One of the two US House representatives behind the expansion of telehealth services for active duty and veteran military members [TTA 19 Nov], California Rep. Scott Peters (San Diego area), has just introduced a bill, HR 3577, the ‘Health Savings Through Technology Act,’ to “create a commission to inventory existing data, examine the cost-savings that can be achieved by increasing the use of wireless health technologies, and develop a comprehensive strategy for integrating these technologies into federal health care programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, which often serve the mobility-impaired and elderly.” What is notable is the backing that the bill has from health tech ‘heavy hitters’ such as Qualcomm, American Telemedicine Association (ATA), CONNECT (a San Diego-based innovation catalyst and accelerator) and CHI-California Healthcare Institute, as well as life sciences industry groups BIOCOM (San Diego area) and BayBio (its Northern California counterpart). However, this commission will be studying a rapidly moving target and best get its skates on, fast. Not helping matters is that there is a long, long road between the introduction of a House bill and its joint passage by both House and Senate–if it ever passes. Release (Rep. Peters’ website) Hat tip to ATA (@AmericanTelemed) via Twitter.
Voice-enabled devices–pointer to the future?
LA billionaire and healthcare investor par excellence Patrick Soon-Shiong (his NantHealth raised $31 million earlier this year and owns Vitality, eviti, iSirona, iCOS) has just made a sizable $8 million investment in Fluential, which is developing a voice interface and speech-optimized recognition software for digital health, wellness, and weight management, to run on anything mobile including wearables, and to be released in the spring of 2014. If this works (and better than Siri), it has major implications across the board in the future shape of both consumer and clinical health tech, especially for older adults and those with mobility concerns. Mobihealthnews.
CATCH Launch Event 19 November: report
Drs. Kenneth Law and Mutaz Aldawoud, GPs at the Hillside Bridge Health Centre in Bradford, attended the 19 November launch of the Centre for Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare (CATCH). Here is their report, with your Editors’ appreciation and thanks!
The Centre for Assistive Technology and Connected Healthcare (CATCH) was officially launched on 19th November in Millennium Galleries in Sheffield. The launch offered an opportunity to explore the exciting research being undertaken at CATCH, based at the University of Sheffield, to help people live independently. (more…)
HSJ Awards–the winners are…
The Health Service Journal (HSJ) Awards in 22 categories were presented Tuesday night (19 Nov) and their article has a comprehensive list of all the winners and respective categories, with a link to the Twitter discussion, a souvenir supplement (!) and a free best practice report incorporating all the shortlisted organizations.
Opportunities in the mHealth Landscape: Encouraging Integration
27 November 2013, Pinsent Masons LLP, 30 Crown Place, London, EC2A 4ES
A one-hour breakfast seminar focusing on opportunities and challenges being presented by mHealth developments. Presenting: Tim Davies, CEO of mHealth supplier Exco InTouch, Dr Andy Richards, recipient of BIA’s 2013 lifetime achievement award, Collette Johnson of Plextek Consulting, who has had a central role in advancing the adoption of mHealth technologies in the NHS, and Matthew Godfrey-Faussett, a partner at Pinsent Masons specializing in ICT and Healthcare. The seminar will be chaired by David Isaac, Head of Advanced Manufacturing & Technology Services at Pinsent Masons. Breakfast is 8am with presentations 8:30-9:30am. Free. Email megan.hanney@pinsentmasons.com for registration. Additional information here.
Hospital Directions
London, 27-28 November 2013, ExCeL London Convention Centre
The second annual Hospital Directions conference focuses on Secondary Care and care integration, including the crisis of emergency care with winter looming, the benefits of telehealth in secondary care and comparatives from the US, notably the Kaiser Permanente model. There are seven speaker streams, seminars, workshops and hands-on skill sessions and an exhibition. Presented by CloserStill. Please see attached and their website for more information and registration.
