This week in Santa Clara marked the 10th anniversary for Health 2.0, a health tech conference held every year in Silicon Valley to explore the progress being made in the digital health space and the challenges that remain. MobiHealthNews was onsite all four days of the conference and below we’ve rounded up our coverage of the event, plus quite a few presentations and bits of news that didn’t make the newsletter earlier this week.
Snake oil revisited
Though the buzz has finally started to fade from the news cycle, Health 2.0 cofounder Matthew Holt couldn’t resist bringing American Medical Association CEO James Madara on stage to take him to task for his now famous “snake oil” comments from the spring.
“Last year, you sat here in this chair and you were super nice to us,” Holt joked. “Then, I’m on my vacation in Vietnam and my Twitter feed starts blowing up with this snake oil stuff. Do you love us or do you hate us?”
Madara responded that “there is love and there is hate”, citing the AMA’s work with Omada Health as an example of a digital health intervention he loved and the troublingly inaccurate blood pressure app Instant Blood Pressure as one he hated.
“Why raise a siren now with this intentionally used term ‘snake oil’? The reason now is I think we’re in a period of criticality for [digital health]. The criticality is that there’s no regulatory framework. I think digital health is going to be part of the transformation of healthcare. But if this is so important for healthcare, does anyone think that it’s going to continue to be unregulated?”
Madara thinks the industry needs self-regulation of apps and connected devices that’s robust enough that HHS will grant legitimacy to those efforts. He thinks relying too heavily on the FDA could result in regulations that are “heavy-handed, they overreach, and they’re one-size-fits-all”.
But also … snake bites?
One of the most interesting presentations at the pre-conference pharma roundtable was from Deloitte, which contracted with pharma company BTG to create Snakebite 911, an app to help users avoid snake bites and respond effectively in the event of a snake bite. BTG makes Crofab, an antivenom for North American pit viper bites.
Matthew Guest, head of digital strategy consulting at Deloitte, talked about how using a lean startup methodology helped BTG develop the app on a faster product cycle than the company was used to, and how a good understanding of the customer’s needs and behaviors informed the development.
“This one’s all about understanding your customers as human beings,” he said. “The snake tracker was very controversial, because we didn’t want people going to find snakes. That would probably have led to good use of the drug, but it’s not really the outcome we were looking for.”
Health 2.0 move over, Health 3.0 is here
A few days before the conference, healthcare investor Dave Chase and athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush teamed up to pen an editorial arguing that Health 1.0 — healthcare before computers was inefficient, but healthcare today (Health 2.0) has lost the human touch and made doctors spend too much time in service of EMRs and documentations. The next era in healthcare, they argue, will combine the best aspects of the two, and make technology serve patient care, rather than the other way around.
Bush took the stage on Wednesday and expounded on some more of the specifics of that idea, saying that it would take large EHR vendors committing to a real connectivity to allow the real value of digital health technologies to scale.
“You’ve got all these ideas, you do the demos, they make sense,” he said. “But they don’t explode, they don’t lift off. I think people will get out of enterprise software or the enterprise software companies will remake themselves. You’re already seeing the Mad Hatter talking about pulling the various instances of Epic together, making it more of a network. As that happens, that concept of an internet makes the ability to really blow out, to make money quickly a possibility in healthcare.”
Karen DeSalvo on the digital health revolution
The shift of government, the private sector and consumers of coming together to tackle the biggest problems in healthcare is starting to show, and the best indication is the innovation in digital health. But in order to do more, all parties must continue working together and providing opportunities in the form of policies, partnerships and information. That was the takeaway from a speech by Karen DeSalvo, HHS’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Health, at Health 2.0.
