PHARMA GEEK

L'application mobile HealthTap connecte les utilisateurs à un réseau de médecins, que le patient peut solliciter en échange de micro-transactions.
Via L'Atelier, Sebastien Brison

While many people feel the move to mobile health may be simply a fad, I believe it will become the new normal in healthcare. Here’s why:

 

#1 Hospitals are all about motion

Have you ever been to a hospital where everyone and everything wasn’t in constant motion? Patients, clinicians and equipment; everything is always on the move and in a hurry! But for the past few decades, we have designed technologies that require the user to sit and type at a workstation. At rest is not the natural state of a hospital. It also radically alters the natural workflows of everyone who must use these tethered systems. Mobile Health is the natural solution to this problem. It allows clinicians, clerks, maintenance, housekeeping and everyone else to stay on the move and still leverage all the benefits of technology.

 

#2 Physicians and nurses are in short supply

So is their time. It’s important to ensure that their time and efforts are maximized. Giving them the tools they need to care for more patients and provide better quality care is the key. Why is this important? Retention. While these have always been stressful occupations, the past several years have placed a greater and greater burden on fewer and fewer people in these roles. Making their workday more satisfying and less stressful benefits everyone.

 

#3 Patient engagement

The opportunities presented with mobile Health to innovate and re-imagine patient engagement not only between clinician and patient but also between the patient and their own health data is unprecedented. Home care, remote patient monitoring, adherence, tele-medicine, PHRs, prescribed apps, the list of opportunities is endless.

 

#4 Time

Untethering nurses from the nursing station allows them to spend more time providing quality and personal care at the bedside. Delivering results directly to clinicians via mobile devices may save critical time delays for providing a diagnosis to save a life. Mobile Health when implemented correctly should provide a return on time that can be invested in care. Speeding up technology allows clinicians to slow down, think, communicate and engage more often and more effectively.

Via nrip, dbtmobile

Take Home: UMass Medical School and WPI have developed an app that can detect atrial fibrillation.  This moves connected and mobile health closer to reality.  The really important development with this approch might allow us to treat patients who have AF intermittently (paroxysmal) differently than we currently do.  Because we are worried about stroke, patietns now get blood thinners all the time because we are concerned that they will have recurrences without knowing about it.  With this technology, in the future, we might see validation of a strategy that allows use of blood thinners when patients are in AF only, sometimes called a pill in the pocket.

Via Seth Bilazarian, MD

Do you get the feeling apps are getting dumber? They are, and that’s a good thing. Behind the surprising simplicity of some of today’s top apps, smart developers are realizing that they’re able to get users to do more by doing less.

I’ve always been of the opinion that anything I disseminate via social media is pretty much fair game, and I try to play by the golden rule of “If you don’t want it used against you in a court of law, don’t tweet it, post it, link it, pin it, etc.” I also am well aware that I generate “big data” whenever I use my smart phone, and some entity, somewhere is mining that data for commercial purposes. So I wasn’t too surprised to read of a recent legal entanglement Twitter has gotten involved in up North.

Perhaps others have come across details around the recent ruling of a New York judge that forces Twitter Inc. to turn over an Occupy Wall Street Protester’s tweets. I won’t go into too many details (you can read them here), but the gist of the ruling comes from a case in which prosecutors say the demanded tweets could show whether the protester was aware of police orders he’s charged with disregarding.

A Twitter spokesperson conveyed disappointment with the ruling, adding “Twitter's Terms of Service have long made it absolutely clear that its users own their content. We continue to have a steadfast commitment to our users and their rights."

I for one don’t really buy into the theory that “users own their content,” at least in so far as that “ownership” means that content can never be used against me. I’ve seen too many episodes of “The Wire” to doubt the reach of government when it comes to gathering data for purposes of prosecution.

I wonder if the folks at OpenQ have kept a close eye on this case. The company recently released SafeGuard, social compliance software that “enables companies to embrace social enterprise platforms with proactive risk identification, classification and management,” according to a recent press release. The release also adds that the new software “collects activity feeds, posts and documents from social platforms, and other enterprise interactions, to proactively identify and classify business and compliance risk. An intuitive interface enables the efficient management of compliance cases with classification of risk level according to industry driven and company-defined priorities.”

A separate story on the new software gives it a healthcare angle, citing the increase in use of social media by physicians and hospitals, and thus the increasing need for the monitoring of that usage for non-HIPAA-compliant posts/updates. I think it’s safe to say that this soft of healthcare IT aims to help curb expenses related to HIPAA-related lawsuits that might arise from errant tweets, but I’m a bit confused as to whether the technology monitors social media usage solely by the customer, or lumps in any mention of customer-indicated keywords. And if it does monitor posts from third parties, will customers be savvy enough to follow up with those that post negative comments (most likely disgruntled patients) in such a way that they protect their brand and offer solace to the patient?

Needless to say, physicians, their marketing departments and their patients should be aware that someone, somewhere is likely monitoring their use of social media. And I’m not so sure that’s a good thing for patients, caregivers or social media developers. I worry that over-monitoring could ultimately stifle innovation on the back end – why bother developing new social media platforms or bells and whistles if folks end up too worried about repercussions to use them? I realize I’m playing the devil’s advocate here, but I still think there’s some validity to the question. What do you think? I welcome your opinions in the comments below.

 

Via Chaturika Jayadewa

Samsung Electonics a annoncé le lancement de S health, une application mobile qui permet de surveiller efficacement le taux de sucre dans le sang, la tension, et le poids, en même temps que son nouveau produit phare, le Galaxy SIII, le 2 juillet.
Via dbtmobile

Association EchoSante pour le projet Resater : installation de 9 stations de visioconférence avec connexions sécurisées, afin de réaliser des séances de télémédecine et de la téléformation entre les Etablissements d'Hébergement pour Personnes Agées Dépendantes, l'Hospitalisation A Domicile et le Centre Hospitalier Ariège Couserans, en lien avec le GCS Télésanté Midi-Pyrénées.
Prix parrainé par AG2R La Mondiale.

Via Hervé Denudt

Via Andrew Spong

There may be 12,000 apps out there but they’re not 12,000 good apps,” Chris Wasden, Global Healthcare Innovation Leader for PwC, said at the MedCity Converge health tech conference Tuesday.

 

“They’re mostly bad apps that people rarely use.”

 

Aside from the issues with the apps themselves, he said recent research conducted by PwC found that even though patients are eager to adopt mobile health, doctors and the larger system surrounding them are reluctant to change things up.

 

“Consumers are demanding it,” he said. “Doctors see mobile healthcare being much more transformative and disruptive to their practice. This transformation and disruption is so painful that they’re very resistant to doing those changes.”

Via Andrew Spong

Passionnante, la Conférence E Santé des Echos Conférences. Ils étaient tous là. Avec la ferme intention de clarifier la situation. Ce fut chose faite. Mais il manque encore une pierre à l’édifice. Elle est de taille et conditionne l’ensemble, c’est l’expression de la volonté des Pouvoirs Publics. Revue de détails.

Via TéléSanté Centre

Slower than predicted start for personal e-health records (Slower than predicted start for personal e-health records http://t.co/HrPYwHGz Got in early, but waited 5 days for login button to appear...)...
Via Gilles Jourquin

Aux Etats-Unis, les patients s'intéressent de près à la e-santé. Et l'acceptent, jusqu'à vouloir, avec une large majorité, bénéficier de services qui y sont liés. Sans toutefois renier leur médecin ou oublier les enjeux de sécurité.
Via Pharmacomptoir / Corinne Thuderoz