NYeC Digital Health Conference 2013: the trends
Updated 21 November
The third annual New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC) Digital Health Conference in New York City attracted several hundred people from the worlds of hospitals, public health, academia, policy makers and health insurers–and the myriad related products and services which will enable these entities to improve their health IT, organization and engage patients in their own health. If there were three buzzword phrases setting the tone, they were interoperability, patient portals and technological innovation. All relate to data–data transfer of patient records between providers to be available regionally (RHIOs) and throughout the state via the SHIN-NY health information exchange (HIE); using data to help people visualize and improve their health; putting data into ‘whole person’ context for providers, integrating it into workflows and to save lives; using data to serve process improvement and tougher standards. And finally there is that old devil cost: reducing the cost of care, reducing expensive readmissions plus co-morbidities and making those tools to do this job more affordable for providers and patients.
NYeC has developed considerably since its early days seven years ago (more…)
Telehealth saves $55 million in the Basque Country
Faced with an aging population (18 percent over 65) and a failing Spanish economy, the Basque Country Health System is testing telehealth systems to keep its older population healthier and out of the hospital (23 percent are readmitted to hospital). The Accenture-developed TEKI is based on a Microsoft Kinect and connects to a heart rate monitor, pulse oximeter and a spirometer, using the Kinect to evaluate their mobility and provide prescribed exercise therapy as part of rehabilitation. TEKI is part of an Accenture-developed ‘Multi-channel Health Service Center’ that provides a variety of counseling and education services to the local older adult population. The Kinect is also used as a telemedicine platform to communicate with the patients in the study. Results achieved by the program:$55 million saving in Year 1 through eliminating 52,000 hospital visits, a 7 percent cost reduction per patient. CNBC/Philips feature, MedCityNews, video of Osakidetza Hospital staff using TEKI with respiratory patients, Accenture paper.
Staples: a new market for health tech? (US)
Staples is following Amazon’s lead and getting into lines of business–including home health care and personal care–totally unrelated to its core merchandise of office supplies. E-commerce blog GetElastic takes a critical look at their business goals in driving towards over a million SKUs, bringing in third-party sellers (“marketplace”) and drop-shipping, plus sourcing and stocking an extended inventory. The news for us is that one of those marketplaces could be fitness tech/wearable items that employees use in wellness programs such as Fitbits, Jawbones and FuelBands, sensors for Samsung’s S Health program–or glucose meters and blood pressure cuffs. (Already Staples stocks DME, personal care, ostomy and respiratory supplies.) And since Staples already sells smartphones, the potential for cross-selling fitness add-ons and apps is excellent. Can Staples Succeed as an Everything Store?
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Staples-home-page.jpg” thumb_width=”400″ /]International CES unveils in NYC
The trends and items of note for next January’s show in Las Vegas
- The ‘Internet of Things’ is the phrase-du-jour–embedding anything and everything with sensors (digital elements) and blending the physical and digital worlds
- Consumer Digital Health Care was listed as #3 of CEA’s 2014 Technology Trends to Watch (PDF link). What is hot is self-tracking (1/3 of mobile users have tracked using a smartphone and tablet, and over half are now concerned about data security), integrating tech for seniors (touching on Selfhelp’s Virtual Senior Center [TTA 17 Mar 2010], remote monitoring (telehealth and telecare) including GrandCare Systems and kiosk HealthSpot Station, patient adherence, FDA approval of apps and the home as a healthcare hub.
- Robots were the #4 trend: consumer robots such as home cleaners Roomba, Ecovacs; robots in eldercare; humanoid robots like NAO; robotic prosthetics and exoskeletons.
Digital health will again be showcased as a TechZone (more…)
A change of guard at GrandCare Systems
This Editor has often referred to her former competitor GrandCare Systems as one of the ‘grizzled pioneers’ on the Conestoga Wagons of Telecare–even more grizzled than QuietCare (circa 2003-4) since their ur-system dates back to 1995-6, when it kept track of founder and CEO Charlie Hillman’s mother Clara. In the years since, the closely-held company has broadened its original telecare and activity monitoring tech into telehealth, socialization and home automation/monitoring into the most fully featured system in telecare/telehealth for older adults. Without making huge splashes, being beholden to VCs or moving from bucolic West Bend, Wisconsin, the company has grown through multiple alliances, the most unusual being home automation association CEDIA. GrandCare has a residential base of customers but has also developed a solid footing in senior communities both in assisted and independent living. Earlier this year, they reached into UK to partner with Saga [TTA 24 Jan, 10 Jan] and received the CE Mark for approval of its telehealth features for EU distribution.
