Below is a list of mobile health and telemedicine related news and stories from this week’s HIMSS11 conference in Orlando.
Verizon Wireless and Zipit Wireless introduce Zipit Enterprise Critical Messaging Solution, a Zipit-built product that will only be available from Verizon. The two-way paging system uses a dedicated device that will work over Wi-Fi or Verizon 3G and is coupled to a cloud-based administration portal for remote management and reprogramming.
Bottomline Technologies, which comes from a document automation background across multiple industries, announces Inprotica, a mobile solution for hospitals meant to streamline the patient consent and registration process.
AT&T announces a) a mobility solution to allow smart phone access to the AT&T HIE solution; b) a telehealth pilot with St. Joseph Health System (CA); and c) an mHealth pilot with Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC – an insurer) to help HCHS employees better manage their diabetes through AT&Ts partnership with WellDoc’s DiabetesManager.
GE launches mobile access (iPad and iPhone) for its Centricity Advance (EMR) and Centricity Practice Solution. The company has a promo in which any provider that signs of for Centricity Advance between now and March 31, 2011 will get a free iPad. Nice promo right before the new iPad 2s come out.
More carrier news. Sprint and IDEAL LIFE announce a partnership to use Sprint’s machine-to-machine (M2M) platform and network to transmit home monitoring data from IDEAL LIFE’s home health hub.
Practice Fusion launches iPad access to its free EMR. Practice Fusion worked with LogMeIn, a remote desktop product company, to provide mobile access to the EMR. The cost of the app is $29.95. I’m curious what people think of the user experience of Practice Fusion through LogMeIn, as it’s essentially just a remote desktop tool.
BoxTone showcases the application of its Mobile Service Management (MSM) software to secure mobile devices in healthcare. MSM automates the process of monitoring and supporting mobile devices.
Motion Computing announces a new, lower-price-point version of its Mobile Clinical Assistant (MCA) tablet. The new, cheaper ($1,899) tablet comes with an i3 processor and 30 GB solid state drive. I know Motion’s tablets are made very durable and do a lot of things lower end tablets do not, but that still seems like a high price tag to me.
Fujifilm debuts Synapse Mobility, a mobile app for accessing images stored in Fujifilm Synapse systems. The app displays 3D images and is compatible with Apple and Android devices. A trial of the app at Ohio Health found “faster decision making and improved patient care.” The mobile experience and functionality is meant to mirror that of a workstation user.
Specialty pharmacy and home care firm BioScrip announces that it will begin using a connected health platform from HealthyCircles. HealthCircles will provide portals for BioScrip to facilitate connections and communications among patients, caregivers, and family members.
Hewlett-Packard rolls out Virtual Health Management (V-Health), a suite of tools for remote monitoring and telemedicine. HP also announced it is working with Greenway on integration with Greenways’s EHR and PM platforms.
And here’s an overview story of some of the major connected health stories out of HIMSS, including those from Verizon, Sprint, and GE.
Travis Good is in his final year of an MD/MBA program and is involved with multiple health IT startups.
LifeNexus launches its Personal Health Card. The multi-purpose card can be used for payment (Visa, Mastercard, and prepaid) and contains an embedded microchip that securely stores a personal health record. I presume there will be some easy way to access the records on the card for both writing and reading. Interestingly one of the collaborators in the development of the card was Emdeon, the healthcare super-clearinghouse.
There’s been lots of mobile news coming out this week with the Mobile World Congress going on in Barcelona. Mobile hardware maker HTC has had a big week, first with its new Facebook phone and now with its Flyer tablet. The 7-inch tablet comes with a “magic pen”, microSD storage, and front- and back-facing cameras. It will run the new tablet-oriented OS from Android called Honeycomb and is slotted to be released officially later this year. Amazon Germany has the price listed at ~$900, which to me seems unlikely to lure people from the cheaper iPad.
BCC Research releases a new report titled Telemedicine: Opportunities for Medical and Electronic Providers. The report predicts that the global telehealth market will grow by over 18% annually, from $9.8 billion last year to $23 billion in 2015. The “telehome” market, a subset of the overall telehealth market, is projected to grow by over 22% over the same time period.
