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Video: AliveCor’s AI launch, plus $30M investment from Omron and Mayo

I did a video interview this week with AliveCor COO Doug Biehn about that company’s launch today of a physician-side artificial intelligence platform for mining ECG readings for signs of atrial fibrillation, a key early marker of stroke risk. AliveCor also announced it has closed a $30 million Series D investment round, led by Omron Healthcare and Mayo Clinic.

You can read my recap on my Forbes page, but here’s the full video interview.

I goofed in one spot as I was editing the video after midnight: I was in Chicago, not Silicon Valley, as you might be able to tell from the artwork behind me. The error is sorta fixed if you’re watching on a desktop computer, but YouTube annotations don’t show up on mobile devices. (In fact, YouTube is phasing out video annotations this month for that very reason.)

Your feedback is always welcome.

March 16, 2017 I Written By

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Join the discussion about wearable technology

The thing about the Internet is that you never know when something is going to go viral or spark heated debate. (Actually, it’s a fairly sure bet that anything involving politics, religion or sports will lead to heated debate, generally of the lowbrow variety.)

Less common is informed, intelligent discussion on the Internet. Something I wrote early yesterday for Forbes.com has, happily, fallen into this category.

My post, “Hype Around Healthcare Wearables Runs Into Reality,” is far from the most inflammatory piece I’ve written about overblown hype in healthcare innovation, or, as Dr. Joseph Kvedar called it, “irrational exuberance,” borrowing a line from former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

It’s also far from the most-viewed item I’ve had on the Forbes.com platform since I started about six months ago. However, it’s generating a lot of discussion on Paul Sonnier’s Digital Health group on LinkedIn. As of this writing, there are 28 comments, or more than one per hour since the original post went up at 9:54 am EST Wednesday.

If you’re one of the more than 30,000 members of that group, I encourage you to join the discussion. If not, you might want to join the group, or comment on the original post at Forbes.com.

I haven’t decided yet if I’ll throw in an additional two cents, since I did, you know, already give my opinion in the actual post.

December 11, 2014 I Written By

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Podcast: Care Innovations CEO Sean Slovenski on his company’s Validation Institute

PALO ALTO, Calif. — I’m out here in the Bay Area, in part because Intel-GE Care Innovations invited me to be one of six judges of its first-ever “hackathon” this past weekend. (Full disclosure: Care Innovations paid my travel expenses, but placed no editorial demands on me.)

On Saturday, I sat down with CI CEO Sean Slovenski to discuss a number of issues in digital health and health reform, but I found myself most curious about CI’s new Validation Institute, launched in late June, which looks to bring some truth to some outrageous claims made by entrepreneurs in the untamed world of digital health, telehealth and population health management. I turned on the voice recorder, and this short podcast is the result.

(Sorry for the bit of background noise. We both live in the Midwest, and just had to do this outside on a gorgeous California morning.)

Podcast details: Interview with Sean Slovenski, CEO of Intel-GE Care Innovations, on the company’s new Validation Institute. MP3, stereo, 192 kbps,  9.2 MB. Running time 6:38

September 22, 2014 I Written By

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More health IT comedy means the public is taking notice

I often share jokes and humorous videos here, sometimes because a product is worthy of ridicule, but also to illustrate how some health IT is going mainstream. I’m going to do it again today because two things happened in the last week that I had not seen before.

First, though Stephen Colbert has made fun of digital health and fitness products before, last week he took it upon himself to do so on consecutive nights.

On Sept. 8, he took down the forthcoming Pavlok fitness bracelet, a product that sends an electrical jolt to the wearer’s arm as a reminder to exercise. It also debits the user’s bank account and posts an embarrassing message on Facebook. No, really. “When you’re in a dark place, alone at home, out of shape and too tired, overweight or depressed to work out, it’s probably because you weren’t getting enough public humiliation,” Colbert said.

 

A night later, Colbert, like the rest of the world, was talking about the Apple Watch. After cheering wildly about the announcement, Colbert asked, “What does it do?” He then showed a picture of himself from high school and said it was finally cool to wear a calculator watch.

