These processes are a perfect fit for the Internet of Things (IoT), which can help with untangling complex supply chains and keeping track of chemical processes without a loss in efficiency or quality of drugs. In comparable industries, like chemical manufacturing, these operations are being phased out in favor of IoT applications that simplify and streamline many of the tedious tasks involved in each process.

The Numerous Challenges of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Manufacturing relies on time and continuity for maximum efficiency. But in the pharmaceutical industry, things aren’t so cut and dry. Drugs are usually developed in large batches, involving mixing compounds in large vats. Upon mixing, the product needs to sit for a while to measure the quality of intermediate products. This can cause delays across the entire company.

After the new chemical compound is measured for its quality, it moves to another step, which can sometimes involve another facility. Because of the timeline and amount of floor space required for each drug’s development, machinery isn’t used continuously. And information and data about the quality, status, and condition of the chemical compound are often stored and distributed through a variety of systems. Many companies still record and store data on paper.

For manufacturing to be optimized for maximum output and efficiency, machinery needs to be used continuously. This means planning ahead, even by years, to experience the biggest cost savings. This is how it’s done across a variety of industries, and pharmaceutical companies need to catch up.

IoT technology is a perfect match for these business and processes problems, and it offers more flexibility, transparency, and return on investment than anything else on the market. But the road to modernizing the pharmaceutical industry’s manufacturing processes is a very rocky one.

Navigating Necessary Regulations

The pharmaceutical industry is heavily regulated due to the life-or-death consequences of its products. When regulations need to be considered, lengthy delays usually follow. For example, to submit a drug for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), you’re required to submit detailed paperwork of every single part about the drug’s manufacturing process.

This includes the active compound, the manufacturing process, and even the layout of the chemical plant. If there any changes to be made in the process, it first requires direct approval from the regulatory committee along with some paperwork. Because of these regulatory hurdles, pharmaceutical companies require much more planning of their experiments and drug development.

To help cut down the time it takes to navigate regulations and receive approval, the FDA started the Emerging Technology Team (ETT). The ETT’s goal is to encourage new manufacturing methods, like continuous manufacturing. This enables pharmaceutical companies to submit their ideas before submitting the regulatory paperwork

IoT and Compliance

The FDA isn’t the first regulatory body to improve drug development. In fact, more than 100 such agencies exist across the world, and they all require their own paperwork, which can be a major timesink for global pharmaceutical companies. The ETT has made positive change and growth for the pharmaceutical industry, however.

Boston-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals has been using continuous manufacturing for their cystic fibrosis drug, Orkambi, since 2015. In 2016, Janssen Pharmaceuticals switched over to continuous manufacturing for their HIV drug, Prezista. Both companies worked closely with the FDA to ensure approval of the modern manufacturing process before they submitted their drug approval paperwork. According to Johnson & Johnson, separating testing and sampling using IoT sensors afforded the company a significant improvement over their previous methods.

By combining medical applications with IoT, pharmaceutical companies can remotely monitor and document every step, variation, and concentration during each part of the manufacturing process. The best part is that they can do everything in real-time, enabling plant operators, researchers, and chemists to know what’s happening during the entire process. Companies can also track drugs for recalls if a specific chemical poses a problem for consumers.

Pharmaceutical supply chains are complex and finicky. Often, a reliable chemical supplier can lose their inventory overnight, causing global problems in drug manufacturing. With IoT, pharmaceutical companies can monitor and document the activity of their contract manufacturing organizations, which are hired to complete much of the manufacturing of the drug.

Additionally, pharmaceutical companies often use different suppliers and vendors to manufacture the active ingredient, formulate new drugs, and package the medication. Regulatory bodies want to monitor, track, and report on each company’s vendors, and IoT can deliver everything in a nice wrapped-up package with a bow.

The Future of Pharma

We need pharmaceutical companies to survive, but we can lower drug prices and the cost to research and develop new medications by introducing IoT technology into the current outdated manufacturing processes. Above all, pharmaceutical companies need to maintain a strict level of high quality in their drugs. Currently, if a drug has possible quality issues, it’s treated as spoiled. But with IoT, tracking down chemical sources will be easier so that action can be taken quickly.

As pharmaceutical equipment tends to be expensive and labor-intensive to produce, continuous manufacturing is even more necessary to improve drug development. And although continuous manufacturing saves a lot of time and resources, it can cause major disruptions in manufacturing from equipment failure. As a result, IoT sensor data, real-time asset management, and preventative maintenance will become bigger priorities.

Telehealth is one technology that emerged during the pandemic that experts expect to stick around after we’ve all gotten our vaccines. But, despite what most think it entails, telemedicine doesn’t just mean a simple Zoom or FaceTime video call. With new telehealth platforms, doctors can now store and pull up bloodwork, test results, MRIs, x-rays, and medical history all while video chatting with you.

These platforms allow for a two-way communication flow between the provider and patient, as the patient can become engaged in their own care by sharing information through the platform. Patients can also approve access to their medical chart for other providers and hospitals, which saves time and effort for everyone, especially the patient. Whether or not it’s your first time interacting with your doctor on a telemedicine platform, here are five ways you can optimize your telehealth appointment to take maximum advantage of your doctor’s time and knowledge.

#1: Set Up Early

Patients might be too sick or tired to go through all of the steps in setting up a new online account or activating a new account. But it’s imperative that you take the proper steps to ensure that you’re set up and ready to go well before your appointment time. If you try to get set up at the last minute, you may cause a delay in starting your appointment, and your provider could even have you reschedule if you don’t make it to the conference within a reasonable amount of time. If you’re really sick, it may be disastrous to your physical and mental health to have to wait another few weeks for another appointment.