“We’ve seen some historic changes in the last eight years,” said DeSalvo. “And I think sometimes we begin to take them for granted, but it’s been an incredible opportunity to really put people first and recognize that they are at the center of all of this.” More
Hospital CIOs talk innovation
CIO is something of a loaded acronym in healthcare these days. Whether your “I” stands for information or innovation can be perceived as a marker of the progressiveness of your organization. But is that fair? At the Health 2.0 pre-conference provider summit in Santa Clara yesterday, two chief innovation officers and a chief information officer went back and forth on the terminology, and how innovation looks in their organizations.
Though Rasu Shrestha holds the title of chief innovation officer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, he’s skeptical about the accuracy of the title.
“Calling someone a chief innovation officer versus a chief information officer I think in many ways is redundant in today’s day and age,” Shrestha said. “The evolving definition of the ‘I’ in CIO is emblematic of where we are as an industry. Innovation doesn’t belong in anyone’s silo. Innovation happens everywhere, and to have one person tasked with innovation is basically telling a lie across the institution.”
Shrestha was joined on stage by Cedars Sinai’s Darren Dworkin and New York Presbyterian’s Peter Fleischut on a panel that covered more than just nomenclature. More
Digital health VCs want entrepreneurs to get real, make plans
This year has proven to be a time of reckoning for digital health funding, with few IPOs living up to their expectations, venture capital funds becoming more selective, and scrutiny of startups increasing, said a panel of investors at Health 2.0 in Santa Clara. That said, however, money is still flowing into the industry, but expect a shift in the next year, with more private-to-private mergers and acquisitions to combine technology and a demand for companies to prove their worth earlier in the game.
Anchored by Lisa Suennen of Venture Valkyrie, the panel discussed what trends they are seeing, what they want to see more of, and what steps entrepreneurs should be taking before they even approach VCs. A show of hands revealed that a solid 40 people in the audience were entrepreneurs, and the VCs didn’t mince words when addressing the crowd. More
Pharma’s necessary culture shifts to embrace digital
The future of pharma is going to involve some major culture shifts for a business that has long been focused on slow development cycles, proprietary molecules, and close-held secrets. That’s the word from representatives from Bayer, Boehringer Ingelheim, Healthware International and BTG, a group that ran the gamut from small to big pharma at Pharma Roundtable onsite at Health 2.0 in Santa Clara. The first culture shift for pharma is one that’s often discussed: the industry needs to find ways to innovate in an iterative, lean startup way to figure out what works in the new world of digital. More
EHR survey results
Health 2.0 shared the results of a survey on EHRs and interoperability, which you can view on Slideshare here. The big takeaway from that survey of 100 or so vendor types was that, other than athenahealth and Allscripts most EHRs scored overwhelmingly low on questions like “Would you say vendors were generally supportive of your integration efforts?” and “Overall, would you say EHR vendors helped or hindered the integration process?”
The talk of the town: VR
Between Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, and Samsung Gear VR, the hardware for first generation virtual reality is here. And innovators in the healthcare space are starting to explore a range of interesting applications for it. Most prominent at the conference was the work of appliedVR, which partner Cedars-Sinai’s director of Health Services Research Brennan Speigel presented from the main stage.
AppliedVR is using virtual reality to relieve pain and distract patients, whether it’s a video game to distract patients from pain during a procedure, or virtual environments to help bed-ridden patients escape the stress of being in the hospital.
Josh Sackman, president of AppliedVR, presented at a special session on VR technologies. He said that even though games like Super Mario have been shown to have some therapeutic effect when it comes to reducing surgery anxiety, there are many benefits to building a game just for health.
“Why not just any game you can download off the app store? One is the concept of continuous engagement,” he said, explaining that games with a pause in the action can give patients too much time to think about their pain. “Two is usability. If I’m stuck in a hospital bed, I might have an IV on my arm, I might have limited mobility. Healthcare skews older, and people recently under anesthesia might be more prone to motion sickness and nausea. So there’s a lot of really specific design considerations.”
Osso VR and SAS Revinax, two other presenters in the VR session, are building virtual training tools for surgeons that allow them to put in many more hours of simulated training without endangering any patients, or to watch an experienced surgeon perform the surgery from an immersive, first-person viewpoint.
