled Survivors. MedCityNews

In the UK, our friends at The King’s Fund have rounded up their most popular content of 2017 here. Newer models of telehealth and telemedicine such as Babylon Health and PushDoctor continue to struggle to find a place in the national structure. (Babylon’s challenge to the CQC was dropped before Christmas at their cost of £11,000 in High Court costs.) Judging from our Tender Alerts, compared to the US, telecare integration into housing is far ahead for those most in need especially in support at home. Yet there are glaring disparities due to funding–witness the national scandal of NHS Kernow withdrawing telehealth from local residents earlier this year [TTA coverage here]. This Editor is pleased to report that as of 5 December, NHS Kernow’s Governing Body has approved plans to retain and reconfigure Telehealth services, working in partnership with the provider Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (CFT). Their notice is here.

More UK roundups are available on Digital Health News: 2017 review, most read stories, and cybersecurity predictions for 2018. David Doherty’s compiled a group of the major international health tech events for 2018 over at 3G Doctor. Which reminds this Editor to tell him to list #MedMo18 November 29-30 in NYC and that he might want to consider updating the name to 5G Doctor to mark the transition over to 5G wireless service advancing in 2018.

Data breaches continue to be a worry. The Protenus/DataBreaches.net roundup for November continues the breach a day trend. The largest breach they detected was of over 16,000 patient records at the Hackensack Sleep and Pulmonary Center in New Jersey. The monthly total was almost 84,000 records, a low compared to the prior few months, but there may be some reporting shifting into December. Protenus blog, MedCityNews

And perhaps there’s a future for wearables, in the watch form. The Apple Watch’s disconnecting from the phone (and the slowness of older models) has led to companies like AliveCor’s KardiaBand EKG (ECG) providing add-ons to the watch. Apple is trying to develop its own non-invasive blood glucose monitor, with Alphabet’s (Google) Verily Study Watch in test having sensors that can collect data on heart rate, gait and skin temperature. More here from CNBC on Big Tech and healthcare, Apple’s wearables.

Telehealth saves lives, as an Australian nurse at an isolated Coral Bay clinic found out. He hooked himself up to the ECG machine and dialed into the Emergency Telehealth Service (ETS). With assistance from volunteers, he was able to medicate himself with clotbusters until the Royal Flying Doctor Service transferred him to a Perth hospital. Now if he had a KardiaBand….WAToday.com.au  Hat tip to Mike Clark

This Editor’s parting words for 2017 will be right down to the Real Nitty-Gritty, so read on!: (more…)

NHS ‘GP at hand’ via Babylon Health tests in London–and generates controversy

November 18, 2017 | by | 2 Comments
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Babylon-NHS-tube-advert.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]The GP at hand (literally) service debuted recently in London. Developed by Babylon Health for the NHS, it is available 24/7, and doctors are available for video consults, most within two hours. It is a free (for now) service to NHS-eligible London residents who live and work in Zones One through Three, but requires that the user switch their practice to one of the five ‘GP at hand’ practices (map). Office visits can be scheduled as well, with prescriptions delivered to the patient’s pharmacy of choice.

Other attractive features of the service are replays of the consult, a free interactive symptom checker, and a health record for your test results, activity levels and health information. 

While the FAQs specify that the “practice boundary” area is south of Talgarth Road and Cromwell Road in Fulham, and north of the River Thames, it is being advertised on London Transport (see advert left and above taken on the Piccadilly Line) and on billboards.

Reviewing the website FAQs, as telemedicine it is positioned to take fairly routine GP cases of healthy people (e.g. colds, flu, rashes) and dispatch them quickly. On the ‘can anyone register’ page, it’s stated that “the service may however be less appropriate for people with the conditions and characteristics listed below”. It then lists ten categories, such as pregnancy, dementia, end of life care, and complex mental health conditions. If anyone is confused about these and other rule-outs, there is a support line. 

Babylon Health is well financed, with a fundraise of £50 million ($60 million of a total $85 million) in April for what we profiled then as an AI-powered chatbot that sorted through symptoms which tested in London earlier this year. This is a full-on telemedicine consult service with other services attached.

