All posts by THS-admin

We need better engagement, not more apps

As the Chief Experience Officer at the Cleveland Clinic, you might expect Adrienne Boissy to be a champion for the health system’s many mobile apps. But, at the Pop Health Forum in Chicago this week, Boissy took a different tack, arguing that apps by themselves are not a strategy, and can get in the way of a positive patient experience if they’re not deployed smartly.

mobihealthnews

Study finds patients often misuse wrist blood pressure monitors, leading to inaccurate readings

Not all blood pressure monitors are created equal, it seems. New research from Italy suggests that at-home, wrist blood pressure cuffs can be inaccurate if not done exactly right, leading to false reports of elevated blood pressure at home when compared to measurements taken in a doctor’s office.

mobihealthnews

Apple will now start screening medical and health apps more closely

Apple just released updated App Store Review Guidelines, and there are tremendous implications for the medical and health apps in the iOS App Store.

The changes they are announcing contain the most stringent language I have ever seen Apple use for the health and medical categories of apps. Frankly — these are a long time coming. The FDA recently updated guidelines on health apps, but this is definitely a bigger deal as Apple is the gateway for these apps.

iMedicalApps

How Nighttime Telehealth Services Can Improve Overnight Care

In hospitals across the country, the image of the solitary doctor making midnight rounds is changing, thanks to telemedicine.

That doctor now sits in front of a tablet, laptop or desktop computer, perhaps at home or even in another country. And he or she can be connected to several hospitals via a telemedicine network, helping night shift nurses with whatever needs to be done during those long, not-always-quiet hours between dinner and breakfast.

mHealthIntelligence

Bosch shutters pioneering telehealth service Health Buddy, US-based unit

Even though telemedicine seems to be having its day in the sun, with Teladoc’s forthcoming IPO and major funding for MDLive, Doctor on Demand, and American Well, one of the oldest, earliest telemedicine companies is shutting down. Bosch has officially closed its US subsidiary Robert Bosch Healthcare, reducing the scope its healthcare operations to a 50-person team based in Germany.

MobiHealthNews

Teladoc Secures Second Consecutive Win in Patent Dispute

Teladoc, Inc. (NYSE: TDOC), the nation’s first and largest telehealth provider, today announced the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has invalidated the major elements of a telemedicine patent held by American Well Corporation on the basis that they were not patentable because American Well did not invent them. The USPTO took this action at the request of Teladoc. At issue before the USPTO were the same elements of the American Well patent that a Massachusetts federal court declared invalid earlier this year on a separate basis.

Business Wire

Telehealth Growth, Savings Tied to Parity Laws

Telehealth will only succeed if providers are reimbursed at the same rate as in-person care.

That’s the conclusion drawn from a health policy brief developed by Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It argues that the nation’s move from volume-based to value-based healthcare will be accomplished only if providers can be assured of delivering high-value care at a lower cost – and that’s what telehealth promises.

mHealth Intelligence

ACOs reward big hospitals, but small practices, using mobile tech, are best bet to cut healthcare costs

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a point-counterpoint set of opinion pieces yesterday on whether ACOs, as an experiment, should be declared a failure. Massachusetts General physician Dr. Zirui Song and Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy Director Elliot Fisher argued for ACOs by pointing to the shades of grey between different types of ACOs and suggesting ways to focus future ACO efforts. But the anti-ACO contingent, Drs. Kevin Schulman and Barak Richman of Duke University Schools of Medicine and Law respectively, argued that the concept was fundamentally flawed, and that mobile and telehealth tools were central to their reason why.

mobihealthnews