Mobile

The digital health pioneer, who currently serves as vice president of connected health at Partners HealthCare, will start a one-year term as president of the ATA next spring.

Liz Ashall-Payne, co-founder and CEO of ORCHA, says the health apps landscape is growing beyond just wellness management.

Swinburne University’s National eTherapy Centre has partnered with medtech startup Coviu to allow Australians to access quality mental health services through encrypted, real-time text chat sessions. The service is offered as part of Swinburne’s Mental Health Online, which is free for all Australians and provides access to treatment programs for common mental health issues including depression and anxiety. Real-time text chat sessions with clinicians will now be a part of the service, alongside email and video calls, offering an additional modality to suit a broader remit of needs within the community.   THE LARGER TREND In April this year, Swinburne partnered with Coviu for telehealth education. The partnership sees Swinburne embedding Coviu’s technology into the curriculum of nursing, occupational therapy, psychology, dietetics, health science, and digital health and informatics. The technology has also been implemented into Swinburne’s new Master of Physiotherapy and Graduate Certificate in Teleaudiology. ON THE RECORD “Since being rolled out in March this year, the chat sessions have become a very popular option amongst our clients. It’s now one of the most common modalities we use to support clients in completing their online mental health program. For many clients, a real-time text chat session is a practical first step into talking with a health practitioner, which for some can be quite confronting,” said Dr Liz Seabrook, Digital Mental Health Fellow at Swinburne, in a statement. CEO and co-founder of Coviu Dr Silvia Pfeiffer said: “Our goal is to make healthcare services easily accessible and usable to all citizens, and this partnership with Swinburne’s Mental Health Online service takes us another step closer. We work hard to ensure our telehealth technology is easy to use, and are constantly looking at new ways for people to use the service. I’m thrilled to hear the text-only chat sessions are helping hundreds of people across Australia.”

Chinese healthcare ecosystem platform Ping An Good Doctor has reached strategic cooperation with nearly 50 hospitals across China, including the Aviation General Hospital of China Medical University, Sichuan Second Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, and the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, to jointly develop a new “internet hospital” model, the company recently announced. DEVELOPMENTS LEADING TO THE INTERNET HOSPITAL MODEL Since 2018, the Chinese State Council and the National Health Commission have issued policies such as the Opinions on Promoting the Development of “Internet + Healthcare” and Measures for the Administration of Internet Hospitals (for Trial Implementation), among other policies, pursuant to which, permission is granted for the development of internet hospitals by relying on medical institutions, application of internet technology for provision of safe and proper medical services, launch of online follow-up consultation for some common diseases and chronic diseases, and launch of online medication prescription for some common diseases and chronic diseases. As such, clear regulation and guidance have been provided with regard to the development of internet hospitals. Last month, the State Council issued the 2019 Major Task List on Deepening the Medical and Healthcare System Reform, which clearly indicates that the National Healthcare Security Administration shall by the end of September 2019 complete the drafting of the policy document regarding fees and charges of internet diagnosis and treatment and medical insurance payment. WHAT’S THE IMPACT The “Hospital Cloud” system of Ping An Good Doctor will be connected to the HIS system of cooperative hospitals to form the three-in-one internet hospital management platform featuring online diagnosis platform, prescription sharing platform and health management platform. This new “internet hospital” model can help hospitals resolve such problems as absence in outpatient appointments, overcome geographical constraints, and expand the scope of hospital service. In addition, internet hospitals will also serve as a data integration and sharing platform to facilitate information exchange and real-time sharing among entities, forming a full-fledged, closed-loop system combining online and offline medical services. THE LARGER TREND Since the start of this year, Ping An Good Doctor has been partnering with different companies such as China Everbright Bank and Wyeth to provide more value to their clients and to build their ecosystem outside of the traditional healthcare domain. Developing the internet hospital model with local hospitals has the enormous potential of reducing data/information silos – something that has plagued healthcare providers all over the world. The integration of healthcare data, if done correctly, will give both Ping An Good Doctor and the partner hospitals the opportunity to provide a better quality of care for patients/clients, particularly for those outside Tier 1 cities. ON THE RECORD “The uniform management platform to be developed by both parties could achieve a seamless connection between patients, hospitals, internet hospitals and supply chains, providing patients with integrated healthcare services such as online follow-up consultation, prescription circulation, drug delivery and chronic disease management, etc.” a Ping An Good Doctor spokesperson said in a statement.