Now to the American view of telemedicine, this is all fairly routine, expected, and convenient, except that there’d be a user fee and a possible insurance co-pay, as more states are adopting parity for telemedicine services. We don’t have an expectation that a PCP on a telemedicine consult will take care of any of these issues which Babylon rules out, though telemental health is a burgeoning and specialized area for short and long-term support. But the issues with the NHS and GPs are different.

First, signing up to ‘GP at hand’ requires you to change your GP to one in that program. US systems are supplementary–a telehealth consult changes nothing about your other doctor choices. This is largely structural; the NHS pays GPs on a capitation basis.

mHealth Insight/3G Doctor and David Doherty provide a lengthy (and updated) analysis with a critical view which this Editor will only highlight for your reading. It starts with the Royal College of GPs objections to the existence of the service as ‘cherry-picking’ patients away from GPs and creating a two-track system via technology. According to the article, “NHS GPs are only paying them [Babylon] £50 a year of the £151 per year that the NHS GP Practice will be paid for every new Patient they get to register with them” which, as a financial model, leads to doubts about sustainability. Mr. Doherty advises the RCGPs that they are fighting a losing battle and they need to get with mHealth for their practices, quickly–and that the NHS needs to reform their payment mechanisms (GPs are compensated on capitation rather than quality metrics).

But there are plenty of other questions beyond cherry-picking: the video recordings are owned by Babylon (or any future entity owning Babylon), what happens to the patient’s GP assignment if (when?) the program ends, and patients’ long-term care.

Oh, and that chatbot’s accuracy? Read this tweet from @DrMurphy11 with a purported video of Babylon advising a potential heart attack victim that his radiating shoulder pain needs some ice. Scary. Also Digital Health.

A blogger’s lot is not a happy one

November 8, 2017 | by | 1 Comment

Who would want to be a digital health blogger? Seconds of inspiration lead to minutes of typing which lead to hours of making sure you have the right URL embedded, the right layout, put in the right tags, tipped your hat to everyone who has helped, not caused offence (well not too much anyway), and so on. And for what? Occasionally you run into someone at a show who says how much they like a post, and that’s it. Well not quite, because there’s a wonderful sense of release when you’ve got something burning inside you out in the open, even if nothing comes back to you.

This came to mind recently because another drawback of being a blogger is that people send you stuff they think is important and get quite irate if you don’t agree (and so don’t blog it). One such piece is the announcement last week that David Allison, Chief Executive at Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation and former Chief Operating Officer for Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is joining Draper & Dash to add “to their stellar executive board team dedicated to enabling world-class digital analytics platforms”. I’ll say straight away that I don’t know why someone with such impeccable-looking credentials is taking essentially what used to be called a “desk job”, so I mean nothing personal by picking this example. It just happened to be the one that spurred me into action.

It does worry me though that (more…)

How *does* the NHS get funded and work? The King’s Fund pulls it together for you.

November 8, 2017 | by

Confused on how a CCG (clinical commissioning group) is funded? Mystified about the relationship between local authorities and the NHS? Updated last month, The King’s Fund’s handy organograms (US=org chart) explain the formal organization of the NHS, how it is funded by Parliament, and the relationships between entities. The slides are downloadable. There are also two six-minute videos that tackle how NHS and NHS England work. See this page also for links to content on local service design, governance, and regulation, plus NHS finances. How is the NHS structured?

Charterhouse lost half its equity in Tunstall debt refinancing–Sunday Times report (updated)

August 7, 2017 | by | 11 Comments

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Big-T-thumb-480×294-55535.gif” thumb_width=”150″ /]Breaking News, even though it happened in March! See updates below. The Sunday Times (UK–sign up for limited access) broke news over the weekend that Charterhouse Capital Partners, the main investor in Tunstall Healthcare, along with other shareholders, have been forced to relinquish nearly half the equity in the company to senior lenders and management. According to their annual report on page 65, section 31**, this happened on 17 March after the close of the FY, but only now has come to light through the Sunday Times report.

The article is light on details, but our Readers who’ve followed Tunstall’s history since the Charterhouse purchase in 2008 for £530 million will not be surprised, only that this development took so long. The cold facts are that the company has been wrestling with a stunning debt burden that grew from £1.2bn in 2015 [TTA 15 Apr 16] to the Times report of £1.7bn at the end of last September, with £300m owed to lenders and £1.2bn to investors. Debt service drove their financials to a £391m pre-tax loss last year. 