Remote monitoring and telehealth company BL Healthcare announces a partnership with Sprint to enable BL device connectivity over Sprint’s 3G network. This has been a good 2011 for BL as we recently reported on its announcement of a similar partnership with Verizon.
Ashe Memorial Hospital (NC) signs with PatientKeeper for CPOE, which I assume will be available to Ashe employees via mobile in the near future, as well as PatientKeeper Mobile Clinical Results.
Congrats to one of our clinical communications sponsors Vocera, which posted results for 2010. The company had 38% growth for the year and now has over 700 healthcare customers around the globe. The company is also poised to continue its growth with four acquisitions during the year.
More good news for Vocera. The American Hospital Association (AHA) exclusively endorses the Vocera Hand-off Solution as the preferred hand-off solution for its 5,000+ hospital members. That’s not a bad organization to win over if you’re selling to providers.
A surgeon has his iPad stolen from the physicians’ lounge at Jennie Stuart Medical Center (KY) while he’s performing a surgery. I’m impressed that he had the patience to wait nine days before reporting in the hopes the thief would unlock the device and give away its location.
SaaS telehealth platform iHASMD partners with wireless broadband provider Axiom to expand telehealth services for providers and insurance plans in the State of Maine. The new partnership seeks to increase access to virtual medical services for all of the rural residents in the state.
John Halamka has a post about securing Apple mobile devices in the healthcare environment. Some basic best practices from Halamka’s security team are highlighted around software updates, tracking, and passcode protection.
With all the recent attention in healthcare around securing mobile devices, this article highlights the use of SMS technology as a potential authentication system for access to Citrix and Cisco VPNs.
MEDecision announces a mobile application for access to MEDecision Clinical Summaries through MEDecision’s InFrame HIE platform. The mobile app will be available March 30.
Mobile marketing firm mobileStorm releases its 2011 mHealth Report, with one of the key findings being that by 2015 there will be 500 million users of mobile health applications on smart phones.
Travis Good is in his final year of an MD/MBA program and is involved with multiple health IT startups.
I’d like to thank Paul Brient, CEO of PatientKeeper, for his time discussing his company as well as his insights into mobile strategies and adoption in healthcare. Below I’ve tried to summarize the key points, but in the future, I plan to have interviews transcribed. Also, for those interested, PatientKeeper will be at HIMSS next week – Booth #5543.
Paul told me that PatienKeeper was founded 11 years ago, before he joined the company, with the premise that mobile was THE solution necessary to drive physician adoption of information technology, and the lack of mobile solutions represented the major barrier to adoption. Since then, with Paul joining the company over eight years ago, the thinking at PatientKeeper has changed to view mobile as an important companion point of access, but not a solution unto itself.
Paul stated that the fundamental offerings of PatientKeeper are the 13 components they have developed to automate and improve physician workflow. As an example, CPOE is a component offered by PatientKeeper and will now be available on mobile devices, as well as via PatientKeeper’s Web portal. Paul compared the PatientKeeper components to e-mail, which can be accessed over mobile as well as other types of access points.
PatientKeeper has over 26,000 clinical users, a number that impressed me. I later found out they have some very big clients, like HCA, which make 26,000 very realistic. Of those 26,000, about 50% are using PatientKeeper-enabled mobile devices. Paul predicts, as most people in the industry, that this percentage will increase as more physicians acquire mobile devices and more tools are provided via mobile.
Until now, clinical results delivery and charge capture have been the big drivers for mobile adoption by PatientKeeper users. The other PatientKeeper services that are offered via mobile are Provider Directory and Sign-Out. The provider directory doesn’t sound very glamorous, but Paul said clinicians love it because they have one repository for colleague contact information, with one-button calling enabled.
Mobile Sign-Out by PatientKeeper is an asynchronous handoff of texts and structured tasks geared towards hospitalists or residents in training. When a clinician gets back to the hospital, they can check which tasks have been completed and also catch up on notes from supervising docs. PatientKeeper is in use at 40 academic centers and about 50% use the sign-out system, which to me seems optimized for mobile.
