Telehealth

More and more organizations are harnessing kiosks as a venue for less expensive and more accessible care but it remains unclear whether they can achieve similar results with existing personal devices. 

Prime Surgeons called its surgical staff "elite," with patients ranging from athletes to celebrities and professionals, touts transparent pricing.

The American Medical Association’s latest guidelines clarify doctors responsibilities when tapping into telemedicine technologies and services.

The infrastructure and consulting services can enable healthcare providers to build out telehealth strategies and design tools that address interoperability challenges and improve the patient experience. 

Patient-generated health data is proving to be critical in the shift to value-based care.

By Marc Sebes, VP of Product Management In-home clinical devices are among a number of digital health technologies that are being used to streamline clinical trial processes and enable pharmaceutical companies and contract research organizations (CROs) to monitor participants remotely. As partially or fully remote clinical trials gain market momentum, these particularly impactful devices enable the remotely collected participant data to be integrated into a clinical trial system, patient community application or engagement platform. Researchers and clinicians are then provided with access to real-time participant data at a reduced collection cost. Clinical devices are instruments, implements or machines intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or monitoring of conditions. Examples of commonly used in-home clinical devices include blood pressure cuffs, blood glucose meters, sleep tracking devices, spirometers and weight scales. Three factors have led to the increased usage of these devices in clinical trials. First, the escalating competition caused by new entrants providing in-home clinical devices has led to better usability and accuracy from all vendors. Second, as evidenced by the specialized digital health displays in retail stores like Target, consumer demand and adoption of in-home monitors is growing. Third, as data from these devices has become more accessible for clinicians, the value of utilizing these devices in trials has increased. Delving further into the increased value of real-time connectivity, the previous lack of device connectivity in the market placed a substantial burden on trial participants and researchers required to routinely collect data. Previously, patients were required to either manually record the readouts or take the device to a trial site for the data to be downloaded by a clinician. This made conducting effective remote clinical trials nearly impossible; mandating participants to self-report data multiple times a day is not only an inefficient means for data acquisition, but it also greatly heightens the risk of incomplete and inaccurate data being provided to researchers. Today, however, devices are becoming increasingly connected via Bluetooth Smart technology or application program interfaces (APIs). This growing device connectivity is enabling data to pass wirelessly in real-time from a blood pressure cuff, for example, to a smartphone and into the clinical trial’s platform or system. Unfortunately, some widely-used legacy devices remain unconnected. To bridge the gap, new data capture technologies have been developed to quickly digitize biometric readings from non-connected devices. Validic’s VitalSnap, which leverages optical character recognition (OCR) software, enables participants to capture health data via their smartphone’s camera from non-connected medical devices and automatically transfer it to a clinician. This provides researchers with the ability to access data from devices that are already clinically validated and being used in the trial.   As clinical devices continue to mature and are integrated into the connected health ecosystem, they will become an increasingly vital component for creating better results for both clinical trial participants and sponsors. Regulators expect clinical devices that generate these data to meet certain standards, therefore most are FDA-approved Class II devices that follow the 510(k) pathway. And, the data generated by these devices are generally accepted in clinical trials. In-home clinical devices are already benefiting and supporting trials today. As data is delivered in more real-time, there is less need for participants to spend time at sites. Additionally, in-home devices allow for more frequent empirical data to be collected throughout the trial. Utilizing the increased number of readings, additional correlations can be drawn from patient-reported outcomes, resulting in less uncertainty and more confident results. In summary, connected in-home clinical devices are allowing for more passive data collection that enables participants to have a more active and engaged role in clinical trials, leading to better results at a lower cost.

Practice Fusion veterans, including former chief executive Ryan Howard, on Tuesday announced a new company called iBeat. The startup is working to create a device that will continuously monitor a user’s heart activity, the company said. Howard called the emerging offering a wearable-as-a-service. The tangible device resembles a wrist-worn smartwatch capable of alerting the user as well as caregivers and emergency responders should a heart event or irregularity occur. iBeat also consists of Larry Stone as Lead Front-end Architect, Brian Boarini as Director of Product, and Kristin Tinsley as Director of Marketing and Communications. All four previously worked at Practice Fusion, which Howard founded in 2005. Stone has worked on products for Lenovo, Tesla, Disney, AT&T, Verizon and other companies, while Boarini worked on projects at Google and Tinsley worked with MySpace and TigerText. The company said it intends to double its staff by year’s end with a focus on engineering, design, growth marketing and operations.  Twitter: SullyHIT Email the writer: tom.sullivan@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Proponents of virtual care say it is the wave of the future. But while the healthcare industry might not find much disagreement with the practice in theory, it is in the potential limitations that skeptics might find flaws.

The platform has the potential to create a national virtual healthcare system, American Well chief Roy Schoenberg says. 

Veterans Affairs Under Secretary for Health David Shulkin said it will establish the centers this summer in South Carolina, Utah, Pennsylvania and the Pacific Northwest.