Family caregiving is potentially a huge market, untapped primarily because it is unseen. It is also a complex market, and solutions to date have met with limited success, often due to a shallow understanding of user needs. But the needs are real and widespread, and enticing to bold, innovative entrepreneurs.
Could complex genetic experiments one day be as simple to carry out as an over-the-counter pregnancy test?
That’s the idea behind new research from James Collins, a synthetic biologist at Boston University, who says he’s been able to print the ingredients for simple DNA experiments on paper, freeze-dry them, and use them as much as a year later.
The work, described this week in the journal Cell by Collins and colleagues from Harvard, could lead to bandages that change color if an infection is developing, environmental sensors worn on clothing, or cheap diagnostics for viruses like Ebola.
The virtual health care platform HealthTap has launched a new service called “Concierge,” which allows users to connect with their own primary care doctor, or with a specialist, in all 50 states.
The new service is an improvement over HealthTap’s “Prime” service, which paired users up with participating primary care doctors in 28 states.
For women trying to conceive, getting pregnant might not get easier in the next few months—but tracking their fertility to find the likeliest time to conceive might.
Kindara, a startup in Boulder, CO, recently announced the debut of Wink, a wireless smart thermometer the company has spent the past few years developing. Wink uses Bluetooth to connect to iOS and Android phones and tablets and syncs with Kindara’s popular fertility tracking app.
In recent decades, the health care industry has made remarkable progress in the understanding, detection and treatment of disease, primarily thanks to technological advancements. Given that the majority of Americans are healthy most of the time, one might expect that medical progress would dramatically reduce the cost of health care due to preventative education, early detection and more effective treatments.
Yet despite this abundance of new testing and treatment methods — or perhaps because of it — the cost of health care has skyrocketed, while over the same period general price inflation has been tame. The question remains: Are we really getting the full value for what we’re paying?
Technological developments in the health care sector hold great promise for delivering a better standard of care in the United States. But just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come. Doctors, that is.
Electronic prescriptions are a good example. The majority of doctors in the U.S. have no idea if the prescriptions they write actually get filled by the patient. Surescripts, for example, has a platform that lets doctors send prescriptions electronically and track when and if they are picked up.
The technology is there. But Seth Joseph, vice president of corporate strategy at Surescripts, says doctors may be reluctant to access that data and check in on a patient outside of an appointment.
As the use of digital health tools continues to become common practice in people’s lives, it’s always useful to quantify that. An infographic released this week (displayed below) showed that 60 percent of households have some sort of digital health device — such as a digital scale or glucometer. Although 25 percent used digital health apps, only 27 percent used their healthcare provider or insurer’s website.
It’s not just the FDA that is making life difficult for medical device companies. Executives are having to follow sales opportunities as medical care shifts out of hospitals into homes and physician offices. They are having to revamp their entire business model to survive in the new world of the ACA.
A.T. Kearney has identified the five forces that are forcing the device industry to evolve in this new report: Medical Devices: Equipped for the Future? In addition to spelling out the threats, the analysts have a guide for how to start building a new business model.
One of the biggest challenges of primary healthcare is ensuring frontline providers receive necessary guidance for managing complex and chronic health problems, especially as advances in treatment change rapidly.
This need is particularly acute when treating poor and underserved populations. But a new tool that leverages technology to link specialists with primary care providers is making big inroads, with the hope of reaching 1 billion people by 2025.
As the use of digital health tools continues to become common practice in people’s lives, it’s always useful to quantify that. An 