Scientists have puzzled over cognitive differences between men and women for at least 100 years. And the results of their work support the reality that should be on the minds of everyone working in healthcare; one size doesn’t fit all.
Researchers in Madrid and at UCLA recently tested men and women on cognitive tasks, including spatial reasoning, inductive reasoning, keeping track of tasks, and attention to numbers. Women, although they have smaller brains – and most importantly because of its role in memory, emotion and reason – a smaller hippocampus than men, were nonetheless better able to handle most of these tasks (except spatial), while showing less brain activity on an MRI. Thus, women require less neural material (and energy) to perform cognitive tasks on an equal level with men.
If this study holds up (other studies also point to significant cognitive differences between the sexes), its results may and should have an impact on healthcare innovation and service delivery. For example:
- At our firm we are very aware of the increased importance of the consumer in healthcare decision making. The way health information is processed by that consumer is very important. This has implications for both the device and the service interface. A consumer-focused device may be intuitive to one person, but baffling to another.
- One particularly strong area for women was in ranking and numerical tasks. New diagnostic tests often produce information that isn’t binary, but probabilistic. In this case, women might have an easier time knowing how to evaluate this information and make choices.
- On the other hand, men appeared to be much better at processing spatial information. This could play into the design of three-dimensional imaging technology, or even smartphone apps and videos.
A big question remains from studies like these; are these traits genetically wired, or more consistent with the way men and women have been trained to think? Perhaps, as Shakespeare showed us 500 years ago, things are more complicated; when Cleopatra’s complexity contrasts to Mark Antony’s hard reason, was that genetic or just the English writer’s perception of life in ancient Rome and Egypt? If it’s nature, then innovation needs to address these differences. If it’s nurture, then a wide range of other cultural differences need to be recognized.
At Popper and Company, we know that incorporating the role of the consumer is critical to successful innovation and strategy in healthcare. We can help you create new strategies, ideas, and inventions to address true unmet needs (and gender differences), and give your company (and its products) a sustainable market advantage. To learn more, please subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, or send me an email.
Tags: cognitive testing, genetic traits, healthcare, healthcare innovation, healthcare strategy
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I originally shared this post as an announcement to the 15,000+ members of my Digital Health group on LinkedIn.
In this update:
- 15 Influencers Shaping Digital Health
- Happtique Mobile Health App Certification Program
- Making Sense of Sensors (Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on CHCF)
- X PRIZE’s Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE – Application Deadline
- Upcoming Events: Future of Genomic Medicine VI Conference
15 INFLUENCERS SHAPING DIGITAL HEALTH
The list of 15 Influencers Shaping Digital Health (via BIONIC.LY) was compiled by London-based digital communications professional Stephen Davies, and is noteworthy because he accurately includes (as part of digital health) leaders in the field of genomics, e.g. Anne Wojcicki, Co-founder of 23andMe, and Jessica Richman, CEO at uBiome. I’m incredibly honored to be included in such esteemed company.
http://bit.ly/15ShapingDH
HAPPTIQUE CERTIFICATION PROGRAM FOR MOBILE APPS
In announcing the new “Happtique Health App Certification Program,” CEO Ben Chodor stated that “Healthcare professionals and consumers need third-party certification to verify that the app they are prescribing or downloading delivers credible content, contains safeguards for user data, and functions as described.” The new program contains standards to be used by partner organizations in assessing operability, privacy, security and content of health apps.
http://bit.ly/HapptiqueAppCert
MAKING SENSE OF SENSORS: HOW NEW TECHNOLOGIES CAN CHANGE PATIENT CARE
Well-known health economist Jane Sarasohn-Kahn (@HealthyThinker) created this excellent report for the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF, @CHCFNews), a nonprofit grant-making philanthropy. Note the cool infographic on passive sensors.
http://bit.ly/CHCFSensors
X PRIZE’S NOKIA SENSING X CHALLENGE – APPLICATION DEADLINE APPROACHING
Along with the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE (@TricorderXPRIZE) and the Archon Genomics X PRIZE (@AGXP), the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE (@NokiaXCHALLENGE) being administered by the X PRIZE Foundation (@XPRIZE) is fostering digital health innovation and catalyzing the creation of a collaborative global innovation ecosystem. The goal of the Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE is to transform personal health with sensing. Innovation in sensing is an important component to creating a means for appealing, usable, smarter digital health solutions.
