Digital Health News Roundup
Can digital technologies help "Uber" healthcare? Read More
Johnson & Johnson's venture arm is investing in neuromodulation as an alternative to opioids to manage chronic pain. Neuromodulation sends mild electric pulses to targeted nerves as a form of therapy. MedCity News
Payers and providers need internal cultural transformation & external innovations for health consumerism to take hold. This article discusses the critical difference between access and accessibility, i.e. access to federal or state exchanges versus the ability to get care when it is needed. Read More
Patient engagement will be a $39B market by 2024, driven by partly by mobile health. "Key end-users of this sector are payers, providers, and individual users. The individual users are projected to register marked growth attributable to the increasing use of mobile healthcare. However, the providers held the largest share in 2015 and are poised to exhibit a rapid growth pace with a CAGR of over 22 percent." MobiHealth News
Walgreens is partnering with HealthPrize Technologies to create a game-like experience for customers to spur them to adhere to their medication and Rx-refill regimens. Read More
Stories are infinitely more powerful than statistics. This is why storytelling is critical for health and digital health companies. Jennifer Maer of IDEO writes about the power of stories in healthcare. Read More
Why is healthcare design for device and drug companies so bad? FastCo
Hospitals are partnering with Uber to transport people and solve the problems with missed appointments. The Atlantic
1 in 4 Americans have refilled in Rx through smartphones. Nearly 3 in 4 people said they would like to fill their Rx through a smartphone. MobiHealth News
Startups like Whoop, Indigo Agriculture, and Moderna Therapeutics are helping us live longer. Learn how these startups are changing the way we live. CNN
Stanford to investigate using VR as a psychiatric treatment for conversion disorder. MobiHealth News
Aetna is planning to withdraw from 11 or 15 states where it offers care through health exchanges. WSJ
A TechCrunch article predicts that VC investment in digital health will flow to provider and pharma enablement, starting in the latter half of 2016. Read More
Is Apple launching a new digital health device? Rumors suggest that the company may be set to release a device that will collect heart rate, pulse, blood sugar changes, and other info. Read More
Four factors are having a major influence on the wearables market: cognitive coaching, internet of things, optoelectronics, and smart fabrics. Read More
Physician owned practices are spending over $32,000 per doctor annually on health IT, according to MGMA. Read More
MobiHealth News provides a fantastic analysis of public company quarterly reports focused on digital health trends. They look at companies like FitBit, Fossil, WebMD, Garmin, Teledoc, Under Armour and Castlight Health. Read More
Elon Musk is known for a lot of things, but being a digital health pioneer is not one of them. However, driverless cars will soon be considered one of the most important points-of-care due to the large amount of idle time people will soon be spending in vehicles. As healthcare shifts from treatment to prevention, this point of care possibility will be even more likely. Read More
Last Week
The Harvard Business Review published an article on the next wave of hospital innovation that is making patients safer. The focus has shifted to 'high reliability organizing,' which means attention to frontline practices, leadership support for responding to and learning from errors, and a cultural shift toward teamwork and care coordination. Read More
TechCrunch writes that "fitness trackers on their own are unlikely to encourage true behavior change." True behavior change will more likely come from financial burden, prolonged waiting periods, and provider and insurer promotion of technologies. Read More
Hospitals are becoming more shift driven, which means more shift changes, known as handoffs in the industry. A new study published in JAMA shows that digital health tools and EHRs reduce the number of medical errors during these shift changes. Read More
Medical Futurist lists 20 incredible medical technology advances, including optogenetics, RFID skin chips, tooth embedded sensors, artificial intelligence assistance, and genomics. Read More
Why do digital health startups fail? Geoff Clap talks about the problems of attaining funding, getting paying customers, working within the large number of market segments in healthcare, and being too flexible with satisfying the needs of customers. Read More
Esther Dyson of EDventure Holdings and Robert Mitendorff of Northwest Venture Partners discuss why health tech has grabbed the attention of VCs. Watch
Accolade raised $70M in Series E funding to expand their healthcare navigation platform. Andreesen Horowitz led the round. Read More
