Put them on the calendar: upcoming US IoT, connected health events (updated)

September 13, 2016 | by

September means that we come back from vacations and holidays. The calendars come out and we start to fill in the gaps for the next few months into (gasp!) 2017. Here’s a forward look through to next August for US healthcare and IoT  conferences, including International CES.

If you’re in Dallas this coming Thursday, the Health Wildcatters accelerator is premiering their new office at Pacific Place with a bash starting at 5:30pm. Reserve tickets quickly and find out more #HWGrandOpening Hat tip to Hubert Zajicek

Since TTA’s been a media supporter of Parks Associates’ Connected Health Summit for the past two years, here’s a sample of their other IoT and connected home events.

CONNECTIONS™ Europe  (Smart home, IoT and the connected consumer)
November 2-3, 2016, Amsterdam     www.connectionseurope.com

CONNECTIONS™ Summit at CES
January 5, 2017, CES, Las Vegas    www.connectionssummit.com

CONNECTIONS™: The Premier Connected Home Conference
May 23-25, 2017, San Francisco   http://www.connectionsus.com

Connected Health Summit: Engaging Consumers
August 29-31, 2017, San Diego  www.connectedhealthsummit.com

December is a big month for US conferences; three of note (and likely partners again) are:

MedStartr Momentum (MedMo16) (more…)

Digital health dates for Autumn 2016

July 21, 2016 | by

Fancy a startup in Barcelona? Look no further than the NUMA Barcelona Accelerator. Note entries needed by 25th September.

The Biomedical Catalyst 2016 early stage award competition requires registrations by 7th September, applications in by 14th September.

The European Commission has opened a public consultation on the safety of apps and other non-embedded software as part of an effort to ensure a high level of health, safety and consumer protection. Be sure to respond by closing date of 14th September.

Baker Botts, the international firm of lawyers specialising in intellectual property has very kindly agreed to continue to support the London Health Technology Forum which has now agreed three evening events this autumn, on 15th September, 20th October & 24th November. The programmes are (more…)

Last minute events, through to the end of 2016

May 17, 2016 | by

We have events this week that you can still sign up for/attend, through to November!

On the evening of 18th May, as we have previously covered, there is a free two hour webinar on telementoring surgeons – watch how it’s done during operations by experts. Register here.

For the 19th May, come and hear world-class speakers, introduced by George Freeman, Minister for Life Sciences, talking about the Future of medicine; the doctor’s role in 2025 at the Royal Society of Medicine. More info is here – online booking is closed though as many people now do at the RSM, you can sign up at the door on the day.

On 20th May, again as we have previously covered, the SIHI event at the University of Portsmouth is entitled Safe and effective medicines: Informatics for best practice. More info here.

Evangelia Balanou has kindly pointed out that the Aging2.0 (sic) Global Startup Search is coming to London on 14th June. Details of the Search are here, if you want to pitch. Note there are also European events in Barcelona, Berlin & Brussels. To book for the London event go here (note special free ticket category for 65+).

Also in June, the RSM is running another in its very successful big data series, entitled big data, clouds, and the internet of healthy things on June 2nd. Details here.

Finally, looking further out, the RSM is also repeating an event last run three years ago, again to a sellout audience, entitled point of care testing: disruptive innovation. is the NHS ready for it yet? (Especially eagle eyed readers with a good memory will notice the addition of yet.) This aims to demonstrate the extraordinary effectiveness of testing at the point of care (rather than sending samples for lab analysis) which can transform the cost of delivering care at the same time as greatly improving patient outcomes. Do check the programme out here, and book!

Two RSM events of interest on medicine’s future and Big Data/IoT (UK)

April 20, 2016 | by

Make a place in your calendar for two Royal Society of Medicine full day events coming up in May and June. Both organized by the Telemedicine and eHealth Section. Hat tip to Charlotte Cordrey, Event Team Manager, RSM

The future of medicine – the role of doctors in 2025
Thursday 19 May 2016  (Chaired by our own Editor Charles Lowe)

Big data 2016 (Clouds and the Internet of Things)
Thursday 2 June 2016

 

Webcast: practical telementoring…for surgery

April 9, 2016 | by

Watch a live interactive webcast, free, with international surgical experts as they show and discuss actual cases using the currently available methods for surgical telementoring.  Utilising VisitOR1, off-the-shelf software services, and Google Glass, these studies will show the comparative strengths of each platform; real-world tips will be shared.  You and your institution will learn methods to improve skills and teach new procedures by remote presence. Watch the various “budget-friendly” ways to accomplish this goal.