The CHALLENGE is comprised of two distinct competitions running through 2014, with total prize purses of $2.25 million. The application deadline for Challenge #1 is less than five weeks away.
http://bit.ly/SensingXChallenge
UPCOMING EVENTS: Future of Genomic Medicine VI Conference
Along with my Popper and Co. colleague Shane Climie, Ph.D., I’ll be attending the Future of Genomic Medicine VI conference in La Jolla/San Diego, CA (March 7-8). I’m excited to learn the very latest about opportunities for genomics to change medical practice and make healthcare more precise and individualized. I gather that the term is now “Precision Medicine.”
I’m particularly looking forward to hearing the following people speak:
- Gholson J. Lyon, MD, Ph.D.,
- Cinnamon S. Bloss, Ph.D.,
- Misha Angrist, Ph.D.,
- Daniel MacArthur, Ph.D.,
- George M. Church, Ph.D. (encoded 20 million copies of his book into DNA: http://bit.ly/ChurchColbert),
- Jonathan Eisen, Ph.D.,
- Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., and
- A.J. Jacobs, author of “Drop Dead Healthy”.
Note that all of the folks and organizations listed above are included in my Digital Health Twitter list: http://bit.ly/DHTwitterList. And you can access the comprehensive global digital health event list at http://bit.ly/DHEvents.
Join the 15,000+ member Digital Health group on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date on these and many of the other happenings in the digital health space. And, if you have a digital health idea you’d like to discuss, please contact me directly at sonnier@popperandco.com to learn how Popper and Co. can help guide your business development strategy.
Tags: digital health, digital heatlh events, genomic medicine, genomics, healthcare events
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Now that a few of the year’s first conferences with a “future of health” or “digital health” focus (e.g., the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference) have passed, I thought it would be a good time to consider whether consumer-oriented digital health products truly affect outcomes, as often promised.
CES featured an abundance of consumer-oriented devices to measure fitness and track physical activity. There are a growing number of companies – like Jawbone, Fitbit, Nike and Withings – that offer tracking devices, or are introducing new versions. They’re all fairly imprecise by some standards, and measure a variety of parameters, such as number of steps per day, body temperature, heart rate or galvanic skin response, that are then analyzed to measure fitness in a non-specific way.
These devices are primarily aimed at people who have been inactive and are trying to change their behavior and they don’t provide detailed, layered information that serious recreational athletes (e.g., runners) would want. For example, most do not contain a GPS so distance traveled is approximated based on steps and stride length rather than actually measured.
The unanswered question at CES and elsewhere was: How much of the appeal of these devices is just their novelty? Will people keep using these? Clearly, given the relatively nascent state of the industry, we don’t have the answers yet. Of course, the manufacturers know, for example, the number of customers that continue to use the devices after initial activation, but those numbers are typically not disclosed.
Marketing claims aside, it seems reasonable to ask if these devices are likely to make a difference in the health of a majority of consumers who purchase them. Maybe they help people get active, but we’ll need some time to know if they make a difference in helping people stay active. Stated differently, what is the impact of quantification on behavior choice as compared to the impact of general awareness and knowledge (e.g. “exercise is good”)?
Importantly, regardless of the answer, the relatively sudden abundance of these trackers is an element of a larger phenomenon, i.e., the “quantified self” movement. People are taking to measuring various aspects of their lives, something made possible by smartphones and apps, remote sensors, activity trackers and the cloud.