The Guam Department of Public Health and Social Services has confirmed 1,417 TB medication doses from 35 unique patients, saved $21,255 in staff time, saved $3,457 in gasoline, and cut 700 hours of driving time.

Researchers are working with digital therapeutics specialist Biofourmis, using machine learning technology and the Apple Watch to analyze dozens of physiology biomarkers.

The smartphone app also came in handy during a ransomware attack: When other systems were down, it was up and running.

Singapore-founded house call doctor app Speedoc and private ambulance operator Comfort Ambulance announced a partnership that allows Speedoc users to hire Comfort’s fleet of 25 ambulances for transport to more than 100 healthcare institutions across Singapore directly through their app. Since September 2018, Speedoc has been a participant of the Ministry of Health’s regulatory sandbox – Licensing Experimentation and Adaptation Programme (LEAP), which allows the safe development of new and innovative healthcare models to be piloted in a controlled environment. HOW IT WORKS Charges for booking an ambulance via the Speedoc app will range from S$120-S$170, depending on timing, location and day. Additional charges for services such as the use of oxygen therapy or stretchers will also be clearly listed in the app for users. WHY IT MATTERS The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) announced that it will stop dispatching ambulances for non-emergencies from April 1 onward, so as to better focus on life-threatening cases. According to SCDF’s latest statistics, non-emergency and false alarm calls made up 9.6% (17,954 calls) of all emergency medical service (EMS) calls in 2018. This means that on average, SCDF responded to around 50 non-emergency and false alarm calls each day. Users who need a private ambulance can now either contact over 20 operators individually or call the 1777 hotline, but waiting times can take as long as two hours compared with around 30 minutes with the app, according to Speedoc. Speedoc is currently working with other ambulance operators to get more of them on board the app.

Dr.  Markus Müschenich, MPH, managing partner at Flying Health, says integrating healthcare into self-driving cars will present a completely new global business opportunity for digital health companies.

With remote patient monitoring a hot topic among healthcare providers, a new survey indicates patients would be open to outfitting themselves with wearable devices if it resulted in fewer trips to visit the doctor. WHY IT MATTERS The study of 100 participants ages 40 and over, conducted by connected healthcare solutions provider VivaLNK, found nearly two-thirds (64 percent) would put on a wearable health monitoring device if it meant it reducing the number of trips made to visit a doctor or hospital. Overall interest in wearables like a Fitbit or the Apple Watch for remote patient monitoring purposes was high, with more than half (55 percent) of respondents noting they would use such a device at home. THE LARGER TREND Healthcare organizations see the potential of RMS in combination with telehealth for convenience and cost savings, and many are currently exploring how to adopt it. In one case, use of an inhaler-connected sensor helped push the average number of COPD-related hospital trips down to an average of 2.2, compared to the year prior to study enrollment (when the average was 3.4), a recent study from the Cleveland Clinic medical center and Propeller Health found. For another example, ClearSky Medical Diagnostics currently employs Shimmer Research wearables for clinical trials, a partnership that uses Shimmer’s Verisense platform to improve analysis of sensor data for central nervous system diseases. And among the new products unveiled at HIMSS19 this past February was VitalConnect’s Vista Solution 2.0, which added a weight scale, blood pressure and pulse oximetry and core temperature reader to the existing eight vital sign measurements monitored by the company’s VitalPatch biosensor. However, there is evidence to suggest the potential benefits of RMS – not to mention the accuracy of certain devices or the security with which sensitive information is stored or transmitted – has not been fully studied.  "Remote patient monitoring … will be increasingly important," Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO Dr. John Halamka wrote on his blog earlier this year. But while "many thought leaders are convinced that remote patient monitoring improves patient care," he said, "surveys suggest that health-care professionals are still not convinced." ON THE RECORD "Remote patient monitoring and the wearable devices that make it possible are not new concepts, but there's more progress that can be made by understanding patient motivations," Jiang Li, CEO of VivaLNK, said in a statement. "While the appointment can't always be avoided, RPM is the key to reducing the time, energy and money it takes to physically visit a doctor's office." As Li noted and the survey also indicated, costs of the appointment, distance, and disliking healthcare facilities were all top reasons survey respondents gave for wanting to reduce physical visits to the doctor. "Patients have always disliked visiting the doctor's office, and now there's a way to mitigate that,” Li continued. “This survey highlights what really fuels and drives consumer behavior from a healthcare perspective." Nathan Eddy is a healthcare and technology freelancer based in Berlin. Email the writer: nathaneddy@gmail.com Twitter: @dropdeaded209