DrBonnie360

Shifting balance of power- more to come

Accustomed to watching public market valuations as an equity analyst and as an investor relations professional, I was surprised when the Vocera IPO passed with little fanfare.

Much has been written about benefits of connected health.  Yet, despite the fact that the Vocera device comes from Startrek and could share some of the excitement of the Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize, the Vocera IPO did not get much buzz in the digital health community.

As I roamed the floors of my first HIMSS, where the large IT vendors dominated the top floors of the conference while mobile health was in the basement, I wondered how new technology would fit into the existing workflow.  Similar to Airstrip, which builds on top of existing infrastructure to improve workflow, Vocera uses voice and mobile technology to help hospital workers communicate more efficiently.  I suspect we will see this technology spread to medical offices and clinics in the near future.

With Vocera’s doubling revenues (40M in revenues in 2009 and 80M+ in 2011) and a successful IPO, I think that mobile health is showing that it can be a viable business and more fanfare is warranted. 

Given that venture funding for Health 2.0 is up 44%, it seems to me that the successful Vocera IPO will serve as a public benchmark for increasing private valuations in mhealth.

More to come.

I enjoyed sharing a dual lens as a clinician and market analyst at the Burrill Digital Health Conference.

Panel: “Redesigning Healthcare around the Consumer”

Jason Langheier, Founder & CEO, Zipongo

Aimee Jungman, VP Healthcare Innovation Strategy, Frog Design

Bonnie Feldman, Principal, Feldman Stakeholder Relations

Kai Huang, Founder of RedOctane – Maker of Guitar Hero

Moderated by: Marty Nealon, Former President, HSN

More to come

A trusted doctor/patient relationship has been the cornerstone of medical practice.
We know that it is important that physicians and other providers be responsive to patient’s needs, and that patients want compassionate care, not assembly-line repair.

Although exactly what patients want may be evolving; so much so, that doctor patient communication may affect outcomes,  and may even enrich the placebo effect.

With the advent of new technology in healthcare, a recent post by well-known venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla, describing the power of algorithms to replace doctors spurred a lively debate.

The discussion continued at a panel entitled “Is technology changing the doctor-patient relationship? at the DHS at CES,  moderated by Zachary Bujnoch, of Frost and Sullivan, with participation by Gene Frantz of Texas Instruments, William Reid of Numera and Alexandra Von Plato of Digitas Health.

The discussion included the three things we want-1.managing chronic disease, 2. predicting catastrophic disease and 3. allowing us to live at home at the end of life.                                         

Other topics included using technology to enhance patient-centered telemedicine.

But it was a story by Alexandra Von Plato that captured the essence of the quandary for all of us.

We anxiously sit in our doctor’s office, waiting to tell our story to our magical healer.  What we really want is someone to connect with us, touch us, and assure us that all is ok.  Instead, we get a hurried physician who is so focused on data entry, that they cannot even make eye contact with us!

How can our magical healers use technology as a tool?

In health and wellness, we see this beginning to catch on.

The Center for Connected Health is finding that having someone watch us, may help us to stay on track.

And new companies, such as Avado, are using tech to streamline electronic communication and improve the doctor-patient relationship.

These are good examples of tech working behind the scenes (invisibly or transparently) as a tool.

But when we are sick, feeling vulnerable, needy and weak - we don’t want our healers to be machines like Watson- we crave compassion.  As Alexandra’s story (in bold above) depicted, our technology will need to be seamless and transparent and take a back seat to the compassion we crave.

Quantified Self, a movement which began as a small group of elite athletes or math geeks using self-tracking, is growing with the advent of cheaper, faster and better health measurement and reporting tools.

Wired shows some of the interesting self-tracking gadgets at CES while MIT Technology Review wonders if “self-tracking” leads to better living.

A recent Pew Study found that one quarter of online users are tracking their health data online. Furthermore, the creation of the peer-reviewed Journal of Participatory Medicine signals that patients (consumers) are becoming more active participants in their health care.

The exhibit floor at CES showed us lots of ways to track fitness, including:

FitBit Ultra, Nike+ Fuel Band, Striiv, Basis and Body Media.

At the Digital Health Summit, The Data Liberation Panel addressed what to do with all of this data that is being generated.  Ray Maker from DC Rainmaker moderated the panel. Panel members included Ian Andes from 4iiiInnovations, Karl-Johan Dahlstrom from Sony-Ericsson, Chris Fickle from A&D Medical, and Mike Stashak from Wahoo Fitness.

The panel focused on biometric data collected from personal health fitness.  Issues discussed included increasing quantity of data that can be collected due to better sensors, wireless standards, the lack of interoperability, security and privacy.

With all this new data to manage, will coaching be a growth industry?

Reflecting on my dental practice days, I know that wellness/healthcare is a people business. Given the mainstream popularity of yoga, we are already seeing the growth of “wisdom” teachers (gurus are so 20^th Century!)

Will we seek actionable guidance via a wide variety of different types of healers/coaches- nutrition, weight, fitness, sleep, stress, self-improvement, overall well-being and even happiness?

What do you think?