While there is no doubt that the quantified self is adding to the world’s data, I wonder when that data will generate meaningful information. What’s missing is a service that analyzes an individual’s specific data to identify possible correlations to various physiological and emotional states. For example, how does my sleep time and quality correlate to my stress level? Am I at my best when I sleep for the recommended 8 hours or, in my case, might 6 hours be better? Or 10?
As we further understand biology, it should be possible for a personalized trainer (either human or virtual) to provide specific advice on specific diets, workouts, etc., to reach optimum fitness and health levels. Current recommendations for diet and exercise are generalized for a population and as such result in trial and error approaches on the part of individuals. In some ways this is analogous to blockbuster drugs, which often don’t work in a significant number of patients prescribed them. Just as we recognize the potential benefits of personalized (or precision) medicine, there will be a growing awareness that we need more personalized approaches to diet and exercise to achieve optimal health and fitness levels.
At Popper and Company, we think there is a valuable market for innovations that organize and personalize this fitness data – and we’re monitoring the industry closely. We can help you create new ideas (and new inventions) to address true unmet needs, and give your company (and its products) a sustainable market advantage. To learn more, you can subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, or send me an email.
Tags: CES 2013, digital health, fitness, future of health, personalized medicine
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As the new year slips into higher gear, and our national focus shifts from politics to policymaking, we need to take a fresh look at how innovation can give the economy a boost.
While President Obama’s second inauguration speech mentions the need for new technology (harnessing new ideas and technologies to remake, revamp, reform and empower various sectors of society), I find myself asking: what kind of innovation? How could digital health play a role?
Harvard professor and innovation pioneer Clayton Christensen calls for a better mix of the three main types of innovations: empowering, sustaining and efficiency. He observes that empowering innovations, which create jobs by transforming complex and expensive products into simpler, cheaper products, are in unusually short supply. Meanwhile, sustaining innovations, which replace old products with new models (that nonetheless operate the same way), and efficiency innovations, which reduce costs of existing products, are abundant, but don’t help jump-start an economy as much. Today, he says, efficiency innovations are just being reinvested back into more efficiency innovations.
Digital health entrepreneurs pursue all three innovation types. I believe, however, that the overall economic impact of digital health comes from empowering innovations. Christensen cites the Model T Ford, IBM personal computers, and cloud computing as such empowering innovations. In my opinion, the remote monitors and sensors, healthcare apps, and biomarker/companion diagnostic tests now being developed are likewise transforming complex and expensive care paradigms, but also are transforming an equally complex, costly healthcare industry. In fact, mobile devices (today’s “personal computers”) and cloud computing are significant contributors to today’s digital health revolution.
Nonetheless, despite the potential to drive significant process and efficiency improvements, many digital health innovators still face challenges in raising capital. Here at Popper and Co., we’re interested in helping you strengthen your business plan to make it attractive to prospective financial and strategic investors and to identify those that may be most receptive to hearing more about your business. Follow us on Twitter, sign up to receive our e-newsletter or reach out to me directly to learn more.
Tags: digital health, digital health innovation, health technology, healthcare policy, U.S. economy
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I attended the Consumer Electronics Show (#CES2013) in Las Vegas earlier this month. While this was my second year at the Digital Health Summit portion, it was the first year that Qualcomm delivered the keynote address for the entire show. While there, I found myself building upon the “Born Mobile” theme of Qualcomm’s keynote show—which unfortunately came across as parody, as seen in this piece in The Verge—in pointing out that we are experiencing a digital revolution, of which mobile wireless devices and networks are just two subcomponents.
Digital Health is the convergence of the digital revolution with health. “Health” is writ large in this context, and includes sports, fitness, and wellness, plus medicine and healthcare. At CES, we could see the convergence of the following key digital elements:
- Wireless Sensors and Devices
- Genomics
- Social Networking
- Mobile Connectivity and Bandwidth
- Imaging
- Health Information Systems
- The Internet
- Computing Power and the Data Universe (Big & Cheap Data)
I was gladdened to see all of the activity-tracking devices at the show. There were also “soft silos,” where players like Withings and Fitbit had what I’d call consumer digital health solution-sets on display: wrist-worn activity trackers, weight scales, and health dashboards. I thought this Cambrian-esque explosion was great, since it drives a virtuous circle/positive feedback loop in the ecosystem; increasing consumer awareness and demand accelerates product innovation and improvements which, in turn, further drives consumer demand for improved solutions.