The highlights of the deal as reported in the Sunday Times:

  • Senior lenders (not disclosed) received 24.9 percent of Tunstall’s shares. Management received 25 percent.
  • Charterhouse with other shareholders now have a razor-thin controlling balance of 50.1 percent. Prior to this, Charterhouse alone had 61 percent of Tunstall’s shares.
  • In return, the lenders agreed to relax covenants on their debt, termed a ‘covenant reset’.
  • Tunstall also spent £18.5m last year on an abortive attempt to sell itself for up to £700m. We noted reports in April 2016 that they rejected a £300 million (US$425 million at the time) buyout offer from private equity investment firm Triton Partners.

**For those who wish to dig deeper, Tunstall’s hard-to-find annual report through last September (but not filed until 29 March 2017)  is available through Companies House. Go to their index here and select the “Group of companies’ accounts made up to 30 September 2016” which currently is the first listing.

This will be updated as other sourced reports come in, if they do–for now, it appears that the Sunday Times has the exclusive ‘dig’. It is unfortunate since Tunstall is responsible for millions of customers and employs thousands worldwide, and has been aggressively investing in the company and technology while having a fair amount of churn in executive and director positions. Regrettably, they never capitalized on a established position in a big market when they bought AMAC in 2011, then estimated as the US’ third largest PERS company. But as this Editor closed her 2016 article, the whole category of healthcare tech, while becoming more accepted and with a few exceptions, regrettably is still mired in ‘too many players, too many segments with too many names, all chasing not enough money whether private or government.’ I will add to that equation ‘too few users’–still true among older adults and the disabled–and ‘technology that moves too fast’ to make it even more confusing and unsettled for potential buyers (obsolescence on steroids!). And ‘gadgets’, to use the Times’ wording, are among the worst culprits and victims of these factors.

Updated: Equity capital. A cautionary tale was Editor Emeritus and Founder Steve Hards’ prescient analysis of the risks that Tunstall and Charterhouse undertook in acquiring so much debt. After you read it, note the year it was published. More recent commentary on Tunstall’s financial deteriorata dating back to 2013 can be found here.

Tunstall pairing with Inhealthcare digital health for NHS remote monitoring

August 1, 2017 | by
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Big-T-thumb-480×294-55535.gif” thumb_width=”150″ /]A digital link of hope for Tunstall’s future? Announced at The King’s Fund Digital Health & Care Conference but oddly not receiving much notice was the UK collaboration of Tunstall Healthcare and Inhealthcare. Inhealthcare builds infrastructure for digital health services, and currently works extensively with multiple NHS regions and programs, such as the North of England Regional Back Pain Programme, NHS England’s Sheffield City Region Test Bed and the Darlington Healthy New Town project. Their services include telehealth monitoring for INR, COPD, medication reminders, a smartphone app platform, chronic pain management, and a surprising one that addresses undernutrition in older adults. The Tunstall-Inhealthcare objective is to integrate health and social care with clinical care systems in six areas: LTC home monitoring, identifying vulnerable patients, involving family members, 24/7 clinical care coordination centers, post-discharge management, and digital health at home innovation. Also noted is that Inhealthcare has programming technology that can reduce the time to build out services and apps.

Inhealthcare Ltd is part of Intechnology plc, owned by Peter Wilkinson, who has developed several UK internet and technology companies at scale–Planet Online, Freeserve, and Sports Internet (now Sky Betting and Gaming). Tunstall release

The King’s Fund 2017 Digital Health Congress: videos, presentations now posted

July 25, 2017 | by

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Digital-Health-email-banner.png” thumb_width=”175″ /]The King’s Fund’s annual two-day Digital Health and Care Congress now has videos and presentation decks posted on the event page.  If you missed it, or want to see the sessions you could not attend, here’s your opportunity to review and share with staff. All the plenaries and keynotes have both video and presentations. Selected workshops/breakouts have video along with PowerPoints on nearly all, including posters. Attendance this year was between 400 and 500. On Twitter: #kfdigital17, @TheKingsFund TTA was pleased to be a marketing supporter of the 2017 conference as we have for several years. Many thanks to events coordinator Claire Taylor.

