Telehealth Monitor

INDIANAPOLIS – A large study of ethnically and racially diverse individuals with diabetes has found that home telemonitoring of their health resulted in significantly fewer deaths than in a similar group that was not monitored. Diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.

The study of 387 diabetics and 387 individuals without diabetes appears in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare.

The researchers, led by Neale Chumbler, Ph.D., professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis’s School of Liberal Arts and a Regenstrief Institute research scientist, used home telemonitoring technology to support timely transmission of diabetics’ symptoms and health status at least once a day to a nurse coordinator who managed the process and acted upon the information when necessary or when requested by the patient.

“People want the freedom to remain in their homes. Telehealth appears to provide a safety net that will allow some of them – such as the growing number of individuals with diabetes – to age in place and to live where they want to live,” said Dr. Chumbler, a medical sociologist who studies access to care and is associate chief of the Center of Excellence on Implementing Evidence-based Practice at the Roudebush VA Medical Center in Indianapolis.

Unless diabetes symptoms are closely monitored, the risk of death from the disease increases significantly. Approximately 25 percent of VA patients have diabetes.

The telemonitoring study, which followed VA patients with diabetes for four years, also provided educational resources to trial participants. “This study demonstrates the effectiveness of chronic care management for diabetes and the feasibility of using telehealth to carry it out,” said Dr. Chumbler.

The magnitude and significance of home telehealth effects on mortality for those with diabetes had not previously been demonstrated. This new study contributes to the growing list of scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of care monitoring for a variety of chronic conditions. “Telemonitoring may be one of the most effective and cost effective ways of helping individuals avoid constant visits to their doctor’s office or hospitalization.”

via Telehealth for diabetes promotes aging at home, not in the hospital.

Minneapolis, MN (PRWEB) March 19, 2009 — Attendees at the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Annual Meeting will have the opportunity to see American TeleCare’s new cellular option for establishing telehealth connectivity.

WHO: American TeleCare, Inc. (ATI), the leader in the development and application of video-based telehealth solutions to advance medical care for patients at home.

WHAT: ATI LifeView™ Telehealth Patient Station with a 3G WWAN router. This establishes an ethernet-to-3G wireless connection with Virtual Private Network (VPN) security to ATI System servers and Provider Stations. Thus, ATI will present how it can utilize wireless cellular services to connect patients and health care providers for telehealth.

WHEN: April 26-28, 2009.

WHERE: The American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Annual Meeting at the Rio All-Suites Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nev. American TeleCare will be located at booth #300.

WHY: Today, patient information in telehealth systems is transmitted to system servers using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology over plain old telephone lines (POTS) or wired broadband connections, including Digital Subscriber Lines (DSLs). Health care organizations need a WWAN option. “We have a large customer that every week has to turn away 30 patients who don’t have a landline phone or broadband access at home,” said Jan Wuorenma, R.N., B.S.N., M.B.A., vice president, partner development, American TeleCare, Inc. “Cellular technology makes telehealth connected care possible for these patients.”

ATI SOLUTION OVERVIEW: The ATI inLife™ system features compact, easy-to-use Patient Stations that gather and send information from health status questions answered by patients as well as objective clinical data from integrated medical peripherals (including blood pressure monitors and blood glucose meters). Narrated instructions with answer verification complement multi-media instructions to guide patients through their telehealth tasks. Individualized patient education and self-care instruction are integrated within the flow of patients’ tasks. A dashboard display presented on the system’s Provider Stations color-codes summaries of each patient’s current health risk status. Clinicians can set specific thresholds for each patient to red flag significant changes, and they can also access the details of monitored physiological data and patient-reported information. In addition to remote patient monitoring via supported communications technologies (now including cellular), ATI’s LifeView™ system offers electronic stethoscope options and interactive video. With LifeView, providers can conduct televisits to further assess patients at home and intervene with timely medical care.

ARTICLES FOR ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

“Telehealth Connected Care”, Health Management Technology (March 2009)

“The Value of Video: Nurses’ Perspectives on Televisits”, Home Care Automation Report (February 18, 2009)

“Case Studies: Two Agencies Report Positive Telehealth Outcomes”, Home Care Automation Report (February 4, 2009)

ABOUT AMERICAN TELECARE: Founded in 1993, American TeleCare (ATI) is the pioneer of intelligent monitoring and video-based telehealth technology. With proven experience in clinical process re-engineering, ATI works with leading healthcare organizations to put their patients at the center of care teams and supports them with best-in-class solutions. ATI systems connect continuous healing relationships and deliver essential information for clinical and self care. Ongoing monitoring and constant care of patients at home keeps them connected to clinical expertise and helps prevent acute events. The results: 100-200 percent increases in provider productivity and 65-95 percent reductions in emergency room and inpatient costs — achieved as care teams help physicians watch over, improve and maintain their patients’ health. For more information, visit americantelecare.com. Then call 800-323-6667.

via American TeleCare to Present its Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) Option for Cellular Telehealth Connectivity at the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) Annual Meeting .

Although industry conferences are great in theory, the actual content is typically lacking and fails to result in new insights. So in response to HP’s Health and Life Sciences Symposium, Datamonitor suggests three ‘insane ideas’ in healthcare IT – telehealth, self-diagnosis and personal health records – that it believes, if adopted, would help companies to succeed when the economy turns around.

Datamonitor believes that the three ideas covered in this analysis represent innovations in technology that are likely to help define healthcare practice and delivery going forward. Given the economic crisis and the focus on healthcare in the US stimulus package, now is the time for companies to think big, and the organizations that are most innovative during this period will be best positioned once the economy recovers. Thus, while the following ideas may seem crazy to readers today, they reflect pivotal changes in the healthcare space in years to come.

Telehealth is for everyone, not just the elderly

Telehealth is the use of IT to diagnose, treat and/or monitor a patient in a different physical location than the expert providing care. It is currently only targeted towards a segment of acute care and long-term care patients but Datamonitor expects it to be used throughout the healthcare system in the future, in order to improve efficiencies.