Children’s hospitals team up to face unique challenges
Impact Pediatric is an association of children’s hospitals that has come together the past two years at South by Southwest to participate in a high-profile startup pitch competition. Boston Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati Children’s, Texas Children’s Hospital, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital (part of Stanford), and Seattle Children’s make up the group.
At Health 2.0, representatives from several of those hospitals talked about innovation and why they chose to come together to form Impact.
“Pediatrics can often get overlooked,” Mike Pistone, director of marketing, innovation and commercialization at Cincinnati Children’s, said. “It’s not just a small market but we deal with small patients and they have unique needs. So we thought it was time to come together in a really unprecedented manner to identify the best technologies.”
Because there are relatively few dedicated children’s hospitals and they do have higher standards for many kinds of pilots because of the age of their patients, innovators aren’t always as interested in pitching them, panelists said. In addition, technology that has proven efficacy in adults has to be proven separately with children. The pitch competition created an incentive to design and develop for children’s health.
More pharma voices
More and more big pharma companies are showing up at these digital-focused events to talk about their digital strategy. In addition to regular attendee Boehringer Ingelheim, this year’s pharma roundtable saw presentations from Bayer, BTG, Eli Lilly, and Bristol Myers Squibb.
Lilly’s VP for drug delivery innovation Justin Wright talked about the company’s new approach to innovating drug delivery in its new Boston office. Though he didn’t dive into specifics he did talk about how the company is working with Mad*Pow on design for some wraparound digital offerings.
Elizabeth Turcotte, director of the patient hub at Bristol Myers Squibb, spoke about the company’s Universal Patient Language initiative at UPL.org, which provides a set of online tools for pharma companies to help them improve communication with patients so it is both clear and meets regulatory guidelines.
“We think of patients as subjects in clinical trials,” she said. “And the reality is, the world has really moved on to thinking of them as partners. Even though I think it’s a wonderful development, there is a huge gap that exists today. Nobody’s really teaching us how to play that role.”
The time is right for sleep technology to advance
Sleep – the final frontier, or so it seems in digital health. While everybody needs sleep and plenty want to know more about how to do it the best they can, tools to improve sleep and, in turn, improve health have moved decidedly slower than other digital health innovations like activity trackers. But that’s changing, said a panel of sleep experts and sleep tracking device and app makers at Health 2.0.
“The power of the sleep message has been blunted for years, because we haven’t really had a metric,” said David Cloud, CEO of the National Sleep Foundation. “To the extent that we can measure sleep, we can drive behavior change, and with that, unlock the true power of sleep and its connection to health.” More
Tech companies present methods of chronic disease management
Chronic disease management not only eats up upwards of 85 percent of US healthcare spending, it also accounts for seven out of 10 US deaths per year. So innovation in this sector is critical, but must take many forms, a panel of digital health companies said at Health 2.0.
“We can quote, all day, stats for chronic disease spending, and if we don’t work to reverse this trend, that amount will quadruple by 2023,” said moderator Dr. Bonnie Feldman.
Featuring representatives from Livongo, MyHealthTeams, Health Decision Technology, Wellness Layers and Sensely, the panel discussed the myriad ways they are working to reverse the financial and physical toll of chronic disease management. For some, it’s taking what has proven to be successful in fostering relationships: social media and dating sites. More
Mobile health first aid kit, VR and more digital health tools
What does the next generation health consumer look like? If you ask the folks at Health 2.0 in Santa Clara, it depends on the technology you give them to make healthy choices. In a session at focused on the consumerization and disruption of traditional care models, we heard from several providers, startups and established medical device makers on the new digital health tools they are equipping consumers with. More
Medtronic gets ready to launch SugarIQ
Medtronic announced the first test cohort of its Sugar.IQ app, created in collaboration with IBM Watson. Sugar.IQ, which could help with that piece of the puzzle of how to create a closed loop “artificial pancreas” system. Originally announced at CES, the app is now a more or less finished product and will shortly began testing in its first 100 or so users, people with diabetes out in the world, not in a clinic setting. More
Johnson & Johnson shows off orthopedic surgery support app
In past years, Johnson & Johnson has shown off the consumer side of its digital health business with things like 7 Minute Workout and Care4Today. But the company is working in the digital space across the healthcare spectrum. At Health 2.0, they showed off an offering from Johnson & Johnson Health and Wellness Solutions, based on learnings from the Human Performance Institute, a 2008 acquisition. It’s an app that helps people undergoing knee replacements prepare for their surgery through video coaching, social support tools, task lists, and reminders.
