The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis that caught us all by surprise. And, the effects caused by the coronavirus are likely to scar our society indefinitely. From our friends and family falling victim to the virus, to the loss of jobs and closure of countless businesses, it’s hard to find a positive that stems from this tragedy. With a strong kinship for the communities we serve such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York and other major hubs, we’ve made it our mission to help deliver cutting-edge technologies in this extremely challenging time. 

However, if we were tasked to draw one positive that was created as a result of the pandemic, we would point to the leaps and bounds made by the mHealth industry. In fact, a recent study over the quantity of medical app downloads from the months prior to COVID to the “peak” months of COVID, shows a 65% worldwide increase in mHealth application downloads. 

This is no coincidence. 

Rather, due to the rising need for accessible health services, the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked an mHealth renaissance as developers and healthcare organizations seek to provide mobilized health solutions to meet their patients’ needs. In this article we will discuss a mere fraction of the advancements made within the mHealth industry during the global pandemic, and how these advancements are aiding in the societal fight against the coronavirus. 

The Rise of Telemedicine 

Did you know that in April of 2020, telemedicine services in the United States grew by over 4000% compared to the months prior? One reason for this was due to numerous insurance providers refusing to cover virtual health services prior to the pandemic. During the peak of the pandemic, however, this dynamic shifted and many patients now had a means to access mobile healthcare services. 

Now, while this new insurance coverage certainly played a role in the expansion of telemedicine, the primary factor was undoubtedly the rapid progression of mHealth technology. From new health applications designed with artificial intelligence to the availability of prescription medication via mobile-ordering, the mHealth industry has demonstrated exponential growth in the quality and functionality of mobile health services. 

COVID-19 mHealth Technology 

As we mentioned prior, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a plethora of new mobile health technology designed for easy access to quality healthcare. And, as we are on the topic of the coronavirus, we felt it fitting to include technology designed to remedy the effects of COVID-19. With that being said, some of these COVID-minded mHealth technologies include:

At-Home COVID-19 Test Kits – the Pixel COVID-19 Test Kit by Labcorp, for example,  allows users to avoid the lines and potential exposure to the virus, simply by conducting a self-administered nasal swab. Once the user ships back the collection kit, Labcorp returns the test results to the user via their Pixel by Labcorp account within 1-2 days. If a user tests positive for COVID, Labcorp provides them with a free clinician consultation to discuss further treatment. 

COVID-19 Symptom Apps – the COVID Symptom Study app allows users to share symptoms they experience as a result of the coronavirus. This application connects users across the country to spread awareness of the health effects of COVID-19, in turn creating a system of potentially effective treatments for the virus. 

Coronavirus Contact Tracing Apps – a number of states within the U.S. have what’s known as a contact tracing app to monitor the spread of the virus. An example is the Protect Texas Together app developed by the University of Texas at Austin and used by the university to help stop the spread of COVID-19 on campus. 

The Future of mHealth Tech 

While it’s unclear what the future has in-store for mHealth technology, it’s becoming quite certain that mHealth and telemedicine are here to stay. And, as long as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to shape the different interactions of our daily lives, it’s foreseeable that mobile health technology will continue to progress. 

For instance, researchers at Stanford and the University of North Carolina are actively developing an mHealth wearable designed to advance vaccination efforts. While it is only a 3D-printed model at this time, this wearable vaccine patch could not only eliminate the use of  needles, but it’s also anticipated to be 10 to 50 times more effective than the current delivery method. In addition, this patch is expected to be produced and distributed more easily, allowing easier access for underserved populations. 

Of course, this is only one example of what the future of mHealth technology has in store. Nonetheless, this technology demonstrates the extraordinary potential of the mHealth industry if it continues to advance at the current development rate, in turn providing global solutions to aid in the fight against COVID-19. 

Here at Dogtown Media, we’re dedicated to helping our clients bring their app ideas to the market. With over ten years of app development for businesses of all sizes and industries, we are confident we can be your go-to development agency. Reach out today to learn more about how we can help with your next mHealth app!

In early 2020 when the COVID-19 virus moved from a novel respiratory virus to a full-blown pandemic, our world got turned upside down. From major city lockdowns in New York City to San Francisco, our society took sweeping action to help slow the spread of the virus. And as we enter a new phase of grappling with this novel virus – armed with new mRNA vaccine technology – it’s useful to take a look at some of the disruptive technologies that have been born out of the pandemic that shows no sign of waning. 

