Telehealth has changed how we treat and care for those who have medical maladies and are vulnerable. The latest innovations in this field are enabling people to live safer, fuller lives without the need for constant human supervision. The COVID-19 pandemic has made this abundantly clear; more healthcare facilities than ever before are embracing telemedicine in an effort to keep patients from in-person appointments that risk exposure to the deadly virus.

Recent telehealth innovations such as wearables heavily rely on the Internet of Things. With this technological paradigm, we can securely transmit and analyze data in order to unearth life-improving care plans. These capabilities allow aging populations to continue to live in their own homes while reducing the burden that many care facilities are experiencing at the moment. In this post, we’ll examine the benefits of furthering telehealth connectivity innovation and the factors needed to make it happen.

Enabling Patient Independence

Good connectivity is essential for three types of telehealth monitoring: passive, active, and condition.

Passive monitoring deals with medical applications and technologies in the patient’s home that quietly monitor his or her behavior. These devices usually only initiate action if they notice something concerning. For instance, the Alcuris Memo Hub connects a variety of smart devices around a patient’s home, like a tea kettle, TV, and lighting. If this platform notices a change in the patient’s typical pattern of behavior, it will issue an alert. It can also observe and trigger an alert for gradual changes that may indicate a revision to a health regimen is required.

Active monitoring entails devices such as panic buttons and two-way intercoms. In summation, these devices require proactive action, either from the patient or a caretaker.

Lastly, as its name implies, condition monitoring involves the monitoring of specific health conditions. It combines aspects of the first two approaches we’ve discussed with detailed health data, like blood pressure, heart rate, and movement.

Simplicity Is Essential

Digital health innovations help improve the quality of life for aging populations as well as patients living with chronic conditions and disabilities. They also help lower the costs and resources needed for adequate healthcare delivery for these cases.

Ensuring that telehealth devices have enough connectivity to reliably capture, share, and analyze data is absolutely necessary. Without proper connectivity, wrong conclusions (and consequently, outcomes) could be reached. But these connected devices need one more feature to take telehealth to the next level: the ability to work right out of the box.

Telehealth device manufacturers should configure their devices to seamlessly connect to a healthcare provider’s system seamlessly without any complexities. They should also be able to work anywhere, whether that’s Beijing or Los Angeles. Making telehealth devices and platforms plug-and-play is imperative since a large portion of their audience may not be tech-savvy or have the time to set up complicated systems.

Overcoming Connectivity Obstacles

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, chances are good that you have some experience with mobile phones. This means you’re also painfully familiar with the occurrence of black spots where your mobile device can’t receive a strong, reliable signal. Can you imagine this conundrum for a device that your life depends on?

When a patient’s life is on the line, we cannot compromise on connectivity. To mitigate this issue, telehealth devices should be capable of selecting the best network based on its location and even change between networks to minimize drop-out time. During a critical moment, a dropped connection can mean the difference between life and death. So any device in the telehealth market should offer strong, reliable, and continuous connectivity.

To ensure optimal connectivity, medical device makers must consider its importance from the start of the design process. This often translates to a few common factors for the device. For example, it must be lightweight, easy to operate, robust, and unobtrusive. Often, these elements restrict the design of these devices, which is something that manufacturers may have not dealt with before if they previously focused on larger or fixed devices.

On top of this, manufacturers must also think through what occurs at the back end of their telehealth devices. Do they connect to a cloud service through which analyses are run? Or is the data being transmitted to another human who needs convenient access to it? In this case, how should the information be presented? Alongside connectivity, this focus on communication must also be considered at the beginning of the design stage.

Don’t Forget Security

End-to-end security is always crucial for anything that handles sensitive data such as telehealth devices. Whether it’s your hardware or software, all of your connectivity platforms must be secured properly in order for your device to work effectively.

Unfortunately, several consumer SIMs lack advanced security protocols. They actually send data over standard internet channels, which increases the risk of this information being stolen or lost. To mitigate this, prioritize security early on in the device design phase.

Numerous IoT manufacturers treat device security as an afterthought. As we know from the IoT industry’s track record with data breaches, this has not worked out well. The same mistakes cannot be made when it comes to the personal data of patients.

Dedicated end-to-end security solutions are usually the best for telehealth devices. This involves measures such as data encryption at the device level, communication through trusted private networks and secure gateways, authentication, and authorization.

If you want to take things a step further (which is never a bad idea), add in data flow monitoring tools to detect any unusual activity. These could be your first indicators of a malicious attack taking place. Lastly, consider consulting a third-party pen tester before deployment.