Many hospitals and private practices use well-known and popular medical portals like MyChart or San Francisco-based BlueJeans. Because of the recent growth of telemedicine, however, most patients will not have an account on one of these platforms. Before the appointment, check and verify the password is working, you’ve got the necessary software downloaded, and that things look like they are yours. Many providers encourage their patients by telling them that it may feel overwhelming to set up a new account, but that it’s really very easy to do.

#2: Share Medical Images Early

Speaking of getting things set up early, if you know you want to show your doctor medical images from your last scan, get a copy of your images before the visit. If the copy is a physical copy, have the copy sent to your provider’s office. It’s best to just ask your radiologist for a copy of the files before you leave their office, but it’s easy to forget this step when you’re eager to get back home or back to work.

Some offices use technology like Patient Connect, created by medical development company LifeImage. It sends patients a link where they can upload their images directly from their local computer. And if you’re facing a problem that prevents you from sharing your medical images, call your doctor and let them know about the situation. They’ll figure out how to get your images on your behalf so that you’re ready to go for your upcoming appointment.

#3: Round Up Your Records

While you’re hunting down your medical images, make sure your medical chart is up to date. If you’ve visited any specialists recently or had a hospital visit, ask them for their notes. Providers often need documented reasons to see patients, and these notes will help them prepare for the appointment as well as bolster evidence of your condition or illness.

Preparing these records ahead of time can also prevent your provider from canceling your appointment or refusing to give you medication. Try to do some due diligence in updating your medical records for your current provider to see.

#4: Fill Out Your Contacts Early

After you update your medical chart, head over to the contacts section and fill it out to the best of your ability. It can be your best friend or a family member. C0ntacts can also be other doctors you see for other medical reasons. Having a list of this information helps providers reach someone for context and questions if you can’t be reached. The data gathered from your contact list can save your life during surgery or during prescription writing.

#5: Be Truthful About Your Medical History

It’s easy to reframe your medical history in a way that wouldn’t garner too much judgment: leave out a lot of details. But doctors and nurses have heard everything under the sun (and then some), so don’t be afraid to tell the truth about all of your lifestyle habits, medical history, and medications. Withholding this information could result in death, but sharing the information could help your provider find the missing piece of the puzzle. It also saves time because it prevents canceled surgeries, drug interactions, and confusing labwork results.

Above All Else, Show Up

Dr. David Shapiro, an orthopedic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, says his team once met with a patient over telehealth who was in a fast-food drive-thru. This is unprofessional and can cause issues with your doctor being able to hear and understand you. When you show up to your appointment, be ready to ask questions, answer questions, and pay full attention to your appointment.

These days, online healthcare is not just for young people or tech-savvy patients. Dr. Shapiro says that his team hasn’t found any age limitations to telemedicine. Telehealth is reducing barriers to medical care and healthcare access, and it’s easier to check-in and be seen by the doctor than you’d think.

Have you had a telehealth appointment? Were there any technical issues? Did your appointment go well or did you feel disconnected from your provider? Let us know in the comments below!

This technology, the research theorizes, could be used to monitor COVID-19 to food poisoning and have benefits for public health overall. The study analyzed data from more than 50 COVID-19 survivors who consistently wore the Oura ring. The data stems from a larger study, called TemPredict, that followed over 65,000 people who wore the Oura ring.

What the Research Shows

According to Benjamin Smarr, the research paper’s author and a professor in Bioengineering at UC San Diego, the Oura ring has massive potential to become part of a larger effort for public health officials to spot where illnesses are spreading throughout the country or across the world. The goal for the research group was to develop an algorithm for the ring’s data that could detect early symptoms of COVID-19, like fatigue, fever, and cough. Essentially, Smarr says, the ring offers a “smart, relatively real-time fever detection system.”

The ring monitors several metrics, like your level of activity, heart rate, body temperature, and respiratory rate. Not many wearables on the market today monitor all four of these metrics. Smarr says that Oura was chosen as a collaborator because the company encourages public researchers to access and use data for analysis from Oura ring users who have previously consented.

The researchers found that 76% of the subjects said they had a fever as part of their COVID-19 symptoms, which aligns with the national average of patients who report having a fever during their COVID-19 infection. According to the study, a majority of the subjects had abnormal body temperature before other COVID-19 symptoms developed, leading to the conclusion that body temperature could predict an illness.

A Safer, More Reliable Way

During the pandemic, checking temperatures has become a common method to check for early signs of infection. Schools, stores, restaurants, and public transport systems have checked children and adults for abnormal body temperature. This method involves comparing each person’s body temperature to the broader population’s average temperature or a previously-determined threshold. The temperature checks are often only conducted once per day per person, which can greatly affect the efficacy of checking temperatures in the first place.

Because blood flow varies throughout the day (causing changes in body temperature from hour to hour), testing a person once during the day is less reliable than a temperature monitoring system. The beauty of the Oura ring’s temperature measurement is that it compares your body temperature to your body’s temperature historically, which introduces more reliability and accuracy. For example, the clinical temperature for fever is 100.3 degrees Fahrenheit, but some people run hotter than others, and the clinical definition of fever doesn’t account for fevers for everyone.

An Early-Warning System

The Oura ring allows researchers to see signs of illness with its sensor data, even for people who are asymptomatic and show no signs of malaise. Smarr also says that the Oura ring can be used to track other health conditions, like the flu and food poisoning. Albert Titus, a professor in biomedical engineering at the University of Buffalo, says it’s useful for people to know their body temperature fluctuation throughout the day.

