General News

Stanford Center for Digital Health awards seed grants, Apple Watches to health care studies

June 26, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

STANFORD, Calif. – The Stanford Center for Digital Health has awarded five seed grants and a total of 1,000 Apple Watches to research projects led by Stanford faculty.

The projects are designed to study whether creative uses of the smartwatches can achieve meaningful health care outcomes.

“Our goal, simply stated, is to enable the Stanford community to do cool stuff to improve health care with technology,” said Dr. Mintu Turakhia, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine and senior director of research and innovation at the center, in a statement.

The center provides platforms for digital health experts, industry members and students to come together and share knowledge; it’s also an internal resource for the Stanford community, providing infrastructure and support in the field of digital health.

Projects that received seed funding are:

Harnessing mindset in health technology;
ReClaim: A virtual therapist for stroke patient arm recovery;
Exploring an artificial intelligence approach to support adherence behaviors in psychiatric clinical care;
Stop, watch: Reducing hyperactivity and supporting attention for youth with ADHD; and
Individualized migraine attack prediction with self-reported and passively collected data.

“We aim to facilitate novel and transformative research with health care technology, leveraging the expertise and academic rigor of Stanford,” said Dr. Lauren Cheung, clinical assistant professor of medicine and senior director of strategy and operations at the center, in a statement.

Digital health startups take notice: Seniors are adopting technology

June 20, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON – Many digital health startups don’t consider the growing population of seniors in the U.S. when developing new products and technologies—but they might want to re-think that now that a recent Pew Research report has found the rate of technology adoption among seniors to be growing.

“It’s easy to understand why health technology companies don’t see seniors as likely consumers,” said David Inns, CEO of connected health company GreatCall. “This shouldn’t be the case, considering the broad spectrum of benefits technology can offer them.”

The Pew report found that half of people age 65 and older now have broadband in their home for the first time, and at the same time America is graying, seniors are also moving toward digitally connected lives. Connected home health devices are part of that technology adoption and older adults are looking to find ways to stay healthy at home while they age, especially tech-savvy baby boomers.

Inns said that digital health startups should keep these statistics in mind when developing new home health care technologies because the senior space can offer huge opportunities.

The Pew report, which was based on multiple national telephone and in-person surveys, found that younger seniors are embracing technology at a faster rate than their older counterparts. Smartphone ownership among seniors ages 65-69 grew to 59%, but only 17% of those ages 80 and older said they own a smartphone, for example.

While seniors are warming to smartphones and other home health devices, the report found that this population faces some unique barriers to a wider embrace of technology, ranging from physical challenges to a lack of comfort and familiarity with different technologies.

Inns said that to help combat these barriers to the senior population, digital health startups should demonstrate the benefits of their product to older adults and make it easy to use.

Text messages may help manage diabetes, study finds

June 16, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

SAN DIEGO – Daily text messages can help improve blood sugar management for people with Type 2 diabetes, a study has found.

“Use of a simple, low-cost text-messaging program was found to be highly acceptable,” said the researchers in a paper about the study published recently in Diabetes Care magazine.

Groups of low-income, Hispanic participants with poorly controlled Type 2 diabetes received the Dulce Digital Intervention or usual care for their diabetes. The Dulce Digital participants received up to three motivational, educational, and/or call-to-action text messages each day over six months.

The study found that the Dulce Digital group achieved a significantly greater reduction in blood glucose over time, and satisfaction and acceptability ratings were high.

“Text messaging may provide one of the most rapid methods to overcome the ‘digital divide’ to improve care,” the researchers said in the paper.

mPulse Mobile partners with Harvard for text messaging study

June 15, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

LOS ANGELES – Mobile health engagement company mPulse Mobile is partnering with researchers at the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School on two new programs to evaluate the impact of interactive, tailored text messages with a Medicaid population.

“There is a major need for innovation in care delivery and how we can engage patients outside of just the office visit,” said Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, program researcher and associate professor of healthcare policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School, in a statement.

One program will evaluate whether interactive text messaging can help new Medicaid members select and visit a primary care clinician soon after enrolling. The other aims to activate members with chronic conditions to enroll and engage in a disease management program.

During the evaluation of both programs, two-way, tailored text messages will be delivered to a population of Ventura County, California-based Gold Coast Health Plan Medicaid members. Gold Coast works with about 200,000 Medi-Cal members.

While one-way, notification-based text messages have been widely used by health care organizations for years, research to determine the effectiveness of interactive text messaging programs tailored to targeted populations is limited, said Mehrotra.