 

Then, on Friday, no less than America’s Finest News Source, The Onion, got into the act with its “American Voices” feature, in which common people (actually, the same five or six headshots recycled for years with different names and occupations) give their fake opinions on a newsworthy topic. That day, the subject was, “Patients Making Record Number Of Telehealth ‘E-Visits’ With Doctors,” with a reference to an actual Deloitte study on that very topic.

As one “commenter” said, “Until doctors can email me painkillers, I don’t see the point.”

 

September 16, 2014 I Written By

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Colbert pokes fun at Fitbit and other digital trackers

“We live in a golden era of digital toys,” noted comedian Stephen Colbert on “The Colbert Report” last Monday.

Indeed, some of the digital health and fitness products out there are rather ridiculous, even the popular ones, and we’re hearing just that at some actual health IT events. At last month’s WTN Media Digital Healthcare Conference in Madison, Wis., Adam Pellegrini, vice president of digital health at Walgreens, poked fun at programs that reward people for allegedly exercising. “You could put a pedometer on your dog and get 10,000 steps while watching TV,” Pellegrini joked.

Colbert, who certainly was not present at that Madison meeting, got the same idea about the Fitbit activity tracker. “Last week, I wanted to run a marathon, so I strapped this bad boy to a paint shaker for about 20 minutes,” he said.

Colbert then addressed the Vessyl digital cup, which records data on the beverages each user consumes. “That level of information was previously available only on the can you just poured it out of,” he said. He then pointed out that Vessyl only tracks half of the hydration equation, the input, so he announced the pre-release of his own “product,” Toylyt.

Watch the clip below.

 

 

July 20, 2014 I Written By

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Digital health should get in on Health Affairs innovation action

The policy journal Health Affairs puts out an e-mail update every Sunday, for those of us who can’t get enough of reading work e-mail during the week. Today’s contained the following solicitation:

Health Affairs is planning a theme issue on health care and medical innovation in early-2015. The issue will span the fields of medical technology and public policy as well as private sector innovations that promote improvements in the delivery of care, lower costs, increased efficiency, etc. We plan to publish 15-20 peer-reviewed articles including research, analyses, and commentaries from leading researchers and scholars, analysts, industry experts, and health and health care stakeholders.

We invite interested authors to submit abstracts for consideration for this issue. To be considered, abstracts must be submitted by Wednesday, June 25, 2014. We regret that we will not be able to consider any abstracts submitted after that date. Editors will review the abstracts and, for those that best fit our vision and goals, invite authors to submit papers for consideration for the issue. Invited papers will be due at the journal by September 2, 2014.

Abstract submission requirements. Abstract submissions should not exceed 500 words, and should include (in this order): proposed title, author names and affiliations, abstract, name and contact information for the corresponding author below the abstract. Please consult our online guidelines for additional formatting instructions. http://www.healthaffairs.org/Abstract_Submission_FAQ.php

If you wish to submit an abstract, please send it as an e-mail attachment to abstracts_innovation@projecthope.org (note: there is an underscore between “abstracts” and “innovation”).

We thank you for your time and consideration. Please feel free to pass this invitation along to colleagues who might be interested. If you have questions about this request, please contact Senior Deputy Editor, Sarah Dine, at sdine@projecthope.org.

Presumably, a lot of the submissions will come from traditional medical device manufacturers, the pharma industry and managed care, but this seems like a perfect opportunity for some from the realm of digital health to prove that they really are disruptive, game-changing, revolutionary or any of a number of buzzwords and clichés the marketing people like to throw around.

The June 25 deadline doesn’t leave a lot of time, but that’s just to submit an abstract. The full description can come later. So get to work, digital health innovators. It’s time to prove to the establishment that your ideas are real and effective.

Click here for more information.

If you’re looking for my writing this week, I’ll be at WTN Media’s Digital Health Conference in Madison, Wis., Tuesday and Wednesday, helping WTN with its coverage. I’ve got to write at least three stories from that conference, which will be my priority once the meeting starts, though that doesn’t preclude me from posting elsewhere once that work is done.