Digital Health was prominent at CES (here’s iHealthBeat’s take on “What the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show Means for Health Care IT”) and even people I talked to who were outside of the health sector really seemed to get it. I also loved that Arianna Huffington, who spoke in a super session, wrote a piece explicitly talking about the “Digital Health Revolution.”
Do you think the digital health revolution is experiencing a “Cambrian” explosion of innovation? Could a post-Cambrian “die-off” be somewhere on the horizon? What other new inventions could fill this space? What does this all mean for the healthcare consumer? What about for life science or digital technology companies? We welcome your thoughts.
Tags: CES 2013, Consumer Electronics Show 2013, digital health, digital revolution, health technology, healthcare consumer
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As I watch the power in healthcare shift away from physicians/providers toward consumers/patients (enabled by the wide access to information and driven in part by higher co-pays), I can’t help but to observe the affects of the Affordable Care Act on both this new power and the bedrock concept of healthcare delivery—“standards of care”.
Rob Lamberts, a physician who switched his practice from fee-for-service to “direct care” (in which patients buy in as a member instead of paying for each procedure and visit, and receive a basic set of services), has compared the changes in healthcare delivery to the upheaval caused by digital cameras. Just as the move from film to digital imagery brought photography closer to the consumer, mobile apps and web-accessible information will move healthcare delivery closer to customers (a.k.a., patients). Film companies like Kodak failed to recognize the disruptive innovations wrought by digital photography; could consumer power provide the same disruptive innovation to healthcare? As healthcare industry expenses approach 18% of GDP, the unsustainable weight of healthcare costs practically beg for such a disruption.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), as well as other regulations and pending legislation, is addressing healthcare delivery standards and relating those standards to costs. The ACA will require health plans to be delivered at four levels of coverage: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Bronze plans will require the highest copayments, and platinum the lowest. All, however, will have to cover basic benefits such as ambulatory services, emergency care, hospitalization, maternity/newborn care, mental health, prescription drugs, rehabilitation, laboratory services, prevention and wellness, and chronic disease management. At the same time, high-end concierge services—the so called “Cadillac health insurance”—will be subject to a 40% tax.
The sheer size of the plans under the ACA will require more standardization of insurance coverage, and new and potentially different concepts of “standards of care.” I believe we will see the basic package become the core “standard” with more costly but more generous premium services layered on top. And we will see a rapid shift from fee-for-service to global payments for various levels of service intensity.
But can you also have too much health care? Standards of care, developed by professional organizations, have traditionally answered this question. With these new levels of care, standards are no longer decided exclusively by physicians and specialists’ organizations; they’re increasingly influenced by patient choices. So the concept of guideline-driven medicine may no longer be in the eye of the physician but in the eye of the policy-holder.
Is the U.S. consumer ready for so much service choice? Where does the responsibility for consumer education fall? What mechanisms should we put in place to measure quality and reward efficient providers? Let us know what you think.
Tags: ACA, Affordable Care Act, guideline-driven medicine, healthcare, healthcare delivery, standard of care
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In its quest to find ways to reduce healthcare costs but boost healthcare quality, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched its first fellowship program in September. For the next year, I’ll be a technical advisor on the part of this program that focuses on quickly developing ways to measure clinical quality under the new healthcare act.
