Empowering Health in the Home: Meet CliniCloud

For consumers looking to track and record personal health metrics away from the doctor’s office, life may have just gotten easier with the help of an Australia-based digital health company. CliniCloud, now making waves on the San Francisco healthtech scene, is showcasing its savvy and uber-compact connected medical kit that may help take patient-to-provider video visits to the next level here in the United States.

Now taking orders for its first product iteration, CliniCloud’s medical kit comprises two main items: a wireless non-contact thermometer and a digital stethoscope that conveniently plugs into a smartphone headphone jack. Patients can use these devices to track and record both stethoscope and temperature recordings or simply transmit them to a doctor during a video visit.

During an interview with mobihealthnews this week, CliniCloud Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Andrew Lin highlighted the importance of the stethoscope and thermometer within today’s realm of medicine, stating: “with the CliniCloud medical kit, we are putting these powerful tools into the hands of everyday users, allowing them to accurately record vital signs that can be shared with…a network of on-demand physicians to determine if a cough is just a cold—or something more serious, like pneumonia or asthma.”

The CliniCloud app is available for both Android and Apple devices and the medical kit is set to ship this coming July. Check out CliniCloud’s sleek and eye-catching website here for more information—maybe you’ll end up pre-ordering your own!

SOURCE: mobihealthnews

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

Taking a Peek at Patient Engagement in Beantown: Beth Israel’s New Pilot Study

Further initiatives to end incessant EMR entry during medical appointments may now be in place within one of Boston’s own. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) recently received a $450,000 grant from the Commonwealth Fund to solidify a program allowing patients to add to and update their own medical records during visits. This program, called OurNotes, is an extension of the larger and well-known OpenNotes initiative. The idea for OpenNotes began 5 years ago and quickly mobilized into an approach that gives patients access to their physicians’ visit notes. OpenNotes has spread rapidly across the U.S. and is now used by more than 5 million patients and providers nationwide.

Throughout this pilot, Beth Israel will collaborate with a number of health sites and providers across the country, including Pennsylvania-based Geisinger Health System, Seattle-based Harborview Medical Center, Seattle’s Group Health Cooperative and Mosaic Life Care in St. Joseph, Missouri. The OpenNotes initiative started making waves in Boston during the 2012 calendar year, when researchers conducting a survey at BIDMC found that patients with access to clinicians’ notes were more engaged and witnessed more positive health outcomes. Results from this year-long study included data from more than 13,500 primary care patients and 100 physicians.

The OurNotes Pilot will initially focus on primary care, with the intent to later expand into other specialties. Jan Walker, RN, MBA and co-founder of OpenNotes hopes that the pilot will further increase patient engagement and improve adherence to medications. Walker also stated that patients in the OurNotes pilots at both BIDMC and additional sites will have access to other parts of their medical records, including problem and medication lists. After this initial phase of testing, each of the five sites will have the opportunity to develop its own prototype for further implementation.

SOURCES: mobihealthnews and OpenNotes.org

For more information on the OpenNotes initiative, check out Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s official press release here!

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

Healthtech Happy Hospitals: Miami Children’s and its Mobile App Endeavors

Over the past few years, mobile technologies of various sorts have proven vital in hospitals and healthcare centers across America with usage rates increasing rapidly for both providers and patients alike. As profiled in mobihealthnews just this week, Miami Children’s Hospital is continuing this trend with two newly released health-specific mobile offerings.

According to Miami Children’s Hospital CIO Edward Martinez, the hospital has developed a care transition app that aids clinicians in the hand-off of patients between shifts. This app includes a patient-facing option as well, allowing patients to keep track of such staff transitions. There is also a parent-facing component to this app, complete with a video consultation feature to enable Q&A between parent and provider after a child is discharged from the hospital.

Another app Miami Children’s has created is a care coordination product for clinician use. At the end of a shift, this app allows providers across all specialties to quickly enter information about a patient’s condition on a handy mobile device and pass it on to the next clinician. This way, the next attending physician does not miss any critical patient information related to symptoms or condition.

In his interview with mobihealthnews, Martinez highlighted one key observation pertaining to the patients and families that enter Miami Children’s Hospital on a daily basis: the parental generation is more mobile-savvy than ever before. The hospital is capitalizing on this occurrence by engaging parents early on with activities such as texting and video chatting. With 2015 expected to produce yet another boom in the mobile health and telemedicine arena, it is very likely that large hospitals from California to Maine will follow soon follow in the footsteps of Miami Children’s.

SOURCE: mobihealthnews

To see some neat screenshots of Miami Children’s newly released mobile health apps, check out the full article here!

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

Retail and Refills: Patient Engagement Technologies on Horizon for Walmart and Target

Recent digital health initiatives suggest that Walmart, Target and other retail giants are steadfastly marching into the healthcare setting with a focus on customer and employee health. With representatives attending Health 2.0’s WinterTech conference in San Francisco, both Walmart and Target have confirmed plans to provide more in-depth healthcare services including chronic disease management and guidance towards healthier lifestyles.