“So the first goal is to make people feel connected to a community — to take something cold, clinical and scary and make it connected,” Stuart McGuigan, CIO at J&J, said from the stage. “You really have to have the person at the center. Everything else is peripheral. Have you helped them adjust to their new life? If we’ve done that, we’ve done something very powerful.”
Welkin Health powers work of Community Health Center Network
As part of an initiative from Health 2.0’s Technology for Healthy Communities, a Medi-Cal managed care organization will get an infusion of digital health tools to better serve their at-risk community. The San Leandro-based Community Health Center Network is partnering with San Francisco-based Welkin Health, which specializes in patient relationship management through messaging services and workflow organization. Announced at Health 2.0 in Santa Clara, the partnership will work to develop a case management platform to leverage the success of CHCN’s Care Neighborhood Program, a comprehensive outreach program supporting the at-risk populations in the East Bay Area. More
StartUp Health opens Colorado program
StartUp Health launched its second regional affiliate program, following the launch of a Finland-focused program in May. The new program is closer to home for StartUp Health, as the accelerator is launching a Colorado group.
“We are proud to see the launch of StartUp Health Colorado and welcome its global community of Health Transformers,” Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper said in a statement. “We’re seeing innovators flock to Colorado because there’s no better region for entrepreneurs to invent and grow.” More
Beyond Verbal opens research platform
Israel-based Beyond Verbal, which makes voice recognition software to analyze human emotion, is now moving its work into health and wellness with the launch of the Beyond mHealth Research platform. The goal is to identify physiological markers through the voice that may indicate various health related issues.
Researchers can now integrate Beyond Verbal's API into any type of application and correlate it other life events, leveraging the existing AI tools as well as the expertise of its data science team to gain new insight into unique vocal biomarkers. When a new biomarker is discovered, the research platform will guide partners on the path to scaling up their findings. The platform also offers a HIPAA compliant app that collects participants’ data and a secure web interface to facilitate data sharing. More
Medable launches Axon
Palo Alto-based healthcare app and analytics platform Medable announced the launch of Axon, a SmartStudy system that enables researchers to create and deploy ResearchKit app for clinical trials or research studies on their own, without having to work with a developer. More
Clarify wins HHS, AARP award
AARP and the Department of Health and Human Services put out a challenge called the “A Bill You Can Understand” Design and Innovation Challenge, asking for technological solutions to help people understand complex medical bills. The winner was announced at Health 2.0.
Here’s a description of the winner, a prototype called Clarify, from a statement by design firm Sequence, which made the winning app: “Clarify aims to connect patients, providers, and payers together in one place, to eliminate the confusion of three-way transactions. This enables consumers to access previously unpublished service fees, giving them a clearer snapshot of their costs and coverage – before service is rendered. They can pay directly through the app at the time of service or they can pay in advance, while scheduling an appointment, another feature of the app. Providers see fewer missed payments, resulting in improved cash flow and better patient relationships. And by reducing paperwork and policy confusion, payers save money and increase customer retention.”
Takeda picks winners in depression app challenge
Another challenge, from global pharma company Takeda, asked entrants to design innovations for patients living with Major Depressive Disorder. EllieGrid, a smart pill box that communicates with an app on the patient's phone to help improve adherence through text and visual message prompts, took home first prize.
