Archive for the ‘Health Care Industry’ Category

Anthony
LaFauce

mHealth is the Future

Monday, August 16th, 2010

welldocWellDoc, a company focused on developing next generation medical tools, announced that the FDA has approved its DiabetesManager System. I can hear you now, “what’s the big deal? There are plenty of those on the market already.” The key to this new system is that it delivers real-time monitoring results to a person’s mobile phone.

Again, is it really that great of a tool? The DiabetesManager System also links directly to the patient’s caregiver via the patient’s phone and can provide automated health updates. HIPA you say? Well the company’s press release says nothing about privacy issues, but because this is an ‘opt in’ program that communicates directly with a patient’s caregiver, the information passed is no different than a patient calling his or her caregiver.

After a quick read-through of the WellDoc’s site, I was able to read that the information captured is held in a highly secure database that only allows for approved member access. I understand the need for HIPA, but on the other hand I understand the need to provide healthcare information on the go. (more...)

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Anthony
LaFauce

Top Tips for Hospitals and Doctors to Achieve Positive Feedback with Social Media

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

social-media-logoI was recently featured in an article on AMED News and ReachMD (12:45) talking about how doctors should handle negative posts by patients on social media sites. I stated that doctors should never go on the offensive against negative postings and instead should work on “getting on top” of negative messages.

The principle is simple; you can never make everyone happy all the time so by nature some people will post negative messages. If you’re a good hospital or doctor, many of the patients you serve are happy with the work you do. Therefore, as a good practitioner or facility, if you give patients an opportunity to speak positively about you they will. More positive messages will always drown out negative messages.

Think about it like this, if you see a Yelp posting about a restaurant and 15 people say it's great and one say it’s terrible… Who are you going to believe?

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Anthony
LaFauce

Mobile and Health Work Hand in Hand

Friday, May 21st, 2010

Last night I had the privilege of attending a Washington Health 2.0 event at The Barking Dog in Bethesda, MD. The night was full of both tech and health care folks talking about great projects they have worked on. Great food, drinks, and digital/health conversation were on the menu but my interest was sparked by two particular presentations.health-20

Doug Naegele, CEO of Infield, gave a great presentation focused on using mobile in developing nations as an ad hoc field hospital. The long and short of it is this, in nations where hard lines and hospitals are at a minimum, innovative people can use the MMS and live video feeds from even the most basic cell phone to provide doctors in other regions with important information for diagnosing.

africaDoug also mentioned how creating an innovative text to phone program allowed users to request a free phone call from a friend if the text message was sponsored by a non-profit interested in providing health care information. Viewership on the host site went up 140% in a relatively short period.

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Kevin
Walsh

Crowdsourcing for a Cause

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

I just read an excellent article about crowdsourcing health care solutions by Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired.  The article, titled "Harvard-Based Crowdsource Project Seeks New Diabetes Answers," describes in great detail a new initiative to crowd source diabetes information with an end goal of curing Type I diabetes.  (Almost 2.4 million people in the US suffer from Type I diabetes.) "Using federal stimulus funding from the National Institutes of Health, Harvard Catalyst has teamed up with InnoCentive to explore whether open innovation and crowd-sourcing can spark new directions, collaborations and research in the healthcare community."

Congratulations to the National Institutes of Health for funding this and to Harvard's medical research department for developing this crowdsourced medical initiative sure to help those with Type I diabetes.

What's particularly interesting about the first phase of this project is the goal of ideation. The project's initial objective is not to identify a specific cure, but to start with the basic premises that there are questions or criteria that may not have been considered before now. (more...)

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Leticia
Diaz

The Growing Field of mHealth

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

We use our mobile phones for banking, to find directions and sometimes to shop. But would you use your phone to track your diabetes, asthma or mood and send that information to your doctor?

Today, there are many Americans doing just that! That's the word from the mHealth Foundation who brought more than 300 experts together in early February in DC to discuss the growing field of mobile health, also known as mHealth. Though the promise of mobile phones has yet to reach its full potential in the U.S., as compared to parts of Europe and Asia, that hasn't stopped the boom of health applications.  mHealth estimates there are more than 5,000 health applications in existence. What's even more eye-opening is that more than 3,700 of these are estimated to be used in a clinical setting - including those among health care professionals and between doctors and patients. 

mHealth has identified 12 clusters to catalog the broad range and function of mobile health applications. Some of these clusters include:

  • Patient Communications - These include communications before, during and after visits to your doctor including searches via your mobile phone to find a doctor based on your zip code and send back relevant information via text.
  • Disease Management - Used both by patients and their caregivers, this area is growing by the day with applications that allow you to track your meals and exercise, measurements such as blood pressure or your A1c level (or that of your child), daily reminders sent to pregnant women based on their due date, and encouraging reminders for smoking cessation.
  • Emergency Care - These applications provide first aid tips and CPR instructions or can be used by EMS departments to help relay critical patient statistics en route to the hospital. (more...)

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John
Seng

Larger World Of Health Care Markets Now At Your Doorstep!

Monday, February 8th, 2010

If you work for a health-oriented company that offers products or services internationally, you might be interested to know that our GLOBALHealthPR partnership expanded significantly in the past year, with exciting new access and capabilities in four countries among Latin America, Europe and Asia. Herewith our new names and faces, transmitting the best savvy in important health care markets around the world. (more...)