Elderly patients with conditions such as congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes are considered prime telehealth candidates, particularly after an acute episode. However, Datamonitor believes that in the near- to mid-term the adoption of telehealth will expand into other areas of healthcare including primary care and outpatient care, and in the mid-to long-term, telehealth uptake will include the healthy population. Telehealth will be a normal part of healthcare, not a separate type of care for a small segment of the population, as it is predominately viewed now.

via Innovations in healthcare technology: telehealth, patient self-diagnosis and personal health records – IT & Software .

Inside the Veterans Affairs TeleHealth Clinic in Craig, veterans can sit down and talk with their physician about any medical problems they have. The physician can check the patient’s heartbeat, listen to lungs and check for warning signs of skin cancer —from Grand Junction or Denver.

The TeleHealth Clinic, which recently was selected as a “Site of Excellence,” uses specialized equipment to have video conferencing in Craig with a physician several hours away.

To highlight the advantages of using the TeleHealth technology, Tom Feliu, of Rocket Media Group in Fairfax, Va., and his film crew taped a documentary about the clinic in Craig. They began filming Wednesday at the clinic.

Feliu said the reason behind the film is to get veterans who wouldn’t otherwise consider using this technology to take advantage of it.

“We want to focus on the people who have used it and know that it works,” he said.

Rocket Media Group has worked for the VA before, filming documentaries about technology. The documentary about the TeleHealth Clinic will be shown to veterans living in rural communities throughout the country and as a promotional tool.

Craig was the third location for the film, after Buffalo, N.Y., and Puerto Rico.

via Craig Daily Press / Documentary features Craig TeleHealth Clinic.

Baton Rouge on Thursday became the second city in the United States to implement a telemedicine program that allows doctors to treat patients en route to the emergency room, city-parish officials said.

Initially, the specially equipped ambulance will communicate only with Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, but plans call for the program to be expanded to all seven major area hospitals with federal Homeland Security funds, said Chad Guillot, assistant director of Emergency Medical Services.

Our Lady of the Lake was selected for the pilot program because it already uses a hard-wired telemedicine system to monitor intensive-care patients from a central location, he said.

The ambulance in the “BR Med-Connect” program will use the same wireless mesh network that police are using for their new high-tech surveillance system, which includes not only video cameras but shot-spotters that detect the origin of gunshots.

via 2theadvocate.com | News | BR implements telemedicine program — Baton Rouge, LA.

Co-CEO Erez Alroy: SHL will remain largely unaffected by the economic downturn.

SHL Telemedicine Ltd. (SWX: SHLTN) today published its financial report for the fourth quarter and full year of 2008. The remote medical monitoring company moved into the black and expects further improvement in its results in 2009, despite the recession.

For the sake of comparison, SHL used 2007 figures which exclude the results of its US operations, Raytel Cardiac Services Ltd., which were sold in late 2007 to Royal Philips Electronics NV (AEX: PHG).

via SHL Telemedicine moves to profit.

A former Fort Collins psychiatrist has pleaded no contest in California to practicing medicine without a California license and faces a possible year in jail.

Christian Hageseth III, M.D., who still lives in Fort Collins, will be sentenced April 17 in a San Mateo County court. Hageseth, 68, had been facing a possible three-year sentence and a $10,000 fine. He has been free on $100,000 bond.

Hageseth was charged with prescribing a generic antidepressant medication in 2005 to John McKay, a 19-year-old student at Stanford University, via an Internet pharmacy Web site. McKay, who had a history of mental illness and alcohol abuse, later committed suicide and traces of the drug were found in his system.

Carleton Briggs, Hageseth’s attorney, said his client pled to the charge mostly due to health considerations. “A major reason was his health,” Briggs said. “He just had open-heart surgery and this was literally killing him.”

Prosecutors argued that Hageseth needed to have a California license before he could prescribe medications for a person living in that state. A trial had been scheduled for April 20.

Briggs said he believed the case has been precedent-setting even though it did not go to trial. “For the first time in the English-speaking world a doctor is being jailed for prescribing medicine across state lines without a license,” he said. “I think this effectively eliminates telemedicine nationwide.” 

via Northern Colorado Business Report – Business News Focused on Northern Colorado.

Floyd Perdue has a buddy.

A Health Buddy that is.

Perdue, who suffers from a chronic lung disease and congestive heart failure, used to make numerous trips to the hospital or doctor’s office for a checkup or to have his vital signs monitored. But ever since his Health Buddy moved into his Jeffersonville home, those trips are no longer necessary.

Perdue’s buddy takes all of his vital signs each day and asks important questions concerning his health issues.

“I love it; it has kept me out of the hospital,” he said. “If something is wrong, they will call me right back.”

The Health Buddy is a small box which sits on Perdue’s kitchen table. The push-button telemedicine device plugs into a telephone jack and sends all his information to Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services.

via The News and Tribune – Floyd Memorial Hospital Health Buddy provides medical care through telemedicine in Southern Indiana.

St. Vincent’s Homecare implemented a remote monitoring project in which researchers studied whether the telehome health patients exhibit enhanced clinical outcomes and patient perceptions of telehome healthcare. Fifty congestive heart failure patients n = 50 participated in this program. Data collection included pre and post Outcome and Assessment Information Set items, 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey and Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire, and data from patient charts were used to capture demographic information. In addition, interviews were conducted in order to assess overall perceptions and attitudes. Results indicate significant changes occurring among respondents in three important aspects that impact their quality of life, namely, physical, behavioral, and emotional improvements. Specifically, statistical significance was documented at the 0.05 level regarding improvement for home telehealth patients in shortness of breath, management of oral medications, ability to engage in moderate activities, amount of energy, swelling in legs/ankles, need to sit/lie down during day, fatigue, need for hospitalization, side effects from treatment, and worry. Additionally, patients found the service easy to use and perceived the care they received via telehealth to be as good as regular in-person care.

via Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. – Telemedicine and e-Health – 152:148.