The event will be broadcast live at 7pm BST on 18th May – a perfect warm-up for those attending the Royal Society of Medicine – and the Institution of Engineering & Technology’s – premier telemedicine event of the year the following day: the Future of Medicine: the role of Doctors in 2025.

This event was planned by The American Medical Foundation for Peer Review and Education, a leader in the organisation and support of surgical telementoring initiatives. There is more information on the most current approaches already implemented in their publication “Surgical Telementoring News” edited by Evelyn Baram-Clothier, PhG, JD

Register for the webcast here.

(Disclosure this editor participated in the planning for this event on behalf of the Royal Society of Medicine.)

A gallimaufry of short digital health items to start the day with

March 22, 2016 | by

The WHO has produced an excellent report on the state of eHealth in the European region, including a review of telehealth readiness. Ericsson have produced a very interesting report confirming what I guess anyone will have realised if they’ve traveled by public transport or have children: young people downloading video content are driving a surge in data usage: there’s much detail here though. Both are well worth the read.

Mentioning Ericsson reminds that the Telegraph recently produced a summary of the 20 best-selling mobile phones of all time – takes you back, with the substantial number once produced by Nokia.

The Royal Society of Medicine has it’s fifth annual medical app conference on April 7th – numbers booked have already well exceeded last year’s sellout so they are expecting to fill this year’s much larger conference venue. The focus this year is on the many legislative, regulatory and voluntary measures being introduced that will impact medical apps – there’s still room for old favourites though, such as Richard Brady’s always-topical (more…)

Exploring how best to use telehealth to manage COPD – can you help?

February 3, 2016 | by

Anyone working in telehealth knows that, of the principal long term conditions to which it is applied, COPD is the most problematic, with many telehealth trials showing no significant benefit. However in various meetings, Dr Julia Bott has tantalised me by suggesting that she and Dr Hilary Pinnock may know how to use telehealth more effectively.

Therefore, on 3rd March, we are holding a small, free, meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine in London from 3pm-5pm to examine how telehealth can be used to manage people with COPD better. Present will be both Dr Hilary Pinnock (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Julia Bott (University of Surrey).

So far we have senior representatives from two major telehealth organisations attending and probably need at least three more. If you are interested, please do email this editor, charles.lowe@btinternet.com, explaining why you’d like to join us for what I suspect may prove to be a groundbreaking event.

Ten years on from the WSD: is the future brighter for telehealth? Can wind farms help?

January 4, 2016 | by

As Prof Mike Short pointed out recently, 2016 is the tenth anniversary of the start of the Whole System Demonstrator (WSD) programme that in retrospect, because of poor trial design, probably slowed the uptake of digital health in the UK more than any other single action. It seems appropriate therefore to look at how telehealth* has fared over that period, and perhaps even more importantly, is poised for the next ten years.

The mistakes of the WSD are well documented (eg here, here & here) – suffice it to say that it proved beyond all reasonable doubt, at least to this editor, that unlike medicine-based interventions, which seem less sensitive to their care pathway, digital health delivers most of its benefit through enabling a different, patient-centred care delivery, so every digital health intervention needs to be evaluated holistically, and in its own care pathway. Sadly over the ten years, much of the academic work looking at the benefits of telehealth has continued to evaluate the technology in the time-honoured way that medicines have been evaluated, with predictably largely equivocal results.

Those of us who have delivered telehealth projects though have a sense of disconnect as, time and again, a focused implementation – not a pilot – in which the staff delivering the service understand that it will be a permanent change for which they need radically to change the way they deliver care, yields huge returns on investments through savings typically in the 50-90% region. (more…)

‘Tis the season of mellow fruitfulness..and consultations

November 13, 2015 | by

Suddenly it seems there are consultations all over the place that are important to the digital health world. If you can spare some time, you will be doing society a great turn by responding to as many as possible. They include:

The Accelerated Access Review (disclosure, which is editor is very involved with) is holding a consultation on pricing & reimbursement schemes. This is important because in the area of digital health (one of three areas covered by the AAR, the other two being medicines and medtech), selling at scale almost always involves a competitive tender (either at the time or previously in establishing framework contracts, or sometimes at both stages). We therefore have much to learn from the pharma sector in particular who have established a wide range of price-setting, and thus tender-avoiding, mechanisms. We are very keen for the digital health and medical technology voices to be heard.

Deadline for submissions is Friday 20th November.