On the horizon for PatientKeeper is CPOE, a brand new mobile-enabled service that Paul thinks will be a big hit. Going beyond records access to order entry is a big step that most observers agree will be a driver of mobile adoption amongst clinicians. Until recently, PatientKeeper did not offer or plan to offer mobile image viewing because mobile device screens have been too small to make it useful. Tablets are changing that and PatientKeeper is exploring mobile image viewing as well as mobile charting options. The goal is for the whole experience, whether mobile or other form of access, to be seamless.
The other side of mobile uptake or adoption is the hardware itself. Paul said some people used Palm back in the day when it was the only option. When the Treo came along, the number of mobile users grew. Mobile usage seems to increase with each round of new devices. All the new mobile hardware technology is helping to drive mobile adoption.
We then moved on to PatientKeeper’s HIE strategy and experience. The PatientKeeper HIE Strategy is not focused on large, state level HIEs. They have a Connecting the Community campaign that seeks to connect local hospitals into localized, integrated care systems. It started in Ocala, FL because PatientKeeper was in use by several of the hospitals in the area and they decided to connect to each other in a localized HIE. PatientKeeper has done similar work in Cedar Rapids, Iowa as well. In terms of mobile offerings for HIEs, PatientKeeper is increasingly bundling its systems so that mobile is always a part of the offering. They do not see mobile as a specific line item.
Paul said it’s impossible to predict what the future will bring, but Apple is killing everything else right now. Echoing many of the reports recently issued on mobile hardware in healthcare, Paul says iPhone and iPad usage is increasing more and more, becoming the dominant force in mobile healthcare, while Android is the up and comer. He sees BlackBerry as a waning platform that is primarily used by larger employed physician groups.
A research2guidance blog post provides highlights is recent report, Mobile Health Market Report 2010-2015. The report is ~$2,500 so I’m glad these blog summaries are free. This post speculates that mHealth developers will not be able to make money using the dominant, current revenue model of pay-per-download. Instead, the report finds services tied to apps around monitoring, sales, and advertising will be what creates sustainable business models. I agree, and the more intriguing apps I’ve seen recently are monthly, service-fee oriented. Also, Epocrates,which is going public, makes most if its money from premium content paid for by drug companies.
A new study finds that hypertensive patients liked using a special pill reminder mobile app, Pill Phone, and that there is a trend towards higher refill rates with the use of the app. The study issued 3G phones preloaded with Pill Phone to 50 patients in DC. OK, admittedly I read the press release and not the study itself but I’m not very wowed by the findings. To draw any real meaningful conclusions from this, I think they needed to find lower blood pressures or somehow prove improved med compliance, not just find satisfaction with the use of the app and a trend towards more refills. Also, why couldn’t you just design an SMS system for this, which does both send and receive, and not have to issue people pre-loaded phones?
Royal Caribbean Cruises offers teledermatology to its on-ship employees through physicians at the University of Miami. I had no idea they provided that level of care on the ships, but I guess it’s a lot more convenient than trying to get a real appointment with a dermatologist.
RNK Products announces that the FDA has approved its PCP-1 Stethoscope. It plugs directly into a PC and can be used for remote monitoring.
The Initiative for Open AuTHentication (OATH) launches its OATH Certification Compliance Program (OCCP) for authentication technologies. On the initial list of certified vendors and products is Diversinet and its MobiSecure Health Platform for mobile health.
Home monitoring aggregator MedApps is named one of three finalists for Best New Product in the Innovative Services: Health, Wellness & Safety Segment, which is part of the 2011 Edison Awards. Another health-related finalist in the same category is American Well, which offers a suite of online care platforms for patients, providers, and health plans. The winners will be announced April 5.
A new Ernst & Young report finds that drug makers increased investments by 78% in websites and mobile applications targeting patients.Investments were designed to improve compliance and overall health. The leaders in the industry were Merck and Novartis.