Frost & Sullivan Names Intel® Health Guide Home Health Device Product of the Year

Intel Recognized for Innovation in Health Care and the Advancement of Better Communications between Patients and their Care Teams

SAN FRANCISCO, March 18, 2009 – Frost & Sullivan today recognized the Intel® Health Guide, a management tool designed for health care professionals who manage patients with chronic conditions, with the 2009 North American Home Health Devices Product of the Year Award. The distinction, which will be presented tonight at Frost & Sullivan’s Excellence in Medical Technologies & Life Sciences Awards Banquet, is given each year to the company that has demonstrated excellence in new product development and introductions within its industry.

The Intel Health Guide received 510(k) market clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in July and has been available since the end of 2008. The comprehensive personal health system combines an in-home patient device — the Intel® Health Guide PHS6000 — with an online interface — the Intel® Health Care Management Suite — allowing clinicians to monitor patients in their homes and manage care remotely.

Frost & Sullivan said it recognized Intel’s advances in innovative technology and care management in the health care space. The Health Guide integrates the work of social scientists, human factors engineers and interface design experts to create tools to offer more personalized and efficient management of chronic health conditions in the home.

“The Intel Health Guide symbolizes technology revolution in health care, allowing a higher standard of patient care,” said Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Aarti Shetty. “A powerful care management tool comprising a suite of intelligent capabilities, it has set the ball rolling for modern marvels in patient monitoring by allowing patient-physician interaction via Intel’s multi-faceted telehealth platform.”

“The Intel Health Guide is the result of years of ethnographic research into the needs of the worldwide aging population,” said Mariah Scott, director of sales and marketing, Intel Digital Health Group. “By combining our research with our technology expertise, we are uniquely poised to address the challenges of today’s health care environment. It is an honor to be recognized by Frost & Sullivan for the Intel Health Guide, our first in a series of products that will help extend care from the hospital to the home.”

To choose the recipient of this award, the Frost & Sullivan analyst team tracks all new product launches, R&D spending, products in development, and new product features and modifications each year. This is accomplished through interviews with market participants, and extensive secondary and technology research. All new product launches and products in development in each company are compared and evaluated based on their degree of innovation and customer satisfaction. Frost & Sullivan then presents the award to the company ranked No. 1 in overall product success.

The Health Guide promotes greater patient engagement and more efficient care management by enabling communication between patients and health care professionals and providing clinicians with access to the most current, actionable data. The guide offers interactive tools for personalized care management and includes vital sign collection, patient reminders, surveys, multimedia educational content, and feedback and communications tools such as video conferencing and alerts. Clinicians have ongoing access to data so that they can better manage each patient’s conditions while patients benefit from customized care in the comfort of their own home.

More information is available at www.intel.com/go/healthguide.

About Intel

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom and blogs.intel.com.

via Frost & Sullivan Names Intel® Health Guide Home Health Device Product of the Year.

Project E-vita Telehealth. More than just monitoring.

You can now get a complete, hosted, turnkey Telehealth solution including hardware from Project E-vita. We can provide you with all that you need including Bluetooth enabled Home Telehealth hubs with a full range of peripherals for monitoring of patients in their own homes. Using our hosted service means you don’t need any hardware other than a PC with a Web browser to start delivering Telehealth services to your patients. Best of all, our tariff is per patient and aggressively priced. Contact us today for more information.

Using Project E-vita enables your organisation to gather data through Telehealth hubs (And or via the patient’s Blackberry or mobile phone) in the patient’s own home. This data can then be combined with other notes and clinical information relating to a patient’s care. Project E-vita is a full Electronic Patient Record System which can be leveraged to deliver benefits beyond those associated with more usual “Monitoring” services that prevail in the Telehealth market place.

With unrivalled flexibility and choice of equipment on offer for connection to your Project E-vita subscription you can deliver a multitude of disease management solutions for chronic conditions.

Diabetes

Congestive Heart Failure (CHF)

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

Hypertension

and many more

Clinical Alerts and warnings in Project E-vita become invaluable in a Telehealth environment. Using the integral Alerting system physicians can ensure that as soon as a patient’s clinical readings break predefined thresholds they (Or other staff) are alerted confidentially via SMS text messages or email.

Coloured Triage levels categorise patients’ according to their observations results (BP, Blood Glucose, spO2 etc) and also any answers that they gave to questions set to them by scripts running in the monitor. These coloured alert / triage levels are defined as Green, Amber and Red. Triage screens allow healthcare personnel to filter new patient results and data by alert level allowing them to concentrate each day on those with highest priority. Using these filtering functions smaller teams of personnel can deliver Telehealth monitoring to a larger number of patients without fear of missing important key data.

via Project E-vita in Telehealth and Telemedicine .

Evaware Ltd, developer of the Project E-vita Electronic Patient Record Solution based in the Isle of Man & England, has today expanded its Integrated Remote Telehealth Monitoring functionality to include data collection via a Wi-Fi enabled Telehealth Monitor and also via Blackberry and Mobile Phones. The integration of these two extra hardware platforms now brings a total of 4 different hardware technologies that can be combined under the Project E-vita Solution to remotely monitor patients in their own homes and while on the move.

In 2008 Evaware Ltd integrated the Tunstall RTX Telehealth monitors which also included a GSM mobile network derivative. This month Evaware Ltd has supplemented that release with integration of the digiO2 Care Pal device. The digiO2 Care Pal manufactured by a subsidiary of SINBON Electronics has among many other features, Wi-Fi 802.11 networking support. This means that patient’s own broadband connections can be used for transmission of clinical data back to their record.

The Blackberry/Mobile phone Gateway solution lets patients use simple devices like Blood Pressure meters to take readings in their own home which are transferred via Bluetooth to their BlackBerry or Mobile phone. The phone then securely transmits the data to the patient record system in Project E-vita for evaluation by the Healthcare professional. This development gives Healthcare facilities and Telehealth Providers unrivalled flexibility in the monitoring of patients. At the same time, the use of mobile phones and BlackBerry devices removes the need for, and therefore the cost of a Telehealth Monitor/Hub.

Managing Director for Evaware Ltd, Nick Dyer, said “We aren’t for one moment suggesting that the mobile phone solution is suitable for all patient scenarios however we believe the variety of hardware we now offer means we are well placed to meet our clients’ needs. Innovation is a key strategy of ours in keeping costs down and functionality rich. The integration of the digiO2 Care Pal system brings another important development to our Project E-vita platform as we have had repeated calls from prospective clients to provide for collection of data via patient’s existing broadband services.”

