Students at Brigham Young University in Utah have developed a prototype ‘smart sock’ for babies that alerts for low levels of blood oxygen, irregular heartbeat and stopped breathing during sleep. This is to help detect for early signs of SIDS… Read moreA baby monitor that 'socks' it to you
Is it telehealth? Telemedicine? Whatever… Healthcare IT News went to the National eHealth Collaborative’s Technology Crossroads Conference in Washington, DC this past Tuesday and reports that telehealth–in their definition also including telemedicine–will be doubling its use in the next few… Read moreThe Friday telehealth roundup
US EHR Stage 2 payments a waste? In September and October, Congressional Republicans scored Health and Human Services (HHS) on “weak” EHR interoperability standards under Stage 2 of the HITECH Act and called for temporary suspension of EHR incentive payments… Read moreMore EHR misery: EHR payment cutoff, data breach
The Gimlet Eye is beginning to feel not quite up to speed in reading The Wall Street Journal’s dashing article on the wonderful things cars will shortly be doing to keep you awake, alive and healthy. Now awake is all… Read moreMore cars that will monitor your BP…and brain waves
Vital signs and activity monitoring sensors enabled on one large postage stamp-sized chip? That is the promise–and it costs less than 25 cents, can be made adhesive (for on-body or clothing use), is disposable and runs on energy drawn from… Read moreThe chip that may revolutionize telehealth and telecare?
On the Gartner hype curve, the ‘slope of enlightenment’ follows the ‘trough of disillusionment’–and telecare, or at least the sensor-based behavioral part, has been in the trough since about 2009. The Gimlet Eye sees a possible curve change coming from… Read moreTelecare on the 'slope of enlightenment'?
Updated 27 Nov pm
Editor Donna’s post-Thanksgiving observations of the US healthcare technology scene, from financing to EHRs, incorporate all of these:
Confusion: seemingly reigns in–and reins in–financing for early stage health tech companies. While major companies attended, presented and chit-chatted at last week’s Life Sciences Angel Network’s conference in NYC, the chairman of major provider Continuum Health Partners, and a (former, current) investor, stated his reluctance to invest in healthcare delivery tech. Dell Computer and device giant Becton Dickinson are looking to invest, but..but…but….uncertain of tech’s relationships to providers and whether they can truly address ‘inefficiencies in the system.’ No one is certain about healthcare in the next five years (with the Federal ACA under further challenge and perhaps designed to fail under its own jury-rigged weight), how to integrate technology into provider workflow, who’s paying for it (back in FBQ-land again, now with insurers augering in to an iffy ACA-landing) and how to deal with all that regulation already there, much less that to come (see ACA). So what else is new? Investors Interested in Health IT—With Caveats (xConomy)
Consolidation and Collapse: Early entrant electronic health records (EHR) company ImagineMD folded its tent in late September with little notice, not only publicly but also to its (probably few) customers after burning through at least $25 million in financing. As Editor Donna mentions in comments below the article, EHRs normally fall outside our scope. But since 2009, investors in search of quick returns flocked to finance every Tom, Dick and Harry EHR that IT companies could cook up, rather than telehealth, telecare and telemedicine. Why?
iRobot’s new robotic hand, developed for DARPA’s Autonomous Robotic Manipulation (ARM) program, takes a licking and keeps on ticking, like the old Timex commercial. See the hand’s fingers, holding a baseball, ‘teed off’ by a baseball bat in the article… Read morePost-Thanksgiving robot roundup
Another project of the William J. Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Health Matters Initiative will, according to Neil Versel in Mobihealthnews, be advocating and funding telehealth and remote monitoring as part of promoting healthy lifestyles, healthy food and physical activity as… Read moreBill Clinton gets involved in telehealth. Really.
Last week, three of LeadingAge’s West Coast state partners (California, Oregon and Washington) in non-profit senior communities and the California Association of Health Services at Home (CAHSAH) announced their collaboration in a new organization called AgeTech West, succeeding AgeTech California,… Read moreAgeTech West forms for senior living telehealth, mHealth