If your body temperature is abnormally high for that time of day, you may need to look at other health metrics to figure out the cause. It may also lead you to make an appointment with your physician for a check-up and testing, making it a dependable early-warning system for illness. Titus, who wasn’t involved in the study, says, “The value is in the trends in combination with other data and information that makes this potentially useful while recognizing that at this point it’s also not diagnostic of a particular disease, but indicative of an overall health change.” While the wearable alerts its wearer to a possible problem, it’s up to the wearer to find help and gather more information about what could be wrong.

Ongoing Analysis

The authors of the paper stress that their research is a jumping-off point for more in-depth research and is, for now, a “proof of concept”. Some areas where future research could focus on is diversity: of the 50 subjects studied, 81% were white, which is not nearly diverse enough to form general conclusions. For future efforts, a more diverse pool of subjects will be necessary. Smarr adds that it is imperative that we develop technology for everyone in society, not just “wealthy people of means”.

The research should also be expanded socioeconomically. Wearables are expensive and require a smartphone to manage, so the technology is not equally accessible to everyone in a population. Titus says wearables research can skew towards those who can afford it or are interested in gadgets overall.

Sharing Data

This study was possible only because Oura was open to sharing its wearers’ data with researchers. To further research in this area and understand how we can make wearables work for us, it’s important for other wearable companies to share data with researchers and scientists. This requires user trust and consent, which is valuable and not easily earned. But Smarr hopes that larger wearables companies will eventually understand the impact their users’ data could make on medical research and development.

Do you have a temperature-monitoring wearable? Have you found any abnormalities in your body temperature that led to a diagnosis? Let us know in the comments below!

Telehealth has transformed during COVID-19. Although it once was a nice-to-have option not available at most doctors’ offices, the virtual conferencing technology has become indispensable for patients avoiding an infection risk. Now, telehealth and virtual services are available at most practices in America.

Many patients and providers are happy with this setup, indicating that it may continue beyond the pandemic. Based on demand, we’re seeing a shift from tele-urgent care to telehealth used for managing chronic illnesses. While telehealth looks like it’s here to stay, medical developers and experts are cautioning healthcare providers and telehealth platforms alike to analyze and improve the quality of this paradigm.

Meeting Demand While Maintaining Quality

Patient outcomes are impacted by healthcare quality. Since telehealth is growing in popularity at unprecedented levels, it’s unclear whether in-person measurements of quality translate to telemedicine. After all, a doctor who delivers amazing care in person may not be the best virtual doctor due to lacking technology experience and slow or unstable Internet connections.

As telehealth expands, we must adopt quality measurements related to equity, accessibility, and transparency. For example, telemedicine cannot be equitable when patients have limited access to smartphone technology or Wi-Fi. Telehealth platforms may not be accessible for patients who have low digital literacy. And for patients with hearing and vision impairments, telehealth is neither accessible nor equitable.

At the University of California San Francisco primary care clinics, there was an increase of more than 4,000% in the utilization of virtual services. But when researchers dived deeper, they found out that many patients who visited the clinic in-person before the pandemic were not accessing medical care through telemedicine avenues. These patients mostly fell into non-English speaking, elderly, and Medicaid groups.

Reviewing multiple published studies and research shows that telemedicine quality is not yet being evaluated rigorously or in a standardized manner. Other than the three measurements we just listed, there should be other measures of quality for telehealth providers and platforms, like unplanned ER visits, diagnostic accuracy, no-show data, patient satisfaction, medication adherence, and successful patient outcomes. The National Quality Forum Telehealth Framework and American Telemedicine Association are working on developing telehealth guidelines, but things aren’t moving fast enough to meet the demand and expansion of telemedicine technology.

Transparency for Patients

Patients already lack access to quality metrics about their provider. They usually use web-based reviews to find a physician, which have been shown to be faulty indicators of quality. And it often doesn’t matter what the patient finds in their web search as most highly-rated physicians and medical groups are booked up for months from now. Sometimes, the highly-praised provider doesn’t have availability until a year from now.

To help chip away at the problem, several companies are developing algorithms that predict quality based on historical data. An algorithm developed by Grand Rounds Inc., for instance, analyzes a provider’s quality based on measurements specific to their specialty. As an example, primary care physicians are evaluated by the algorithm according to their specialty referrals, patterns of prescribing pain medication, preventative screenings and check-ups, and skill in developing a long-term relationship with their patients.

These measurements were independently validated by Harvard researchers as helping to effectively predict the quality of the provider. But the patient, i.e. the party who needs this information the most, doesn’t get access to this information when performing a web search. We can change that with the implementation of quality measurements for telehealth providers by prioritizing transparency for patients. If we can shift the data that we allow patients to access, we can greatly improve equity and accessibility to quality care.

What We Can Do

The first step we need to take immediately is to standardize quality measurements. Because telehealth is here to stay, it’s imperative that we address this topic urgently as in-person care is going to remain impacted by the pandemic and throughout vaccination roll-outs.

After we identify the main quality metrics, we need to ensure that the data is easily accessible and available to patients, providers, and health systems. As we move through this process, the goal should become helping consumers vet and choose a telehealth provider while giving providers feedback for continuous improvement of medical practice and processes.

In addition to transparency, equity and accessibility should be prioritized. Practices should run analyses of their pre-pandemic in-person patients’ demographics as well as of telehealth patients’ demographics. These two analyses should be compared for any obvious changes in patient income, living situation, and race.

Providers should ask many questions, chief among them: “Are there certain populations not using telehealth?”, “What assistance can be given to patients in these groups to improve accessibility and usability?”, and “Who would benefit from using telehealth more often?”