The news is that they have a new CEO–Daniel Maynard, who is joining from (more…)
Diagnosing Parkinson’s in a 30 second phone call
…and with 99 percent accuracy is the claim made in this TED video by Max Little, an applied mathematician who has devised a voice test/analysis explained in this video. The challenge is to enable early diagnosis as there is no blood test and other diseases can mimic Parkinson’s disease. Neurological tests must be done in a doctor’s office and cost $300. This is algorithmically based, non-invasive and uses precision voice analysis. Parkinson’s is one of the most widespread neurological diseases, affecting 6.3 million people worldwide (the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation estimates 7-10 million) with at least 1 million in the US and 127,000 in the UK (Parkinson’s UK). He now is examining 10,000 voices gathered on his website, the Parkinson’s Voice Initiative with Aculab and PatientsLikeMe. Mr. Little is a TEDGlobal 2012 Fellow and a Wellcome Trust-MIT Postdoctoral Research Fellow. TED Talks page. Hat tip to readers Bob Pyke and Wen Dombrowski, MD.
[This video is no longer available on this site but may be findable via an internet search]The lack of evidence in health IT and patient engagement
In health economist/consultant Jane Sarasohn-Kahn’s lengthy analysis of the IMS Research report, Patient Apps for Improved Healthcare: From Novelty to Mainstream, ‘mainstream’ does not necessarily mean that apps deliver value–in health outcomes, health support or behavior change–which is why doctors have largely ignored them. For the 43,000+ ‘health apps’ so categorized in the Apple iTunes store, only 23,000 met IMS’ criteria of a ‘genuine health app.’ Few apps manage chronic disease for the highest health spenders or assist seniors, amazingly 5 apps =15 percent of all downloads with most apps having less than 500 downloads. Most apps provide information only and only 20 percent capture/track user data. Not dissimilar to the Manhattan Research smartphone study [TTA 30 Oct], the bulk of apps address behavioral health, eyes and hearing, endocrine and nutrition, heart/circulatory, musculoskeletal, and cancer. In IMS’ view, (more…)
Top 10 technology hazards–what pertains to telehealth?
Our Second 10 For Friday comes from ECRI Institute, a non-profit which applies evidence-based research to improve patient care, has issued its annual Top 10 Healthcare Technology Hazards. Compiled from hospital reports, the FDA device experience database and ECRI’s proprietary database of incidents and testing, the most pertinent to telehealth out of the 10 are:
1. Alarm hazards–real alerts go unattended due to caregivers being overwhelmed, distracted or desensitized.
4. Data integrity failures in EHRs and other health IT systems–patient/data association errors, missing data or delayed data delivery, clock synchronization errors and more
7. Neglecting change management for network devices and systems–the “underappreciated consequence of updates, upgrades or modifications made to one device or system have on other connected devices or systems”
8. Risks to pediatric patients from “adult” technologies–mixups within EHRs, conversions from kilograms to pounds, even height and weight being recorded on different EHR screens.
Rural Health Conference – more good news
The Dispensing Doctors’ Association (DDA) has kindly just drawn our attention to the Rural Health conference which took place last month. The presentations include three extremely positive ones extolling the benefits of health technology implementations.
Perhaps just the most impressive on paper (it’s a very difficult choice) is (more…)
Health tech enthusiasm ≠ implementation and scale
Laurie Orlov’s impressions of this year’s Connected Health Symposium, hosted as usual by Partners HealthCare in Boston, presents the conundrum that telehealth and health tech faces beyond the consumer segment, booming fitness trackers and the apps bought one day, discarded the next. How do you get telehealth beyond the pilot to a permanent program in a health system? Do these systems really want to move healthcare to the home? According to Ms. Orlov, there’s amazingly no change from last year on these questions. They are still testing, not broadly deploying (how do companies like Ideal Life and Care Innovations [ever-funded? really?] which aren’t near substantial adoption continue?); and health systems are moving care from brick-and-mortar to the home but slowly, still. Continuing too is the lack of focus on how technology can work best with older adults. (more…)
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