For planning ahead, The King’s Fund Annual Conference will be two days this year, 29-30 November. Early bird registration is available until 1 September and sponsorships/exhibit opportunities are open.

‘We carry on’ this Memorial Day

May 26, 2017 | by

As our Readers and Editors make our getaways for this holiday weekend (on Monday, in the UK the Spring Bank Holiday, in the US Memorial Day), it cannot help be on our minds the terrorist bombing this week killing concertgoers in Manchester and the extreme likelihood of further terror attacks. NHS trauma centers are already on highest alert specifically for this weekend, and there are reports that there may be another or even more devices in the hands of terrorists, ready for further slaughter, based on the remains of the home bomb factory. Here in New York, it is also Fleet Week, where many of our Navy’s and Coast Guard’s ships, along with sailors and Marines, visit the city. There are multiple, well-publicized events all over the metropolitan area. Evidence of increased security is everywhere.

On this US Memorial Day, where we remember and honor our fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine and civilians in military service, we also include in our thoughts and prayers the innocent Manchester children and adults killed for simply enjoying themselves at a concert. We also remember that there are 18 adults and 14 children still in hospital, and that NHS emergency and trauma staff, under extreme pressure, performed magnificently.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives are forever changed. What really hits the heart, more so than at Bataclan, are that most of the dead and survivors, are children and adults waiting to take them home. Innocent lives snapped out in a few seconds. Holes in the heart that will never close.

What also hit the heart was Roy Lilley’s Friday newsletter, which says it better and more than this Editor can express. We carry on because we have to, until we can do better. We are pleased to link to it here.

Dry the tears: WannaCry stymied, North Korea hackers suspect. Is this a poke for a worse attack?

May 16, 2017 | by | 1 Comment

Breaking News This morning’s (Tuesday 16 May) news is about reputable security organizations–Kaspersky Lab and Symantec–connecting the dots that lead for now to a North Korea-linked hacking organization, the Lazarus Group. This group has been identified in previous hack attacks and is based upon WannaCry code appearing in Lazarus programs. US Homeland Security has admitted seeing the same similarities, but all are working to gain more information.

Lazarus has been previously identified as the source of the 2014 Sony attack and the theft of $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank, again linked to fundraising for North Korea for its missiles, army, EMP and nuclear arming while its terrorized people starve. However, this attack was a flop; according to US Homeland Security, about $70,000 was raised in ransom. The Homeland Security spokesman also distanced the NSA from the original information which targeted weaknesses in Microsoft’s systems.

According to reports, WannaCry disproportionately affected Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine and India, according to Czech security firm Avast. No US Federal government systems were affected. China on Monday reported that it attacked traffic police and school systems.

The Telegraph has posted a speculative list of 34 NHS organizations which suffered IT failure during the WannaCry attack. The article includes a map produced by MalwareTech that geographically spots the infection locations; the Boston to Washington corridor is a sea of blue dots. And…Marcus Hutchins has been identified as the young UK tech working for Kryptos Logic who redirected the attacks by buying a domain embedded in the WannaCry code. How it worked, according to PC World, is that if the malware can’t connect to the unregistered domain, it infects the system. By registering the domain and creating a page for the malware to connect to, he stopped the malware spread. (Video in Telegraph article)  Also FoxNews

But is this a prelude to more and worse? Is this testing our preparedness? If so, we’ve been found wanting on an enterprise level with vulnerable systems and administrators not updating their software and OS. George Avetisov, the CEO of HYPR, a biometric authentication company, in The Hill, summarized it neatly today: “We’ve also learned the hard way that, simply through a coordinated phishing attack on unsuspecting users, hackers can disrupt the day-to-day activities of enterprises that provide communications, travel, freight and healthcare administration simply by remotely deploying malware.” He then goes on to praise President Trump’s executive order (EO), “Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure,” which he signed on Thursday–right before all this began. As if in confirmation…ShadowBrokers, the group that hacked the NSA files, today announced the availability of a subscription to a ‘members only data dump’ like a Wine of the Month Club. Watch out, banks and healthcare, it’s open season! NHS, better pay attention to another kind of hygiene–cyberhygiene. Without it, plans for patient apps and data sharing will go sideways–and deserved fodder for Dame Fiona [TTA 10 May]. The Hill  Earlier coverage here