Now is the time for a team effort from a multitude of organizations like academia, telehealth platforms, federal agencies, and healthcare systems to develop a set of measurable goals and metrics that can be used as telehealth continues to grow. Clinical societies, like the American Medical Association, should create guidelines for best practices for telemedicine by specialty. And medical schools should be training future doctors that are comfortable with triaging, examining, and diagnosing patients in a virtual platform.

Workings Towards Better Telehealth for Tomorrow

By working to build robust guidelines and measurements for telehealth today, we can secure a better and more equitable, transparent, and accessible future for every patient. As the saying goes, “sooner rather than later” is necessary for healthcare to maintain quality for patients and providers. Without these issues ironed out, we may see smaller problems become amplified in the next few months and years.

From their inception, it was immediately obvious that wearables had immense potential to improve how we interact with medical apps. These sleek and stylish devices could not only make technology more widely accessible, but they could also allow us to understand our own health in a more intimate, digestible way. Dogtown Media has always striven to keep up and innovate with the latest developments in wearable technology. That’s why we’re so excited and honored to announce that we’ve recognized as a top wearable app developer of 2020 by TopDevelopers.co!

Since we opened our doors in 2011, the wearables market has witnessed unprecedented growth. The explosive popularity of these devices has led to countless advancements which now present endless opportunities for augmenting preventative medicine. With that said, it’s safe to say that the days of viewing wearables as mere fitness trackers are over — this technology can give you a comprehensive picture of your health that wasn’t possible only a few years ago.

Wearables unlock insights that allow anyone to take better control of their health. They can also elucidate better ways for medical experts to manage maladies. It’s no exaggeration to say that these benefits are priceless. But this is really just the beginning; we expect wearables to radically expand in functionality and capability over the next few years.

TopDevelopers.co assessed several wearable app developers to identify the pioneers in this field. Ultimately, they had to drastically cut down their list of candidates to companies that demonstrated not only substantial experience in this field but also a proven track record of consistent client satisfaction. We’re extremely proud that our Los Angeles-based development studio made the cut!

Besides being recognized as a top wearable app developer of 2020, Dogtown Media has also had the pleasure of being featured as one of the best B2B service providers in California by Clutch as well as a leading IoT app developer by TopDevelopers.co!

At a time when it has become painfully clear that more medical innovation is sorely needed, we’re committed to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with wearable technology. We’d like to extend our thanks to TopDevelopers.co once again for recognizing our work. We’d also like to thank our clients, team, and community — we couldn’t have done it without you!

Who is TopDevelopers.co?

TopDevelopers.co is a widely respected directory and review platform for B2B IT service providers. They take a neutral approach to analyzing companies. The team of analysts at TopDevelopers.co vets organizations through stringent parameters which ensure that only the most competitive firms, businesses, enterprises, and entrepreneurs are filtered through their process. This helps service seekers find the most appropriate solutions for their needs.

But while big data brings a variety of benefits to healthcare organizations, it also comes with a few unique challenges. Let’s delve into both sides of this equation.

The Monumental Benefits of Big Data in Healthcare

Medical data is rich with historical information, and examining a large number of medical records can yield obvious patterns into diseases, treatments, and patient health. Using big data and data science, medical developers can help healthcare providers turn health data into actionable insights. These insights can be vital to patients and their lives, and stakeholders like insurance companies, pharmaceutical enterprises, and healthcare providers benefit too.

Some major benefits include creating comprehensive patient profiles, enhancing the patient experience which leads to higher patient satisfaction, and optimizing hospital administrative workflows. Other benefits include making the healthcare industry more cost-effective, improving medical procedures by increasing efficiency, and finding patterns in treatment outcomes almost instantly. Patients can expect a more personalized approach to care, more accessible electronic health records (EHRs), and higher levels of engagement from their providers.

For the industry overall, there will be a major lift in productivity, efficiency, and quality of health services. And over time, the cost of analytics and data servers is expected to decrease while speed and capacity increase. Data science in healthcare creates a holistic profile of the patient in real-time while processing new information like diagnoses, lab results, medications, demographics, and procedures.

With such data collected from various sources, health systems can better analyze trends, predict outbreaks, and develop targeted interventions. The abundance of health-related data facilitates the identification of risk factors, early detection of diseases, and improved treatment plans as well as public health surveillance. By collecting data on a large scale, researchers and healthcare professionals can gain valuable insights that would be otherwise unattainable.

In conclusion, collecting and leveraging big data in the healthcare sector holds immense promise for improving patient outcomes, streamlining operations, managing hospital performance, and advancing medical knowledge and biomedical research. Embracing data-driven approaches will undoubtedly help with improving health outcomes for individuals and population health.

More Applications for Healthcare Providers

Several enterprises, large and small, like Cerner Corporation, IBM, San Francisco-based Oracle, and MedeAnalytics, have developed expertise in medical big data analysis both inside and outside of the clinical environment. These market leaders are pushing the boundaries of data science in healthcare while making the technology more accessible to smaller hospitals and those in rural areas.

Among the myriad applications of data science in healthcare and medicine, we’ve outlined a few key areas below.

Genomics

Genomics is an indispensable part of medicine and healthcare, and big data processing tools are helping sort out what’s most impactful from the rest. Using historical data, analysts can interpret and understand data to develop recommendations for sequencing experiments.

Predictive Analytics

The medical and healthcare industries can extract a lot of valuable insights from data, like predicting trends and behavior patterns to improve the patient experience and calculate the probability of medical outcomes based on past data and statistical analysis.

Medical Imaging

Although AI is doing a great job of helping radiologists find minute details in medical images, biomedical big data can help interpret X-rays, MRIs, and mammographies to find tumors, see patterns in the data, look for anomalies, and recommend next steps.

