Accountability for both physicians and patients
 Some estimates peg about 50 percent of health care problems on bad genetics or accidents, the Director of the Connected Health Center, Dr. Joseph Kvedar noted during his closing remarks at the Connected Health Symposium in Boston on Wednesday.
“Those are the types of patients that politicians [love to point to] and ask providers: Why would you want to deny that patient care? The other 50 percent of health care problems result from patients who have been irresponsible,” Kvedar said. “No one wants to talk about that. We need to find ways — both societally and in our businesses — to hold people accountable [for being irresponsible with their own health], but if we don’t and we continue on our merry way of believing that every one is a victim, then we won’t accomplish the vision discussed here today. That’s hard for politicians to do and it’s hard for us to do, but we have to do it.”
Kvedar may have spoken softly, but his words were clear: We need to carry a big stick.
How did we, as a society, largely stamp out smoking as a socially acceptable activity? Panelists throughout the day invoked the decades long campaign toward smoking cessation and hinted that those people who make irresponsible health decisions need to be poked, prodded, nudged and shamed into making healthier decisions beyond just not smoking.
Earlier this month we wrote about Safeway’s practice of giving employees discounts on their health insurance for having certain body mass indexes, quitting smoking, controlling hypertension or lowering their cholesterol. According to the original NPR report, organizations, including the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, argue that incentives programs like Safeway’s let healthy employees pay less for health care while discriminating against those who may have pre-existing conditions or a different socioeconomic status.
While the groups make a fair criticism of Safeway’s plan, they are also making Kvedar’s point: Maybe 50 percent of those people who won’t receive bonuses from Safeway had pre-existing conditions, but what about the other half who are make poor health decisions?
“Yes, we need to hold people accountable, but I’m not sure how that can be done. I am sure it will be done eventually, but it may be done with significant negative consequences for certain populations,” Deepak Ayyagari, Director, Technology Programs, Sharp Laboratories opined during a panel session following Kvedar’s remarks. You cannot penalize someone for not being able to afford a salad and choosing to buy a Big Mac instead, Ayyagari said.
“Maybe we need a Big Mac tax and a salad subsidy,” Verizon’s newly appointed Chief Medical Officer Dr. Peter Tibbett quipped.
|
| @Connected Health: Aphorisms for wireless health
During a wireless health-focused session at the Connected Health Symposium in Boston this week, the panelists from Verizon, WellDoc, GenerationOne and Sensei had some memorable quotes and bits of wisdom that often stood out as best practices or interesting comments. Below is a rundown of some of the more helpful aphorisms from the event:
Carriers eye connected health at home and on-the-go
“We believe that the home is where healthcare is going to be taken care of most of the time, which we can service through our FiOS television and Internet offerings, hub devices, and so on. The cell phone will become the place for primary care on the go, while the television will be the hub at home. With these fiber and wireless networks, we have the technology, security and bandwidth and are able to push as many applications as we want, but we need to be careful to remember to focus on solutions that are going to impact the patient and change his lifestyle.” – Rajeev Kappor, VP and Managing Director, Verizon
Wireless health goes to Hollywood?
“How do we really engage people and encourage them to participate? That’s the Holy Grail for wireless health. It needs to be more enjoyable and attractive on a day to day basis then it has been up until now. Just look at Apple’s iPhone AppStore, there are pages and pages of applications available on the App Store, but consistently the games are the most popular applications. We need to find more enjoyable ways to get people engaged. Maybe we need to hire Hollywood — seriously, maybe we do.” – Robert Schwarzberg, CEO, Sensei
Continue >>
|
@Connected Health: Myca, Hello Health & QCOMM
At the Connected Health Symposium in Boston this week, Myca Health described its offering as a platform for physicians and patients, called MycaHub, which delivers a set of automated tools, intuitive interfaces, integrated systems, and the capacity for doctor and patient to engage in real time, any time, online or offline.
Earlier this month the company announced that Blue Cross Blue Shield Ventures and Sandbox Industries had made a strategic $5 million investment into the company, which has a well-known and highly publicized subsidiary named Hello Health that offers the platform to physicians.
Myca Health also offers its Myca Hub to employers with in-house clinics — self-insured employers like Qualcomm. Interestingly, Qualcomm actually developed the Myca platform in-house before turning it over to entrepreneur Nat Findlay who now leads the company as CEO, Qualcomm’s VP of Health and Life Sciences, Don Jones told mobihealthnews on the sidelines of The Connected Health Symposium in Boston this week. Qualcomm knew that EMRs probably wouldn’t reach the level of patient-doctor interactivity that Myca offers today for years to come — so it decided to build the platform on its own. How long do you think it will be before EMRs allow patients and doctors to exchange video messages? Myca does that today.
