Develop a simple, straightforward indication of the impact and viability of innovation in healthcare

As we are preparing our first HealthStartup event on October 5, we receive quite a lot of questions on how we plan to evaluate the participating projects – and how we plan to measure the output of the event.

Our goal is to develop a tool that would give buyers of the startups’ services – as well as potential investors – a simple, straightforward indication of the project’s impact and viability. It should also be useful as a guideline for the startups themselves in evaluating potential markets, raising funds, and communicating with various target audiences.

With that in mind, we’ve started developing a “project scorecard” which will include three aspects of an innovation and produce an overall score indicating the viability of a project.

The scoring on a simple numeric scale (1-4) will be carried out by participants during the event; scores would be tabulated and communicated after the event.

Attached is our initial thinking on the parameters within the scorecard. We would very much appreciate your input, any additions (or reductions) to the list of the question, clarifications, etc.

 

So, please read through the article at HealthStartup and leave your comments!

Will we get the healthcare ecosystem to collaborate on improving mankind?

We have very high development cycles of devices and techniques (18 months or less) AND an industry moving at a ludicrous speed.

We have an enormous amount of incompatible data, coming from: 

• different devices, 
• via different systems, 
• via different (mobile) OSs

Despite great efforts of organisations like Continua Health Alliance, it's an illusion to think that -someday- we will be using the same (open) techniques/standards worldwide to collect and combine health-data.

Striving towards compatibility and interoperability is essential, but I believe this should be complemented by focussing on efficient ways to aggregate all that incompatible data (the equivalent of Friendfeed) and display it as a coherent stream in a personal health record. 

Fusion with data from energy-sources, city- & home-services and social media will further leverage the potential of the collected data.

Extra advantage is that the collected data can be searched upon anonymously. Possibilities to improve mankind by developing cures & remedies faster, improving diagnoses, improving adherence, ... and at the same time lowering the (healthcare)costs and giving more opportunity for 'face time'.

Good examples are:

http://www.data.gov/health

http://www.numerahealth.com/

http://www.gravityeight.com/

http://www.scanadu.com/

http://www.runkeeper.com

Will we find good plumbers to connect the different data-pipes? 

Will the diameter of the data-pipes be wide enough to cope with an enormous data-flow?

Will our buckets be big enough to store collect/store the data? 

Will we find enough good craftsmen to visualize and interpret that flow? 

Will we get the ecosystem to collaborate on improving mankind? 

Slide from 'mhealth is huge' preso at MoMoAMS.

Ambient Assisted Living solutions to achieve the market breakthrough

Summary of notes of the AAL workshop in Brussels on June 7, 2011

Personal summary

Many platforms and many applications and many users = many end-to-end products/services = 'The Long Tail' in assisted living. Going from 'one size fits all' to 'one size fits one' (quote from openurc).

Open source, flexibility, synergy and interoperability are the way to cope with current and future society variables and the velocity of technological evolution. Committee not fond of small scale projects (like Flanders Care) or closed source (like Apple).

User based involvement and consolidation of players in the ecosystem is imperative.

Whereas I think building data-aggregations (function like translators) will offer solutions for agile connectedness, none of the participants I spoke to seem to agree. Also my believe that creating an open environment through regulated APIs would leverage the potential of SMEs, didn't have many supporters.

AAL products and services have the advantage they aren't (always) considered as medical devices.

Matchmaking in AAL: find information/products/projects/... I can't understand why the EU hasn't started with making a list of people and companies involved, there's no public searchable list or inventory! If a complex ecosystem is one of the barriers, you should start by identifying the stakeholders!

Liked

Users can pick any controller they like to interact with the system.

Trialog: standardisation for interoperability is supported by the EU commission

Repository (like sourceforge) in Brazil around assisted living. At this time they have 50 apps

Medical reminders are displayed on the TV while watching.

Freemium in assisted living (business model on operational level).

Increase system-family engineering to speed-up development.