Next we have an EC consultation with a characteristically long-winded title Public consultation on the preliminary opinion on ‘Disruptive Innovation. Considerations for health and health care in Europe’. For this, the EC is partnering with an organisation previously unknown to this editor: the Expert Panel on Effective Ways of Investing in Health (EXPH). Having learned about disruptive innovation at the feet of the man himself, Clayton Christensen, this editor gets just a little uncomfortable when experts seek to impose order on the process (especially ‘taxonomies’), as by definition it is chaotic and opportunistic. However the four areas that the survey seeks views on are:

1. New models of person-centred community-based health delivery that allow a decentralisation from traditional health care venues like hospitals to integrated care models (e.g. transfer of records to patients);

2. New technologies that allow early diagnostics, personalised medicine, health promotion, community-based therapy and care and the empowerment of patients/citizens, as well as potential curative technologies (e.g. regenerative medicine, immunotherapy for cancer);

3. Person-oriented approaches for the treatment of patients with multiple chronic diseases, situations of frailty and/or of loss of functionalities in a multi-cultural context;

4. Education of the health workforce and transfer of skills and tasks from highly trained, high cost personnel to personnel that have less specialised trained and are more affordable; (e.g. from specialists to generalists, from generalists to nurses, from nurses to health care assistants and to other care providers such as pharmacists, and ultimately to citizens themselves.)

The preliminary opinion is just 95 pages long, and here. The consultation closes on 16th December.

Closer to home and potentially of more immediate significance is the consultation on the draft EU Code of Conduct on data privacy for medical apps which is now being opened up for general consultation prior to a meeting in Brussels of the group producing the Code (of which this editor is a member) on December 7th. Please send your comments directly to charles.lowe@DHACA.org.uk and I will pass them on.

Finally, London’s Southbank University is planning to establish a set of qualifications for digital health-related topics and is keen to understand the likely willingness to pay for them. They are currently in discussion with the Royal Society of Medicine regarding use of educational material. They have produced this short survey which they would appreciate as many TTA readers as possible completing.

Hat tip to Dee O’Sullivan for alerting me to the disruptive innovation consultation.

 

Important dates for your diary – many free! (UK)

November 6, 2015 | by

The must-do free digital health event of the next few weeks has to be to go to one of the four final dallas events, in which attendees will get to hear of all the important things that the programme has learned over the past three years. Surely that’s unmissable, or as the flier says, “free but priceless”!

The events are at:

  • Manchester – 12th November
  • Cardiff – 17th November
  • Belfast – 25th November
  • Glasgow – 8th December

Bookings for the first three of these can be made here, for Glasgow, here.

The Cardiff event is being run alongside the TSA International Technology Enabled Care Conference on 16th & 17th November, (and see our recent blog on this too), so you can combine the two.

The Glasgow event is part of the Scottish Digital Health & Care Week, that we also featured in a recent blog.

Another free-to-attend event with a particular focus on SMEs takes place on the evening of the 3rd December in City Hall, London: 21st Century London MedTech. Bookings, and more details, here.

Moving to paid events, albeit very cheaply priced because the Royal Society of Medicine is a charity, the Telemedicine Section of the RSM has four events now open to book:

Both the February and April events are now into their fourth years – and both are regular sellouts, so worth booking soon.

You might also want to hold the 19th May in your diaries for when the RSM & IET jointly run another conference that was previously a sellout: “the future of medicine; the doctor’s role in 2025”. This will be opened by George Freeman, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Life Sciences,and features a glittering array of experts who will be suggesting what we need to do now to deliver the health & care systems of the future. Bookings will open soon.

The 2nd UCL Festival for Digital Health is now set for 22 February to 4 March 2016 – more details here.

Planning ahead, the search for the best eHealth solution in 2016 developed by an EU SME has begun with the unveiling of the competition’s website and the ability to get mailed information as it emerges.

Good luck if you apply!

What’s caught my digital health interest recently

September 30, 2015 | by

At the Royal Society of Medicine we’ve just announced our next medical apps event on 7th April next year, Medical apps; mainstreaming innovation in which we feature for the first time a presentation by Pam Kato, a Professor of Serious Games, so it’s intriguing to see the iMedicalApps review of a clinician-facing serious game, iConcur, for anaesthetists.

We also have a powerful presentation on mental health apps from Ieso Digital Health which doubtless will make the same point as has been made in previous events that online mental health services typically are more effective than face:face. The abstract to the recent Lancet paper by Dr Lisa Marzano et al, examining this topic in great detail, suggests that the academics are now a long way to working out why this is the case and offers further potential improvements; aspiring mental health app developers unable to access the full paper may consider it worth paying $31.50 (or join the RSM to access it for free).