#1: Video Conferencing 

This one should come as no surprise. As we all know video conferencing platforms like Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx, and Zoom have made it possible for many businesses to continue their day-to-day practices without skipping a beat. And by some striking research presented in some recent Gallup polls, nearly 60 percent of employees working in the United States are either now working fully remote, or working partially remote. That’s a huge number!

By our assessment, it doesn’t look like these platforms are going anywhere. In fact, the data now is showing that both employees and employers are embracing this remote model. Based on some recent research presented by PWC, an astounding 83% of employers now say the shift to remote work has been successful for their company and there’s resounding feedback that employees love the flexibility in remote work. 

So, where do we go from here? Well, as video conferencing platforms look to provide more and more value in our everyday lives, we’re sure to see these platforms take on an entirely new form. Take, for instance, the recent Tokyo Olympics. With Tokyo in lockdown to slow the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant, Microsoft Teams stepped in to help. While Olympian’s families were required to watch their children compete from afar, Microsoft stepped in to support remote communication between Olympians and their families via teleconferencing. It’s technologies like Microsoft Teams and other teleconferencing platforms that will continue to make life more enjoyable as we continue to uncover our new normal grappling with the novel COVID-19 virus. 

#1: Telehealth 

Telehealth comes in at number two on our list. Over the past year and a half, we’ve seen an incredible uptick in the use of telehealth services. Platforms like Doctor on Demand, a platform that pairs patients with doctors to facilitate remote consultations, or SonderMind, a remote therapist pairing platform to facilitate remote therapy are fundamentally transforming the way individuals receive care. And to support this, researchers found an astounding 154% increase in telehealth visits during the last week of March 2020.

So, what does this mean for patients and healthcare? Well, surprisingly both providers and patients are finding remote-based care to be a major success. Today, one of the major bottlenecks for healthcare providers is in-person appointments. We’ve all experienced it. Every time we need to go to the doctor’s office, it seems to be overflowing with patients, and doctors have an incredibly hard time giving proper time and energy to their patients.

Now, telehealth platforms can ease the load. Consider a routine visit or a low-priority health concern. Now, rather than waiting for an in-person visit, these types of visits can be taken care of remotely. What’s the net result? Now patients get better faster care for low-priority health concerns and doctors’ offices are now freed up to attend to more serious ailments and health concerns. 

#3: Remote Learning 

Remote Learning is a space we feel is ripe for disruption. With challenges around re-opening in-person learning, and college tuition becoming an increasingly concerning financial debacle, we believe remote learning is about to shift. Today, students have a wealth of educational resources at their fingertips. From certifications to online boot camps, students are able to skill up without the formal process of a state college. Further, we’re finding that businesses are starting to hire based on skills and accolades, over the formal degree.

Our two cents, with the age of remote work, video conferencing platforms on a tear, we believe educational platforms will fundamentally change how students receive education today and into the near future.

If you’re looking to develop your next mHelath app or artificial intelligence app, consider reaching out to the trusted team at Dogtown Media today.

Digital vaccine passports have become a contentious topic over the past few months. Whether you agree with their necessity or not, one thing’s become readily apparent: They are coming. But these passports may not take on the shape or format you imagined.

The U.S. government will not be implementing a vaccine passport. Instead, it is handing off the responsibilities of building and enforcing one to private enterprise. The reasoning behind this decision? Private organizations can solve this problem, faster, better, and more efficiently. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will be releasing guidelines for how to develop a vaccine passport in the coming weeks. But if you’re eager to get started on developing yours, we’ve got you covered.

In this blog post, we’ll give you a glimpse into our future with digital vaccine passports. We’ll also examine some of the common pitfalls that this paradigm is susceptible to. Lastly, we’ll round up this piece with a checklist that health tech developers should try their best to meet when creating a digital vaccine passport. Let’s get started!

Our (Near) Future With Digital Vaccine Passports

Whether you want to visit a certain country, partake in events like attending a concert, or work in a particular sector, it’s likely that you’ll have to demonstrate that you’ve received your COVID-19 vaccine in the near future. For example, unless they have very good reason to abstain from it, healthcare employees will need to be vaccinated to keep their jobs. This also goes for frontline workers across industries. Companies have the right to fire an employee or forgo renewing their contract if they have not been vaccinated.