Monitor Patient Health

Healthcare providers can monitor their patients’ health by continuously storing and analyzing medical information from patients. Providers can also use analytics to monitor patient vitals like body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure — all in real-time.

Provide Virtual Help

Patients can find virtual care with comprehensive platforms that provide secure video conferencing, an easy way to view a patient’s medical history, and a way to get back in touch with the doctor. There are also platforms that allow patients to enter their symptoms into a search bar to find possible diseases and causes of illness. The platform will subsequently offer recommendations on the next steps, providers nearby, and possible solutions.

Launch New Drugs

Using data science, pharmaceutical companies are predicting financials and the potential impact of a new drug by analyzing data from operational pipelines starting from the manufacturer and all the way down to the consumer.

Track and Manage Health Conditions

Providers can use data science to track potential cases that their patient is prone to. For example, patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes can benefit from constant tracking meals, blood glucose levels, and physical activity zones.

Overcoming Challenges of Big Data in Healthcare

Although the potential and promise of healthcare big data analytics seems endless, there are some challenges that have been uncovered. For example, there is always the lingering risk of cybersecurity attacks. Because healthcare data is private and requires the highest level of discretion, it’s imperative to layer robust data security protocols on top of any analytics application.

Other challenges in analyzing and processing big data include a shortage of IT professionals with relevant experience, ensuring medical data safety, and issues with data integrity. There are also issues surrounding the lack of regulations, best practices, and unified procedures.

In addition to the aforementioned challenges, healthcare system often grapples with high healthcare costs associated with implementing big data tools. The expense of procuring state-of-the-art hardware, software, and recruiting skilled data scientists can be significant. Furthermore, training existing staff to adeptly navigate these tools can add to the financial burden.

Another critical concern is the integration of disparate data sources. Health data comes from a myriad of sources like electronic medical records, insurance claims, clinical trials, and wearable devices, each with its own format, making data consolidation a complex task. This fragmentation often impedes the efficient extraction of insights, thus undermining the potential benefits of big data in healthcare.

Lastly, regulatory compliance poses a challenge, especially when dealing with sensitive patient data across different regions with varying privacy laws. Striking a balance between harnessing the power of big data and ensuring compliance with these regulations is a major hurdle for healthcare systems worldwide.

Access to Data and Technology in the Healthcare Industry

Giving hospitals, medical providers, and stakeholders in the healthcare industry access to technology for analyzing vast amounts of data has already made a positive impact on patients and providers. It has also improved the quality of health care by allowing us to predict trends, prevent diseases, monitor symptoms, manage health conditions, find better pharmaceuticals, and more accurately calculate dosages.

The advantages of big data in healthcare seems more than obvious. Human health professionals now have unprecedented access to clinical data, enabling them to gain valuable insights and patterns to improve patient care and treatment outcomes. From predictive analytics to medical imaging and genomics, big data analytics is revolutionizing medical decision-making and empowering providers to monitor patient health in real-time, offer virtual care solutions, and optimize treatment plans.

However, the adoption of big data in healthcare comes with hurdles. Security remains a top concern due to the sensitive nature of health data, demanding robust measures against cybersecurity threats. Additionally, addressing the shortage of IT professionals with relevant experience and ensuring data integrity are critical to fully harnessing the potential of big data technologies. Despite these challenges, the transformative impact of big data in healthcare is evident, as organizations leverage data-driven insights to enhance patient care and advance medical research. Through collaborative efforts among health professionals, data scientists, and policymakers, the healthcare industry can navigate challenges, seize opportunities, and continue on a trajectory of improved efficiency, reduced medical errors, and ultimately, better health outcomes for patients worldwide.

Using big data and data science, healthcare is poised to explode in growth and patient satisfaction. What will we use data analytics for next? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked unfathomable damage on the lives of Americans and the country’s economy. To move forward in the right direction, we must take new and drastic action to address this crisis. This includes employing cutting-edge developments in medical technology to the best of our abilities.

Dogtown Media fully supports the Connected Health Initiative’s request for the Biden-Harris administration to extend the existing declaration of a public health emergency (PHE) so that the use of connected health technology is available to all U.S. citizens during this time of need.

Innovation Can Help Flatten the Infection Curve

It has become painfully clear that we must leverage connected medical technologies such as telehealth if we are to ever beat COVID-19. But antiquated regulations will stand in the way unless the declaration of PHE is extended. The Connected Health Initiative (CHI) aims to make that happen.

An initiative of ACT | The App Association, CHI is a coalition of healthcare industry stakeholders and partners that strives to lead efforts to effect policy changes that allow medical providers to harness the power of technology in order to improve patient engagement and outcomes. Its steering committee consists of the American Medical Association, Apple, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Dogtown Media, and many other notable figures in the tech and healthcare space.

CHI recently sent a letter to the Biden-Harris administration that not only congratulates them on their victory in the 2020 Presidential Election but also urges them to continue to use digital health technologies such as telemedicine, remote patient monitoring (RPM), artificial intelligence (AI), and other modalities to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. Each of these innovative modalities allow us to implement effective and necessary measures to flatten the infection curve in the United States.

Telehealth Technology Is Key to Managing The COVID-19 Crisis

Alongside CHI, we believe that congressional action focused on permanent telehealth policy changes can help provide immense relief from the damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Such changes would play an integral role in defeating this crisis. Not only this, but permanent policy changes for connected healthcare tools can also help to modernize American medical laws so that they correctly reflect the value that these paradigms offer. We also think that Congress should prioritize providing all Americans with the high-speed broadband infrastructure needed to use these digital health tools.