I’ll be working on a team with Mindy Hangsleben, an innovator in Lean technology at Intel in Portland, Oregon. We’ll be examining the challenge presented by the Affordable Care Act, which aims to move reimbursements from “fee for services” to” fees for performance.” Our questions are: “how do you measure performance? How do you pay for it?” Some aspects of health care delivery are easier to measure; e.g., what percentage of the relevant population gets a mammogram. But basing performance upon a more holistic measure of patient outcomes is tricky because all patients are not equal, and a comparison and ranking of outcomes is not easy. In addition, we’ll be looking at ways to determine the role played by various electronic health records (EHRs) in the capture of these performance parameters, as required under the new Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act.
The other HHS Innovation Fellowship projects include:
- Finding ways to quickly determine Medicaid or CHIP eligibility for people. This is going to be very important under the new healthcare law because a significant percentage of the 30 million new health-insurance eligible people will be covered under Medicaid. It will take a sophisticated infrastructure to make sure people know about the coverage they are eligible for and are getting the care they need, at the right time. Could a combination of the fulfillment ability of Zappos with the innovation of Apple show the way to some solutions?
- Optimizing services in the event of disaster. Preparing for disasters is problematic because disasters are rather rare—but as “Superstorm”/Hurricane Sandy showed, the need for care is acute when these types of natural disasters occur. This team is looking at ways to optimize devices and services for rare disasters and that may have collateral benefits for routine events. While only an advertising line, Motel 6’s “We’ll leave the light on for you” hints at ways to provide a constant state of comfort, if not readiness.
- Developing electronic tracking and efficient transport for the nation’s organ transplant system. Could the logistics expertise of United Parcel Service (UPS) provide new avenues, for example?
The fellowship program was spawned when HHS met with other federal agencies to determine issues that might require some outside help (very much like the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency). For the first round of the program, the teams assembled make for an extremely varied group, which should foster fresh ideas and perspectives, some of which are readily borrowed or repurposed from other industries.
What do you see as some of the biggest challenges facing healthcare with the ACA in place? Are the ones outlined above “it” or are there others that HHS might consider next? How would you develop a fee-for-performance system, perhaps borrowing ideas from other industry segments? Are there specific ideas you’d like to share with me as an advisor in this effort? Let me know your thoughts.
Tags: Affordable Care Act, healthcare act, HHS fellowship, HHS innovation fellowship, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
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Earlier this week, I reflected on the Cleveland Clinic predictions on the Top 10 innovations in healthcare for 2012 from the vantage point of the year coming to a close. Today, I’ll review the predictions for 2013:
- Healthcare programs with monetary incentives (Medicare Better Health Rewards Program)—Due to rising costs of healthcare, this program is designed to empower the patient to reach achievable health goals. Metrics gauge improvement in six areas: body mass index, diabetes indicators, blood pressure, cholesterol, vaccinations, and tobacco use. The program gives participants an incentive of up to $400 after they follow the program for two to three years. The rewards: better outcomes for seniors and reduced utilization of healthcare services. While this is not a medical device, it will be interesting to see results over the year ahead.
- Breast tomosynthesis (3D mammography) screening for breast cancer—The technology is FDA approved and does not replace standard two-dimensional mammograms. Instead, it is performed along with conventional mammograms for a more accurate view of the breast—tissue, ducts, vessels, and ligaments at varying depths. This could help women with dense breasts where standard mammography may not detect the tumor. Preliminary studies indicate a substantial increase in cancer detection over standard mammography.
- Modular device for complex aneurysms—Ruptured aneurysms are often fatal. Monitoring and treatment can deter a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm, using meticulous measurements of the aneurysm’s size and location and fitting an appropriately sized stent-graft. A custom-fit graft can take weeks to make and deliver; however, a new fenestrated stent-graft system allows treatment of the patient without detailed measurements or prolonged wait times.
- Ex-vivo lung perfusion to reverse lung injury in donor organs rejected for transplantation—Damaged lungs are removed from a donor and connected to a cardiopulmonary pump and ventilator. As the lungs inflate/deflate, fluids and nutrients are pumped through blood vessels to repair and nourish the tissue. Ex vivo lung perfusion is approved in Europe and Canada and a multicenter study in the U.S. is underway.
