Gamgee, a stealthy mobile health care startup, raised $2 million in equity funding. The Palo Alto startup does not have a website, but CEO Bob Quinn’s Linkedin suggests the startup is developing an app related to chronic illness.
Voxiva announced the addition of new interactive features to their Text4baby service, which texts expectant mothers content timed to their due date. Subscribers can now access an interactive mobile website with educational content and informational videos.
The U.S. Department of Defense will investigate commercial options for an EHR system instead of developing one based on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ VistA system, Nextgov reported. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel wrote in a memo that he was “convinced” a competitive process was best.
India-based ThinkHealth Services, a mobile health and wellness solutions company launched a mobile health care service named Jivananda in collaboration with Airtel, a cellular services provider, and Jiva Ayurveda, an Ayurvedic medicine company, to provide medical advice to subscribers in small towns and rural areas of the country.
Health care information technology company Healthland acquired American HealthTech, an EHR software provider, to develop a complete EHR solution for hospitals to help reduce re-admissions and improve patient outcomes.
ConsultingMD announced a $10 million funding raise from Venrock. ConsultingMD created a technology platform that creates a “virtual clinic” where expert physicians in the network access a comprehensive digital profile of a patient’s history and medical records to speed and streamline diagnosis.
Scanadu launched an Indiegogo campaign to sell its SCOUT device. The company launched its crowdfunding campaign without FDA 510(k) clearance, with the intention of conducting the usability tests needed to get the clearance via the campaign. Scanadu surpassed its funding goal in a mere three hours.
One of humankind’s oldest battles has been the fight against cancer. Ever since Hippocrates first named the disease after the veined underbelly of the crab, we’ve struggled to understand and eradicate cancer in all its forms. While the day when we can declare our society ‘cancer free’ may still be a long way off, doctors and scientists are devising increasingly novel and effective ways of killing it at early stages. Here we take a look at the cutting edge of cancer treatment, the methods, effectiveness and theory of each new method:
Computer Models
It sounds like something from a Sci-Fi film: a frightening dystopia where our care is devoid of human interaction and reliant on cold, unfeeling machines. But studies show new algorithms used in cutting-edge computer models may be better at diagnosing a course of treatment than the most-seasoned health professional. Over the course of two years, researchers at Maastricht University in The Netherlands monitored the progress of 121 lung cancer patients. In the three cases it was used, the computer model outperformed the experts with a blistering degree of accuracy.
The results are unsurprising: we now know that cancer is a complex thing, its growth dictated by a patient’s genes and a host of other factors. In the same way meteorologists now trust computers to predict weather systems more than their own intuition, we’re starting to realise that cancer is too complicated to be beaten by a harassed professional. The day soon may come when this predictive treatment is the standard method used.
May 16, 2013 - By
Adam Wong, Management and Program Analyst, ONC
ONC, along with the Office of the HHS Chief Technology Officer and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), recently launched the Apps4Tots Health Challenge – a developer challenge to create applications using the new TXT4Tots message library.
Through this challenge, we are calling on developers, researchers, and innovators to use the new TXT4Tots message library by integrating it into new or existing applications that will reach parents and caregivers of young children. There will be a total of $25,000 in prizes awarded to the top three winners, including $17,500 for the first-place challenge winner.
Like TXT4Baby, the TXT4Tots message library can send caregivers appointment reminders, health alerts and parenting advice. The messages provide information about nutrition and physical activity for parents of children between the ages of one and five including:
tips and recipes for healthy snacking, and
ways to encourage physical activity among children through games and play.
While the goal of this app challenge is to integrate the TXT4Tots library and messaging functions into existing or entirely new applications, we aren’t looking for a typical smart phone application. We want to see how the parenting advice content in the TXT4Tots library can be integrated innovatively to reach users. A submission that only delivers the TXT4Tots messages is not enough to win the Challenge.
May 15, 2013 - By
Adam Wong, ONC and Abdul Shaikh, NCI
ONC and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) are challenging app developers to create new tools to help cancer survivors. The new Crowds Care for Cancer: Supporting Survivors Challenge is asking app developers to create new tools meant to help survivors manage their care after they have completed cancer treatment.
HHS has had a series of developer contests that have spawned the creation of tools and apps to help patients and doctors better manage care. Some past app challenges include:
the Million Hearts Risk Check Challenge
the Blue Button Mash Up Challenge, and
the Ensuring Safe Transitions Challenge.
Cancer patients need more care coordination
The number of cancer survivors in the United States is currently estimated at 14 million people. With improvements in cancer screening, diagnosis, and treatment, as well as the aging of the United States, this number is expected to rise.
While celebrating advances in cancer care, there remains a need to help patients manage their health after they have completed their primary treatment. Cancer survivors experience a host of physical and psychosocial long-term and late effects of the disease, and it’s the treatment of this that requires coordinated follow-up care.
Despite significant progress in cancer treatment, the complex and often fragmented state of end-of-treatment care may lead to harmful breakdowns in patient-provider communication. This can result in unmet health care needs. Better communication, data exchange, and care coordination have been shown to help the patients.
HIMSS Media launched an online community dedicated to chronicling new and innovative models of care that improve individual and community well-being, while reducing health care costs. The Future Care community website is supported by IBM and its Smarter Care initiative.
Sorin Group announced that the FDA cleared SmartView, a remote monitoring application for implanted cardiac rhythm management devices. The technology allows physicians whose patients have a Paradym device, Sorin Group’s implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), to monitor them outside of the office.
The White House unveiled policy requirements calling for all federal government agencies to make information resources easily accessible. Data liberation efforts are already underway and have long been a priority for the CMS and ONC.
TrialReach, a UK based clinical trial search platform, raised £2M in Series A funding. The round was led by Octopus Investments along with Amadeus Capital Partners, who previously invested in the company in 2011.
