UnitedHealthcare, Zamzee partner for weight loss pilot

Last year, UnitedHealthcare announced a partnership with Konami to bring the classroom version of its DanceDanceRevolution exergame to a pilot group of schoolchildren in Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Now UnitedHealthcare is continuing that pilot, adding a fourth school in Southern California. The company is also starting a new pilot with another big name in the kids’ digital health space — social activity tracker platform Zamzee.  Join for Me is a 12-month community program geared towards helping overweight and obese 6 to 17-year-olds lose weight and reduce their risk of Type 2 diabetes. According to Henderson, Zamzee activity trackers will be given to both children and parents to help encourage movement and activity while participants are at home or school and away from the YMCA-based program. The pilot will collect data comparing kids who used Zamzee with other kids in the Join for Me program.  More

Video game maker partners with Pfizer for Alzheimer’s clinical trial

Boston-based Akili Interactive Labs partnered with Pfizer to conduct a study of Akili’s iOS-based game, Project Evo, in the hopes of using the game to detect indications of Alzheimer’s in healthy individuals.
The month-long study of 100 participants includes a mix of some who have risk markers of potentially developing Alzheimer’s and some who do not. All participants will take the game home and play it daily while researchers test whether the algorithms within the game can distinguish the group with risk markers.  More

Gamification in Healthcare

Gamification Trends:

The Best of Health Gamification in 2013

In our next collection from the best gamification stories of 2013, we have a cornucopia of healthy gamified applications for everyone to check out. Gamification Co readers were most interested in seeing new health apps in 2013 and we have about 20 of the top health apps for you to check out here.
Here’s to seeing even more at 2014! (Especially with all that new stuff at CES)
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How Gameplay Transfers Knowledge into Skills

Games are tools for rewiring your brain. When you’re playing a game what you’re essentially doing is building new neurological connections and strengthening them with a process called myelination.
You build new networks that can be used outside the game, then strengthen them through repetition. Now there’s the highly contextualized questions of what skills the game is creating and if its transferable outside that game into the real world. Not all games develop the same skills and not all skills are used in particular fields (these studies are relatively new so expect new insights in the future). Knowledge management has two terms I adopted to understand knowledge transfer from games: adaptation and exaptation, which can acts a lens to understand knowledge transfer from playing games.
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New Australian Facility is Teaching Dementia-Care By Simulating It

Alzheimer’s Australia Vic has opened up Australia’s first dementia learning center to educate people about the effects of dementia through virtual-reality simulations, according to Australian Ageing Agenda.
The simulation’s primary goal is allow students to envision the cognitive and perceptual difficulties that dementia sufferers deal with in their daily life routines.
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Slideshow: Health devices launched at CES 2014

French company Medissimo’s smart pill box imedipac is a feature-filled spin on medication adherence hardware. The device both reminds patients to take pills and tracks when they have using GPS. Users can review information on their computer or on specialized phone or tablet apps. It can send alarms via text message, email, or even call you on the phone and leave voice messages.

CES is upon us again. According to the Boston Globe, the Las Vegas consumer electronics show is dedicating 40 percent more floor space to digital health than last year and more than 300 digital health companies are exhibiting. Whether or not those stats are illustrative, digital health is still a more popular topic at CES than it ever has been. And with more and more big companies like Sony and LG getting into fitness and activity tracking, even the definition of a digital health company is blurring.  More

Vida! Engaging Citizens in Their Own Health

¡Vida! emerged from work with breast cancer survivors who, despite five years or more since the breast cancer diagnosis, clearly articulated their goal not only to live, but to live well.
Named from the Spanish word meaning “life,” ¡Vida! is a monthly partner educational series for patients and their professional health care teams. Guided by a broad-based Community Partnership Group, ¡Vida! has been proactively addressing the identified needs of patients and their families across the state of Arizona.
While ¡Vida! originally began with a focus on breast cancer survivorship, the series has evolved to include topics related to lifestyle medicine, wellness, and advocacy with the overarching goal of engaging Arizona’s citizens in their own health!

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Telehealth 'parity' continues to make inroads via state legislation

Individual states continue to press forward with telehealth legislation, as evidenced by recent news out of Montana and a forthcoming effort in Florida.

A bill introduced to Congress last month--the Telehealth Modernization Act--seeks to establish a federal definition of telehealth and clear up the confusion from myriad state policies.
"Telehealth is a major contributing factor to increased health care quality, convenience, and lower costs," said Reps. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), who introduced the Telehealth Modernization Act. "However, there currently are 50 separate sets of rules as to what type of care can be provided. This often leaves both providers and patients in a state of uncertainty."
Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last month announced that changes to Medicare's 2014 physician fee schedule would incrementally expand coverage for telehealth services.