- Femtosecond laser cataract surgery—allows greater precision without a blade. Cataracts are a common eye ailment in people over 60 years of age, and cataract surgery is one of the most common and effective surgeries performed. This laser is FDA approved.
- Handheld optical scan to identify skin lesions—The technology was used in the military for guided missile navigation. This FDA approved device is showing promising results in the largest study ever on melanoma, with a 98% detection rate.
- Novel advanced prostate cancer medications—These drugs block testosterone production and prevent stimulation of genes that cause prostate cancer growth. Metastatic bone pain is a common problem in advanced prostate cancer; treatment with an injectable form of radiation that targets bone metastases and avoids damaging healthy cells is showing promise. Treatment of advanced prostate cancer may be managed as a chronic disease with improved survival.
- Mass spectrometry using matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization time of flight (MALDI-TOF)—Identify pathogens causing infection in far less time compared to inoculating an agar plate and waiting hours to days for the organism to grow. This basic science lab technique may help avoid inappropriate antibiotic use and improve outcomes.
- Neuromodulation therapy for cluster and migraine headaches—This uses a small implantable neurostimulator, placed in the upper gum. The tip of the device is placed near the sphenopalatine ganglion nerve bundle (SPG), a target for treating severe headache. A remote control delivers stimulation to the SPG when a headache is looming. In the U.S., the device is in multicenter trials. It is approved and available in Europe.
- Bariatric surgery for control of diabetes—Initially used for weight reduction in obesity, it appears to also diminish Type 2 diabetes soon after surgery. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that patients who underwent bariatric surgery reduced their medications for diabetes or were diabetes-free. Other benefits were lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Due to these positive results, some Type 2 diabetes patients are now being offered the surgery.
The themes for these 2013 innovations strike me as cost reduction and re-purposing. The Medicare Program, if only because of its sheer size, could make dramatic differences in healthcare spending while handing responsibility for healthcare to the patient/consumer. Meanwhile, handheld optical scanners illustrate the transfer of military technology to healthcare, and MALDI-TOF, bariatric surgery and lung rejuvenation are cases of using science and medical technology for an innovative purpose, or using previously rejected tissue. We’ll see how effective they are in the longer term.
Do you think these are the top ten innovations? What would you replace? How can the life sciences industry impact healthcare innovation over the next year? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
Tags: cleveland clinic, Cleveland Clinic Top 10 Innovations, healthcare innovations, top 10 healthcare innovations 2013, top healthcare innovations
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Last year, the Cleveland Clinic predicted what the Top 10 innovations in healthcare for 2012 would be. Before we report on the Cleveland Clinic’s predictions for 2013, let’s review how well the Top 10 Innovations for this year actually fared:
- Catheter-based renal denervation for resistant hypertension—Five companies are manufacturing the devices, which are now available in Europe and are under study in the U.S.
- CT scans for early detection of lung cancer—New practice guidelines recommend screening using low-dose CT scans for people at high risk of developing lung cancer and can only be performed in experienced facilities. The cost? About $100 per screening (not covered by insurance).
- Concussion management for athletes—The Cleveland Clinic is developing a concussion app for use in high schools that checks athletes’ memory, reaction time, and balance and compares scores to previous data points.
- Mobile health devices and apps—This is now an area of enormous growth, with more than 40,000 mobile apps related to health and wellness. The FDA recently released draft guidelines for apps that make medical claims. At Popper and Company, we added Paul Sonnier to our team as head of digital health strategy, due in part to our recognition that mobile and other technologies from other industries have become incorporated into healthcare.
- Next-generation sequencing—This technology has expanded into pathology laboratories with a small footprint and low cost. As the price of sequencing and the speed at which sequencing can occur both drop, look for handheld devices to hit the market next year that will have the ability to sequence the genome in 15 minutes.
- Implantable device for complex brain aneurysms—An FDA-approved device that reconstructs blood vessels in the brain is gaining traction over older coil and stent technologies.