Continue >>
|
@Connected Health: Verizon highlights partners
At Partners Health 6th Annual Connected Health Symposium in Boston, during a presentation by Verizon’s VP and Managing Director Rajeev Kapoor, the carrier distributed marketing materials that laid out the carrier’s healthcare offerings and highlighted a number of the carrier’s wireless health partners, which included a number of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion’s healthcare partners.
Verizon breaks down healthcare into four key categories: Home care, patient monitoring, prescription and electronic medical records. For home care Verizon highlighted its partner Xora’s OnCare application for home health care workers that it claims can increase revenue by increasing patient visits thanks to increased efficiency and time saved. OnCare also reduces costs because it accurately tracks mileage and reduces paperwork, Verizon said. For patient monitoring Verizon did not disclose any partner companies’ names, but the photo appears to be one of Verizon partner LifeWatch’s solution, which is for remote cardiac monitoring through smartphones and sensors connected exclusively to Verizon Wireless’ network. For drug interaction, e-prescribing and EMRs, Verizon has Epocrates and Thompson Reuters Clinical Xpert Navigator app highlighted.
Continue >>
|
| CTIA interviews: AirStrip; BlackBerry; MedApps
As part of the CTIA Wireless IT&E event’s focus on wireless health in San Diego earlier this month, CTIA published a number of video and audio interviews with wireless health industry luminaries on their event site today. Among the interviewees: BlackBerry, Gold’s Gym, AirStrip Technologies and MedApps. Read on for brief summaries and pull quotes from the interviews.
AirStrip Technologies
Dr. Cameron Powell, an obstetrician, is also president and co-founder of AirStrip Technologies.
"It’s a well-known fact in this country that communication errors are the number one cause of patient injury in a hospital," Powell said. "Paying attention generally involves a visual experience, actually looking at data to make a decision… [a lot of the data transmitted within a hospital] is presented as wave form data. At AirStrip we deliver this wave form data any time and any where."
Continue >>
|
Does wireless health need a medical app store?
A recent Brookings Institute report that we pointed to last week has drummed up a lot of response from the political commentary crowd: Joe Rothstein, editor of EIN News, penned an editorial in U.S. Politics Today this week that picked up where Brookings Institute’s Darrell West left off:
“Physicians and patients are going to have to learn how to migrate into the new medical world. That may not be as difficult as it seems with a generation or so now having grown up with Nintendo and Game Boy as their constant companions,” Rothstein wrote. “And who now doesn’t have a cell phone, or a smart phone, or an ipod? In the near time horizon it’s likely we will all be customers at the medical app store, customizing our own devices.”
Continue >>
|
Epocrates Essentials now on BlackBerry
Epocrates announced that its clinical software suite, Epocrates Essentials is now available for BlackBerry smartphones. In its recent press release, the software developer said that “BlackBerry smartphones are one of Epocrates’ fastest growing platform with more than 20 percent growth among U.S. physicians in the past quarter.” Epocrates Essentials is also available for Palm, Windows Mobile, iPhone and iPod touch devices.
The Epocrates Essentials app for BlackBerry costs $269 for a two-year subscription or $159 for a one-year subscription.
Epocrates said that its point of care application is used to support clinical decisions from diagnosis to treatment and includes drug prescribing and safety information, thousands of peer-reviewed disease topics developed with the BMJ Group; hundreds of diagnostic and laboratory tests for interpretation and diagnostic support; hundreds of brand name OTC drug products with drug interactions; more than 600 alternative/herbal medicines; plus an infectious disease treatment guide.
Epocrates boasts more than 900,000 healthcare professionals, which includes one in three U.S. physicians and some 40 percent of medical students.
For more, read the company press release here.
|
USPTO grants patent for wireless health system
“Our company focus is the protection of our Intellectual Property and the commercialization of a development platform of products for solution providers in growing market segments like: the remote collection of data for patient monitoring, physical rehabilitation and strength conditioning, gaming, military, and aviation,” Applied Technology Holdings CEO Jay Shears stated in a company press release last week.
ATH applied for a patent for a wireless health body area network system in November of 2006, according to the patent filing.
The company said that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office USPTO granted it a patent for a system that gathers and processes biometric and biomechanical body motion data. The patented system includes low cost motion sensor technology attached to a body, and data storage and retrieval systems to collect body motion and biometric data wirelessly, Shears stated.
Continue >>
|
Senate: Wellness incentives may double
According to a report in the Washington Post, a bill recently passed by the Senate Finance and Health Committees, includes a provision that more than doubles the potential rewards and penalties that employers can use to incentivize or motivate employees to get healthy, lower cholesterol, stop smoking or lower their BMI.