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Telehealth Coverage for Extended for Military Service Members

The 2014 National Defense Authorization Act signed last week by President Obama includes a measure designed to bolster military service members' access to telemedicine services. The measure will extend the Transitional Assistance Management Program by 180 days for all services delivered via telemedicine. FierceHealthIT, Rep. Thompson release. More

Medical Technology Stories To Watch at CES 2014

forbes.com · At the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, (CES 2014) this January in Las Vegas,  expect a storyline shift away from the annual event’s typical focus on everyday consumer electronics — such as smartphones, tablets and televisions — towards other growth markets such as medical technology, health products and applications.  Including
Real-time remote monitoring, Aging-in-Place offerings....More

Do Patient Portals Improve Healthcare?

  Do Patient Portals Improve Healthcare? - InformationWeek informationweek.com

Study results are mixed on how portals affect the quality and efficiency of patient care, suggesting more research is needed.

•  Healthcare practices need to focus more on patient engagement when it comes to web portals. Read Patient Portals Aren't Very Patient Centric

Medicare and Medicaid to encourage more telehealth visits in 2014

David Hemler

CEO at Revation Systems, Inc.

Medicare and Medicaid to encourage more telehealth visits in 2014
http://hub.am/K6HpOR

Use of telehealth network can boost care, study says hub.am

Study shows how telehealth networks can save lives and money.

Story Highlights

• Doctors who work at remote locations can help several hospitals at a time
• Research appeared in CHEST Journal
• Practice can boost rural hospitals with smaller staffs

New CPT Codes Approved for Telehealth

By: Marlene M. Maheu, Ph.D.

In Medicare’s 2014 physician fee schedule, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services outlined several new telehealth services and service regions that will be reimbursed by the federal government starting 2014.  These changes include new services for mental health providers. …More

8 Notes About Changes to EHR Stage 2/Stage 3

CMS and ONC recently extended Stage 2 of the EHR meaningful use program, delayed the start of Stage 3 by a year until 2017, and tweaked the EHR certification program. But the actions aren’t as much of a reprieve to providers as they might appear; there are tradeoffs. Here’s a look at the changes. HDM Resources
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Care Beyond Walls and Wires: Telemedicine Home-Health Monitoring Program is Changing Patient Lives

Care Beyond Walls and Wires, it’s a telemedicine-based, home-health monitoring program that has significantly improved the health of most participating patients, while reducing emergency room visits and hospital admissions and readmissions, and decreasing the length of stay for those who still require hospitalization.

Qualcomm funded the Care Beyond Walls pilot study. When it ended on April 1, 2013, Northern Arizona Healthcare took on the costs of continuing Care Beyond Walls and Wires.  More

FDA Regulation of Mobile Health 2013

FDA at last has published its final guidance on mobile medical apps. Further, the mHealth industry has morphed several times over the last couple years. Consequently, in this second edition, more than 80 percent of the content is new. Download here Not only have I updated the regulatory analysis, but I’m also covering a few new topics like FDA regulation of pharmaceutical apps.  More

Home telehealth helps specialists reach Parkinson’s patients

In a study published this month as an open-access article in the journal Neurology: Clinical Practice, 100 percent of the 55 patients who participated in a virtual house call with a neurologist said they were likely to recommend telemedicine to a friend. The researchers, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the University of Rochester (N.Y.), found patient satisfaction levels topping 90 percent for most aspects of remote consultations.  More

Meaningful Use Portal Updates in USHIK

The Meaningful Use Portal in the AHRQ-funded United States Health Information Knowledgebase (USHIK) has been updated with new functionality. The portal is a one-stop shop for Meaningful Use Stage 1 and Stage 2 Clinical Quality Measures, their computation logic, their data elements, and the vocabularies and codes the data elements may take on.

What is USHIK?

The United States Health Information Knowledgebase (USHIK) is an on-line, publicly accessible registry and repository of healthcare-related data, metadata and standards. USHIK is funded and directed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) with management support in partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).  More

Text message interventions work best when they’re tailored

Text messages have been proven several times to be a positive medium for improving health outcomes. Text message intervention studies for smoking cessation, medication adherence and weight loss have all come back with positive results.

While all of the studies focused on tailoring messages, the researchers agreed that a good next step for texting studies is a three-way texting system, which is helpful to adding an even more human element to the intervention.

“In other studies that we’ve done we’ve created three-way messages, send out, come back in and receive a tailored message based on your response,” .... “And we found that patients sometimes think that it’s their doctor texting back. So we’ve used it as a communication tool, to really think that they’re being cared about.”  More 

6 regulatory and procedural hurdles for multistate telemedicine

For the most part, the laws that govern the practice of medicine in the United States are state laws. One of the few things Federal law does say is that jurisdiction of those laws is based on the patient’s location, not the doctor’s. That’s tough news for a mobile health company that wants to establish any sort of multi-state telemedicine practice, whether it’s evaluating moles and blemishes via store-and-forward dermatology or doing virtual video consultations on an iPad. More

EHR Use Boosts Diabetes Care, Federally Funded Project Finds

	A study by the Western New York Beacon Community finds that the use of electronic health records and other health IT helped improve the care of patients with diabetes and reduce costs. The study was funded through a $16.1 million Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT grant. Buffalo News, FierceHealthIT. More

The Transparency Tipping Point

Patients are engaged and participate in their care when they can view their medical records. 