Many of the peripheral devices like Blood Pressure meters and Scales etc are interchangeable between the platforms ensuring that customer investment in these devices can be maximised. All the hardware platforms are integrated within one hosted Project E-vita Patient Record System which operates on a simple “Per patient” subscription tariff. Being a full Electronic Patient Record System delivers more than simple “Monitoring”. Physicians and other healthcare professionals can keep detailed notes and clinical records about each patient in the system. A powerful feature of Project E-vita is Clinical Alerting. The Physician can create tailor made clinical thresholds for each patient that the system then uses to evaluate data as it arrives and attribute a classification or alert level. The alerting can even send SMS messages and emails to physicians to alert them that certain thresholds have been breached.

About Evaware

Evaware is an independent software vendor based in England and the Isle of Man and is the development company behind the Project E-vita Platform. Project E-vita is a subscription based hosted Patient Record System incorporating Telehealth Monitoring Technology.

via Blackberry & Wi-Fi based Home Monitoring with Project E-vita .

AbstractA wearable health monitoring device includes at least one sensor for obtaining a signal indicative of movement of a user in at least one axis and logic configured to determine, based upon the signal, whether the user has taken a step.

    LANIER FORD SHAVER & PAYNE P.C.
    P O BOX 2087
    HUNTSVILLE
    AL
    35804-2087
    US

1. A wearable health monitoring device, comprising:at least one sensor for obtaining a signal indicative of movement of a user in at least one axis; andlogic configured to determine, based upon the signal, whether the user has taken a step.

AbstractEmbodiments of the invention provide a method and apparatus for a wireless health monitoring system for interactively monitoring a disease or health condition of a patient by connecting an internet-enabled wireless web device (“WWD”) to a health monitoring device which may be a medical device or other health related device such as an exercise machine. The WWD may be connected to the health monitoring device directly by a wired connection to a generic input/output port of the WWD using an optional adaptor if necessary. Alternatively, the WWD may be wirelessly connected to the health monitoring device, such as via an infrared or radio frequency connection, including using protocols such as Bluetooth or 802.11. The wireless connection may also employ an adaptor if necessary. The user may also input data to the WWD manually, such as by a keypad, keyboard, stylus, or optionally by voice command. The health related data is transmitted from the WWD to a server using standard internet protocols. The server calculates a response using a software program which may include an algorithm or artificial intelligence system, and may further provide for review by a physician or health specialist. The user may interact with the server. For example, the server transmits a response to the WWD, and the user may answer the response or provide other information.

    MAYER & WILLIAMS PC
    251 NORTH AVENUE WEST, 2ND FLOOR
    WESTFIELD
    NJ
    07090
    US

1. A method for interactive exercise monitoring, the method comprising the steps of:a. coupling a web-enabled wireless phone to a device which provides health-related information;b. rendering a user interface-on the web-enabled wireless phone;c. receiving health-related information in the web-enabled wireless phone, wherein the health-related information includes physiological data and exercise data, and wherein at least one of the physiological data and exercise data is received from the device which provides health-related information;d. sending the health-related information to an internet server via a wireless network;e. receiving a calculated response from a server, the response associated with a calculation performed by the server based on the health-related information; andf. displaying the response.

FOR 20 years, I practiced pediatric medicine with a “paper chart.” I would sit with my young patients and their families, chart in my lap, making eye contact and listening to their stories. I could take patients’ histories in the order they wanted to tell them or as I wanted to ask. I could draw pictures of birthmarks, rashes or injuries. I loved how patients could participate in their own charts — illustrating their cognitive development as they went from showing me how they could draw a line at age 2 and a circle at 3 to proudly writing their names at 5.

Now that I’ve been using a computer to keep patient records — a practice that I once looked forward to — my participation with patients too often consists of keeping them away from the keyboard while I’m working, for fear they’ll push a button that implodes all that I have just documented.

We have all heard about the wonderful ways in which electronic medical records are supposed to transform our broken health care system — by eradicating illegible handwriting and enabling doctors to share patients’ records with one another more easily. The recently passed federal stimulus package provides doctors and hospitals with $17 billion worth of incentive payments to switch to electronic records. The benefits may be real, but we should not sacrifice too much for them.

The problem is not just with pediatrics. Doctors in every specialty struggle daily to figure out a way to keep the computer from interfering with what should be going on in the exam room — making that crucial connection between doctor and patient. I find myself apologizing often, as I stare at a series of questions and boxes to be clicked on the screen and try to adapt them to the patient sitting before me. I am forced to bring up questions in the order they appear, to ask the parents of a laughing 2-year-old if she is “in pain,” and to restrain my potty mouth when the computer malfunctions or the screen locks up. I advise teenagers to limit computer time as I sit before one myself for hours each day until my own eyes twitch and my neck starts to spasm.

In short, the computer depersonalizes medicine. It ignores nuances that we do not measure but clearly influence care. In the past, I could pick up a chart and flip through it easily. Looking at a note, I could picture the visit and recall the story. Now a chart is a generic outline, screens filled with clicked boxes. Room is provided for text, but in the computer’s font, important points often get lost. I have half-joked with residents that they could type “child has no head” in the middle of a computer record — and it might be missed.

via Op-Ed Contributor – The Computer Will See You Now – NYTimes.com.

President Obama launched a campaign today to reform health care in the United States by the end of this year, telling a White House summit on the issue that that fixing the troubled system is “no longer a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative.”

Joined by lawmakers, health industry executives and a handful of “average Americans,” Obama vowed to press for legislation this year that dramatically expands insurance coverage, improves health care quality and reins in skyrocketing medical costs.

“The same soaring costs that are straining our families’ budgets are sinking our businesses and eating up our government’s budget, too,” Obama said in an East Room appearance.

“At the fiscal summit that we held here last week, the one thing on which everyone agreed was that the greatest threat to America’s fiscal health is not Social Security, though that’s a significant challenge,” he said. “It’s not the investments we’ve made to rescue our economy. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”

At the same time, the White House unveiled a new Web site, www.healthreform.gov, and said it plans to hold town-hall-style meetings across the country to rally public support for what is expected to be a protracted and arduous legislative battle. The meetings will be hosted by Democratic and Republican governors.

