Telehealth News - June 2020
Here's a recap of the resources for clinicians, digital health news, telemedicine innovations and virtual care updates for June 2020.
News & Resources for Clinicians
How to have an effective telehealth visit, according to 2 doctors
Telehealth appointments mirror in-person visits, where your clinician will ask various medical history questions and probe for specifics on your current health. Just like in the office, medical students or residents may accompany the physician. There can even be a limited medical exam with some providers collecting digital vital signs. All of this can help develop an effective medical plan for you, the patient. With telehealth, you are in control and can take specific actions to maximize your experience.
Read full story on Business Insider >
Help patients adjust to telehealth by remembering the human touch
In a recent “AMA COVID-19 Update” video, a panel of experts discussed how to ensure empathy remains central to the patient-physician relationship on this new frontier. “If you really think about empathy at an operational scale—which is making life easier for patients, reducing suffering, reducing time spent waiting—digital tools have enormous potential,” said Adrienne Boissy, MD, chief experience officer at Cleveland Clinic Health System.
Read full story on the American Medical Association >
Meet the New York doctor who fought coronavirus while pregnant — in a Netflix doc
"Lenox Hill" launched earlier this month and follows the lives of four doctors — including Macri — as they navigate the tightrope of their work and professional lives. But in a special episode, titled "Pandemic," released this week, cameras return to document the doctors as they maneuver through the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City, then the U.S. hot spot of the virus, just as many Americans were beginning to self-isolate at home.
Read full story on the Chicago Tribune >
How One Boston Hospital Built a Covid-19 Forecasting System
The healthcare delivery infrastructure in much of the United States has faced the equivalent of an impending hurricane but without a national weather service to warn us where and when it will hit, and how hard. To build a forecasting model that works at the local level – within a hospital’s service area, for example — the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), relied on an embedded research group, the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, that reports to the CMO and is dedicated to applying rigorous research methods to study healthcare delivery questions.
Read full story on the Harvard Business Review >
MedTech assessor Elektra Labs is offering free evaluations of COVID-19 biosensors to doctors
As COVID-19 cases in the U.S. continue to spike and doctors and researchers try to marshal any and all technological resources to help patients, understand the disease and fight off the spread of the epidemic, one startup that monitors and evaluates medical device technology is offering its services for free so doctors can understand the tools at their disposal. San Francisco-based Elektra Labs was co-founded by a former official at the Food and Drug Administration and a Harvard-trained physician working at Massachusetts General Hospital, to provide clear and accurate assessments of the security, validity and viability of new biosensors coming to market. The company said that it will now make available for free to clinicians and researchers its assessments of medical devices that are pitching symptom monitoring technologies for COVID-19.
Read full story on TechCrunch >
Innovations in Healthcare & Digital Health
New Digital Health Innovations to Zimmer Biomet mymobility® Aim to Transform and Enhance Joint Replacement Standard of Care
The mymobility digital platform is a care management system on a patient’s wrist that uses iPhone and Apple Watch to facilitate a new level of connection between patients and their surgical care teams. By collecting and monitoring objective data about patients’ surgical preparation and recovery, mymobility with Apple Watch helps surgeons deliver better support and guidance to their patients throughout their surgical journey.
Read full story on OrthoSpine News >
How Walgreens leveraged its Microsoft partnership to respond to COVID-19
Amid the surge in coronavirus cases in April, Walgreens leveraged its partnership with Microsoft to roll out a COVID-19 risk assessment tool on its website and mobile app. That risk assessment tool, powered by Microsoft's healthcare bot, runs on Microsoft Azure and helps users assess their risk of COVID-19, based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Walgreens announced its partnership with Microsoft last year to develop new healthcare delivery models, including technology and retail innovations to disrupt the healthcare delivery space.
Read full story on Fierce Healthcare >
How Tech Innovation Can Revive the Economy
Economists will be measuring the impact of the novel coronavirus on the global economy for decades, but each day that emergency rooms and unemployment claims swell brings physical and financial pain to real people right now. The depth of that pain and the uncertainty it introduces into every phase of life suggest that the CARES Act will not be the last stimulus President Donald Trump will sign into law in 2020. From a technology policy perspective, there is a lot to like about the CARES Act. Investments in new medical technologies, including increased access to telehealth services, are a terrific use of taxpayer dollars at a moment to which countless health-care professionals have admirably risen. From a cybersecurity perspective, the act dedicates $400 million to progress in the realm of election security ahead of what stands to be the most unconventional, and perhaps vulnerable, election cycle in US history.