Updated 15 May: 20% of NHS organizations hit by WannaCry, spread halted, hackers hunted

May 15, 2017 | by

Updated 15 May: According to the Independent, 1 of 5 or 20 percent of NHS trusts, or ‘dozens’, have been hit by the WannaCry malware, with six still down 24 hours later. NHS is not referring to numbers, but here is their updated bulletin and if you are an NHS organization, yesterday’s guidance is a mandatory read. If you have been following this, over the weekend a British specialist known by his/her handle MalwareTech, tweeting as @malwaretechblog, registered a nonsensical domain name which he found was the stop button for the malware as designed into the program, with the help of Proofpoint’s Darien Huss.

It looks as if the Pac-Man march is over. Over the weekend, a British specialist known as MalwareTech, tweeting as @malwaretechblog, registered a nonsensical domain name which he found was the stop button for the malware, with the help of Proofpoint’s Darien Huss. It was a kill switch designed into the program. The Guardian tagged as MalwareTech a “22-year-old from southwest England who works for Kryptos logic, an LA-based threat intelligence company.”

Political fallout: The Home Secretary Amber Rudd is being scored for an apparent cluelessness and ‘wild complacency’ over cybersecurity. There are no reported statements from Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. From the Independent: “Patrick French, a consultant physician and chairman of the Holborn and St Pancras Constituency Labour Party in London, tweeted: “Amber Rudd is wildly complacent and there’s silence from Jeremy Hunt. Perhaps an NHS with no money can’t prioritise cyber security!” Pass the Panadol!

Previously: NHS Digital on its website reported (12 May) that 16 NHS organizations have been hacked and attacked by ransomware. Preliminary investigation indicates that it is Wanna Decryptor a/k/a WannaCry. In its statement, ‘NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organisations and ensure patient safety is protected.’ Healthcare IT News

According to cybersecurity site Krebs on Security, (more…)

The stop-start of health tech in the NHS continues (UK)

May 10, 2017 | by

Continuing their critique of the state of technology within the NHS [TTA 17 Feb], The King’s Fund’s Harry Evans examines the current state of incipient ‘rigor mortis’ (his term). Due to the upcoming election, the Department of Health is delaying its response to Dame Fiona Caldicott, the National Data Guardian for Health and Care (NDG), on her review of data security, consent and opt-outs (Gov.UK publications).

People have significant trust and privacy concerns about their data, which led to NHS England suspending care.data over three years ago. But with safeguards in place, public polling supports the sharing of health data for uses such as research and direct care. But…there’s more. Now there is ‘algorithmic accountability’, which may single out individuals and influence their care, much as algorithms dictate what online ads we’re served. What of the patient data being served to Google DeepMind, IBM Watson Health, and Vitalpac for AI development? Have people adjusted their concerns, and have systems evolved to better store, secure, and share data? And how can this be implemented at the local NHS level? The NHS and technology: turn it off and on again Hat tip to Susanne Woodman of BRE.

A reminder that The King’s Fund’s Digital Health and Care Congress is on 11-12 July. Click on the sidebar to go directly to information and to register. Preview video; the Digital Health Congress fact sheet includes information on sponsoring or exhibiting. To make the event more accessible, there are new reduced rates for groups and students, plus bursary spots available for patients and carers. TTA is again a media partner of the Digital Health and Care Congress 2017. Updates on Twitter @kfdigital17

Fitbit reaching out to NHS–but new smartwatch ‘a giant mess’ (updated)

May 4, 2017 | by

There have been sketchy reports of Fitbit’s CEO James Park meeting with the NHS last month to get Fitbits into the ‘big moves’ in wearables and apps promised by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. Mr. Park’s interview with the Sunday Times (limited access) indicated that Fitbit’s NHS project, should it happen, would be for exercise and activity monitoring, similar to the partnership with UnitedHealthcare which reduces premiums based on policyholder exercise monitoring. This move towards payers is in line with reports starting last year of Fitbit’s seeking clinical markets and moving away from the fickle B2C market. City AM