Across the world, many organizations and countries are already taking action to implement vaccine passports and regulations of some kind. For instance, E.U. legislators recently proposed rules for a certificate system to verify the vaccine status of people moving between this union of 27 member countries. While those who pass these checkpoints can travel without the need for quarantine restrictions or additional tests, anyone who fails to comply with these regulations could be denied admittance or forced into quarantine.

While the concept of vaccine passports may seem stringent to some, its success is readily apparent in Israel. The country has issued “green passes” to citizens who are fully vaccinated. With this pass, people are free to eat at restaurants, socialize at bars, and attend concerts or sporting events. Public health experts believe that the country’s vaccine passport implementation has helped tremendously in keeping its COVID-19 numbers down and allowing its economy to reopen safely.

The arrival of vaccine passports will cause a big shift in society. After all, how do you really prove you’ve been vaccinated? In the U.S., people receive flimsy cards as proof. But these can potentially be forged and possibly lost. Well, that’s why vaccine passports are going digital. But there are still myriad pitfalls to address for this concept to be a success.

Potential Pitfalls of Digital Vaccine Passports

As we’ve alluded to with forgery, security is a prime concern when it comes to vaccine passports. But there’s also the potential issue of non-compliance. People as well as private and even public organizations may not follow the regulations that come with these passports. There’s also the question of fragmentation — as we witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic, each state took different measures to stave off this illness from spreading. If you were in Los Angeles, California, you probably had a drastically different experience than a citizen of Miami, Florida.

The problem of non-uniformity in vaccine passports only becomes magnified when you examine the entire world. Different vaccines are being distributed and used around the globe, and what’s permitted in one country may not be allowed in another. For example, China does not accept travelers who received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. Such fragmentation between countries, along with the fact that digital vaccine passports will be developed by different organizations, could make things quite confusing.

Then there’s the question of time. Currently, there isn’t much data to go off of to see how long the COVID-19 vaccines are effective for. A quick Google search shows that there’s conflicting information regarding each specific vaccine’s efficacy against the COVID-19 variants circulating throughout the world. It’s likely that we’ll need to receive annual booster shots to ensure proper protection against this virus, so we’ll also need to factor in proof of these into passport iterations.

Clearly, several questions must be answered. While digital vaccine passports may differ from one another, there are a few key factors that all of them should possess.

Best Practices for Building a Digital Vaccine Passport

Here are some elements that every digital vaccine passport should have:

An Intuitive User Experience

A digital vaccine passport should be seamless to access and use. It should also enable the passport holder to easily disclose the minimum amount of information needed for verification. This can be difficult since the information required to be disclosed is dependent on the use case.

Privacy Protection Must Be Prioritized

Obviously, digital vaccine passports should be forgery-proof. But that’s only one segment of security in a long list of many. Be prudent and examine each component of your digital vaccine passport and every step required in a verification process. Identify any weak areas and ask yourself how you can strengthen them to ensure complete end-to-end privacy.

Build Trust Through Credibility and Transparency

Digital vaccine passports must strike a fine balance between information security and transparency. They must also work and be recognized across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. Your solution should not only be multi-lingual but also credible enough that it’s recognized by various organizations such as airline companies and foreign governments. It should also be transparent enough to pass stringent requirements set forth by these organizations in a timely manner.

Data Portability

At the end of the day, digital vaccine passports are all about data. And developers of these passports must prioritize data portability. Passport holders should have complete control over the data they choose to share. Create your solution with granular data-sharing in mind so that users can easily compartmentalize and choose what information is displayed for various use cases.

Factoring In the Future

We believe that digital vaccine passports will become an essential part of humanity’s future. With that said, it’s vital for developers of these solutions to plan with the future in mind. This can be difficult to do since nobody knows what the future holds as far as health crises like the pandemic go. But it can help to examine the potential benefits that emerging technologies offer.

For instance, blockchain is a strong candidate for a tech stack that supports vaccine passports. it’s transparent, encrypted, and private. Not only does it store information securely, but you can choose who you share it with. And if you end up needing booster shots in the future to protect against COVID-19 variants, it can easily log that.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of digital vaccine passports. What components would you like to see in these health tech solutions. As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

The pandemic has changed many industries, but the field most affected by the coronavirus has been healthcare and medicine. As hospitals scrambled to accommodate the high numbers of emergency room and intensive care unit visits, telehealth grew extremely quickly to complement physical contact with hospitals and doctors. In fact, telemedicine grew so rapidly that The Mayo Clinic estimates the field grew ten years of progress within six to eight weeks.