Last week, MedCity News connected with Walmart and Target spokespersons to learn more. Complete with clinics that serve both customers as well as employees, Target and Walmart will look to enhance healthcare efforts with technologies like mobile coaching apps and telemedicine platforms. For both Target and Walmart, much of this expansion will take place in the form of strategic partnerships with powerhouses like UnitedHealthcare and Kaiser Permanente. In developing its new pharmacy prescription app focused on medication adherence for employees and customers alike, Target partnered with Mscripts, a leader in mobile pharmacy solutions. Michael Laquere, a senior buyer for pharmacy at Target, pointed out that through this app Target hopes to “connect with pharmacies in a more virtual way.”

When taking information access into consideration, retailers could be sitting on a data gold mine. With customer buying patterns and health information at their disposal, retailers could potentially make suggestions to improve health or aid in chronic disease management. With the current privacy barriers and regulations in place, this possibility is far from a reality—however, the opportunity to improve consumer health is salient and two major retail players have taken the reigns. Who will be the next to join?

SOURCE: MedCityNews

To learn more about increasing retail presence in the healthcare industry, check out MedCity News’ full article here!

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

2015: Is the “Year of the Telemedicine” Upon Us?

Have you texted, web chatted or Skyped with your doctor lately? You may want to, as health professionals and digital health entrepreneurs alike are predicting great things for telemedicine in the coming year. There’s no disputing that telemedicine “went big” in 2014—with provider communication, patient engagement and care coordination products dominating the digital health space, remote care and patient-to-provider telemedicine services proliferated virtually every area of the market. This “boom,” however, is expected to intensify in 2015 with ambitious predictions already circling within the wide and wonderful world of healthcare.

According to a recent article published by VentureBeat, there are several key indicators that 2015 will be the year that telemedicine has a takeoff of epic proportions. Check out the numbers:

• As of 2016, the global telemedicine market is predicted to be $27 billion with Virtual health Services accounting for $16 billion.
• By 2018, 65% of interactions with healthcare organizations will be done via mobile devices.
• Rock Health, a San Francisco-based digital health accelerator and seed fund, estimates that $4.1 billion of new capital in 2014 was invested in digital health—up from less than $1 million in 2011 (Forbes Magazine).

With the aforementioned financial gains on the near horizon, major players in the healthcare space—such as providers and insurance companies—can expect worthwhile benefits:

• Remote patient-to-provider virtual consults have the potential to reduce the need for all in-person doctor visits by up to 93%. This translates into savings of about $103 per primary care visit and $1,067 per emergency room visit. Your wallets will be thanking you!
• 50% of all doctor visits can be conducted virtually and 70% of all electronic health record (EHR) visits can be conducted remotely.

Finally, the patient—posited at the center of care—wins in the grand scheme of telehealth, as on-demand and high quality care becomes a reality. With a vast and continuously growing population of aging Americans, proponents of virtual visits point to the advantages conferred to those lacking easy access to a doctor’s offices, namely the elderly, the frail and those in rural areas. Telehealth is certainly headed in a strongly positive direction. Will predictions prevail? Only time will tell!

SOURCES: VentureBeat and Forbes Magazine 

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

The U.S. Dental Market: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Headed

As 2014 comes to a close, one industry in particular deserves a contemplative glance—the U.S. dental system. Projected to “evolve more in the next 20 years than in the previous 50,” U.S. dental care is changing quite dramatically and failure to change with it (listen up, stragglers) may result in decline and stagnation. Key research bodies are proud to release their 2014 research reports, highlighting where the U.S. dental industry has been—and where consumers can expect it to go in the coming years. Take a look at some key industry-shifting trends below:

Group practice growth

As group practices continue to grow, the days of solo practices being the dominant model for dental practices are dwindling. There are a number of reasons why consolidation and acquisition are the future of dentistry—first, dentistry always seems to follow medicine. Other reasons include rising costs, third party pressures, severe fragmentation of the dental industry and massive dental school debts.

Influence of PPOs

Fee-for-service (FFS) dentistry and PPOs will continue to be a hot topic in the field of dentistry. Dental insurance expert Teresa Duncan states the obvious—patients will “vote with their wallets” as typical American consumers do. According to Duncan, “what will separate successful offices is the ability to provide quality service and a great patient experience…half the battle is accepting that [one’s] business model must shift to accommodate industry changes.” To all dentists out there, keeping an eye on this trend in 2015 is advised.

Medical-dental collaborations

Expect to see more dental and medical cooperation towards things that will help both sides as well as their patients—such as EHRs. Collaboration between physicians, dentists and other allied health professionals to promote a holistic, integrated approach to caring for patients is a major goal for 2015.

