Events, Dear Friends, Events: UK Telehealthcare, Mad*Pow HXD, dHealth Summit

January 23, 2019 | by

UK Telehealthcare is hosting two events at Hammersmith Town Hall, King St. London W6 9JU on 7-8 February. The 7th is a Suppliers’ Forum, the 8th is for Providers. For more information, contact Gerry Allmark, UKTHC’s Managing Director, at gerry@uktelehealthcare.com. UKTHC is also partnering with Naidex on 26th-27th March at NEC, Birmingham. Naidex is Europe’s largest event for the disability and independent living sector with over 250 CPD-accredited seminars and the latest in assistive technology, accessible business advice and more. Registration and more information here.

Two events have moved from NYC to the Boston/Cambridge area, reinforcing that much of entrepreneurial health tech is moving away from the primary cities of New York and San Francisco to secondary–and more affordable (well, slightly!) areas. The first is Mad*Pow’s Health Experience Design (HXD) Conference on 2-3 April at the Royal Sonesta Boston in Cambridge. The conference will be centered on the design and delivery of transformative health services, behavior change interventions, and digital solutions. Information and registration here.

The second is the dHealth Summit on 11 June at State Room Boston.  The University of Rochester in collaboration with West Health organizes this two-day annual conference, now in its fifth year, to foster disruptive technological and process innovations to improve the lives of the nation’s aging population. The pre-conference kickoff on 10 June is themed around caregiving and is at AGENCY CIC Headquarters in Cambridge. Speakers represent a cross-section of care delivery companies, insurers, innovators, and non-profits. What this Editor enjoyed about past conferences was their interactive setup and a fairly select group of attendees. More information and registration is here.

And don’t forget our earlier listings here for Matt Hancock at the RSM 28 Jan, the NOLA Health Innovators Challenge (applications extended to 27 Jan), plus event at the RSM and The King’s Fund (see TTA 9 Jan). In Dallas the Health Wildcatters have their Challenge on 8-9 Feb and there’s more in our 10 Jan roundup.

Successful Aging 2030: how far we haven’t come, how far we have to go

May 17, 2017 | by | 4 Comments
[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dhealth2017_300x75_2.png” thumb_width=”200″ /]This Editor attended last Wednesday’s (10 May) d.Health Summit 2017–Successful Aging 2030, sponsored by the University of Rochester and West Health. It was an expansive, well-organized and attended seminar at the New York Academy of Sciences at the impressive new 7 World Trade Center. Panels covered economic, housing, health outcomes, government policy, technology innovation, and investing factors key to one central fact: that in the US, nearly 20 percent of the population will be over 65 by 2030. Worldwide, the numbers are already much higher as of 2015: Japan (26 percent), Italy (22), Greece, Germany, Portugal (21) with nearly all of Europe already near that magic number (World Bank).

What was dispiriting to this Editor was that in her now 11 years in related health tech (telehealth and telecare), the status of many issues were the same as in 2006. The inadequacy of ‘aging in place’ supports and “assisted living”; a culture that brutally devalues people as they get older starting after 50; a belief that whiz-bang technology will fix it, but it doesn’t; the non-recognition of ‘aging-consumer-driven healthcare’; the lack of attention from investors because aging is not glamorous–are still there. What was hopeful? The candid recognition of these factors and the open discussion around them. There was a blunt admission expressed somewhat differently by two speakers, June Fisher MD of UC Berkeley and Charlotte Yeh of AARP, that without co-designing solutions with older people, we will get nowhere, and that imposing ‘fixes’ from the outside hasn’t and isn’t going to work. We also have a new middle age of 55-75, but the work market and employers have not adapted to that lengthening of productiveness, with the ‘pasture’ of retirement still pegged theoretically at 65.

Highlights of each panel:

The Longevity Economy, or the Silver Economy, was estimated by Merrill Lynch‘s Surya Kolluri at $7 trillion, with a surprising 90 percent of package goods spending done by 65+, and not just that but also areas such as home improvement. But healthcare spending is about 200 percent over the population average, and caregiving factors into that as well. There are profit opportunities for companies in this market, including developing/future areas such as robotics. (more…)

Ding! Telecare developer Healthsense raises $10 million in 8th round

August 22, 2014 | by

Sensor-based remote monitoring company and certified Grizzled Pioneer Healthsense has completed a raise of $10 million, its eighth round of funding since its founding in 2003. This round was led by new investor Mansa Capital with previous investors Radius Ventures and Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. Mansa has current investments in only two other companies–smartphone med adherence platform HealthPrize Technologies ($3 million from Mansa just yesterday) and employer behavioral health risk manager E4 Health (CrunchBase) with a third, Independent Living Systems, listed on its website, but was a prior investor in well-known Athenahealth. Earlier investors Ziegler HealthVest Management (2007) and West Health did not join in this round. The VentureBeat article alludes to home monitoring pilots with home health providers Humana Cares/Senior Bridge and Fallon Health–odd since Healthsense has always had units in home health. Last year Healthsense bought rival telecare company WellAWARE [TTA 2 July 2013] after the latter experienced difficulty (more…)