Are You Ready for the Future of Telehealth?

We hope you’ve enjoyed this overview of how connectivity can help accelerate telehealth innovation. It may not be the first topic that comes to mind when you think of new capabilities in digital medicine, but it’s certainly among the most important. By emphasizing connectivity during the design of a telehealth device, you’re able to give patients and providers more peace of mind and unlock better outcomes for both parties.

Have you had any unusual experiences with telehealth connectivity? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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!

But there’s more in store for 2021, namely all kinds of interesting new technologies being added to the hardware and software of wearables devices. Here’s what features and devices we’re looking forward to seeing launch this upcoming year.

1. SpO2 Monitoring

Because of the pandemic, the SpO2 sensor has become one of the in-demand features of any smartwatch. Almost every new smartwatch that shipped in 2020 had a SpO2 sensor. But the efficacy of the data has repeatedly come into question by medical professionals, device wearers, and the companies themselves.

Watches with SpO2 sensors often come with a disclaimer that the sensor is only for fitness and wellness. In other words, these sensors don’t offer medical advice, although you can monitor your SpO2 levels to figure out if a doctor’s appointment is warranted. One issue that the SpO2 sensors can alert a user to is the possibility of sleep apnea. However, some wearables don’t use the SpO2 sensor automatically, making it a nearly useless feature.

In 2021, SpO2 data is expected to start being utilized more deeply, especially for health monitoring, early COVID-19 detection, and other respiratory illnesses. In fact, San Francisco-based Fitbit recently released a study that links data from devices’ SpO2 sensors to early signs of respiratory infection, including COVID-19.

2. Sleep Tracking

Sleep tracking has been a major hit for all wearables devices. In Apple Watch devices, sleep tracking involved downloading a third-party app. In watchOS 7, the major added feature was native sleep tracking, which more closely aligns the wearable with Fitbit’s offering.

With the new sleep tracking feature, Apple Watch users can check sleep consistency, set sleep schedules, and focus on time spent asleep and awake in bed. Since the feature just launched, the visualizations are lacking compared to Fitbit and Garmin. Although it’s not known what improvements watchOS 8 will bring, experts are certain that watchOS 8 will be released sometime this year.

One thing is for sure: Apple is going to put its own spin on sleep tracking, whether that means a sleep ring, goals for sleep consistency, or more cognizant sleep schedule tracking. These small changes can help users prioritize sleep as an aspect of health and fitness, rather than viewing sleep as a necessity that doesn’t need any optimization.

3. Body Temperature TrackingBody temperature is a difficult vital to measure, but Fitbit managed to accomplish it. Temperature tracking will remain important in 2021 since it’s an early COVID-19 symptom, so the other wearables manufacturers are expected to follow suit this year. Changes in basal temperature hold a lot of value: they can indicate the start of menstruation, signs of illness, or the beginning of a fever.

Huami’s Amazfit GTR 2e and GTS 2e watches have temperature tracking already, leaving Apple and Samsung behind in offering this feature. This is one feature that users will never ignore, empowering them to get help earlier than they normally would.

4. Your Personal Trainer In a Watch

One of the most utilized features in smartwatches is exercising tracking. The sports watch manufacturers, like Polar and Garmin, work for swimming, bike riding, running, and indoor workouts. With the amount of data collected during each workout, making that data accessible and actionable is the next step for wearables in 2021.

Garmin and Polar are also monitoring sleep and heart rate, tying daily activity levels to other aspects of health and wellness. In addition to Garmin’s acquisition of heart analytics company Firstbeat, Polar’s FitSpark feature dives deep into looking at training data to give insights about how to train moving forward as well as give recommendations about what trainings to incorporate into your next workout.

The notion that a smartwatch can be a digital personal trainer has been an ultimate goal of wearables developers, and we’re inching closer to it every day.

5. ECG and Blood Pressure

Apple led the way when it introduced ECG examining in its Apple Watches. To remain competitive, Samsung also added ECG sensors to its Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2 and Galaxy Watch 3. One of the hurdles these companies had to overcome is regulatory approval. Additionally, this feature is incredibly complex, so development time is extended for the company. ECG support has been approved in South Korea and the U.S., but other countries are expected to grant approval in 2021 as well.

Blood pressure support is still a unique selling point for smartwatches, and Samsung is leading the way. The company approaches blood pressure monitoring by inserting a dedicated blood pressure monitor that requires some calibration before use. This feature has only been approved in South Korea, but as demand for this feature grows from Samsung users around the world, we expect that more countries will approve blood pressure monitoring in 2021.

