Telstra has spent $100M on telehealth

Telstra Health has splashed out $100 million buying up other telehealth companies, it was revealed at a recent conference. Bronwyn Pike, former Minister of Health in Victoria and now Community Care Lead at Telstra Health, addressing the 13th National Rural Health Conference[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Telstra-Health.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /] held in Darwin from May 24th to 27th, described how Telstra Health wants to transform rural health in Australia.

“Increasing demand, rising costs and more people with chronic illness are among the challenges Australia’s health care industry is facing. Working harder can only go so far — we need to reimagine what the future could look like”, Pike wrote in her abstract.

“Helping users to do more for themselves has been a key feature of almost every other industry change of the last decade. Banking is a perfect example — where once every single interaction required your physical presence in front of a teller, now you can manage almost every aspect of your banking needs securely online.

“Health is caught in a model that is inconvenient for patients and labour intensive for health care providers. We need to tailor the model to suit the health industry and capitalise on the benefits connection can provide. Those living in rural and remote communities without regular access to all levels of care stand to benefit enormously if we can unlock the potential of ehealth”

Telstra expands telemedicine offering with acquisition

Following our report earlier in the month on Telstra’s success in winning the Western Australia telehealth [grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Telstra-Health.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /]contract, Telstra announced the acquisition of UK based Dr Foster last week. Telstra has now announced that they are acquiring Medibank’s Anywhere Healthcare platform, further expanding its Telstra Health arm.

Since 2013 Telstra has had exclusive access to Dr Foster in Australia and supplies Dr Foster products to several health services in Australia.

Anywhere Healthcare is a middleman platform with specialists signed up to provide remote consultations and GPs signed up to use the services of those specialists. When a face-to-face consultation is considered not appropriate the GP can arrange for a remote consultation via Anywhere Healthcare. Typically, this has been used to date for patients in nursing homes.

The current Anywhere Healthcare directory lists 30 specialists covering 17 specialties and it is reported that there are 1600 GPs signed up to the service. Telstra have stated that they expect to expand the service, particularly into rural patient consultations.

 

Health apps presently of little use, says Australian telehealth expert

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Margelis.jpg” thumb_width=”120″ /]”Immature” and “focused on low-lying fruit such as fitness tracking and not focused on the big issues of management of disease” are also two of the compliments that Dr George Margelis of the University of Western Sydney’s TeleHealth Research & Innovation Laboratory (THRIL) has bestowed on the current state of health apps. Until the collected data ‘plugs into other digital platforms’–he mentions the Australian government’s PHR, eHealth–apps will not help those who need it the most. “Unfortunately, managing these diseases, in particular the chronic diseases that are a major part of the current burden, requires more than just tracking a few physical parameters which is what the app world is up to.” Dr Margelis called for collaboration between app developers and healthcare professionals; while he scores Apple’s HealthKit, that may be the means to make his vision come true. It should be noted that Dr Margelis (more…)

Box.com’s odd swerve into healthcare cloud storage and PHRs

[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/gimlet-eye.jpg” thumb_width=”150″ /] Both The Gimlet Eye (filing from a remote island) and Editor Donna have been pleased users of the Box.com file storage site for storing all sorts of files in the ‘cloud’ (a/k/a Somewhere Out There On A Whole Bunch Of Internet Servers), sharing and collaboration. It’s simple to use, it works and, for our needs, actually free. However founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith, who look barely old enough to shave (but smartly have A Touch of Grey in their management team), have their eyes set on far bigger prizes than our mediocre needs. Now they have added ‘special advisers’ Aneesh Chopra, first US CTO, and Glen Tullman, former CEO of Allscripts. Mr. Tullman certainly does add major luster (and connections) and Mr. Chopra, despite the Eye’s consideration of him as hyperbolic and politically, not technically, qualified for his previous positions in the Government and the state of Virginia, adds the inevitable political ones. Having them on the roster also adds heft to their imminently rumored IPO (TechCrunch; update, filed 24 March) and ultimately acing out other file sharers Dropbox in the enterprise area. Expectations are high; Box has $414 million in funding from a roster of investors (including Telefónica and Australia’s Telstra) through a Series F (CrunchBase) with a valuation of $2 billion (TechCrunch) and undoubtedly they’d like some of it back. Soon. (The completely overheated Castlight Health IPO only whets the appetite.)

Healthcare one key to a rich IPO. Box’s healthcare moves point in the enterprise direction. (more…)