10 Foot TeleHealth Clinics That Can be Placed Anywhere, Healthspot Doc in the Box

 

This not the first time we have seen something like this but it is the first product I have seen “in a box” and not in trailer, etc.  The company is selling and marketing the products and they could be anywhere and of course right outside the pharmacy door would be one place as how convenient could it be to see the doctor and get your prescription.  This like the concept United was promoting with their trailers with a personal attendant on premise. 



Here’s a video done at CES that shows “the box”.  The doctor opens up boxes with instruments for you to use.  Nice is the one for skin imaging and you get to see what the doctor sees on the screen too.  BD 



The Affordable Care Act will flood the resource-strapped national emergency room system with 30 million more insured citizens, increasing already-long wait times to see a doctor. A new hospital-in-a-box, HealthSpot, aims to alleviate congestion with medical stations capable of treating emergency room visits for minor inflictions by beaming in idol doctors via video conference. “Emergency rooms and the urgent cares are being crushed because they’re being used for convenience,” says CIO Dave Sebenoler, who helped launch the product at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

HealthSpot plans on selling stations to hospitals and retail outlets for around $10K to $15K, with a $950-a-month prescription. Properties get a cut of every visit. On the patient side, HealthSpot boasts cheaper rates of around $60-$80 a visit (urgent care visits can be a few hundred dollars). The company is currently navigating the state-by-state insurance system to see how providers can cover telemedicine and e-prescriptions.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/10/healthspot-a-hospital-in-a-box-beams-in-doctors-to-relieve-emergency-room-overcrowding/

Verizon Latest to Enter “Code for Cash” Prize Format With $1 Million Top Pay Out for Writing Healthcare Apps That Use Their Platform, Is This the New “Corporate Business Model” To Yield Inexpensive Code?

You know I think these start up incubators and accelerator programs have traveled a little different road that what was the original intention. Do you wonder where some jobs have gone? Are companies all using this model now with the buzz words of incubator and accelerators when sponsored by big corporate conglomerates? It’s looking that way as of course it’s cheaper than hiring employees and they get something out of and most starting out have a very tiny bankroll. It is interesting to see more and more jump on this bandwagon and it does differ a bit from let’s say a start up in Israel quite a bit. I have met some of those folks at the Los Angeles Israel Conference and listened to them talk about how they work and function. Just earlier today we had this announcement with GE (who sometimes pays a little tax). 

GE and Start Up Health Launch Accelerator Program for Consumer Health Products–Companies Can Shop Their Own Investment Start Ups for Inexpensive Code

We have this one sponsored heavily by health insurance companies.

New York Digital Health Accelerator–Health IT Hub For Emerging Technologies–Remember All Start Ups Don’t Make It And It’s A Potentially Good Place for Health Insurers to Shop for Inexpensive Application Code

Even a bit more interesting was Allscripts with their announcement…please come write code using our platform:)  They were probably a little different in their motivation as they had promised code before it was ready with their integration of Eclipsys and shareholders got mad.  Anyway, do you get it, they want cheap code:)  They had already gone to Microsoft for help since both the Eclipsys  Sunrise Suite and their products were both built with Microsoft technologies.  Now they are suing folks out there for not choosing their product?  Write code for us please we have a big carrot out there too:) 

Allscripts Turns to Microsoft To Expand Their Application Development

There may be others but the only Start Up that doesn’t want any of your stock if it is successful is BizSpark from Microsoft, and that’s nice as they really don’t need it so the support is not there for the pocketbook and hard to find these days as there’s always some catch somewhere along the line with today’s complexities in data and in contracts.  Some of the people I spoke with at the Israel Conference were working with the incubator from Microsoft in Israel, and some neat stuff coming out of there too. 

So is this the new corporate business model to get your code written cheap?  Sure there are tons of creative people who do come up with good solutions for sure both inside and outside of companies and we need them, but darn this is starting to resemble something was not meant to be a “business model” but rather programs that would help creative people and you do have to remember about 95 out of 100 might not make it but if they write something that won’t stand on it’s own, folks are there standing by to pay a nominal price for the code written and then they can go start all over again.  I see the communications workers of America not too happy these days with Verizon with the status of their jobs and contracts so again what is all this?  I read where they are working to get their mHealth platform approved by the FDA for their HIPAA complaint cloud service and who doesn’t have a cloud today and we do need a few to choose from that’s for sure. So again, models for cheap code?  You tell me but it’s looking that way.  BD 

http://mobihealthnews.com/19807/ces-verizon-offers-1m-healthcare-prize-pushes-high-speed-mobility/

Nuance Buys Virtual Assistant Company VirtuOz–Siri for the Enterprise

Nuance certainly has been busy as at CES they announced yet another technology that works on several platforms and doctors can benefit using a Personal Assistant in combination with Dragon Medical.  More information on that technology at the link below. 

Combining Nuance Dragon Personal Assistant Services With Dragon Medical–A Winning Combination

It will be interesting to see what Nuance does with the VirtuOz technology as they normal go right straight to integrating without delay.  Intelligent Virtual Agents in the cloud learn company information  They already have an account base and a box opens up for communication on websites.  The software includes mobile apps as well and uses speech technologies.  The video below shows how it works from a smartphone.