As a result, things have moved too fast for insurance companies to organize their billing claims appropriately, creating a lack of transparency in how medical services are billed and reimbursed. Although telemedicine provides tremendous value for both patients and providers, doubt and confusion are rampant in the state of healthcare today. And for providers who were already opportunistic and predatory, the relaxation, elimination, and suspension of rules during the pandemic have created a massive playing ground for large-scale fraud.

Before the Pandemic

Fraud related to telemedicine before the pandemic was a sign of what could happen if we implemented telehealth on a much bigger scale. Whether it was one-off fraud or constant scheming, the most hurt groups were single-payer systems like Medicare and Tricare which consistently were victimized by telemedicine scams. Marketers would get together insurance beneficiaries and market them as telemedicine companies, giving them access to providers over the phone.

The “telemedicine company” would then recommend expensive drugs, medical equipment, and diagnostics to the physician. The cost of these scams? Just one nationwide scam before the pandemic, which involved free or low-cost orthotic braces, created $1.2 billion in false billing claims.

Before the pandemic, medical applications like telehealth technology were used to help under-served rural patients get in touch with their doctors. It was also used to “store and forward” important medical information, like radiological images. HIPAA rules regarding the technology were strict, and a HIPAA-secure connection was required. If you were a patient who was going to meet with your provider, you had to be at a pre-approved origination site, and your provider had to be at a pre-approved distant site. You also were required to speak on an audio-visual connection. But it’s well-known that American healthcare rules and regulations change daily, and it changed much more drastically when the pandemic arrived.

After the Pandemic

There’s been no question about extending telemedicine technology to everyone during the pandemic. Because of the fast timing, HIPAA and privacy concerns on telehealth platforms were largely relaxed to accommodate the massive influx of patients and providers. Today, video isn’t even required during telehealth appointments.

You can speak to your provider over the phone or over the computer. Patients now send private clinical and medical data directly to their providers. But this has created confusion and uncertainty about how to bill for medical services.

Before the pandemic, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) allowed only 101 telehealth services. On March 30, 2020, an additional 85 services were added. A month later, 51 new services were added. This brought up the total from 101 to 241 within a month.

No one knows how long the lax rules of telehealth will last after the pandemic is over. And no one has information about if telehealth will be shrunken down again as a service offered to a select group of patients. The Chicago-based American Medical Association also added to the confusion and chaos by releasing new billing codes and descriptors for telehealth services. But one thing is clear: there was likely massive fraud committed in 2020, and many schemes are still active.

Chaotic, Confusing, and Challenging

Because of the relationship of the American government with states, there are no two states that have the same healthcare guidelines and delivery regulations. State regulation depends on a variety of factors, like if the telehealth technology uses live video or just email/fax/phone or if it offers store-and-forward services, remote patient monitoring, or originating/remote site restrictions. It also depends on whether online prescribing and coding is happening, what geographic locations are offered, and what the form of consent looks like. 35 states have parity laws that require telehealth billing to be reimbursed at the same rate as in-office visits.

Identifying and analyzing telehealth claims doesn’t usually result in any actionable insights. Workers’ compensation, disability carriers, and union welfare trusts are particularly at risk for being bamboozled. When you look at the fraudulent claims singularly, they look legitimate and payable, which provides more fuel for the scam and involved fraudsters. In fact, fraudulent claims and legitimate claims are difficult to distinguish because the scammer won’t disclose that the service was provided through telehealth technology.

What’s worse is that advanced automation technology, like fraud detection algorithms, sophisticated analytics software, and previously-trained billing and clinical data applications, cannot catch the hundreds of physicians that scammers pay under the table. Bills are spread out over hundreds of payers, resulting in even more chaos and confusion, and this negatively affects any analysis because the volume is too low to analyze.

The Future of Medicine

Medical fraud has always been a part of healthcare in the U.S., especially because of the obfuscation created by adding more complexity into an already complicated system. Insurance companies must help sort out these scams moving forward, rather than remaining passive and reactive bystanders. If we don’t prepare now, we’ll have to pay much more later on.

