You can't avoid the term "patient engagement" in healthcare today, and for good reason.
Health Affairs explains that "'patient activation' refers to a patient's knowledge, skills, ability, and willingness to manage his or her own health and care," while "'patient engagement' is a broader concept that combines patient activation with interventions designed to increase activation and promote...
Eighty four percent of patients said they should be able to use technology to help their doctors make a diagnosis, while 69 percent of physicians said patients should use such tools to help them form a diagnosis. That's according to a recent survey from WebMD. In a follow up, the survey asked physicians if patients should self-diagnose using technology, to which only 17 percent of physicians said...
Kinsa's smartphone-connected thermometer
The US Food and Drug Administration has proposed to largely deregulate a sizable list of Class II and Class I medical devices and no longer require their makers to go through the 510(k) process. The agency made clear the deregulatory move would not necessarily exempt the device makers from other steps like appropriately registering and labeling their...
There are now more than 100,000 apps on the iOS and Android app stores, according to a new report by research firm Research2Guidance, double the market size of two and a half years ago. They project the mobile health app market will have produced $26 billion in revenue by the end of 2017, up from $2.4 billion so far.
Research2Guidance also found that the average app publisher has seven apps and...
The National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has proposed a project that would use smartphones to collect information on health behaviors, especially with an eye on smoking habits and cessation. The project, which was outlined in the Federal Register this week, is for a feasibility study set to last one...
A WellPoint health plan in Florida, called Amerigroup Florida, announced that it will offer Asthmapolis' FDA-cleared mobile health device and service to its members with asthma.
Asthmapolis' device is a sensor that sits atop (most) inhalers used by patients who have asthma or COPD. The sensor transmits data to a companion app on the user’s mobile phone every time the inhaler is used. The app can...
As has been tradition for some time now, every year around this time the digital health community gets a wake up call. The Pew Internet & American Life Project published its latest report on mobile health this morning and while it is filled to the brim with helpful, encouraging statistics related to mobile health adoptions, buried deep within is an outright discouraging one. Health app...
Feedback loops. That's the focus that some of the highest profile consumer health startups have taken in recent years. Making scales smarter by pairing them with smartphone apps, using smartphone camera's to track eating habits or to measure vital signs, pairing wireless-enabled pedometers with smarter software, all hope to create tighter and more effective feedback loops with an eye on health...
By Padma Nagappan
Children are generally active when they are young but their level of activity often tapers off as they enter their teens, which leads to a high incidence of obesity, associate professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine Donna Spruijt-Metz said during her remarks at the WLSA's Wireless Health 2012 event last week. The number...
By Padma Nagappan
While healthcare is shifting from provider-centered episodic care to outcome-based, patient-centered care, at least one speaker at last week's Wireless Health 2012 event believes that more personalized air quality data should be a part of the healthcare discussion, too. In chronic conditions like asthma and cancer, environmental exposures play a major role in disease development...