Gold Coast believes management of chronic conditions like asthma is often unsatisfactory, leading to inadequate treatment and adherence to treatment. For this reason, one of the two mobile engagement programs will focus on increasing program enrollment and personal health engagement, where participating members will be prompted via interactive text messages to sign up for and participate in the Gold Coast asthma disease management program.

“We’re looking forward to seeing learnings from these programs applied industry-wide,” said Dr. Nancy Wharfield, associate chief medical officer, GCHP, in a statement.

Patient monitoring market to reach $1.9B by 2025

June 13, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

NEW YORK – The global remote patient monitoring market will reach $1.9 billion by 2025, predicts a new report by consulting and advisory firm Grand View Research Inc.

“Remote patient monitoring devices, due to their capability to monitor various chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular conditions and cancer are expected to witness substantial growth over the forecast period,” wrote the report’s authors.

Drivers for that growth include the rise in demand for home health care and independent living by seniors, as well as

improving health care infrastructure and increasing post-acute care management, according to the report.

The rapid growth of the remote patient monitoring market is indicative of the world embracing new technologies in health care, said Jack Tawil, CEO of Medpod Inc., a maker of mobile medical carts and other telehealth devices.

“As technology becomes more ubiquitous, the standard of patient monitoring is being raised to new levels, and providers and patients are being empowered by information that can help detect issues early and promote understanding and greater engagement in preventive care,” he said.

Also helping to spur that growth: The remote patient monitoring market has seen many important technological developments, with the integration of professional-grade medical equipment into mobile carts and other structures being at the top of the list, Tawil said.

“The miniaturization and mobilization of the office or clinic frees physicians to extend beyond the walls of their traditional practice and deliver, from a remote location, in-home care that is on par with an in-office visit,” he said.

The report identified heart rate monitors as the most lucrative sub-segment of the remote patient monitoring market, and while hospitals accounted for a bankable share, alternate sites for patient monitoring like home health care and ambulatory care are expected to see profitable growth over the next 10 years.

The report pegged North America for more than 40% of the remote patient monitoring market because of the high demand for technologically advanced products.

Validic teams with Microsoft for patient health insights

June 12, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

DURHAM, N.C. – Validic, a provider of health care data connectivity platforms, is integrating with Microsoft HealthVault Insights, a research-based project designed to transform patient engagement by generating new insights about patient health.

“Validic provides the scalable infrastructure needed to acquire a broad range of data for millions of patients,” said Drew Schiller, CEO and co-founder of Validic, in a statement. “With a vision for a health care system built around intelligent insights, we are excited for this opportunity with Microsoft to improve care management and delivery in a way that benefits providers and patients.”

Through this integration, Validic will enable HealthVault Insights to connect to as many as 400 clinical and consumer devices—enabling the data from these devices to drive meaningful insights for patients.

Patients will be able to connect their in-home medical devices and wearables to HealthVault Insights, giving providers contextual information into a patient’s lifestyle, activities and health.

Patients will receive trends and correlations that are based on the their electronic health records and analyzed by Microsoft’s machine learning capabilities to improve the management of their chronic condition and general wellness.

Clinicians will be able to remotely view the patient’s adherence and engagement with a provider-defined care program to track the patient’s progress and health data.

“We are working to bring together critical data sources with machine learning to deliver personalized, actionable insights to both patients and clinicians,” said Heather Jordan Cartwright, general manager, Artificial Intelligence and research at Microsoft, in a statement. “This collaboration helps us continue to build a seamless experience for the patient while providing unique insights to the care team.”

Ideation Center aims to spark health care innovation

June 5, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

‘You just have to engage and the answers will come’

NEWARK, N.J. – New Jersey aims to become a hotbed of health care innovation with the recent development of an ideation center to help create and launch a new wave of health care technology, products and services, including home health care devices like wearables, software and health management platforms.

“One of the key tenets of this center is to create the conditions for innovation and creativity to happen,” said Thomas Bartiromo, chief innovation officer of the New Jersey Innovation Institute, which is a nonprofit corporation of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. “We hope to bring real-world projects to the health care marketplace.”

The ideation center is a project of the NJII and Hackensack Meridian Health, and it will be run through NJII’s Healthcare Delivery Systems iLab, which specializes in pairing New Jersey’s top innovators with companies whose mission is to change the face of health care in New Jersey and across the country, Bartiromo said.

The ideation center, which began operation in April, will initially take ideas from employees of Hackensack Meridian Health, including family members and physicians. Eventually, it will solicit ideas through an application process, which is still being refined. A mix of staff and students from NJIT and Hacksensack Meridian, as well as entrepreneurs, major corporations, research scientists and others, review the applications and choose certain projects for advancement. Those projects will hopefully go on to prototyping and commercialization.