Siddhartha Srinivasa, a computer science professor at the University of Washington and director of robotics artificial intelligence (AI) at Amazon, said he wants to make robots unsexy again. For example, he said, we don’t consider our dishwashers to be state-of-the-art and sexy even though they’re incredibly complex mechanical robots. According to Srinivasa, “When something becomes unsexy, it means that it works so well that you don’t have to think about it. … I want to get robots to that stage of reliability.” Although we haven’t reached that stage yet, Srinivasa is one of many AI developers around the world who want to drastically improve the perception of automation and robotics.

The Impact of the Pandemic

The economic, business, industrial, and consumer effects of the pandemic cannot be understated. Many businesses scrambled to implement automation during the start of the pandemic to prevent their employees from taking on higher infection risk. Most of them were targeting work carried out by humans that were necessary to business operations so that the company could continue business as usual.

According to research by Digital Trends, some of the industries that significantly increased their automation efforts include grocery stores, meatpacking facilities, and manufacturing, among others. In June 2020, 44% of corporate financial officers that were surveyed said their company was considering adding more automation into their workflows to combat the negative effects of the pandemic. But that number is low as MIT economist David Autor describes the effect of COVID-19 on the economy as one “that forces automation.”

Autor says that there has been no reduction in demand for automation as companies hurry to automate in sectors that are facing a shortage of workers. One sector that has faced the worst economic downturn is hospitality. As consumers completely halt their travel plans and cancel reservations without booking another, the hospitality industry saw demand disappear virtually overnight.

In sectors like agriculture and distribution, automation is boosting revenues while keeping labor costs down. Specifically, in the distribution industry, e-commerce has changed the landscape of shipping, inventory tracking, and package receiving. More and more warehouses are becoming automated, which is increasing productivity and efficiency while keeping employees safe.

China’s Role

Of all of the countries in the world, China is in the best position to lead the world into increased automation. Much of the world’s manufacturing is done in China with Chinese labor, and even though the country has an enormous workforce, labor costs have risen by 10 times in the past two decades. Being the largest and fastest-growing global market for industrial robotics, China has the biggest incentive to automate factories and manufacturing companies within and outside of the mainland.

China’s industrial robotics market share increased to $5.4 billion in 2019, representing 33% of global sales. However, like most of the world, China’s workforce is getting older and reaching retirement age but the country is facing major issues finding young people to replace the retired population with. For maximum short-term benefit, automation is needed to stabilize the global economy.

In some areas, like restaurant automation, China is ahead of the rest of the world. In early 2020, a UBS Group AG survey found that 17% of consumers in the U.S. ordered meals through their phone once a week or more while 64% of respondents based in China ordered meals once a week or more using their mobile device. Although a mobile app may not be robotic automation, experts believe that robot waiters and chefs aren’t too far away.

The Next Step for Robots

Robots have slowly made their way into the mainstream, but they have mostly operated in the way of fun (looking at you, Boston Robotics), delivery, and factory automation. During the pandemic, we saw the rise of robots in hospitals, airports, and offices that continuously clean and deliver important medications as needed. In fact, there have been over 66 different kinds of these “social” robots, say researchers from Pompeu Fabra University.

The robot revolution that everyone imagines — the one where automation, robotics, machine learning development, and AI all seamlessly come together to transform nearly every industry — hasn’t happened yet. There’s nothing that points to a robot revolution overnight, but it seems like we may reach the revolution slowly and one step at a time. When 5G is more widely available, automation will become accelerated, allowing robotics to grow more rapidly.

People-Facing Robots

Unfortunately, consumer-facing robots are still met with hesitation, fear, admiration, and rejection, all at the same time. For example, Walmart ended its contract with San Francisco robotics development firm Bossa Nova. The end of the contract meant that 1,000 inventory robots were pulled from Walmart stores because the company was worried about how customers would react to the six-foot scanning robots.

Experts aren’t so sure that the World Economic Forum’s forecast of almost 50% of tasks worldwide being handled by machines by 2025 is actually feasible or realistic. But it is still possible.

Just The Start of It All

Even with the increased automation efforts caused by the pandemic, it seems unlikely that we’ll see robots appear in more aspects of our lives within a short amount of time. It will happen one day, but it will take a lot of time and gradual acceptance of robots before people adapt to them psychologically and practically. Until then, robots will still be seen as sleek and sexy.

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!