June 22, 2014 I Written By

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Browning out at IntelliBlast, PwC’s Wasden gets academic appointment

I have some personnel news from the world of digital health for you today.

This morning, I learned that Matthew Browning, founder of IntelliBlast Health, a healthcare communications platform formerly known as YourNurseIsOn, has resigned as CEO, in an apparent dispute with investors. Alliance Healthcare Partners made an undisclosed investment in IntelliBlast parent Targeted Instant Communications one year ago tomorrow.

Browning’s wife, Phoebe, remains CFO of the New Haven, Conn.-based company for the time being, but probably not much longer.

Also, Chris Wasden, managing director of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ healthcare innovation practice for nearly seven years, has been named executive director of the Sorenson Center for Discovery and Innovation at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business and the associate executive director of the university’s Center for Medical Innovation. Wasden remains with PwC as a consultant.

 

June 10, 2014 I Written By

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Video: StartUp Health co-founder talks Health Datapalooza on CNBC

Unity Stoakes, co-founder and president of entrepreneurship academy StartUp Health, was in Washington this week for Health Datapalooza. Tuesday morning, with the Capitol dome serving as a picturesque background, he appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to talk innovation in digital health. Stoakes used more than a couple of buzzwords, such as “revolution” (see my commentary for Forbes on Apple’s just-announced HealthKit mocking the notion of a revolution) and “creative destruction,” and CNBC added a few more, like “disruptive” and “tectonic shift”

But he did temper the enthusiasm with a reality check. “To be quite honest, there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Stoakes said when asked about who the losers would be in the new healthcare world. Have a look, and share with your friends outside of healthcare so they get a bit of a sense about what digital health is and where true healthcare reform might come from.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In case you missed it, I interviewed Stoakes last month for a story in Healthcare IT News about breaking down data silos in digital, mobile and “connected” health.

June 5, 2014 I Written By

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Justin Barnes lands at Georgia Tech’s startup incubator

Here’s some more personnel news for you: Justin Barnes, who last month stepped down as chief of industry affairs and government affairs for EHR vendor Greenway Health, has been named entrepreneur-in-residence at Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center.

The startup incubator isn’t specific to healthcare, but it sounds like Barnes will be focusing a lot of his energy on the healthcare sector. Per his bio: “He mentors and provides strategic entrepreneurial advice as well as key business connections to help grow a wide range of organizations including healthcare and IT companies, industry collaboratives, health systems and physician practices.” Barnes does have a lot of experience in healthcare. Before he spent 11 years at Greenway for 11 years, he was a founding vice president of Healinx, the precursor company to RelayHealth. Barnes also worked at HBO & Co. when that company was acquired by McKesson.

June 2, 2014 I Written By

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Palomar Health innovation officer Portale stepping down June 30

Late word from the West Coast on Thursday is that Orlando Portale, chief innovation officer of Palomar Health in San Diego County, Calif., for the past seven years, is leaving at the end of June.

According to a quick e-mail from Portale, “I’m going to focus on advising health technology companies, private equity firms and healthcare organizations.” He already has dabbled in some of those areas, helping Palomar start up Glassomics, which he calls the world’s first incubator for healthcare applications and technology that run on wearable computers, including Google Glass.

Qualcomm Life provided an operating grant to Glassomics, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Portale ends up at that San Diego-based venture. Then again, Portale has a deep résumé, including senior positions at the former Sun Microsystems, health insurer WellPoint and government IT contractor Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC).  I’m sure he will have plenty of opportunities coming his way in short order.

In an e-mail to Portale — and copied to executives and board members — Palomar CEO Michael Covert said: “I want to personally thank you for everything that you have done for Palomar Health. Your efforts have put us on the map in the world of innovation and technology. We had a vision of what we could be and you helped to make it a reality. I am forever in your debt. Please let me know if I can be of support or help to you in the future. … I wish you only the best. Let us stay in touch as your career moves forward.”

 

May 29, 2014 I Written By

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