“A single employee whose annual premiums cost him and his employer the national average of $4,824 could have as much as $2,412 on the line,” according to the report. “Families with premiums of $13,375 — the combined average for employer-sponsored coverage, according to a recent survey — could have $6,687.50 at risk.”
Efforts to financially incentivize employees to get healthy has been a controversial aspect to increasingly popular corporate wellness programs, but if incentives do become widespread then wireless health tools could find a willing audience both among employers looking to reduce health costs and employees looking to shape up.
Continue >>
|
Texas Instruments demos Bluetooth low energy
Texas Instruments unveiled a Bluetooth LE (low energy) cell demo during a Bluetooth conference in Germany this week. Texas Instruments claimed that the device will consume so little power that it would allow wireless connectivity to run on devices for very long periods of time: A small button cell battery, for example, could power a device without recharging for more than a year, TI said.
The company said that ideal applications for low-power devices include fitness applications like pedometers as well as medical equipment.
The Continua Health Alliance has already tapped Bluetooth LE as one of its guidelines for personal health devices interoperability: “Bluetooth low energy technology is a power efficient, short-range wireless technology that offers connectivity between mobile devices and small, battery-powered devices such as watches, emergency pendants and health and fitness sensors. It features low power consumption, small size and low cost, providing Continua a reliable solution to enable mobile devices for a wide range of telehealth audiences. Bluetooth low energy technology extends the current Continua standard for the Bluetooth Health Device Profile, the only wireless technology specification included in Continua’s Version One Design Guidelines, announced in February 2009,” Continua wrote in its press release that announced the chosen technology this past June.
For more on TI’s demo this week, read this report from Electronista
|
Survey: Ripe mobile market for home healthcare
A recent report from the The National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) and commissioned by BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) found that only 6.3 percent of the hardware used in the field today are handheld devices like smartphones. The report follows an announcement from Verizon Wireless earlier this month that it now offering an application for home health care workers called OnCare, that was developed by Xora.
The new report, called: The BlackBerry Report: The National State of the Home Care Industry Study also included the metrics below:
- More than 65 percent of home health care agencies now have electronic medical records (EMRs)
- Some 83 percent said that these EMRs have improved the quality of their care coordination
- Almost 40 percent of home health agencies use some form of POS system in the field
- Handheld devices account for 6.3 percent of hardware used in the field currently
- Some 36.8 percent of agencies planning to purchase new hardware are interested in handhelds
- About 23 percent of agencies report using telehealth systems
- About 21.9 percent of home health agencies give more than 5 percent of revenue for free care
Continue >>
|
Red Cross by SMS; FireFly/GenerationOne
Text alerts to encourage blood donations: The Red Cross announced that it will begin offering real-time alerts to critical blood inventories and tips for successful blood donations through text messages. Users opt-in to the program and can then choose to give blood when and where it is needed. The text will even include a click to call feature that allows the user to book an appointment right away. Willing donors can subscribe to Red Cross texting by texting: “redcross” to 42227 or by registering here.
Simplicity is what we need: In a recent Fast Company column, Gadi Amit, president of NewDealDesign wrote up his takeaways from attending the Body Computing Conference in L.A. last week: “Simplicity is what we need. We need concise clinical ideas that can be effective tomorrow, not in the next decade. And making these ideas come to life is a task any designer would gladly take on.” More
Kids mobile company’s transformation into healthy phones for seniors: Forbes continues its coverage of the wireless health industry with this piece that follows up on kids phone maker Firefly’s new re-purposed life as part of senior-focused wireless health company GenerationOne: “In April 2008, health software maker GenerationOne purchased Firefly with the intention of using its mobile platform to support and expand its own services,” Forbes writes. Since then the companies have combined their technology to create what they call an integrated mobile platform for health care. More
|
Canada’s MDDS; CE for Biotronik; DoCoMo
“Soap it off or eat it later,” read one rather to-the-point reminder for men to wash their hands in the bathroom. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine set-up wireless sensors in highway service station restroom to determine how best to encourage patrons to wash their hands after using the facilities: “Absent such reminders, the study found, only 65 percent of women and a paltry 31 percent of men used soap,” the study found. The group tracked 200,000 restroom visits over 32 days. More