As we start vaccinating frontline workers and at-risk populations across the world, it seems that the end is in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a multitude of technologies, old and new, to thank for helping humanity make it through this crisis.

From artificial intelligence (AI) applications to UV light, we’ll discuss five more technologies that are being used to save lives and stop the spread of the virus in this second and final post of our series about COVID-19 technologies. You’ll notice many of the tools we dive into are data-focused, and for good reason: sharing data and analyzing it faster and more efficiently is imperative for humanity to beat this pandemic.

Remotely Monitoring Ventilators

Many hospitals, in an effort to save staff from infection risk and prevent understaffing, started using remote surveillance technology to monitor COVID-19 patients. These patients often arrive at the hospital with already-reduced breathing functionality, many waiting outside in the ambulance for hours before being admitted. When they eventually make their way into the ICU and start breathing through a ventilator, their vitals need to be monitored closely and frequently.

However, there isn’t enough PPE (personal protective equipment) for nurses and doctors to change into when going from room to room. In these common cases, remote surveillance has been a life-saving technology, in more ways than one. According to Chris Gutmann, the executive director of information technology (IT) for Yale New Haven Health, the Yale healthcare system has been using the technology across five of its hospitals during the past year.

A ventilated patient surveillance workstation allows medical staff to remotely hear and see the ventilators across the hospital, even if ICU patients are located in a non-ICU part of the hospital due to a shortage of ICU beds. The workstation analyzes the ventilator data in real-time and allows the Yale tele-ICU group to check-in at any time. When an emergency arises, it escalates “clinically actionable events to respiratory therapists, pulmonologists and intensivists,” says Gutmann. Remote surveillance has optimized efficiency and the use of PPE across Yale hospitals.

AI for Data Mining

During the pandemic, AI is being used for its strong suit: analyzing enormous amounts of data. In this case, medical records are being analyzed by AI to find patients that are already admitted to the hospital and flag those with the highest risk based on medical history. Using this information, hospital staff can prioritize who should receive treatment first. AI has been one of the strongest tools used in the fight against COVID-19.

Interoperability

Interoperable health IT is crucial for a team effort against the virus, specifically in data sharing. Azalea Health, a medical development platform, implemented a HIPAA-compliant cloud-based electronic medical record solution during the height of the pandemic. Using this digital system, the entire state of Arkansas was connected to local facilities that wanted to share their information with other healthcare providers.

According to Brian Miller, the CEO of Dewitt Hospital and Nursing Home, the solution “enabled us to connect our clinic and hospital to the state health information exchange to collect and securely store health data from thousands of constituents being tested at the clinic.” This freed up physicians to conduct more tests, rather than spend time on the phone with other providers sharing and comparing notes.

Better Access to Medical History

Speaking of interoperability, another major tool used during the pandemic was the digital sharing of medical history. Matthew Michela is the CEO of Life Image, a Boston-based healthcare interoperability company that focuses on sharing images. According to Michela, when patients arrive at the hospital for COVID-19 treatment, only 6% had their health history digitally available. By using technology to reduce the dependence on paper and physical records, healthcare facilities were able to more easily control the spread of infection and increase access for other facilities to important medical data.

Michela notes that “healthcare data is notoriously siloed,” which is a popular sentiment from people experienced in analyzing data from different medical facilities. Even neighboring medical facilities, if not owned by the same company, can have different data infrastructure and organization. When a patient is experiencing rapidly decreasing levels of hypoxia, there is no time to hunt down their medical history.

Often, however, the patient is unable to speak without losing their ability to breathe stably, which creates a massive problem for medical staff. Without a medical history, administering drugs or treatments could result in immediate death. Thankfully, says Michela, “The gap in access to important clinical information was quickly recognized, and many in the industry deployed existing technology solutions to effectively exchange data with community providers or patients to better coordinate care.”

UVC Light

Ultraviolet C (UVC) light was being used in some hospitals prior to the pandemic to disinfect rooms. At the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Maryland, a device named CRIS (short for “clean rooms improved safety”) emits UVC light to sterilize rooms in the ER and ICU. The antiviral and antibacterial effects of UVC light are well-known, and new research shows that UVC can possibly inactivate SARS-CoV-2. Although the FDA is not completely for or against the technology, they’ve published some guidance on their website: “Currently there is limited published data about wavelength, dose, and duration of UVC radiation required to inactivate the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

With Technology, Anything Is Possible

The ten technologies we’ve covered in our series are working to save more lives, PPE, and medical supplies. Without these tools, we might be looking at another few years of quarantines, social distancing, and masks, but thanks to innovations in vaccines, data sharing, remote monitoring, rapid testing, contact tracing, and more, we’re better equipped for another worldwide pandemic.