The Issue:
With the increasing use of electronic health records (EHRs), patients have more access to their lab and medical records. What is less often seen by patients, however, are the notes doctors enter in the medical record. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded OpenNotes initiative sought to find out how patients would use and feel about open access to doctors’ notes. Others now are experimenting with OpenNotes and exploring how they might change doctors’ practices.  More

AHRQ’s Innovations Exchange Focuses on Mental Health Care in Rural Settings

The latest issue of the AHRQ Health Care Innovations Exchange features three innovation profiles describing programs that increased access and improved mental health care for individuals living in rural areas. One of the featured profiles describes a program at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville, in which psychiatric fellows and residents use videoconferencing to serve children and adults with mental illness who live in rural parts of the state. More

Mayo’s iPad study had 98 percent engagement among seniors

“Patient participation is completely dependent on usability,” Cook said at a session at the mHealth Summit near Washington, DC. “Healthcare technology and tools are not meaningful unless they’re integrated with care plans and expectations, and that’s dependent on delivering knowledge to patients. Once you have a usable tool, you can help self-assessment and reporting, data acquisition and aggregation is meaningful, and clinically meaningful algorithms can impact patient outcomes.”  More

Home Runs in Telemedicine and Telehealth: The Season is Always Right!

The First Telemedicine Service Home Run

MGH in the late 1960s and early 1970s: The first telemedicine service home run was teleradiology, a component of the MGH-Logan Airport telemedicine program.
Teleradiology had been deployed in Canada, around 1959, and then adopted by the MGH program in 1968.
Home run status was achieved decades later.
Today, teleradiology is quite ubiquitous, sustainable, cost effective, and is regarded by many to be mainstream medicine. Thus, a home run!   More

Want to Improve Diabetes Management? Send Texts

Researchers study the effects of text messaging on glycemic control in patients with diabetes in a new study.  Text messaging is a practical, cost-effective way to engage and motivate low-income patients with type 2 diabetes to improve their long-term management of the disease... Research has shown that even in poor communities, where costly smart phones are inaccessible, most patients have and use text messaging as a means of communication, making it the ideal platform on which to deliver an effective and automated diabetes management solution.

Source: “Trial to Examine Text Message–Based mHealth in Emergency Department Patients With Diabetes (TExT-MED): A Randomized Controlled Trial” Article in press in Annals of Emergency Medicine http://bit.ly/HScCV

Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Expands Telehealth Coverage

The final Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2014 recently released by CMS expands Medicare coverage for telehealth services to rural areas defined by the Office of Rural Health Policy. The American Telemedicine Association called the telehealth provisions included in the fee schedule "good news." MedPage Today et al.
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Telehealth Innovations & Spotlight

AHRQ :
Videoconferencing Enhances Access to Psychiatric Care for Children and Adults With Mental Illness in Rural Settings 12/4/2013

Psychiatric fellows and residents at the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville provide care via videoconferencing to patients in rural parts of the state who otherwise would likely not have had access to such care. 

 

New Expert Commentary
Academic Telepsychiatry Programs Enhance Access for Rural Populations
by Ana Maria Lopez, MD, MPH, FACP, Medical Director, Arizona Telemedicine Program and Professor of Medicine and Pathology, University of Arizona http://www.innovations.ahrq.gov/content.aspx?id=3945&tab=2

Changing Behaviors to Improve Health

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Do you want to change your behavior to improve your health? According to the Fogg Behavior Model, behavior change happens when three factors—motivation, ability, and triggers—come together at the same moment. http://rwjf.ws/IGk6e

Biggest Communication Challenges

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51 digital health metrics in 2013

95M Americans used mobile for health in 201395M Americans used mobile for health in 2013
Pew: 35 percent of US adults are online diagnosers 
Seven in ten doctors have a self-tracking patient 
Survey: 31 percent of doctors make Rx decisions from smartphones 
Manhattan: 72 percent of physicians have tablets 
Survey: 43 percent of doctors use mobiles for clinical purposes 
Pew: Caregivers are top digital health users, but only 59 percent find online tools helpful

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High-tech home care for children

Children who need complex care can receive it at home

Home & Community Programs have experienced an increase in home care volume as medical advances have allowed premature and other medically needy children to survive longer with a better quality of life. Bringing the child home despite needing complex care reduces the risk of nosocomial infection and often is easier on the family than continued hospitalization.  Nurse.com

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