- Active bionic prosthesis—Limb prosthetics are improving thanks to better materials and advancements that allow lighter limbs, and increased activity and stability. The first exoskeleton device was available this year for paraplegics, for over $100,000. However, insurance companies currently pay only for basic prosthetics.
- Big data—This will become the norm in managing patients, due in part to the Affordable Care Act and the implementation of electronic health records.
- Diabetes Therapy—SGLT2 Inhibitors (sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 protein) rid glucose by excreting it in the urine. They also lower A1C levels but the FDA rejected the drug application for dapagliflozin, an experimental drug being studied by Bristol-Myers Squibb in partnership with AstraZeneca, due to concern over side effects and requested more data. The European Commission approved the drug.
- Genetically modified mosquitoes—The U.S. Department of Agriculture is considering the release of millions of GM mosquitoes in Florida but citizen protests touting fears of disrupting the food chain have involved the FDA.
While there have been more than a few stumbling blocks, a few trends are clear: mobile apps and more accessible electronic records are a growing phenomenon, and devices are becoming more flexible, light, and more often than not, implantable. And so what’s to come in the year ahead? In my next post, I’ll look at the Cleveland Clinic’s predictions for 2013.
Do you think these were the top 10 healthcare innovations for 2012? Were there others more worthy of the list? What trends do you see? How do they impact your medical device or diagnostics business? What can life science leaders to do keep up with these trends? Let us know your thoughts.
Tags: cleveland clinic, Cleveland Clinic Top 10 Innovations, healthcare innovations, top 10 healthcare innovations 2013, top healthcare innovations
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We have followed the progress of Walgreens as the drugstore chain integrates health clinics into its stores as one example of what appears to be a growing trend throughout the drugstore industry. But it’s still not clear how these clinics will fit into the mix of healthcare offerings.
Walgreens now has 356 in-store clinics, and other drugstore chains are more than catching up: CVS has about 588 CVS “MinuteClinics,” and Wal-Mart includes 143 clinics across some of its stores nationwide. The consulting firm Merchant Medicine estimates that there are almost 1,400 in-store health clinics in the United States.
Recently, National Public Radio and Truven Health Analytics conducted a poll of consumers, and found that:
- Two-thirds of people would try an in-store clinic, while about half said they were aware of a clinic near them.
- Eighty percent of people who tried a clinic were happy with the experience.
- Most consumers went to a clinic to treat a cold or minor illness, or to receive an immunization.
Why are these clinics popular? The reasons could be a warning shot to physicians and other providers. Although most people who used the clinics also had “regular” doctors, the consumers reported that the clinics were cheaper, more accessible than a doctor’s office, and provided the “perceived” same quality care as that received from a physician.
While Rand Corp. and other studies found that clinics indeed are 80 percent cheaper than an emergency room and half the price of a doctor’s office visit, the clinics could cause headaches for doctors and patients:
- Patients who try clinics are less likely to visit a doctor the next time they get sick. Since clinics don’t have patient records or a regularly scheduled provider, there’s no provider-patient relationship.
- Clinics aren’t staffed by doctors—usually a nurse practitioner or physician assistant sees customers. Serious or chronic problems could easily be overlooked.
- Consistency could become a problem—some in-store clinics could over-prescribe drugs, and in extreme cases, certain free-standing clinics were found to be “pill mills” in disguise, illegally selling narcotics and painkillers.
There’s no doubt that the consumer revolution in healthcare is demanding more access at a more reasonable cost, but are in-store clinics the solution? Right now, less than one percent of outpatient care is handled through such facilities. But as they grow, there will have to be a good, secure fit within the overall healthcare delivery system.
What do you think: Do in-store clinics have a rightful place in healthcare delivery? Or are they undermining physicians and other providers, and possibly putting patients at risk? What other solutions incorporate quality care, accessibility and low cost?
Tags: drugstore chains, health clinics, healthcare delivery, healthcare offerings, in-store clinics, Walgreens
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