Of course, we know that pursuing these congressional efforts can take time. So it’s critical that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) continues to extend the existing declaration of PHE. This provides millions of Americans with the allowance to use connected health technology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth and RPM have been invaluable in preventing, diagnosing, and treating American citizens as we all adhere to social distancing guidelines. These must not only be maintained throughout the entirety of the pandemic but also built upon so that this country is better equipped to handle future health crises.

Should the PHE expire before the Biden-Harris administration is in place, the new HHS Secretary under them should immediately reinstate it.

Actions That Can Help Us Fully Leverage Digital Health Tools

CHI’s letter to the Biden-Harris administration is meticulous in detail and spans several suggestions. Below, we’ve outlined some of the most crucial ones:

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) should ensure that Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) and rural health clinics (RHC) can provide RPM services.

Both FQHCs and RHCs are key actors on the frontlines of America’s medical ecosystem. Thus, they should be able to monitor key patient-generated health data (PGHD) metrics for the populations they are serving on a permanent basis. This includes those receiving treatment for COVID-19.

CMS should provide Anti-Kickback Statute relief for digital health.

Many clinicians are remotely monitoring COVID-19 patients. This has raised concerns that any equipment or access to software platforms provided free of charge could inadvertently trigger Anti-Kickback Statute (AKS) liability. The CHI has requested that HHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) provide clarity that access to software platforms for PGHD or telehealth at low or no cost doesn’t violate the AKS.

HHS should provide certainty with regard to HIPAA’s application to various remote technologies during the PHE.

The HHS’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) recently announced enforcement discretion for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) that clarifies that the use of private, secure telehealth tools which aren’t part of the provider’s official offerings will not draw a penalty as long as the provider makes their patients aware of the risks. CHI is urging OCR to issue guidance that certain telehealth tools are merely “conduits” and thus don’t require business associate agreements (BAAs). The guidance should also clarify that the providers of these telehealth services should only store electronic protected health information (ePHI) temporarily.

HHS should leverage AI-enabled technology to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

There’s no doubt that AI has incredible technology to augment healthcare by preventing hospitalizations, reducing complications, and improving patient engagement. Unsurprisingly, public health experts and providers are already using AI to combat COVID-19. This has given rise to a variety of opportunities and challenges for U.S. policymakers to consider (e.g., bias, inclusion, and transparency). As a coalition with many leading developers of AI, CHI urges for the design of healthcare AI systems to be informed by human-centered design, real-world workflow, and end-user needs.

Unrecognizable woman doctor using tablet in office with double exposure of creative ncov coronavirus covid 19 treatment and vaccine search icons. Toned blurry image

COVID-19 Will Come To an End

From New York City to our hometown of Los Angeles, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented tragedy and hardships to many of our lives. The Biden-Harris administration represents an opportunity for America to tackle this problem in a new and better way.

We stand by CHI’s request of the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect to fully leverage telehealth and other emerging technologies to mitigate this crisis. With time, proper guidance, and unity, this too shall pass.

In our last Amazon post about its medical and healthcare strategy, we covered the successes and potential improvements of PillPack and Amazon Care. If you missed it, you can check it out here. In this second and final post of the Amazon healthcare series, we’ll dive into Comprehend Medical, Alexa, Haven, and the ramifications of data and privacy.

Amazon’s Comprehend Medical

Comprehend Medical is an extension of Amazon Web Services, and it’s just as much an artificial intelligence (AI) application as it is a MedTech one. The technology focuses on the comprehension of electronic medical records, which are notoriously complex, rich with years of patient history, and more focused on insurance billing than clinical analysis and data capture. Not only does Amazon offer transcription services that map the patient’s data into the appropriate field, but it also standardizes the healthcare data along the way so that medical clients can easily access and use the data.

The technology also uses AI to study imaging files and find possible abnormalities. However, because the AI algorithms are being developed for specific cases and diseases, the imaging portion of the technology is slower-moving.

Amazon’s Haven Collaboration

As opposed to Amazon Care’s potential to become the newest trend of corporate healthcare offerings, Haven is a little more elevated in potential and theory. The Haven service was launched in early 2018 as a collaboration between Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase. The companies named Oxford- and Stanford-educated Atul Gawande, M.D., which further elevated expectations of the venture.

But, in May, Gawande stepped down as CEO, dealing a big blow to the Haven collaboration. Haven’s self-proclaimed goal on its website is to undertake “commonsense fixes as well as innovative approaches” to healthcare access for patients, easier-to-understand insurance benefits, and more affordable prescription drugs. The company’s strategy is to use technology and data to improve the “overall healthcare system”. It’s unclear what exact technologies the company is using, what exactly they’re tackling, and what changes they want to exact upon the healthcare system. Recently, Haven partnered with Cigna and Aetna to offer employees at JPMorgan healthcare plans with increased transparency in pricing.

Alexa’s Medical Skills

Amazon partnered with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield to create a program in 12 states for members to use Amazon Alexa smart assistants to refill prescriptions, answer insurance-related questions about deductibles and claims, and schedule appointments. Rajeev Ronanki is Anthem’s chief digital officer. Ronanki says the goal is to “simplify the experience for our members.”

The service was first introduced in 2018 by Anthem for informational questions, like giving the user the nearest doctor’s or pharmacy’s information without collecting identifying data about the user. When Amazon became HIPAA-certified in 2019, however, Anthem became interested in further pushing the boundaries of what Alexa can do for its members. Across the Atlantic, Britain’s National Health Service signed up with Amazon to use Alexa to provide general health information and guidance in 2019.