“We want to make the health care experience better from beginning to end,” said Bartiromo. “The center will provide an environment where developers can fail in a safe environment and advance in a more productive environment.”

Bartiromo said the most important aspect of the center is the brainstorming, discussion and problem-solving that takes place among the multidisciplinary staff.

“You don’t have to have all of the answers right away,” he said. “You just have to engage and the answers will come.”

Rutgers develops asthma attack sensor

May 31, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Scientists at Rutgers University have developed a grapheme-based sensor that could predict an asthma attack.

The miniaturized electrochemical sensor accurately measures exhaled breath condensate using reduced grapheme oxide, which resists corrosion, has superior electrical properties and accurately detects biomarkers.

“Nitrite level in breath condensate is a promising biomarker for inflammation in the respiratory tract,” said Clifford Weisel, professor at Rutgers’ Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute and co-author of a recently published study describing the invention.

“Having a rapid, easy method to measure it can help an asthmatic determine if air pollutants are affecting them so they can better manage use of medication and physical activity.”

The next step for the researchers is to develop a portable, wearable system, which could be commercially available in five years, said Mehdi Javanmard, a researcher on the team, in a statement.

“Our vision is to develop a device that someone with asthma or another respiratory disease can wear around their neck or on their wrist and blow into it periodically to predict the onset of an asthma attack or other problems,” he said. “It advances the field of personalized and precision medicine.”

Q&A: Val Ornoy

May 30, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

‘Technology is continuing to provide the best platform for engagement across the various players involved in the lives of the elderly’

SAN FRANCISCO – Val Ornoy believes that connected care is about more than health care—it needs to bring together health, family and community engagement to support seniors as they transition through life’s late stages.

Here’s what Ornoy, CEO of LifeAssist Technologies, which provides connected devices and platforms that promote active and independent living for seniors, had to say about the significant mind-shift that needs to take place in the way the U.S. thinks about the increasing number of adults who want to age in place.

HHTN: You have cited a recent briefing by AARP that reports almost 90% of seniors want to stay in their own homes as they age, and that they are willing to engage in day-to-day health care assistance to do it. What does this statistic tell us in terms of healthy aging?

ORNOY: The impact of this statistic has significant ramifications across senior/family/community-centered approaches to health and active aging. U.S. Census data estimates a rise in adults age 65 or older who are aging without the benefits of an adequate family, health and/or community support system. An estimated one-quarter of these adults will potentially become “elder orphans.” Regardless of this country’s rugged individualism, there is a strong need for family and social support providing healthy engagement and less reliance on clinical and institutional care.

HHTN: Do you see the home health care industry moving to address these issues?

ORNOY: New approaches are emerging to better address coordination of care and connecting our health systems, community-based services and the network of support. Age-friendly solutions are being developed and launched to provide enhanced models of care for older adults.

HHTN: How can technology help?

ORNOY: Technology is continuing to provide the best platform for engagement across the various players involved in the lives of the elderly as they transition. Key to the elderly’s core needs is the ability of technology to assist them in routines, communication, health and the daily control of their lives. Support of aging adults and their independence is often focused on the health component, as it is vital to allowing them to age in place, but technology can also reduce the feeling of isolation.
HHTN: What technologies are the most helpful in addressing these concerns?

ORNOY: The technologies with the best returns focus on: integrating schedules and calendars to manage and track treatments, appointments and social events; connecting and distributing data from wearables and the Internet of Things; devices to monitor vital signs and behavior trends; and communication across video, text and photos for social and medical support.

Paper strip allows home testing for heart failure patients

May 26, 2017 by Kathy Dion Leave a Comment

SHAANXI, China – Scientists at several universities have developed a paper strip test that will allow heart failure patients to monitor their disease at home.

The fluorescent strip works with a smartphone-based reader (the UC-LFS platform) to identify the two antigens responsible for indicating progressive heart failure. A study on the platform was successful.

“The developed UC-LFS platform is demonstrated to be highly sensitive and specific for sample-to-answer prognosis of heart failure, which holds great potential for risk assessment and health monitoring of post-treatment patients at home,” said Feng Xu, one of the authors of a recently published paper on the study, in a statement.

The test uses 10 microliters of sample blood. Patients can use an accompanying app to analyze the information and send results to their physician.

“Comparing the results from (the U.S. Food & Drug Administration)-approved clinical methods, we obtained a good linear correlation, indicating the practical reliability and stability of our developed UC-LFS platform,” said Xu.