Technology as a window of opportunity

CAD/CAM technology in dentistry is expected to continue its boom in 2015 with a larger number of dentists using tablets to improve patient care and satisfaction. The idea of Google Glass helping dentists may take off after the New Year, as dental students at the University of Michigan have already formed a dental consulting company to pinpoint exactly how this innovative technology may be useful to dental practices going forward.

The more educated patient

Patients will continue to utilize the internet for information about dental health and clinician feedback, along with “shopping” for dentists. Ratings sites seem to be everywhere and prove to be very powerful, so clinicians should be cognizant of word-of-mouth in the coming year. Social media is everywhere!

SOURCE: Dental Products Report 

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

“Stuck in the 70’s:” Modern Medicine, the FDA and Medical Device Legislation

Will Congressional bills slated for 2015 review finally bring medical device regulation into the 21st Century?

The year was 1976. Apple was founded, bell bottoms were in, Jimmy Carter was elected President and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began its first regulatory measures on medical devices.  The notion of “tech-savvy” Americans had not yet come to fruition, nor had the ubiquity of iPhones and tablets—in fact, no consumer would have known what to do with such a device during this era. Today, increasing numbers of hand-held devices allow us to connect with providers, manage and track medications and organization medical records. In 2013 alone, the Apple Store reported 97,000 mobile health apps in use and over 60% of physicians were using tablets. With these solid numbers marked in the medical sphere, why is the FDA still stuck in 1976?

In a recent article released by Forbes Magazine, John Graham illuminates the FDA’s continued regulation of novel, cutting-edge medical devices under outdated amendments and what this antiquated authority means for new health tools. According to the FDA’s original amendments, a medical device is an “instrument, apparatus, implement, machine…or related article, including any component, part or accessory…” Technologies of the 21^st century, namely smartphones, smartwatches and tablets, don’t seem to fit within this definition in any regard.

Despite the amendments’ verbose restrictions, the FDA has informed patients and providers alike on how it intends to regulate new technologies. With the final guidance for medical mobile apps passed in 2013, the FDA intends to focus its regulatory oversight on only a subset of mobile medical apps that present a risk to patients if they do not work as intended. In the final guidance, the FDA defined the term “mobile medical app” and Congress defined the technologies subject to FDA regulation.

While it appears the FDA is making strides in the right direction, many find its law-related verbiage unsettling. Early-stage startups remain weary over the FDA’s “enforcement discretion,” which includes the self-perceived ability to withhold smartphones, tablets and more. After much discussion at last week’s mHealth Summit in Washington, DC, the consensus is this: the FDA cannot be expected to generate consistent regulatory standards without appropriate legislation. Fortunately for the medical sphere, this may be resolved in the next Congress with the following propositions:

MEDTECH Act: would legislate that electronic health records (EHRs) and other technologies that only store and communicate information are exempt from FDA regulation.

SOFTWARE Act: would define the term “medical software” as software distributed directly to consumers and not integrated with a drug or device but includes the use of a drug or device. Such software would be subject to FDA regulation. The bill also includes the terms “clinical software” (used by medical professionals) and “health software” (used by consumers to store and communicate data but doesn’t include the use of a device). Both clinical and health software would not be subject to regulation.

SOURCE: Forbes Magazine

For more information on the FDA, legislation and the future of U.S. health innovation, click here!

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

Got the sniffles? Tweet about it: The push to share illness data online

The truth hurts. We’re currently in the throes of flu season with no reassuring end in sight. Whether it’s a fever, the chills, a runny nose or the ever-dreaded stomach bug, recent data trends show that sicklings across America like to share their not-so-pleasant illness narratives on the World Wide Web. According to Boston Children’s Hospital computational epidemiologist John Brownstein, a keynote speaker at this week’s mHealth Summit in DC, we should be thanking these individuals—they’re allowing digital public health companies to capture valuable data to create meaningful insights for users.

Brownstein highlighted several noteworthy collaborations and projects while at the Summit. Boston-based HealthMap currently deploys Google’s “Vaccine Finder,” enabling health consumers to search by location and vaccine type across the United States. In a pilot with UberHealth, HealthMap used Uber cars to help nurses deliver flu vaccines to individuals at work and at home in both New York City and Boston.

Brownstein, one of HealthMap’s chief architects, also highlighted the startup’s cooperation with Yelp to collect reports on food poisoning to track foodborne illnesses—which average about 10,000 cases per year. Through HealthMap’s Outbreaks Near Me app, iOS and Android users can report outbreaks of a variety of illnesses for identification and tracking.

So, to the tissue-hogging, fever-running, congested and unhappy folks out there—keep blogging, keep Tweeting, and keep Facebook posting. HealthMap and other soon-to-be digital public health companies seem to have you covered for now and for the future of illness outbreak tracking.