The Year of Wearables

Wearables are staying strong in market presence and user engagement. As more people purchase smartwatches in 2021, we expect wearables manufacturers to add more features to stay competitive with each other. This may be the year that wearables go from being nice-to-have devices to becoming need-to-have tools for your health and fitness tracking.

Do you have a wearable that you use for fitness and health monitoring? Do you think the current features are enough or do you want to see more measurements on your wrist in 2021?

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!

So where do we draw the line on how deep we let the AI technology go in our healthcare system? And can we fully trust the results that come out of an AI’s calculations, especially since those calculations are black-boxed (hidden) from those who are interested in learning the reasons behind the AI’s final decision? A few months ago, academics debated these questions against developers from Google Health.

The Root Problem

AI-enabled medical applications, like those we mentioned earlier, span a variety of fields and disciplines, from academia to industry enterprises like Amazon, Google, and Apple. Everyone involved has different incentives, ideas for the future, and thoughts about where the technology stands today. The two sides engaged in a heated discussion in Nature, one of the most well-known science journals. The two sides included AI researchers from the University of Toronto, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Harvard, and the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre (PMCC), as well as researchers from Google Health.

It began when Google Health published a study about their AI’s phenomenal results in screening for breast cancer. The company said that its AI vastly outperformed professional radiologists in finding and diagnosing breast cancer. It also added that this technology could be generalized beyond training populations, which is a very confident statement, given that large datasets of high-quality medical images are incredibly rare.

The academics argued that the study was non-replicable, which is a must for published studies so that other researchers can help bolster the claim or warn others that the authors are just blowing hot air. Google Health didn’t include sufficient descriptions about its model and code, requiring readers to blindly trust the results and model’s performance. Google Health’s rebuttal stated that they couldn’t release that information in order to protect patients and the AI.

In science, discourse like this is necessary to push the boundaries of ethics, morality, and regulations surrounding emerging technologies. When big-name companies and schools argue, even the public takes notice.

Academics’ Arguments

Without a replicable method and enough details, published scientific studies are at risk of losing credibility and trustworthiness. Anyone could publish something, make up stellar results, and get praise and credit from the media. But science is formed in replicated experiments that return the same results, follow-up experiments that explore a slightly different question, and novel ideas on how to apply the study. Thus, in all published studies, you’ll read about the exact number of people used in the research, how they were split up, what technologies and tools were used, what experimental procedures were carried out and when, and much more.

But with AI mixed in, it’s difficult to publish replicable studies. Dr. Benjamin Haibe-Kains is a senior scientist at the Toronto-based PMCC. He explains, “In computational research, it’s not yet a widespread criterion for the details of an AI study to be fully accessible. This is detrimental to our progress.” As any developer knows, asking five developers to write code to solve one problem will likely result in five different programs. So without having the exact program, a developer might have a different way of accomplishing the same thing using the very few details he or she knows, which in turn could impact the performance of the AI.

The academics said Google Health’s study is just an example of a major, far-reaching problem. The study lacked transparency and not just for the AI algorithm’s code but for the dataset used for training the algorithm as well. Many medical datasets are under license and can cause patient privacy problems, but that’s not an excuse as datasets can be anonymized. Ultimately, the authors wrote, “such resources can considerably accelerate model development, validation and transition into production and clinical [implementation].”

Google Health’s Rebuttal

Google Health’s team, led by Dr. Scott McKinney, centered around protecting patients and the AI’s code. They also mentioned that regulations require that the AI algorithm remain private, for example, because it could be classified as “medical device software”. Without the proper permissions and regulatory body overseeing the release, developers, patients, and providers can be at risk. Google Health also mentioned that the largest dataset they used is accessibly online by putting in an application to Google. But the other datasets cannot be shared at all.

The Next Big Debate

This is just the start of a series of debates that multiple stakeholders will have over new AI algorithms, their performance, their underlying black box calculations, and the effects on patients and providers. These arguments could rage on for decades, as the line between “right” and “wrong” is still unclear and can vary from stakeholder to stakeholder. One thing is for sure: because this debate was held publicly, it opened up the possibility of hosting these discussions with input from patients. If nothing else, the researchers on both sides piqued the public’s interest in the pitfalls of AI, publishing AI research, and medical experimentation.

Would you trust an AI to diagnose you from your medical scans, or do you prefer a physician to make a decision before looking at what the AI thinks? Let us know in the comments below!

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.

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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!