Doro, a Swedish company that develops mobile phones for aging populations, announces two mHealth-related partnerships. They will work with MyGlucoHealth to assist with the management of diabetes and with Medixine to provide medication reminders and compliance tracking. This is timely given the need for devices and apps for baby boomers
The New York City Health Department releases an app that uses GPS to help New York City residents locate places that give out free condoms. The app was released just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Attending HIMSS next week? If so, have you searched for “mobile” or “wireless” on the education session search page?
President Obama talks about the federal government’s push to expand wireless Internet to rural America. Of the $18 billion allotted, “About $3 billion would go to a government research program that would develop methods for using mobile Internet access for emerging technologies and for health, education and energy applications.”
Travis Good is in his final year of an MD/MBA program and is involved with multiple health IT startups.
It seems like everywhere I turn I hear about somebody else wanting to get into the appointment-setting business. The viral growth of ZocDoc probably doesn’t hurt that. This week Healthagen announced that it will acquire AppointmentCity.com and integrate appointment making into the web and mobile versions of iTriage. I assume they will offer this to premium facility listings first and I’m curious to see if this is a fee per appointment or subscription payment model. With the recent announcement that iTriage has over one million users, this certainly has some potential.
Quest and Withings announce a partnership to integrate Withing’s WiFi scale into Quest’s Gazelle mobile app. This is an interesting move for Quest, which released the app to help patients get lab test results and send information to providers. Quest is clearly trying to move into remote monitoring and I think we’ll probably see another announcement soon about the Withing’s iPhone-enabled blood pressure cuff being integrated into Gazelle. According to Quest, “Over the coming months, we will continue to add additional capabilities from best-in-class partners as we expand and enhance the Gazelle Mobile Health platform”. I wonder if that means appointment setting?
A study of socials networking sites for diabetics finds considerable variability in the quality of information and privacy controls. The sites compared were the top ten sites found with a Google search. The report found only 50% of sites were consistent in terms of science and clinical practice.
How does your facility deal with security issues around Apple mobile devices? Adventist Health System uses a “sandbox” network to limit connectivity for the devices and uses Citrix for access to Cerner, though they plan to start testing a native, Cerner-developed iPad app in March.
Mobile diabetes management system developer Cellnovo, based in London, secures a whopping $48 million in Round B funding. The Cellnovo system, which includes an insulin pump, mobile handset, and online management system, is being compared to Apple as the “iTunes of diabetes care.”
This article comparing the Motorola Xoom to the iPad 2 predicts that the leaked Xoom price of $799 will likely push consumers towards Apple. I’d say Motorola is more in need of pulling customers than Apple is in getting customers pushed to them.
InTouch Health announces that 45 telemedicine networks are using the company’s cloud-based telemedicine platform and Remote Presence endpoints. These networks represent 475 contracted hospital locations.
In a study of 46 mobile apps to help people quit smoking, a recent paper concludes that none should be effective. This conclusion is based on the finding that none of the apps’ strategies were recognized as effective for smoking cessation.
PEPID announces the release of an iPad version of its drug database and clinical decision support tools.
The Continua Health Alliance is working with the Global Certification Forum to create a certification program for wireless personal health devices. I didn’t realize Continua had grown to over 230 members. That’s impressive.
A study of the Pacific Asynchronous TeleHealth (PATH) system, a provider-to-provider teleconsultation platform, finds it to be effective and convenient at providing pediatric subspecialty care. The study looked at 1,000 teleconsultations and found that it precluded transfers that saved up to $750,000 annually.
AstraZeneca launches Quest app (not to be confused with Quest Diagnostic’s Gazelle app) for the iPhone to provide clinicians information about cardiovascular-related clinical trials and news. The app also allows users to annotate and share trial information.
A study by Children’s Hospital Boston and The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto finds that not only do parents prefer digital health forms over paper, they also provide more information digitally. This isn’t very surprising, but what is surprising is that I still fill out paper forms when I visit Kaiser.
Travis Good is in his final year of an MD/MBA program and is involved with multiple health IT startups.