What technologies do you think helped humanity the most during the COVID-19 pandemic so far? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Beyond that, robots are helping cut down research and development time in medical development as well as conducting deliveries and other tasks that reduce human contact. Hospitals are utilizing recruitment platforms to more quickly fill open positions with qualified, trained healthcare professionals. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. In our first post this special series, we’ll cover five technologies that have helped humanity combat COVID-19.

Contact Tracing

Contact tracing requires an entire community to participate in open communication to develop a proper risk assessment of COVID-19 infection. Adam Sabloff is the CEO of VirtualHealth, a New York City-based healthcare technology firm. VirtualHealth developed a screening survey to help officials and hospitals identify any patients who are at risk of infection or may have contracted the virus.

Sabloff says that the pandemic has caused a major change in how our healthcare system adopts an increasingly proactive care model, “an approach that is all about anticipating patients’ needs before an emergency (and costly) healthcare event.”

Payer/Provider Communication

Providers and payers have traditionally used electronic transactions to process claims and other information, but many processes still require the use of fax machines, paper, and phone calls. When COVID-19 forced many employees to work from home, the landscape for payer/provider communication pivoted to existing technologies that allowed for secure digital attachments and automation. Long seen as an unadapting industry, healthcare has been forced to accelerate its acceptance of new technologies and tools in an increasingly remote world.

Rapid Testing for Infection

Right now, many places (including schools) are rapidly testing for infection by using digital thermometers. But this is no replacement for actual virus tests. By using real tests, hospitals and medical providers can reduce backlogs and see more patients with a higher degree of certainty. Ron Chiarello is the CEO of Alveo Technologies, a medical development firm from California. Alveo Technologies has been working on creating at-home tests for infectious diseases like COVID-19.

According to Chiarello, at-home testing and rapid testing will help medical organizations “see patients basically as normal again for all the delayed, nonemergent care; get newly identified COVID cases into care faster; and save the extra PPE for treating the cases that really need it.” This type of testing can also better inform contact tracing and give governments a more accurate number of cases.

At Yale University, researchers have developed a promising saliva-based test. According to the researchers, this new test will greatly reduce costs and bottlenecks of the current test type (nasopharyngeal swabs). The NIH (National Institutes of Health) announced it was going to invest $250 million in up-and-coming COVID-19 testing technologies.

The government agency used an approach similar to Shark Tank, where companies competed to land an NIH contract. The three companies that came out on top were all California-based: Mesa Biotech, Quidel, and Talis Biomedical. The NIH also granted four companies funding to develop lab-based COVID-19 tests: Ginkgo Bioworks from Boston and Helix OpCo, Fluidigm, and Mammoth Biosciences, all from California.

Remotely Monitoring Patients

Remotely monitoring technologies save the lives of caretakers like nursing home aides and nurses. For patients who are experiencing symptoms that aren’t severe enough to require a hospital visit, remote technology allows the provider and patient to check-in without creating an infection risk. According to Justin Williams, the CEO of Noteworth, a digital healthcare company, remote monitoring technologies are “[asymmetrical], freeing up staff resources desperately needed in dealing with very sick patients.” Additionally, this technology can help governments get a better idea of the real-time disease spread over a specific geographic area.

Developing Vaccines

Developing an effective vaccine is the end goal in the fight against COVID-19. Although we may need annual COVID vaccines moving forward, developing the first one is the most difficult. The HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) drove a lot of momentum and progress by developing a partnership between the private sector and the government. Because we were able to sequence the SARS-CoV-2 genome early on, we were able to start working on a vaccine quickly.

Today, the federal government is funding trials of the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine. Other companies that have been working on vaccine development are GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, and Sanofi.

The Future of Healthcare

The virus has shown us that medical technology and vaccine development can be sped up with the proper amount of funding and support. If the future holds a risk of more pandemics, we will be better off because we can use all of the novel technologies and ideas that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Without these innovations and tools, there is no doubt that we’d still be ravaged by the virus.

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.