Fusion with energy, e-health, city- and home-services and social media.

Web guidance tools for self-care (like measuring blood pressure).

uAAL works together (complementary) to openurc, continua and osami.

EU 2020 target: increase healthy years with 2 years

Personal UI: anywhere, anytime.

Presentations of openURC and Osami.

Barriers

Interoperability

Hesitant stakeholders

Lack of standards

Regulation and laws (Continua)

No awareness of AAL among end consumers

Stand alone projects (small ecosystem or small market) are too expensive

Assembly or choreography of the healthcare service ecosystem is a huge challenge (casala.ie)

Guidelines for privacy and security

Liability

Speed of technology: healthcare technology goes faster than the ability of the EU committee to make a roadmap for it

Venture capital doesn't fund platforms or ecosytems.

Practicality and usability.

Producing a healthcare product may cost 100,00 EUR, putting it on the market may costs millions. Cost of production-ready healthcare-product testing (at least 500-1000 people) is too high for SMEs.

SMEs are not interested in (open source AAL) platforms, they are only looking for short term business possibilities.

Critical support services and sustainable maintenance.

See the full gallery on Posterous

5 Healthcare challenges summarized in 1 image

5_healthcare_challenges.pdf Download this file

Attached an older 1-page depiction I made to illustrate the 5 challenges in healthcare.

I post it here because several people asked if they could use it (YES you can!).

Other reason is that I'm bored by presenters spending 10 minutes explaining these challenges (WE KNOW! move on!).

Assessing healthcare innovations in ICT: the society scorecard

What's the real worth of an innovation in healthcare? 

What's the impact on a society?

Preparing for Westartup healthcare, I dug up a simple scorecard I used to determine the impact of an ICT - innovation in healthcare.

The scorecard gives a score, based on questions from 5 different angles:

Care organisation

What's the ROI? (workflow, efficiency and general cost reduction) 

Does it have a quantifiable impact on marketing and recruitment?

Will it simplify making business/management decisions?

Is it interoperable with other aspects of the healthcare ecosystem?

What are the costs to train people to work with the product/service? How simple is it to use?

Care consumer

Does it offer convenience? Will it allow to reshape healthcare to fit people's lives (and not the other way around)?

What about participating in the process? Will it help the consumer to interact?

Exactly how does it improve the quality of the treatment from a consumers perspective?

Will it offer peace of mind?

Is it easy/simple to use?

Care practitioner

Can you quantify the improvements on efficiency, workflow and time?

Is it user friendly? Is it simple to use? Is it intuitive?

Will it enhance interaction with other practitioners?

How interoperable is it with the other tools I use?

Can it simplify decision making?

Taxpayer

Will it lower healthcare costs? Will it lower reimbursement costs by lowering re-admission, enhancing adherence, ... or by lowering efficiency in workforce and processes? 

Does it improve the quality of treatment?

Can it speed up developing a cure?

Business

I can haz 458 Italia?

The weight of the 5 scores might differ for each product/service, but calculating an overall result is feasible and meaningful.

Suggestions on improving this simple model are welcome!

Cloud storage for the exchange of health information

ZH_dossier_voorbeeld.pdf Download this file

For several years I'm complaining that paper health records are getting lost when one of the elderly residents of our carehome is hospitalised.

We did all kinds of efforts to prevent loss of the papers, but no success till now.

In case of loss we had to fax (alas, no email) the papers to the central reception of the hospital (alas, no fax at the specific department).

I was approached by a hospital and a software vendor to find a solution.

A logical suggestion was to use cloud storage (like Amazon, Dropbox, Nomadesk, ...) and to use encrypted folders (per user or per organisation) for such papers. Such cloud solutions are easy to use, very flexible, easy to implement and safe enough for this purpose. When hospital staff reacts outraged 'how unsafe this is', I point them to the current 'solution' where we fax the papers to the central reception.

I'm very curious which cloud solution they are going to produce, how cheap it will be and how user friendly it will be.

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!