Medical spending, now about $2.3 trillion, consumes about 16 percent of the gross domestic product. And although the United States spends more per capita on health care than any industrialized nation, Americans do not live longer or healthier lives, according to a range of international measures.

As an opening maneuver, Obama set aside $634 billion in his proposed budget to be dedicated to health reform. The 10-year reserve fund could be used to provide health insurance to some of the 46 million Americans who do not have it today. To raise that money, Obama would cut itemized tax deductions for the wealthiest Americans and trim federal payments to hospitals, home health aides, drug manufacturers and some physicians.

via At Summit, Obama Urges Solutions for Rising Cost of Health Care – washingtonpost.com.

With e-health initiatives across the country in various stages of development, state governments now have an opportunity to determine the best regulatory and governance framework to support and advance electronic health information technology (HIT)and health information exchange (HIE), according to a new report prepared for the State Alliance for e-Health by the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The report, Public Governance Models for a Sustainable Health Information Exchange Industry, states that the adoption of effective HIT and HIE by states will help improve and transform the American health care system. Citing the significant burden of health care costs on state budgets, the imperative to improve the quality of health care delivery and the likelihood of accelerated investments being made in health information technologies in the near future, the report reiterates the critical need for state leaders to keep informed of the key issues involved and the strategies that might be used to effectively leverage investments in these technologies for health system improvement.

“This report is particularly timely in light of the recent federal recovery bill, which will provide resources to states to take the lead in creating health information exchanges to serve patients and providers,” said John Thomasian, director of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the organizing body for the State Alliance for e-Health. “This report can serve as a valuable starting point for states as they consider governance strategies for building, sustaining, and protecting a system to support electronic health record.”

The report details three conceptual models of public governance that could lead to the practice of sustainable HIE and delves into specific rationale and description, legal structure and financing and accountability considerations for each model:

Model 1 – Government-Led Electronic HIE: Direct Government Provision of the Electronic HIE Infrastructure and Oversight of Its Use

Model 2 – Electronic HIE Public Utility with Strong Government Oversight: Public Sector Serves an Oversight Role and Regulates Private-Sector Provision of Electronic HIE

Model 3 – Private-Sector-Led Electronic HIE with Government Collaboration: Government Collaborates and Advises as a Stakeholder in the Private-Sector Provision of Electronic HIE.

To inform the State Alliance for e-Health and governors across the country, the University of Massachusetts Medical School convened a multidisciplinary team of researchers and a national Advisory Committee including experts in HIE, public policy and public utilities regulation. This team assessed the current state of the electronic HIE marketplace and the oversight and regulatory roles of state government in other industries. Using this information, a range of public governance models, with specific review of the legal structure, accountability issues and finance considerations, was developed to serve as a framework to support state governments as they consider their appropriate role in the evolving electronic HIE industry.

via State Governments to Play Critical Role in Health IT, Says Report.

WASHINGTON – The economic stimulus package has allotted $17.2 billion to reward Medicare and Medicaid providers who can prove they are using certified healthcare IT “in a meaningful way.”

The incentives are scheduled to take effect starting Oct. 1, 2011. Experts say providers should not waste time getting prepared because there is a shortage of change management experts available to help.

According to Dave Garets, president and CEO HIMSS Analytics, 94 percent of hospitals currently don’t have enough healthcare IT in place to meet the stipulations required to receive bonuses. Under the new law, they must prove “meaningful use,” which will require capturing certain data.

Garets expects that healthcare organizations will adopt healthcare IT “with a vengeance” in 2009. He and other members of the Healthcare Information and Management and Systems Society are concerned there are “precious few” change management experts to help providers make the complicated transition to healthcare IT by 2011.

via Industry News | Healthcare IT News.

Google Health has introduced a new feature that lets people share their online health records with designated doctors, friends, and family members.

Google said the move is in response to people’s concerns that caregivers and loved ones might not be up-to-date on all the details of a patient’s health situation, especially in the event of an emergency.

Sameer Samat, director of product management at Google, explained his personal impetus behind the new feature in a company blog post on Wednesday:

Just a few years ago, my father suffered a minor heart attack and was sent to the ER. I arrived on the scene in a panic, and was asked what medications he was taking. To my surprise, I had no clue. If my father had a Google Health account, and had shared his profile with me, I would have been up-to-date on his current medications.

Along with the sharing feature, Google added a graphing feature that lets people enter lab results and visually track trends in their medical test results, such as their cholesterol levels.

Recognizing the sensitive nature of sharing health records, Google said it has built in several security measures to preserve privacy. Users choose who can view their histories, and the link to the patient’s profile will work only in connection with those people’s e-mail addresses–meaning the link won’t work if it is forwarded to a third party. Users can also decide what information they want to share, and those allowed to view the profile will not have the ability to edit the data. Users will also be able to see exactly who has reviewed the profile.

However, one security measure that is a bit baffling is a feature that restricts the usability lifespan of the e-mailed link to only 30 days. Unless the user is diligent about regularly sending links to loved ones, this protection could negate the feature’s value in the event of an emergency.

Google also announced a feature that lets users print wallet- and letter-size hard copies of their profile, including medications, allergies, conditions, and treatments. But again, the value of these printouts may be questionable if they are not updated regularly.

via Google Health lets users share their online records | Digital Media – CNET News.

Just four months ago, the pharmaceutical industry was prepared for the worst. Drugmakers feared that Barack Obama would press for price controls on prescription drugs and readied plans for a multimillion-dollar ad campaign against the idea.

Instead, Obama chose a more modest approach after becoming president, proposing to extract bigger discounts on medications bought through Medicaid. The plan could save the drug companies billions a year compared with price controls.

“This is a great start,” said W.J. “Billy” Tauzin, a former House member from Louisiana who now runs the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), referring to Obama’s health-care plan. “There are things we don’t like about it. But there’s time to discuss all that.”