To hear more from John Brownstein, check out his interview from this week’s mHealth Summit here!

SOURCES: MEDCITY News

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

From Option to Necessity: The Paradigm Shift in Digital Health is Coming

Digital health is no longer a futuristic idea, it’s happening in the here and now. As the healthcare industry quickly moves toward full digitization, previously tech-averse clinicians are slowly—but gradually—getting on board with new and innovative technologies. A report recently published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) highlights a telling shift in clinicians’ attitudes toward digital technology, especially when connecting with patients is concerned. And it appears this shift is for the better.

In an extensive survey of over 1,000 clinicians—physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants included—PwC aimed to gain a sense of how these health professionals perceive digital health as it stands today. The takeaways? In most health spheres, clinicians are supportive. Check out some key findings below:

• When it comes to patient engagement tools, clinicians and patients seem to agree that putting diagnostic tools into the hands of the patient is both powerful and reliable. Roughly 42% of physicians are comfortable relying on at-home test results to prescribe medication.

• A large body of physicians also said they believe digital health tools can boost the patient-doctor interaction, with 50% saying telehealth visits could eventually replace more than 10% of in-office patient visits.

• Clinicians view consumer health apps to manage chronic disease and wellness as a good thing, with about 65% saying they would prescribe an app to help patients manage specific conditions. Furthermore, the percent of consumers who say they have a healthcare or wellness app downloaded onto a mobile device has increased significantly from last year and is up to 28% (versus last year’s 16%).

• An overwhelming 79% of clinicians support mobile health applications, stating that mobile devices can better help clinicians coordinate care with their patients.

With these findings in place, what do clinicians have to look forward to in the digital health space? According to PwC’s health information technology practice leader, Daniel Garrett, “digitally-enabled care is no longer nice-to-have; it’s fundamental for delivering high quality care.” The adoption and integration of digital technology within existing healthcare practices has not reached its full potential to transform patient care. Many health experts hypothesize that the next five years will be absolutely crucial.

SOURCES: Healthcare IT News and PricewaterhouseCoopers

To view PwC’s full digital health report, check out the link to their website here!

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.

Honing in on HealthKit: An App Review

A few weeks ago, MobiHealthNews rounded up an updated list of the health and wellness apps that connect to Apple’s HealthKit, a health and fitness data exchange that facilitates data sharing between iOS apps. With a total of 137 apps, MobiHealthNews analyzed the ways in which these apps integrate with HealthKit—some only pull data, some only push data and about 20 percent do both. When all analyses were complete, the major point discovered was this: while HealthKit makes it possible to share dozens of different types of health and fitness data, most apps make use of the same few data points. Active calories and weight data are both among the top three most popular data types to push or pull from HealthKit. Take a look below to see the full results!

Number of apps pushing various kinds of data (or “writing”) to Apple HealthKit.

• 34 percent of HealthKit apps (46) are pushing active calories data.
• 20 percent of HealthKit apps (28) are pushing weight data.
• 18 percent of HealthKit apps (25) are writing heart rate data.
• 18 percent (24) are pushing workouts data to HealthKit, even though the Apple Health app doesn’t have such a field.
• 15 percent of HealthKit apps (21) are feeding step count data into the platform.
• 15 percent (20) are sharing walking and running distance data with HealthKit.
• 10 percent of HealthKit apps (14) are pushing out sleep analysis data.
• 9 percent (12) are sharing nutrition data with the HealthKit ecosystem.
• 8 percent (11) are pushing out blood pressure data with HealthKit.
• 7 percent of HealthKit apps (9) are writing cycling distance data.

Number of apps pulling various kinds of data (or “reading”) from Apple HealthKit

• 23 percent of HealthKit apps (32) are pulling weight data.
• 16 percent (22) are integrating step count data from HealthKit.
• 12 percent (17) are using active calories data from the platform.
• 10 percent of HealthKit apps (14) are using heart rate data pulled from the system.
• 10 percent (14) are pulling down blood pressure data from HealthKit.
• 9 percent (13) make use of walking and running distance data retrieved from HealthKit.
• 9 percent (13) are pulling nutrition data from HealthKit.
• 9 percent of HealthKit apps (12) are using sleep analysis data from the platform.
• 7 percent of HealthKit-connected apps are using the platform to pull in a user’s height.
• 7 percent (9) are pulling in a user’s birthdate from HealthKit.

SOURCE: MobiHealthNews

About DoseSpot 
DoseSpot is a Surescripts certified e-Prescribing platform specifically designed to integrate with electronic health record, electronic dental record, practice management and telehealth software. DoseSpot is certified to e-Prescribe controlled substances and has provided simple, affordable and integratable e-Prescribing solutions to healthcare IT companies since 2009. For more information, please visit www.DoseSpot.com.