Basically the virtual assistant can answer some questions and for those more complicated the series of questions is sent to a human if needs are greater than what the virtual agent can accomplish.  Can you see this being used for a doctor’s office some day?  Obviously there are privacy issues to clarify on how far and how much information could be accessed and the agent would need to be HIPAA compliant:)  CRM seems to be a hot ticket here with Salesforce.com listed as a client.  BD

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TechCrunch has received a copy of a memo indicating that Nuance, the speech and natural language technology giant that also powers Apple’s Siri voice assistant, has made another acquisition: VirtuOz, a developer of intelligent virtual assistant services for online sales, marketing and support — dubbed “Siri for the enterprise” — that was founded in France and is now co-headquartered in the Bay Area’s Emeryville.

Today, VirtuOz counts PayPal, AT&T and Symantec among its list of top-shelf customers using its online virtual assistant services.

According to what we’ve seen, Nuance is making VirtuOz part of its Enterprise division, which focuses on customer self-service solutions that currently brings in revenues of $330 million annually from some 3,000 enterprise customers, covering some 12 billion customer interactions per year.

In addition to bringing some key customers to Nuance, VirtuOz will also bring is a way to extend the Nina experience to the web, and equally to give VirtuOz a route to developing more mobile services for its web clients. The addition will mean that Nuance can offer services across phone-based voice recognition, web, mobile, social and chat channels, covering speech recognition, text-to-speech, voice biometrics and natural language solutions.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/10/in-our-inbox-a-memo-that-says-nuance-has-bought-virtuoz-to-ramp-up-its-enterprise-services/

Withings Wearable Activity Tracker Out Soon and Will Support Android Phones

Fitbit and a few others have a little competition in this business and with support for Android it might be pretty popular.  So far today you can still only download the IPhone version but states Android coming soon and you can enter your email address to be alerted.  A couple years ago at CES they were demonstrating their blood pressure monitor.  Most of Withings products also connect to HealthVault, a PHR.

Withings Blood Pressure Monitor Sends Your Information to an iPhone And to HealthVault PHR (Video)

Withings iPhone Blood Pressure Consumer Device Gets Clearance From FDA

The company also makes a wi-fi scale which if I remember correctly this was their first product.  What is kind of funny is that one their website they list fitbit as a partner…so…for how long:)  Their scale even does indoor air monitoring…what next?  BD

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Withings' Smart Activity Tracker does just about everything the Fitbit, FuelBand and UP can do, like track the number of steps taken, calories burned, distance traveled and "quality" of sleep, but it also measures your heart rate and the number of strides run. All in a tiny little package (43.3 x 22.1 x 8.3mm) about the size of the Fitbit One or a generic flash drive. Oh, and it (supposedly) supports Android right out of the gate along with the last two to three generations of every iOS device.

So this new Smart Activity Tracker claims to have a two week battery life thanks to Bluetooth 4.0 aka Bluetooth SMART and will sync your data to the Withings Health Mate App. It can be worn on your upper arm (bicep) for working out and tracking sleep and can also be thrown in your pocket as is or on your belt via the clip.

http://gizmodo.com/5973507/finally-a-tiny-wearable-activity-tracker-that-supports-android-and-takes-your-pulse?goback=.gde_2181454_member_201685761

FDA Cuts Dosage in Half for Ambien–Sleepy Driving Concerns, Lunesta Not Affected

One other item that should be mentioned is the time of night when you take the pill.  The warnings all tell you to not take it too late like at 1 am if you are going to get up at 6 am for example.  Sanofi now can make some additional revenue if they price doesn’t drop for the lower does:)  This is actually a good thing and reactions around the web today said what took so long as this has not been a big secret.  Remember Tom Brokaw who “accidentally” took an Ambien during the day and went to the hospital because he was light headed?  Maybe that helped move this up in priorities at the FDA. 

The order does not apply to Lunesta which is made by another company and have a different active ingredient. (Some Lunesta users chase butterflies though and it is not for little wussy boys-humor).  BD

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The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it will require manufacturers of zolpidem, a popular sleeping pill sold as Ambien and Edluar, to reduce recommended dosages amid concerns about morning drowsiness caused by the pills.

In its announcement, the FDA noted that "some patients may be high enough the morning after use to impair activities that require alertness, including driving" and said that "patients with high levels of zolpidem can be impaired even if they feel fully awake." The FDA has received 700 reports of zolpidem leading to "impaired driving ability and/or road traffic accidents."

Sanofi, who manufactures Ambien and Ambien CR, said in a statement that they "have been in contact with FDA on the issue of zolpidem dosing.

"

We agree that individuals taking zolpidem should always talk to their doctor about the most appropriate dose [and] they should never take more than the prescribed dose," the company said. "Sanofi stands behind the significant clinical data demonstrating the safety and efficacy of Ambien."