Read full story on the Fair Observer >
Conversa Health raises $12M Series B for its digital health platform
Conversa Health, a Portland, Oregon-based startup that provides a virtual care and communication platform for personalized healthcare, is among these startups. The company today announced that it has raised a $12 million Series B round led by Builders VC and Northwell Ventures, the venture arm of Northwell Health, one of the largest healthcare providers in New York, with 23 hospitals and 800 outpatient facilities. With this round, which also saw the participation of P5 Health Ventures, Nassau Street Ventures, and Ohio’s UH Ventures (the venture arm of Ohio’s University Hospitals), Conversa has now raised a total of over $26 million.
Read full story on TechCrunch >
Digital Health Platform BrightInsight Closes $40 Million
BrightInsight, a provider of the leading global regulated digital health platform for biopharma and medtech, announced that it raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Insight Partners with participation from New Leaf Venture Partners and Eclipse Ventures. This round of funding will drive growth for BrightInsight as it continues to scale its team and platform to meet customer demand. And this funding will enable BrightInsight to achieve a significant scale by accelerating team growth and international availability and enhancing the already robust BrightInsight Platform.
Read full story on Pulse 2.0 >
Kaia Health gets $26M to show it can do more with digital therapeutics
Kaia Health, a digital therapeutics startup which uses computer vision technology for real-time posture tracking via the smartphone camera to deliver human-hands-free physiotherapy, has closed a $26 million Series B funding round. The funding was led by Optum Ventures, Idinvest and capital300 with participation from existing investors Balderton Capital and Heartcore Capital, in addition to Symphony Ventures — the latter in an “investment partnership” with world famous golfer, Rory McIlroy, who knows a thing or two about chronic pain.
Read full story on TechCrunch >
Telehealth News
Covid-19 spurs collaboration in telehealth
The coronavirus pandemic has led to enhanced health-care collaboration, innovation, and increased use of digital technologies. Telehealth enables doctors to safely connect with patients virtually and monitor them remotely, whether in different cities or down the hall. And smarter and smaller medical devices are producing better outcomes for patients—a disruption is sensed, like low blood sugar or a too-rapidly beating heart, and a therapy is applied, in real time.
Read full story on the MIT Technology Review >
Is Virtual Primary Care the Next Big Disrupter in Telehealth?
As the coronavirus pandemic forced healthcare systems and providers to find new ways to deliver care, regulatory and reimbursement barriers lifted. Suddenly, telehealth became the darling of the healthcare delivery toolbox. With new potential unleashed, a question looms about where the next form of disruption in virtual care will occur. Primary care seems poised as an ideal candidate. As the ATA2020 Virtual Conference and Expo winds down its week-long event today, Northwell Health will present its novel model to home-based primary care (HBPC) that employs telehealth as one component of an initiative to provide medical care to frail individuals, helping them remain in their homes longer.
Read full story on Health Leaders Media >
Telehealth Is Just Healthcare Now – One Post-COVID Certainty, Three Reports
As we wrestle with just “what” health care will look like “after COVID,” there’s one certainty that we can embrace in our health planning and forecasting efforts: that’s the persistence of telehealth and virtual care into health care work- and life-flows, for clinicians and consumers alike and aligned. On the provider side of the telehealth equation, telehealth visits fast-scaled between 50 to 175 times pre- and post-COVID’s emergence, McKinsey’s physician survey learned. Most providers also reported they were more comfortable using telehealth post-COVID.
Read full story on Connected Health Pulse >
Digital health stocks are surging because ‘suddenly now we’re in the future’
As companies across the U.S. see plunging demand from two months of economic shutdown and sky-high unemployment, investors are finding comfort in digital health, where the transition to remote services is happening at warp speed. Livongo, Teladoc and One Medical are some of the digital health stocks on a tear as the coronavirus forces patients to seek medical care from home.
How Telehealth Expands Cancer Care Access
Almost everyone knows someone who has been impacted by cancer, and each diagnosis has its own set of challenges. But a problem no cancer patient should have to deal with is whether they can see a doctor who can address their medical needs. Yet the American Society of Clinical Oncology has projected a significant shortage of oncologists in the United States by 2025. And for rural patients needing cancer care, access to an oncologist is limited with 19% of the U.S. population residing in rural areas. In comparison, only 7% of oncologists practice in rural communities. While no one wants to receive a cancer diagnosis, telemedicine can augment care for patients who will ultimately need cancer treatment.