Obama’s opening gambit to dramatically expand the health-care system has attracted surprising notes of support from insurers, hospitals and other players in the powerful medical lobby who are set to participate in an unusual White House summit on the issue this afternoon. The lure for the industry is the prospect of tens of millions of new customers: If Obama succeeds in fulfilling his pledge to cover many more Americans, those newly insured people will get checkups, purchase medicine, undergo physical therapy and get surgeries they cannot afford today.

To start the process, Obama has proposed a $634 billion health-care reserve fund that would be partially paid for with targeted cuts in payments to insurers, doctors, hospitals, drugmakers and other providers, and he has vowed to fight attempts to water down the package.

The unstated intention of Obama’s approach is to dole out the pain in small, easier-to-swallow bites to minimize opposition, White House aides say. Under the president’s plan, hospitals, doctors, drugmakers, insurance companies and wealthy seniors — all of whom will be represented at today’s summit — would sacrifice. But if the system was calibrated properly, no one would lose too much.

Not everyone is happy, of course, and lobbyists and health-care experts warn that major obstacles lie ahead. The seniors lobby AARP, for example, opposes Obama’s recommendation to raise Medicare prescription premiums on wealthy retirees. Major insurers also dislike his proposed overhaul of the Medicare Advantage program, which markets managed-care plans to seniors, while home-care providers object to cuts to their Medicare reimbursements.

via Health Industry Voices Support for Obama Health Plan – washingtonpost.com.

Held January 22-23, 2009:  Two-Day Industry Forum Highlighting The Latest Trends, Best Case Studies, Hands-On Experiences, and Innovative Strategies From America’s Top Telehealth Hospitals, Facilities and Other Prestigious Organizations.

LEARN ABOUT:

• How home telehealth can successfully be applied in the healthcare environment

• Identify key clinical, administrative and technical design and support elements for implementing a successful home telehealth program

• Identify critical areas such as change management, organizational behavior, and buy-in from stakeholders, marketing, and recruitment that greatly impact the success or failure of home telehealth programs

• Building a home telehealth program to deliver more convenient, accessible and efficient patient care at a lower cost

• How home telehealth programs increase staff productivity, patient satisfaction and maintain quality of care

• Overcoming challenges to home telehealth program design, usability, evaluation and reimbursement

• The advantages of home telehealth including reduced patient ER visits, travel and facility staffing needs

• Emerging technologies and applications in home telehealth services and products

WHO SHOULD ATTEND: All clinical practitioners, technical support staff, leadership, financial and strategic planners involved in implementing and sustaining home telehealth/remote monitoring operations. KEY TITLES INCLUDE: Director Telemedicine, Director Business Development, Nurse Practitioners, Registered Nurses, Licensed Practical Nurses, Physicians, Physician Assistants, Pharmacists, Healthcare Executives, Financial or Strategic Planners, and Technical Support Staff

DISTINGUISHED SPEAKING FACULTY INCLUDES:

Nina M. Antoniotti, RN, MBA, PhD, MARSHFIELD CLINIC TELEHEALTH, Marshfield Wisconsin

Naomi Fried, PhD, Vice President, Innovation and Advanced Technology, KAISER PERMANENTE, Oakland, CA

Kathy Bowles, PhD, RN, FAAN, Associate Professor in the New Courtland Center for Transitions and Health, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA SCHOOL OF NURSING, Philadelphia, PA

Douglas J. McClure, MIM, Corporate Manager, Connected Health Operations, CENTER FOR CONNECTED HEALTH-PARTNERS HEALTHCARE, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

Christine Chang, Associate Analyst, DATAMONITOR, New York, NY

Ken Topel, RN, BSN, MBA, Project Director Northeast Telehealth Resource Center; Director MAINE TELEMEDICINE SERVICES, HEALTHWAYS, Lubec, ME

Glenn G. Hammack, OD, MSHI, FAAO, Assistant Vice President and Executive Director, ELECTRONIC HEALTH NETWORK, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDICAL BRANCH, Galveston, TX

Ronald Merrell, MD, Professor Of Surgery, VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY VCU MINIMALLY INVASIVE SURGERY CENTER, Richmond, VA

Judie Fesz, RN, MN, Senior Disease State Management Coordinator, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH MEDICAL CENTER/JEFFERSON REGIONAL HOME HEALTH LP, Pittsburgh, PA

Annemarie Kaan, MCN RN CCNC CCTN, Adjunct Professor UBC School of Nursing, Clinical Nurse Specialist Heart Failure//VAD/Transplant, PROVIDENCE ST. PAUL’S HOSPITAL, Vancouver, BC Canada

Sandra Tokey, RN, MS, Vice President Administrative Programs, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH MEDICAL CENTER/JEFFERSON REGIONAL HOME HEALTH LP, Seven Fields, PA

Jay Sanders, MD, President/CEO, THE GLOBAL TELEMEDICINE GROUP, Professor of Medicine Adjunct, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, Mclean, VA

via Active Communication International: TELEHOMECARE & Remote Patient Monitoring For Hospitals And Health Systems.

Finally, Affordable Mobile Health Monitoring For Everyone.

At MedApps our focus is to deliver effective and affordable technology solutions to help:

• Expand the benefits of telehealth and remote patient monitoring to more people

• Improve compliance rates for healthcare providers and DMOs

• Lower costs for both patients and healthcare providers

The MedApps solution replaces expensive, home-based, hard-wired home health monitoring systems with mobile, wireless M2M Technology in portable devices, that are easy to use.

The MedApps monitoring solution integrates with various types of off-the-shelf medical monitoring devices from a variety of manufacturers. Timely health readings supplied from these types of devices are useful in maintaining wellness regimens and can assist healthcare professionals in their treatment of patients with chronic diseases.

MedApps Mobile Wireless Health Monitoring System Home – Remote Patients with Diabetes, Asthma, CHF, COPD and more .

Summary

This report is an essential source for in-depth information and data relating to the United Kingdom patient monitoring devices market. It also offers detailed and comprehensive coverage of market revenue, volume, distribution and company share information; and latest news, financial deals and pipeline products information of each of the key sub-segments of the patient monitoring devices in United Kingdom.