A regular at the RSM’s Appday is Dr Richard Brady’s presentation on Bad Apps, which next year will now doubtless include mention of the FTC’s recent fifth action against an app provider, UltimEyes, with deceptively claiming they their program was scientifically proven to improve the user’s eye sight.

Moving to good apps (more…)

Events dear boy, events: a roundup of UK digital health stuff this autumn

August 18, 2015 | by

This editor accumulated vast piles of notifications when on a two week holiday recently – here is the cream of the events notified. More to follow on resources shortly.

Between 4-6th September, SECC Glasgow is holding what it claims is the first ever medical education hackathon.

On the 14th September the free-to-attend London Health Technology Forum, organised by this editor, has an evening devoted to Exits (of the financially very lucrative kind). Baker Botts’ experienced lawyers will describe with examples the different exits available to the successful entrepreneur, why it’s important to plan ahead, and what the plusses and minuses are of each type of exit. Essential knowledge if you hope to become rich from your hard work & dedication.

On 17th September, KPMG are holding a free all-day event entitled ‘Information Protection in Digital Health’ at (more…)

Events for your diary, your CV and perhaps your bottom line

July 16, 2015 | by

This editor has recently been overwhelmed by important dates near and far that readers needs to be aware of. Beginning with July, the first networking event for the Long Term Care Revolution SBRI National Challenge will take place in Birmingham on 21st July at the Menzies Hotel, Birmingham. Click here to register. The second networking event will take place on the 28th July at The Thistle Marble Arch. Register here

This SBRI competition aims to stimulate the development of innovative new products, services and systems that disrupt the institutional long-term care model, ensuring that UK businesses are well placed to take advantage of this growing market opportunity. A total of £4m is up for grabs so (more…)

I’m finally losing faith in Jawbone

July 10, 2015 | by

A couple of days ago this editor got yet another promotion for a Jawbone product – UP4 – that he cannot buy. This time however, things were different.

Not only were the links both to find out more about, and to buy, the product broken, the UP4 isn’t even in the UK Jawbone store. Thankfully “Caitlyn” from “Jawbone Customer Care” did reply to my email, to give me standard blurb on the product explaining that it is linked to an American Express account to offer contactless payment. She also commented that it “is currently available for purchase in the US” so why the email was sent to a European she did not bother to explain, or seemingly, even care (they should know my address as they’ve used it often – see below). If this experience is repeated by other wearable suppliers, no wonder there continues to be a high level of abandonment among purchasers.

Now this editor has been after a posher UP ever since the new tracker that captures heart rate etc – the UP3 – was announced, seemingly many months back now, and so any email like this gets me excited, encouraging me to click ‘customise’ in the Jawbone store, only then to be told when I click through that it’s ‘coming soon’. and indeed it still is, apparently (even though Amazon now says it’ll be in stock by (more…)

The health disruptors, about to be themselves disrupted

May 31, 2015 | by

FierceMedicalDevices on Friday had an article on disruption of the hearing aid business that looks like it could have slipped through a time warp from a few years back – it even mentions faxing as a part of the new process.

The disruption it transpires is separating hearing test from hearing aid provision, the results of the test being sent to a provider “via fax or email”. This it seems is likely to reduce device costs (no mention of the tests costs) from $1,000-$6,000 to some $700/pair.

However, as a Royal Society of Medicine audience heard recently, (more…)

A collation of recent items received – something for everyone

May 11, 2015 | by

Thanks to Professor Mike Short, Mike Clark and Dr Nicholas Robinson, the following are items that have been drawn to the attention of this editor, plus a few he spotted himself:

We begin with a post from Dr Richard Windsor, aka Radio Free Mobile, a person whose opinions I greatly respect, arguing that Fitbit has chosen the perfect moment to float.

Next is an invitation to a Healthcare App – Peer to Peer Session at Swansea University on 20th May at The Institute of Life Science 2 – attendance is free, booking is here. Hours are stated  as 10.45 am – 12.00pm (ie noon).

Then we have a gentle reminder for the Royal Society of Medicine’s event on the 4th June entitled “Should patients manage their own care records?” As the RSM is a charity, our charges for a whole day of excellent speakers are a tiny fraction of what a commercial event would charge, and there’s no hustling.

After that we have the latest Morgan Stanley North American Insight, summarised as saying (more…)