Canada posts its own medical device data system (MDDS) rule: Medical Connectivity’s William Hyman writes: “Health Canada, Canada’s medical device regulatory authority, posted classification information for Patient Management Software. This action is similar to the FDA’s proposed rule for the regulation of Medical Device Data Systems (MDDS), nearing finalization. The Canadian announcement begins with a reminder of its definition of “medical device” which is similar to although not identical to the U.S definition.” More
Continue >>
|
Online visit reimbursement; iAorticValve
Online visits to get reimbursement: New York-based MPV Health Care plans to reimburse for more than 22,0000 physicians who use McKesson subsidiary RelayHealth’s webVisit consultations. The group has partnered with Mohawk Valley Medical Associates (MVMA) a regional, independent physician association. RelayHealth also offers results management, personal health records (PHRs), appointment scheduling and referrals, patient health education and e-prescribing. More
MIT program aims to answer the question: “Can you make a cellphone change the world?’’ MIT students in the program have created about 20 projects and three start-up ventures that enable communities in developing markets to leverage the mobile platform for healthcare in markets including India, Vietnam, and Mexico. More
iAorticValve app for iPhone: iPhone app developer company iMobileHealth released its first of ten apps: “The iAorticValve application will allow doctors and patients to access and use critical aortic valve information—and have it at their fingertips in a mobile form.” More
Continue >>
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| What’s Happening |
6th Annual Connected Health Symposium
October 21-22, Boston
Up from Crisis: Overhauling Healthcare Information, Payment and Delivery in Extraordinary Times
hosted by the Center for Connected Health at Partners HealthCare
Healthcare will have its renaissance when it moves beyond the hospital and clinic and into the day-to-day lives of patients and consumers. The Connected Health Symposium asks how information technology — cell phones, computers, the Internet and other tools — can help people manage chronic conditions, maintain health and wellness, and age with independence.
Use invitation code mobihealth to receive a $100 discount!
Register here
TEDMED 2009
October 27-30,
San Diego
The fifth in a series created by Marc Hodosh and Richard Saul Wurman, TEDMED celebrates conversations that demonstrate the intersection and connections between all things medical and healthcare related: from personal health to public health, devices to design and Hollywood to the hospital. Together, this encompasses more than twenty percent of our GNP in America while touching everyone’s life around the globe.
Register here
e-Patient Connections 2009
October 26-27,
Philadelphia
Join hundreds of fellow healthcare marketing and communication
professionals at e-Patient Connections 2009 on October 26 and 27 in
Philadelphia, PA.
It’s the one conference you need to attend to make sense of the
radical changes taking place in health marketing, such as social media marketing, web conversations, and mobile health. Discover new ways to connect, educate, and engage digital health consumers. Don’t miss this REDUCED PRICING of only $2,195 which expires in October.
Register now!
2009 NIH mHealth Summit
Oct. 29-30,
Washington, DC
Foundation for the National Institutes of Health Will Bring Together Researchers, Mobile Technology Experts, Policy-Makers Industry Visionaries
This two-day event, a public-private partnership of the Foundation for NIH, is being produced in partnership with the NIH, the premiere biomedical research institute in the U.S. It is the first Summit focused on exploring the partnership between biomedical research and the use of mobile technologies to improve public health.
Register here
9th Transforming Healthcare through Health IT Summit
Nov. 4-5,
Beverly Hills, CA
The Transforming Healthcare through Health IT Summit is designed to help top-level executives, legislators, physicians, regulators, and technologists come to grips with the swirling forces of health information technology change, policy development, and changing business models. Participants include CEO’s, CIO’s, CMIO’s, VP’s, Directors, etc. from rural hospital, health systems, single facility hospitals, IDNS, and other health care providers.
Register here
The 5th Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress
Nov. 8-10,
Alexandria, VA
The 5th Annual World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Congress (WHIT v.5.0) is the premier industry event for senior executives tasked with making these multi-million dollar IT decisions. WHIT v.5.0 presents the latest innovations and initiatives in accelerating the adoption and implementation of information technology in the health care setting.
Register here
Mobile Healthcare Industry Summit
Dec. 1-2,
London, UK
The ONLY Event For Best Practice and Innovation In Global Wireless and Healthcare Convergence
With a special keynote delivery from Vittorio Collao, CEO, Vodafone Group we bring you the lead pioneers in wireless and healthcare convergence and best practice. Expect two days of 50:50 representation from the communications and healthcare sectors working towards services innovation and partnership – with Continua Health Alliance, GSMA, NHS, M Health Alliance, Vodafone, Orange, Verizon, Microsoft, Bluetooth Special Interest Group and more.
Register here
Coming up in 2010:
CIO Healthcare Summit
May 9-12, Scottsdale, AZ
The CIO Healthcare Summit is a gathering for C-suite executives and industry thought leaders to discuss IT challenges currently facing the health care industry, including improving patient care, controlling costs and meeting government regulations.
Register here
|
|
|