Scope

-The report provides patient monitoring devices information broken down into detailed categories and segments in United Kingdom.

-Total revenues, products sold, end users, and average pricing.

-Market shares of all the key competitors.

-Key pipeline products that are set to shape the market, broken down by sector.

-Information on the top medical equipment companies in the sector in the country covering business description, strategic analysis, and financial information.

-Healthcare structure, regulatory environment, approval process, pricing trends and reimbursement.

-Product and brand updates, strategy changes, R&D projects, corporate expansions and contractions and regulatory changes.

-Key mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, private equity investments and IPOs.

-Customer, hospitals and physicians data.

Companies Mentioned

• OMRON HEALTHCARE Co., Ltd. 
• GE Healthcare 
• HARTMANN GROUP 
• Philips Healthcare 
• Draegerwerk Aktiengesellschaft 
• Abbott Laboratories 
• A C Cossor & Son (Surgical) Ltd 
• Cybersensors Ltd 
• Gaeltec Ltd. 
• Numed Holdings Limited 

via United Kingdom Patient Monitoring Investment Opportunities, Analysis and Forecasts to 2015 – Market Research Reports – Research and Markets.

Summary

This report is an essential source for in-depth information and data relating to the Germany patient monitoring devices market. It also offers detailed and comprehensive coverage of market revenue, volume, distribution and company share information; and latest news, financial deals and pipeline products information of each of the key sub-segments of the patient monitoring devices in Germany

Scope

-The report provides patient monitoring devices information broken down into detailed categories and segments in Germany.

-Total revenues, products sold, end users, and average pricing.

-Market shares of all the key competitors.

-Key pipeline products that are set to shape the market, broken down by sector.

-Information on the top medical equipment companies in the sector in the country covering business description, strategic analysis, and financial information.

-Healthcare structure, regulatory environment, approval process, pricing trends and reimbursement.

-Product and brand updates, strategy changes, R&D projects, corporate expansions and contractions and regulatory changes.

-Key mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, private equity investments and IPOs.

-Customer, hospitals and physicians data.

Companies mentioned:

• OMRON HEALTHCARE Co., Ltd.
• GE Healthcare
• HARTMANN GROUP
• Philips Healthcare
• Draegerwerk Aktiengesellschaft
• Abbott Laboratories
• EKF-diagnostic GmbH
• Medisana AG
• Siemens Healthcare

via Germany Patient Monitoring Investment Opportunities, Analysis and Forecasts to 2015 – Market Research Reports – Research and Markets.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 17 /PRNewswire/ — Based on its recent analysis of the remote patient monitoring market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Strategic Healthcare Programs (SHP), L.L.C. with the 2009 North American Frost & Sullivan Growth Enabling Technology Award for continuing to provide superior technology toward finely identified market needs. There is a desperate demand in healthcare, especially in emerging spaces such as home healthcare, for real-time data that helps assess efficiency and cost savings. SHP was early to recognize key needs in the remote patient monitoring market and pioneered a web-based, real-time performance data service aimed at improving profit margins and patient outcomes for home healthcare agencies and hospices.

“Despite the billion dollar market potential of remote monitoring segments such as home healthcare, the market remains stifled,” says Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Zachary Bujnoch. “One major issue is that these services utilized by home healthcare agencies and hospice facilities continue to be in a desperate need of validation.”

While these systems have an inherent potential for cost savings, implementation is the hinging point of success or failure. A careful monitoring of efficiency, true cost savings, and overall effective integration of these systems into a healthcare provider’s setup is essential for the success of these highly customizable and diverse remote monitoring services. Over the past ten years through a constant drive for improvement and consistent attention to its clients’ needs, SHP has developed a product unique to this industry, capable of fulfilling the essential need for system validation and cost savings analysis. The data show comparisons between telemonitored and non-telemonitored patients.

SHP’s technology integrates with over 30 different types of software vendors including healthcare majors such as Philips, Honeywell HomMed, McKesson, and Viterion. Two components that really make this technology unique and elegant are its real-time capability and ease of customization. The real-time capability and the customized data queries and benchmarks keep information relevant.

“In the end, all of these components seem to be focused around one common goal, optimizing the business and clinical performance for the home healthcare industry, and despite the daunting undertaking this goal represents, SHP seems to be well on its way toward this task,” concludes Bujnoch.

For providing demand-oriented superior technology that has penetrated a mature and highly competitive healthcare market, SHP is the worthy recipient of the 2009 North American Award for Growth Enabling Technology for remote patient monitoring. Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in new product development and launch within its industry. The recipient company has shown innovation by launching a broad line of emerging products or technologies.

Frost & Sullivan’s Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.

About Strategic Healthcare Programs, L.L.C.

Strategic Healthcare Programs (SHP) is an award-winning innovator in real-time decision support and benchmarking tools. SHP sends its clients actionable information that immediately impacts profit margins and outcome scores, and provides new-age benchmarking services. SHP uses best-of-breed technology that enables instant deployment of continuous enhancements and automated data sweeps from client software applications. SHP is the undisputed industry innovator having pioneered real-time benchmarks, data interfaces, risk modeling, on-demand reporting, pushed alerts, integrated patient satisfaction, clinician scorecards, gross profit comparisons for Home Health and Hospice, and more. SHP is the industry’s only one-stop source for data, spanning all business lines. Please visit www.SHPdata.com for more information.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best in class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company’s Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO’s Growth Team with disciplined research and best practice models to drive the generation, evaluation and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 31 offices on six continents. To join our Growth Partnership, please visit http://www.frost.com.

via Frost & Sullivan :: Frost & Sullivan Recognizes Strategic Healthcare Programs for Best Practices in Focused Innovation.