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Fitbit-Watch-FINAL.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]Given this week’s leak/reveal and scuttlebutt on the new Fitbit smartwatch, Mr. Park needs to gin up a big payer, quickly. The advance buzz is not positive nor kind. It’s delayed from spring to end of year–in competition with the latest iteration of the Apple Watch. This advance photo of codenamed ‘Higgs’ from Yahoo!Finance indicates a certain clunkiness (and derivation from the panned semi-smartwatch Blaze). It’s pricey, rumored to be priced at around $300. Features include a 1,000nit, built-in GPS, heart-rate monitoring, contactless payments, Pandora and four days of battery life along with connectivity to new Bluetooth headphones. Yet TechCrunch notes “complaints about design, production delays, antenna issues and software problems.” in what they dub “a giant mess”. Forbes notes problems in waterproofing and GPS signal. There are other Android-based smartwatches that do the same for the same price or less. Will this save Fitbit? To be determined….

Update: CEO Park denies delays in the new smartwatch, saying “all new product introductions are on track”, but then again–it hasn’t been officially announced! On the earnings call Thursday, Fitbit stated that new products are now accounting for 84 percent of 1stQ revenue. The company also reported better-than-expected earnings for the first quarter of 2017, reporting an adjusted loss of 15 cents per share on revenue of $299 million. Full year projected at $1.5 – 1.7 bn. Marketwatch, The Verge

How to unblock that health data in your EHR? Blockchain. (UK)

April 5, 2017 | by

The solution to that huge pile of patient-generated data, blocked and stymied in those non-interoperable EHRs [TTA 15 Mar], may be a system based on blockchain. DeepMind, Alphabet’s AI ‘skunk works’, is building a tool that it calls Verifiable Data Audit. It will be tested first in UK hospitals with which DeepMind is already working, including London’s Royal Free Hospital. What VDA will do is use cryptographic math to keep an accurate record of data used in the past to see exactly who is using health-care records, and for what purpose. When data is used, it generates a code based on all past activity. Any alteration to one part of the data alters the others and is quick to spot.

The UK test results will be interesting because, according to the MIT Technology Review article, patient records are considered to be highly fragmented. Another issue that DeepMind had in the UK was the NHS oversharing data with it for other projects, such as AI systems to diagnose eye disease, early warning signs of illness, and machine-learning approaches to guide cancer treatment. The VDA approach would, ironically, create an audit trail of that data. Another reason why we may be moving from Data Despare to Hope. Hat tip to contributor Sarianne Gruber of RCM Answers.

CHANGED DEADLINE Calling all diabetes prevention apps: may be your chance for greatness!

March 1, 2017 | by

Our Mobile Health is seeking to identify the best digital behaviour change interventions aimed at helping people diagnosed as pre-diabetic to reduce their risk of onset of Type 2 Diabetes. They are working with NHS England and the Diabetes Prevention Programme to identify the best 4-5 of these that are suitable for deployment to around a total of 5000 people across England. The aim is to build up an evidence base for digital behaviour change interventions for people diagnosed as pre-diabetic.

Organisations with suitable digital behaviour change interventions are invited to submit their solutions for inclusion. These should be either actually deployed or will be ready to be deployed within three months. They should be suitable to be, or have been, localised for the UK market, and they should not be dependent on any further integration with the UK health system for deployment.  Shortlisted digital behaviour change interventions will be invited to participate in Our Mobile Health’s assessment process; the final selection will be made based on the results of that assessment.

The deadline for submissions, which can be made directly online is midday on Wednesday 15th March.  NOTE THIS IS A CHANGE FROM THAT PREVIOUSLY ADVISED. There is more about the programme on the NHS website.

(Disclosure: this editor has been asked to assist with the assessment process referred to above)

Tender up: NHS Shared Business Services (SBS) (UK)

February 7, 2017 | by

Susanne Woodman, our Reader who is our Eye on Tenders, has found this on the Gov.UK contracts finder site:

Lease of telehealth equipment and peripherals by NHS Shared Business Services. Tender # is RA212802. Location is listed as postal code M50 2UW which is Salford, Lancashire. No value assigned. The RFQ expires on Monday 20th February at 12pm. Questions accepted until Wednesday 15th February 2017 at 12:00 with responses returned by Friday the 17th. Quote procedure and more information is via Multiquote.