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/10/fda-cuts-ambien-dosages-in-half-amid-concerns-of-sleepy-driving

GE and Start Up Health Launch Accelerator Program for Consumer Health Products–Companies Can Shop Their Own Investment Start Ups for Inexpensive Code

I said this a while back with Accelerators that are sponsored by insurers and it is true and you have to remember that most start ups fail.  That’s what this is all about to see what sticks to the wall.  In this instance GE “wants” developers to work with their technologies and code, so again cheaper than hiring employees.  If a start up doesn’t make it to stand on their own, but did create some code that has potential use in their own software, bingo, thank you very much and here’s a few dollars and then it may be used now, stored or evaluated by in house programmers so they can figure out to do with this section if they were to incorporate.  It’s already written in GE format. 

I’m just a straight bottom liner here after many years working in sales for fortune 500 companies and then able to put a coding twist on this stuff with that experience too with writing an EMR years ago, so I see things differently for the most part:)  Here’s what I wrote on the New York Accelerator program regarding insurers having access to cheap code or maybe I should be a little more politically correct, inexpensive code.  I had a couple doctors email me and asked my for advice on what to focus on to sell cheap code to insurance companies. 

New York Digital Health Accelerator–Health IT Hub For Emerging Technologies–Remember All Start Ups Don’t Make It And It’s A Potentially Good Place for Health Insurers to Shop for Inexpensive Application Code

There may be others but the only Start Up that doesn’t want any of your stock if it is successful is BizSpark from Microsoft, and that’s nice as they really don’t need it so the support is not there for the pocketbook and hard to find these days as there’s always some catch somewhere along the line with today’s complexities in data and in contracts.  So don’t be too harsh when thinking of Microsoft as they have a bigger R and D department than Google and Apple put together.  BizSpark gives you Microsoft technologies to work with to develop software of course, just like GE is here and they want it for their benefit.  Speaking of developers with carrots, it makes sense again for me to reference this crazy Heritage project where they think algorithms are the one stop shop for re-admissions. 

If you read the news Twitter couldn’t find an algorithm for their search either so “cheap humans” are being used from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program where folks can earn chump change.  Heritage is pretty Algo Duped with what they expect from some algorithms.  I said that from day one when they started and I keep an eye out here to help consumers see the fantasy stuff as I find it, like that Blue Cross X-Prize that was out there a couple years ago.  It was only a publicity stunt and quietly went away as nobody could solve “healthcare” even with that $10 million dollar carrot so see how some of the duping goes on. 

So What’s Going on Over at the Heritage Health Prize Competition to Predict Who Ends Up Being Re-Admitted to the Hospital–A Lot of Mathematical Algorithms For One…

Sure I’m all about innovation that makes my life easier and is not fantasized with some Quant values that are there to make money only and benefit corporations more than consumers.  So again my opinions from being able to clearly a marketing and sales angle and a programming and coding focus allows my to write from both sides of the duck brain and I don’t know if that is healthy or not but before all the stuff on Wall Street and in other areas, I was already having nightmares about failing code because I could see way back then when the Madoff case broke, nobody was watching the show and they still don’t do a very good job.  Anyway, if you want to write some code for GE and either get your company (maybe) funded or have them buy your code, use go here  for more information and to apply to be one of the 10 chosen.  BD



http://medcitynews.com/2013/01/heads-up-startups-ge-and-startup-health-launch-program-for-healthcare-entrepreneurs/#.UO7blXgLCi4.twitter

Telepresence RP-VITA Robot Receives FDA Approval And Can Be Used in Emergency Situations

We have seen these for a while being used in hospitals but this is the first to get FDA approval and has a few more features I believe.  It is interesting that trials were done here in southern California.  It has voice recognition for one and has facial recognition.  It has touch screen capabilities.  Care givers can use their smart phones.  Here’s a video that shows the RP-VITA in use.  When it is done, the unit parks itself.  The doctor is remoting in and interacts with the nurse and patient. 


In addition the company has other models but this is the top of the line.


During Hurricane Sandy a doctor saved a stroke victim in New Jersey.  Here’s another video that explains how the unit works and how all collaborate via the unit for patient care.  BD

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LAS VEGAS--How would you feel if you were hospitalized and your doctor were talking to you through a 5-foot robot?

RP-VITA (Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant) is a remote-, iPad-operated telepresence bot. It's become the first self-navigating communications robot to receive FDA certification, developers InTouch and iRobot said at CES 2013.

The machine is approved "for telemedicine consults inclusive of active patient monitoring in high-acuity environments where immediate clinical action may be required," InTouch said in a release. Specifically, it's cleared for "active patient monitoring in pre-operative, peri-operative and post-surgical settings, including cardiovascular, neurological, prenatal, psychological, and critical care assessments and examinations."

Based on iRobot's AVA telepresence platform, RP-VITA was unveiled last year. It's been put through trials at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and Children's Hospital of Orange County, and leasing will begin this year at about $6,000 a month.

"This is the first FDA clearance for a navigating robot," Wang says. "It's approved for emergency use, and will be used in life and death situations before other uses. Just as early cell phones were used in emergencies before becoming ubiquitous."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57563095-1/medical-robot-rp-vita-gets-fda-approval/