Washington, D.C research foundation RTI International has partnered with Validic to leverage consumer wearable and health sensor data for research. Validic – which has a platform that enables personal health information from consumer devices to be securely captured, standardized and delivered – will validate and deliver the patient-recorded data, and RTI will carry out the research from there. The first project will focus on how teenagers’ health, social experience, genetic profile and living situation affect their health, and more projects looking at other populations will follow.
“Relatively little is known about the validity and reliability of consumer devices and there has not been much work done to pair large samples of these data with other, more traditional sources, like survey responses and clinical records,” RTI’s Senior Clinical Informaticist Robert Furberg said in a statement. “We’re in an unusually good position to help researchers access, appreciate, and analyze the output from this new generation of data collection instruments.” More
On-demand healthcare concierge company Accolade has joined forces with ClearCost Health, which makes a healthcare price and quality transparency tool. The partnership will give users of the Accolade platform a fuller picture of their healthcare choices, as well as increase awareness and adoption of ClearCost’s offering. The combined offering is now in place at Lowe’s Companies, where employees can access the comprehensive tool through their personal Accolade Health Assistants.
“So many of our client interactions involve questions about the cost and quality of health providers and procedures, yet many consumers are unaware of or lack the confidence to effectively use price transparency tools on their own,” Accolade CEO Rajeev Singh said in a statement. “ClearCost is a natural partner for us as our platform integrates their solution to empower our Health Assistants to provide the best care options for each individual. Our personalized high-touch, high-tech platform increases adoption of healthcare tools and solutions, while maximizing plan investments and delighting consumers in process.”
San Francisco-based population health management company Welkin Health has partnered with digital health company Neurotrack to work on a clinical study aimed at identifying ways to detect and prevent cognitive decline and diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The six-month clinical study will use Welkin Health coaches to support Neurotrack’s cognitive assessment and lifestyle program. Additionally, Welkin’s configurable platform will allow the study team to engage, track and measure health outcomes of participants to determine effectiveness of Neurotrack’s early detection and lifestyle technology. More
BodyCap, which makes miniaturized wireless monitoring devices, is officially out of this world. Two of the company’s health-monitoring devices are being used by astronaut Thomas Pesquet onboard the European Space Agency’s International Space Station. The use of BodyCap is part of ESA’s ambulatory data collection system called EveryWear. The program combines input from three wearable sensors, two of which are BodyCap’s: a tonometer to record how the astronaut’s arteries react to weightlessness, and a patch that combines skin temperatures and activity recording to focus on sleep patterns in space. More
Medication management apps Medisafe and RxRevu and care coordination platform CareEvolution have taken part in an initiative led by the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and was able to show successful list functionality with EHRs. Patients can use the Medisafe app to access their medication list from multiple provider locations in a fully secure HIIPAA compliant environment. More