Health promotion is a popular phrase. What does it mean, really? How does someone promote health? I’m going to address the concept of health promotion from my perspective as a Registered Nurse in Ontario. Nurses play a huge role in illness prevention and health promotion. We, as nurses assume the role of ambassadors of wellness. Yes, I do believe that nurses play just as an important role in caring for the well as they do in caring for the sick. Perhaps caring for the well is the more important role. In this day and age of budget cuts, cost reduction and staffing shortages, health promotion makes sense. If we can preserve wellness, we reduce the number of times a person needs to enter the health-care system, thus reducing costs.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health promotion as a process of enabling people to increase control over and to improve their health (WHO, 1986). To facilitate that process, we must provide people with appropriate information. Nurses have a key role in providing that information in the form of health teaching. Nurses are highly educated, experienced health professionals who are accessible through many settings. Telehealth Ontario is a great example of how anyone can access the expertise of a nurse. Anyone can call in with a question, concern or health issue and gain information while being advised of a plan of action right over the phone. Of course, without being able to use hands-on assessment skills, this can be limiting when it comes to dealing with an acute scenario. Telehealth is not for resolving situations that require immediate attention. Nurses can direct people to local resources and give out health and wellness information. Telehealth would be useful when parents seek well-baby/well child information, information on vaccines, smoking cessation, addiction counseling, adolescent mental health resources, nutrition information etc. These are examples of situations where access to accurate health information can assist people in staying healthy.

via Hospital News.

MANILA, Philippines—The Congressional Commission on Science & Technology and Engineering (Comste) is looking at filing a bill to mandate a national telehealth or telemedicine system in the country.

Representative Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya who is also co-chair of Comste is set to file the National Telehealth Service Act of 2009 to push the use of information and communication technologies in the delivery of medical care.

The proposed measure aims to benefit patients and medical professionals who can now use Internet technology to tap medical expertise. This could be done through remote medical procedures via teleconferencing.

Abaya said in a statement that the bill needs the cooperation of government and public sectors “to pave way for new, better ways of delivering health services to the public,” especially to marginalized sectors.

The bill is based on the experience of UP Manila Telehealth Center, which is able to provide basic electronic health record registry via the Community Health Information System (CHITS), audiovisual education to local health workers and professionals through E-learning and video conferencing, and tele-referral and tele-mentoring to Doctors-to-the-Barrios (DTTB) using SMS technology through the Buddyworks Program.

via National telehealth bill mulled – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.

Some new low-cost services have popped up on the Internet with the aim of providing basic health-care consultations more cheaply and easily.

In January, American Well Inc. went live with a Web service that allows patients to communicate with doctors via online video, text chat or phone. The doctors can view patient personal health records through Microsoft Corp.’s HealthVault and even prescribe medication over the Web. The service is currently available only in Hawaii through the Hawaii Medical Service Association, the Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliate in Hawaii. HMSA-insured patients pay $10 for a 10-minute visit; uninsured or non-member patients pay $45 for a 10-minute consultation.

A similar service, SwiftMD Inc., launched in November and is now available in New York and New Jersey. For a one-time $18 registration fee and $9 a month, users can make an appointment at any time to speak with a doctor over the phone or through online video chat. Doctors call or connect on average within a half an hour of when the appointment was made, and patients pay $59 for the consultation.

And in Dallas, TelaDoc Inc. has a similar service that allows anyone to go online or pick up the phone and schedule phone consultations with physicians.

The services are the next step in “telehealth,” or the delivery of health care through the telephone, Web or other telecommunications technologies. While some doctors communicate with their patients electronically, medical providers and insurance companies generally provide online services that allow patients only to manage personal health records, schedule appointments, refill prescriptions and request referrals.

via Cough, Cough. Is There a Doctor in the Mouse? – WSJ.com.

MORE technology is being put into the NHS to enable increasing numbers of patients to be diagnosed closer to home.

Details of the £1.6 million investment in “telehealth” projects was announced in Stirling by Nicola Sturgeon, the health secretary.

The projects include putting touch screens into the houses of hundreds of patients with chronic conditions in the Lothian areas, enabling symptoms to be monitored from home. New software will also enable patient records in Glasgow to be sent electronically, direct to consulting rooms.

In Orkney, online scanning is to be introduced to enable patients to be diagnosed remotely, avoiding long journeys to hospital.

A total of 16 projects will share £1.6 million of funding.

via ‘Telehealth’ cash boost – Scotsman.com News .

ATLANTA, February 24, 2009 – More than 30 U.S. and Israeli companies are expected to attend as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia (BCBS) and the American-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Southeast Region (AICC) hold the first U.S.-Israel TeleHealth Business Exchange February 24-25 in Atlanta. The Exchange presents an unparalleled opportunity for emerging telehealth companies in Israel and the Southeast U.S. to present and hold pre-arranged, pre-qualified meetings with leading companies in North America. The goal is to foster joint venture R&D, investment and marketing alliances. The event will be held at BCBS headquarters in Atlanta (3350 Peachtree Rd., NE). Full event details at http://www.usisraelexchange.com.

The U.S.-Israel TeleHealth Business Exchange is a unique peer-to-peer networking experience and innovative business matchmaking framework, and for the North American companies, a very concise and productive forum to gain advanced exposure to a wide range of cutting-edge telehealth technologies from Israel.

Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, who serves as honorary chairman of the event, said, “We are proud that the state of Georgia serves as a leader in the field of telehealth. This unique event creates an excellent opportunity for Israeli technology companies to interact with major participants in Georgia’s healthcare market, and by extension, the entire United States.”

Oxendine is the founder of the Georgia Partnership for TeleHealth and is a national advocate for the industry. He joined AICC on a business mission to Israel in December 2008 that included three events in different parts of the country to meet innovative telehealth companies.

The following companies have confirmed attendance:

• North American companies attending include: AT&T, McKesson, Medtronic, Polycom, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia, Chubb, Intel Healthcare, United Health, Emergency24, Medical Place, Clinical Solutions, Cox Communications, Seedium (VC), Telemedical Environments, IatroLinc Radiology, Fonemed, Critical Signal Technologies, Dixon Hughes, Croft & Bender, Emory Healthcare, AssistMed.

• Israeli Companies attending include: Nav4Life, Spirocor, Vaica, HMU, Commwell, Nexsense, CardioMEMS, Caring Technologies, Sensiotec, Sensible Medical Solutions.

via 30+ Companies to Attend First U.S. – Israel TeleHealth Business Exchange Showcasing Latest Advances in Healthcare Technology – AICC – pitchengine.com.