Dallas, TX — In brief: The coolest doctor we know just joined AT&T, BMS used four words to poison a competitive launch, all your pills now come in handy to-go packs, the way the internet is organized is changing, clinical trial data has been freed, patient records are now for patients, ERs are becoming education hubs, insurers are dumping apps, an eye scan predicts if you’ll have diabetes, billboards talk to your phones and you can finish a painting just by walking by it. Whew! Check out the details:
1. Dr Topol (an HxP favorite!) named medical lead at AT&T: The biggest advocate for mHealth as a tool to improve medicine and reduce healthcare costs now has a bully pulpit. AT&T recruited cardiologist Dr. Eric Topol to be the company’s new chief Medical Advisor, consulting on existing and emerging mobile health technologies to enhance and support AT&T ForHealth. Read more about this new role on CNBC. Or, check out his iPhone-powered exam room:
2. How competitive positioning undercut the Eli Lilly and Daichii Sankyo blood thinner launch: PharmaExec has a fascinating new look at how positioning is changing. BMS assembled a multi-disciplinary internal counter-launch team nearly two years before the approval of Effient to pre-position its competitor as a “niche product” with “bleeding concerns.” A strong, targeted, consistent message dramatically impacted the eventual launch. Read their perspective.
3. Tear-off packs hold a day’s Rx: Online pharmacy PillPack charges users $20/month to organize all their medications in convenient tear-off packs that are clearly dated. The packs are delivered every two weeks and a service called “Proactive Refill Management” takes care of any refills and prescription renewals ahead of time. (Thanks to Brock Poling for this find!) Watch their video.
4. Huge changes to how the internet is organized are starting to launch:About 1,000 new generic top-level domain names, or gTLDs (the last part of an internet address, like the com in WebMD.com) will launch this year. The first dozen or so (including our favorite: .guru) rolled out this week. The full list of requested domains including lots of healthcare choices, like .Pfizer, .Lilly, .Abbott, .Abbvie, .Cialis, .Doctor, .Health and more. Read a little more at AdWeek. Read a lot more at Quartz.
5. J&J sets the standard in clinical trial data sharing: Independent analysis of clinical trial data just got a lot easier. Boehringer Ingelheim, GSK, Sanofi and ViiV Healthcare agreed to make anonymized patient-level data from their clinical trials available to researchers on request. J&J went even farther, sharing clinical data through the Yale School of Medicine Open Data Access (YODA) Project. More from Forbes.
6. First-of-its-kind patient portal integrates, well, everything: George Van Antwerp just reviewed a new platform called Dossia. It’s a true patient engagement portal that integrates health plans, PBMs, pharmacies, lab companies, and even EMR companies to create a rich longitudinal view of the patient for the patient. Backed by Applied Materials, AT&T, BP, Cardinal Health, Intel, Pitney Bowes, Vanguard Health Systems, NantWorks and Walmart, this one could go all the way. See his post.
7. A tablet in every room of the emergency room: Bioscape is bringing patient engagement to ERs on Android tablets loaded with text, audio and 3D visual imagery. The tablets have workflow utility – discharge forms, feedback surveys – but more importantly they help educate users on diagnoses and treatments while they wait (and wait and wait). Mobihealthnews has the details.
8. Payers abandon apps, bet on bio trackers: A recent report from Chilmark Research found that health insurance companies launched more apps in 2012 than in 2013. They appear to have replaced those app pilots with new partnerships with biometric device companies. “[W]e continue to see growing investment in payer-owned consumer data aggregation platforms, biometric tracking initiatives, the next generation of social media platforms, and more,” the firm wrote. The report is pricey, but MobiHealthNews has more details.
9. Six-second can predict if you’ll get diabetes: The ClearPath DS-120 Lens Fluorescence Biomicroscope instantly tells users if they have pre-diabetes or diabetes with a simple six-second eye scan, no blood draw required. It looks like the type of machine you’d chin-up to in an optometrist’s office and can detect pre-diabetes up to seven years before symptoms start showing up. More from Fast Company.
10. Beacon-powered billboard offers smartphone self service: Toshiba has developed a digital signage system called Smartphone-linked Signage that is able to interact with multiple people’s cellphones at the same time. The sign sends out beacon signals by using Bluetooth low energy wireless technology. When the user’s smartphone comes close to the system, a button appears on both the sign and phone and gives the user the ability to control the sign, get information or coupons sent to their phone, etc. Read more at PSFK.
11. Painting at Liberty Mutuals HQ changes as people walk by: Flourish is a 70-foot-long interactive painting that comes to life in response to human movement, thanks to motion-tracking cameras. Depending on where passersby are standing, it can trigger the growing or falling of leaves. Watch the video:
Flourish from Michelle Higa Fox on Vimeo.
12. Oh, and just for you, our favorite readers: Answering work emails on your phone at night makes you bad at work the next day: A pair of recent studies found that using a smartphone to answer work emails after 9 p.m. led to people feeling less well-rested, engaged, and focused the following morning. They concluded that “always on” email answering = disengagement from work the next day. You’re going to want to read more about this one at Fast Company.
Contributors: Brock Poling, George Van Antwerp
Posted by: Leigh Householder
