Assessing the value of an innovative startup in healthcare: updated scorecard

Our departure point is that in healthcare the products/services will have to survive in a unique ecosystem with unique challenges and unique opportunities. Excellent outline of some of these challenges and opportunities can be found in this Harvard Business Review article by Clayton Christensen, Richard Bohmer, and John Kenagy.

Therefore, while the basic principles for startups, customers and investors apply (and here’s a fresh example), there are additional considerations that are very important for healthcare startups.

With that in mind, our objective is to create a simple, straightforward scorecard specific to the healthcare sector that would allow a potential customer or investor to quickly evaluate a startup along the criteria that matter to such customer or investor.

Read more @ HealthStartup.eu

Questions for the future of home automation in health care

Next thursday I will be member of a panel (together with Joachim De Vos from Living Tomorrow & Philip Minnaert from Care Home Carpentier) discussing about the future of home automation in health care.
It will be a very interactive discussing with an audience filled with health care professionals (link to the event, in dutch, here: http://www.facilitynights.com/zorgcongres/).

Looking forward to the answers they will be giving to following questions:

1. Is home automation (or technology in general) for elderly "comfort"or "necessity"? (responding to attractiveness, progress, HR deficit)
2. How will a nursing home -through technology- 'take care' of a region? (through linked houses)
3. Is home automation a violation of privacy?
4. Will residential care evolve into houses of mourning? (because technology enables the elderly to stay home longer and more independently)
5. Will residential care be organised solely by large institutions ... or only through local (linked) initiatives?
6. Given the labor shortage, deploying robots is inevitable - or should we import "guest workers" in large quantities?
7. How much will automation technology blur the boundaries between skilled medical professionals and unskilled manpower?
8. What happens to human contact when communication with the outside world is done via screens (and / or augmented reality)?
9. If a multitude of devices and software are used, how important will the "openness" of health systems be?
10. Will the developments of home automation move from a permanent place in the house to the bodies of care consumers?

If you would like to see other questions answered, ... your suggestions are welcome!

Senior housing should lead with tech-enabled service to drive costs down

that the current approaches are unsustainable and so last-century

via ageinplacetech.com

Baby boomers do NOT want to go to a senior house,
the cost to house them in a senior house are unsustainable anyway.
And if the cost would be sustainable, there wouldn't be (human) staff to take care of customers.
There's only one way to cope with these problems and that's at home monitoring, collaborative (family) caring and preventive medicine. Mhealth can play a major role in these 3 solutions.

Overview of non-invasive mhealth solutions + trends

Non Invasive Health Monitoring with mHealth

View more documents from Bart Collet.

Preparing for MoMoAMS #14, I made an overview of non-invasive mHealth devices and services.

Thanks for the feedback and the RT's of the community!

Special thanks to David Doherty (3GDoctor) for pointing me to several great companies in the EU.

Still have questions:

1. Is mHealth going to be a succesful export product of developing countries?
2. I have undoubtely overlooked companies and services, which are they?
3. I certainly should have incorporated mobile medication checks and alerts, any pointers?
4. If wearable solutions are the outcome, can i take them to the drycleaners?
5. If devices evolve from medical ones to consumer goods, will the pricedrop be sufficient to overcome reimbursement problems?
6. What policies are needed if everyone starts spreading and sharing information?
7. How long it will take before specific medical ringtones are developed (or even mandatory)?
8. Are hospitals and practioners ready to handle the amount of data coming their way (with current hard- and software)?

Love to hear from you!

Posted via email from bartcollet's posterous

Increase possibilities of independent living by technology

Ambient Assisted Living
CAALYX aims at increasing older people's autonomy and self-confidence by developing a wearable light device capable of measuring specific vital signs of the elderly, detecting falls, and communicating automatically in real time with his/her care provider in case of an emergency, wherever the elderly person happens to be, at home or outside.
TRAIL In TRAIL, we develop innovative research that explores the implications of these changes and how they can promote sustainable collaboration between public, private and voluntary service providers. We utilise academic, business and community partnerships focused on participative research and design, encompassing living lab and open innovation methodologies and practices.
PERSONA aims at advancing the paradigm of Ambient Intelligence through the harmonisation of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies and concepts for the development of sustainable and affordable solutions for the social inclusion and independent living of Senior Citizen, integrated in a common semantic framework.
Grand Care The GrandCare system supports standard protocols which means that the list of supported sensors will continue to grow. Depending on the situation, we will provide sensors based on wireless X10, powerline X10, Zwave, or Zigbee standards. You can always start small and add new sensors as the situation requires.
eNeighbor (Healthsense wi-fi) Healthsense Integrated Solutions offers completely integrated systems including: Wi-Fi Wireless Nurse Call, Remote Monitoring, Telehealth and campus-wide Wi-Fi communication. These systems are scalable, flexible, and based on proven open network communication standards.
Fall prevention
Artesis + VUB Accelerometer based gait analysis
myHalo is a step ahead for you and your caregivers and it brings the future home. This is the only system offering automatic 24/7 vital signs and activity monitoring, including advanced fall detection. That means, you don’t have to push a panic button, because the system already knows when you have fallen.
U.Va.'s School of Engineering Wireless body sensor networks that monitor gait, being developed by University of Virginia researchers, could offer a solution on both fronts.
GE Ecumen Quietcare Video shot at Ecumen's Lakeview Commons community in Maplewood, Minnesota, was shown at GE and Intel press conference announcing proactive health technology partnership between the two companies. 
GeriatricAssistant (bug labs) This application is the combination of various geriatric assistance ideas(two to be exact). The first function of the application is a more modern “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” device which actually attempts to detect when a fall has occurred using the Motion/Accelerometer module. If a fall is detected, a log is posted to a tumblr account complete with an image which pin-points the location of the fall based on the GPS coordinates retrieved from the GPS module. The second function of the application is used to help people with memory issues (Alzheimer's patients, etc.) by recording images throughout the day and allowing them to review those images in rapid succession before they go to bed, which has been proven to help increase their recollection of events.

Posted via email from bartcollet's posterous

Attempt at a Nexthealth definition

Nexthealth is the entire array of inexpensive and pragmatic (userfriendly + down to earth) technology, methods, techniques and systems that offer practical solutions to cope with:

• increasing aged population and chronic diseases
• increasing regulation, complexity and administration
• altering patient expectancy towards healthcare delivery
• decreasing workforce
• decreasing means