Privacy and Data Concerns

Amazon’s an enormous company with a lot of data about our browsing habits, shopping behavior, and likes and dislikes. By dipping its hands into healthcare, we encounter an unspoken understanding that one company will have more varied information and diverse data points about us than ever before. How is Amazon using the data they’ve accumulated? For patients using Alexa through the National Health Service, the company said they were not creating health profiles or using the health information about each patient to recommend products.

However, the devices have been shown to send recordings to Amazon without the user’s consent. Amazon also keeps the recordings to use for training its AI algorithm. According to Ronanki, however, Alexa isn’t retaining any member information, and that caveat is in “our contract.” Alexa does verify the user’s voice for authentication purposes.

Without the healthcare data, Amazon can still use the learnings from these ventures to develop customized medical applications for other organizations. For example, Amazon can use information about British patients as learnings to apply to another partnership. Some experts, on the other hand, worry about using healthcare data for marketing purposes, especially for patients who have Medicare Advantage.

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Amazon’s Ongoing Healthcare Strategy

To become a big player in healthcare, Amazon has to work with the entrenched companies, and this becomes increasingly challenging as insurance and healthcare companies are consolidating to build bigger market shares. Adding the pandemic into the mix, healthcare innovation has accelerated particularly for patient experience and convenience. And more concerningly, the federal government has relaxed its rules and regulations on healthcare and insurance companies during the pandemic to allow patients to get faster and cheaper care at their convenience.

But it’s this loosening of regulations that has opened up the floor for Amazon to jump in, whether with an idea that increases patient convenience, like its new digital pharmacy, or an idea that revolves around the acquisition of a major telehealth or healthcare company. It’s still not certain what Amazon’s healthcare strategy is, at least not at first glance. The company will need to work hard to find a way to fit all of its health ventures into a neat little package.

One thing is for sure: Amazon is definitely interested in healthcare and medicine, and we can’t stop the company from becoming a healthcare juggernaut in the next decade or so. Would you use Alexa to find a nearby doctor? Are you open to purchasing prescriptions from Amazon Pharmacy? And how concerned are you about your data being used or sold for marketing purposes? Let us know in the comments below!

In this special series of posts about Amazon’s healthcare and medical products, we’ll cover a variety of the largest healthcare acquisitions the company has made in the past decade. We’ll also look at how far these products have forayed into the actual medical system. In this first post, we’ll discuss the success and shortcomings of PillPack and Amazon Care.

Amazon’s Healthcare Vision

Amazon hasn’t shared its healthcare goals, vision, and strategy publicly. But we’ve got an idea of where the company is headed by following its acquisitions, earning reports, and press releases. According to Bryan Niehaus, a vice president at healthcare consulting firm Advis, Amazon is making it known that it’s very familiar with the American healthcare industry and new tech advancements in medicine and healthcare. But Amazon is being selective with what types of companies they acquire and follow: “they’re picking their spots on where to get involved,” says Niehaus.

While some products are an extension of their current business model, some products are more disruptive medical applications that utilize emerging technologies like AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT (the Internet of Things). Some products have found their niche quickly, while others are struggling to find their target audience. But because all of the products have the multi-billion-dollar backing of their parent company, there’s still a chance for major success and integration into the world’s largest healthcare industry.

Amazon’s PillPack

According to Nathan Ray, a director of healthcare mergers and acquisitions at consulting firm West Monroe, Amazon isn’t the first company people think of when they’re asked about innovators in healthcare acquisitions and mergers. But that’s not the case with PillPack. PillPack was originally a startup, but Amazon acquired it in 2018 as it was growing from being a small company to a large, national enterprise.

In 2018, PillPack already had strong relationships with local brick-and-mortar pharmacies, and the company had fortified the mail-order pharmacy operations that allowed them to dispense medications in all 50 states. The promising company had a growing and proven business model, and Amazon was particularly interested in the expertise that the company had acquired through years of regulatory filings and legal meetings. PillPack had gained the appropriate licensing to practice in all 50 states and had built up their infrastructure to maintain mail-order services and supply retail pharmacies.

Amazon saw PillPack as a perfectly-positioned opportunity to connect their existing (massive) customer base with digital healthcare. These customers had shown Amazon, through their repetitive purchases online, a strong interest in getting medications delivered as well. PillPack had the potential to be the portal to Amazon’s product delivery expansion goals.

Using PillPack More Strategically

Niehaus has some ideas to use PillPack’s strengths in other ways for Amazon customers. For example, partnering with a well-established electronic health record system to create a sign-in space could help customers unite their prescriptions, medical supplies, medical devices, and provider messages in one easy-to-manage location. Another idea for PillPack is to offer telehealth services. This is a perfect fit for the digital shoppers of Amazon to streamline and merge more broken-out parts of the healthcare system.

Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Massachusetts recently announced their partnership with PillPack. The insurance company is offering pharmacy services to its members, including free home delivery of their medications. BCBS said it was the first health insurance provider to offer direct integration with PillPack.

Amazon doesn’t offer all of its own employees telehealth services. But it should: the company is already providing infrastructure and up-time support to a large portion of the telehealth services that launched during the pandemic with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Anything that has to do with digital healthcare can be successfully managed on AWS servers. Ray says that Amazon’s ability to consolidate telehealth with data collection and analysis from wearables and remote monitoring devices could create the most change in our healthcare system.

Amazon Care

Amazon Care is a virtual healthcare program started by Amazon in September of 2019 that offers telehealth care and face-to-face follow-up appointments to a number of Seattle-based employees. The employee must reside in one of 105 pre-designated zip codes and have an Amazon-sponsored healthcare plan; employees with Kaiser Permanente plans aren’t eligible for the Amazon Care program. According to Ray, Amazon Care is a product of great interest to healthcare experts because Amazon is using its employees to experiment with a new healthcare model.

Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist and public health expert, was appointed principal scientist of Amazon Care in January. In February, Amazon Care expanded to include healthcare coverage to dependents of the employees already using Amazon Care. Ray says that Amazon has the means to innovate healthcare while saving money and providing a new type of healthcare to its employees. With Amazon Care, the company can remove barriers to access and offer better care and hours of operation.

No one is sure how Amazon Care is going to fare over the next decade, but Amazon shouldn’t miss the opportunity to provide top-of-the-line care to its national network of warehouse employees. It would set the precedent for other large companies to provide in-house healthcare with better quality at a fraction of the cost to both the employer and employee. And if other companies don’t want to expand into having in-house healthcare, they can always offer their employees a plan under Amazon Care.

Amazon’s Road Ahead

Amazon is unlike any other company on Earth; it has the scale and ability to change almost any industry for the better, and healthcare is one industry in need of a major revamp. Stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll discuss Amazon Haven, Comprehend Medical, Alexa, and data and security considerations.

Would you be comfortable signing up for a healthcare plan under Amazon Care if it was cheaper and gave better access than your current plan? Let us know in the comments below!

COVID-19 has changed how medical providers see their patients for wellness check-ups, illness check-ins, and on-demand appointments. More and more people are turning to telehealth to avoid the risk of catching the virus from visiting the doctor’s office. Especially for patients who are managing their chronic conditions, telehealth has been a more convenient and less painful way to receive medical attention.

Managing Chronic Conditions During COVID-19

Adding the stressors of COVID-19 (like job loss or reduced salary) to a chronic condition can quickly worsen symptoms, leaving the patient with reduced energy and capacity to physically and quickly find help from a medical provider. Traditional care models for chronic conditions don’t reduce or address the patient’s emotional well-being.

For many chronic conditions, stress, anxiety, depression, and other emotional states cause and control the condition. So failing to address emotional well-being only raises the cost of healthcare for these population groups. For example, patients with IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) who have a mental health co-morbidity increase annual healthcare costs by three to five times, according to the CEO of Trellus Health, Monique Fayad.

IBD is a complex chronic condition that affects more than 3 million people in the U.S. alone. During COVID-19, medical applications are helping patients navigate their condition with more ease. Telehealth, for one, improves the patient experience by not requiring the patient to leave their home for care.

Fayad says that COVID-19 has intensified the need for “telehealth and resilience-driven care for IBD patients due to their immunocompromised conditions.” These patients already struggle with physically meeting their doctors for check-ups, so the shift in the healthcare system due to COVID-19 has “improve[d] outcomes and quality of life” for the patients.

A New Approach to Chronic Condition Care

Trellus Health is a healthcare organization that analyzes patients’ risk factors to identify what types of patients need the most touch and care from their medical providers. Using this information, the company organizes and coordinates a custom team to develop a personalized treatment plan for the patient group. Trellus wants to provide medical services to patients who need the highest level of care for their mental health and chronic conditions.

This approach utilizes the company’s comprehensive resilience-based program equipped with a dedicated multidisciplinary care team, called Trellus Triad. The team is comprised of registered nurses, licensed nurse practitioners, dietitians, social workers, and psychologists, and they’re all available through telehealth using the TrellusElevate platform. The TrellusElevate platform seamlessly coordinates and communicates between the providers and the patients, and it monitors patients remotely.

Fayad says research has shown that patients who aren’t getting this form of coordinated holistic care face increased risks and reduced outcomes. For the IBD patient, the wellness journey takes many years and requires overcoming failed therapies, misdiagnoses, emergency room visits, surgeries, and high rates of opioid abuse, steroid misuse, depression, and anxiety. Patients are usually diagnosed during adolescence or early adulthood. According to Fayad, for patients working with the Trellus network of certified IBD experts, the typical patient journey gets reduced from years to days.

Leading the Charge In Positive Change

The New York City-based Susan and Leonard Feinstein IBD Clinical Center in the Mount Sinai healthcare system has been using Trellus’s clinical and behavioral approach for over five years. Trellus’s goal is to ultimately develop a technology platform that can scale this proven resilience-driven, connected approach to all chronic disease patients across the world. The platform allows insurers to improve their tracking and management of chronic disease patients, and even the providers are easier to reach on the Trellus platform, which increases patient satisfaction and engagement. The Trellus platform also allows patients to give access to their caretakers, family members, friends, and anyone else who is involved in their medical care.

Employers can onboard their employees onto the Trellus platform to reduce medical expenses and monthly costs generated by unplanned and inappropriate medical care, absenteeism, presenteeism, and high-cost drug therapies. Employees using the platform have experienced improved outcomes, quality of care, and quality of life.

For medical providers, the Trellus platform works as collaborators for the provider’s staff. Trellus also providers medical providers with a free CME-accredited online program about the most up-to-date evidence-based guidelines and therapies for IBD patients. Trellus also educates providers about the importance of maintaining resilience and addressing behavioral health to significantly improve healthcare outcomes for IBD patients.

Be Proactive, Not Reactive

Fayad says that resilience is “a learned trait”. She says that resilience can be slowly weakened from social, physical, psychological, and environmental stressors, surroundings, and circumstances. Having to navigate a healthcare system that is reactive to sick patients, rather than one that focuses on managing and mitigating patients’ chronic conditions, has created a worsened patient experience. This deficiency has affected all patients involved, not just those with chronic conditions.

With a program that looks at the patient’s history and goals more holistically, the patient’s resilience and strength can be fortified over time. But this requires a proactive medical provider and healthcare system, which we are one step closer to achieving with platforms like Trellus’s.

Have you used telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic? What did you think of it? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!