Hunt Psychiatric Innovations recently unveiled MedOptimizer ADD/ADHD, the first app in the planned series of psychiatric apps to convert patients’ experience with medicines into actionable data for doctors.
Day one of Health:Refactored is officially in the books much to the relief of many tired shoulders. After all, there was hardly a panel or speaker who didn’t resort to the tried and true crowd favorite: “Raise your hand if …” And no, the sore shoulders are not a jab at our target audience (read: developers). Rather, the fatigue stemmed from the simple fact that people require a lot more hand raises these days to describe their experiences and occupation(s).
The hand raising got started bright and early with Health 2.0 CEO Indu Subaiya’s opening remarks where she felt out the crowd with a series of questions. Health:Refactored is branded as a conference for designers and developers working in and around the health care space, but it’s hard to tell who exactly makes it into the auditorium for the event.
If Subaiya’s survey is any indication, the Health:Refactored crowd is pretty heavily weighted on the technical and entrepreneurial side with maybe a slightly smaller representation of designers. Attendees also seemed evenly distributed between health care veterans and health care newbies (exciting, welcome new friends!). These buckets were hardly mutually exclusive though as most everyone seems to dabble in business, and the brave seem to dabble in everything.
The questions continued throughout the day, and with the right combination of imagination, lighting, and squinting you could almost see the raised hands shape shifting into ven diagrams. We are software developers and MBAs, but on a broader scale we are patients and stakeholders interested in fundamentally changing the world. All these questions and more were on tap in day one, which revealed the Health:Refactored crowd to be a bunch of chameleons. It’s hard to tell what day two will bring with this crowd, but in the meantime, we should probably all get our shoulders loose …
In preparation for Health:Refactored, our code and design focused conference taking place May 13–14, we sat down with Vice President of Innovation & Engineering at Spaulding Clinical, Brock Heinz. He will present a demo on the panel “Dreaming of Data: Big, Open, & Interoperable – Part I” on May 13. Follow the Health:Refactored speaker interview series here.
Spaulding Clinical is a clinical research organization based in Wisconsin. Heinz discusses the technicalities of making use of and managing clinical trials data. Here he talks about his migration to health care from a more general IT background and how he got over thinking that his lack of experience was a liability. He also gives us his predictions for Pharma 2.0.
Note: there is an audio file embedded in this post. If the player doesn’t appear, try loading the post in a different browser, or listen here.
A new company, Maxwell Health, launched in March in 7 cities to help employers and employees make health insurance decisions from the first step of buying a policy through picking providers to becoming healthier.
The New York Digital Health Accelerator (NYDHA) announced the graduation of its inaugural class at its first annual Demo Day. The eight participants are developing technology solutions in care coordination, patient engagement, and analytics.
A Toronto based pediatrician along with his team, developed a new children’s medication app called Snap’n'Dose. It allows users to take a picture of the drug identification number with their smartphone and calculate the correct dosage for that particular medication based on the child’s height & weight.
The Mount Sinai Medical Center adopted a care-coordination app called Cureatr across the enterprise. This cloud-based mobile app provides a HIPAA-compliant group text messaging system that aims at improving communication between team members coordinating care for patients with complex medical conditions.
Doctor Q&A startup HealthTap raised $24M in Series B funding. The round was led by Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures, who joins the company as an advisor. Other investors include Mayfield Fund and Mohr Davidow Ventures.
In preparation for Health:Refactored, our code and design focused conference taking place May 13–14, we sat down with CEO of Smart Patients Roni Zeiger, MD. His talk “Data and Context” will take place during “Dreaming of Data: Big, Open, & Interoperable – Part II” on May 14. Follow the Health:Refactored speaker interview series here.
Q. Yourparticular segment within this panel is about how an obsession with data can create problems. So now data is getting in our way?How did we get here?
A. I think part of the problem is we’re still not sure what data we need. Being appropriately opportunistic geeks like many of us are, we get good at analyzing the data we have. It’s important to take a step back and remember that in medicine, we still don’t have a very good understanding of exactly how to measure quality.
In preparation for Health:Refactored, our code and design focused conference taking place May 13–14, we sat down with Geoffrey Clapp, founder of Better. He will be speaking on the panel “Scary Acronyms: HIPAA, USPTO, FDA, EHRs” on May 13. Click on each player to hear answers to questions about his current roles and his take on advising, learning, and heeding regulations. Follow the rest of the Health:Refactored speaker interview series here.
You’re a Rock Health advisor as well as a startup founder. Which persona are we going to see on stage? The student or the teacher?
When companies are just starting out, if they’re stepping into uncharted territory, how do they calculate the amount of money they’ll need to dedicate to figuring out all of the regulations?
In preparation for Health:Refactored, our code and design focused conference taking place May 13–14, we sat down with David Chao of MuleSoft. He will be speaking on the panel “Dreaming of Data: Big, Open, & Interoperable – Part I” on May 13. Follow the Health:Refactored speaker interview series here.
David Chao, senior product manager at MuleSoft, Inc., explains how his company effectively helps its customers to connect their systems to other systems. MuleSoft works in several other industries besides health care. Chao said health care’s problem right now is that it’s struggling to play catch up in terms of realizing technology’s value. And even though the field has made progress, it can’t stop now. “The message is very much: APIs are starting to be prevalent in health care, but getting them out is only the first step — there’s still a lot of work to be done in making sure that they are effectively utilized to improve patient outcomes,” Chao said.
Note: there is an audio file embedded in this post. If the player doesn’t appear, try loading the post in a different browser, or listen here.
ONC, along with the Office of the HHS Chief Technology Officer and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), recently launched the Apps4Tots Health Challenge – a developer challenge to create applications using the new TXT4Tots message library.
In preparation for 
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