Health Startup Digest - 4/15/16

Startup Highlight: Medical RealitiesI've had a couple AR/VR companies highlighted in the digest, but   April 15 - Issue #9 Health Startup Digest Curated by R. Scott Munro, the latest news and information about startups and innovations in healthcare. Startup Highlight: Medical RealitiesI’ve had a couple AR/VR companies highlighted in the digest, but Medical Realities did a live VR broadcast of a surgery this week, so I figured it warranted a highlight. The company focuses on medical training using AR/VR technologies which is (of course) the main use of AR/VR in healthcare. I’ll try to include a video of the surgery in a future digest once it’s out. They’ve got some other videos you can check out, here. As always, if you come across news, announcements, videos, or podcasts that you think the other 4,600+ subscribers would benefit from, e-mail me at scott.munro@startupdigestmail.com or tweet @R_Scott_Munro and subscribe to the digest, here. If you have feedback/suggestions, please let me know, here. Articles: Forget Patient-Facing Apps. Yes, You Read That Correctly. thehealthcareblog.com This is a great piece from Dr. Alan Pitt on patient engagement. He makes the point that often, we have a tough time with health apps because they make us face our own mortality to a certain extent. As Dr. Pitt says, “most people find tracking their health to be, in some sense, an admission of frailty, imperfection and mortality.” This is an incredibly interesting point, and his suggestion is we should switch our view from patient engagement to caregiver (family, spouse, child) engagement, as it can be easier to get those individuals to care for the patient then to get the patient to care for themselves.  Consumer Segmentation Just Hit Healthcare and Here's How It Works www.hhnmag.com This is a very cool piece on how a number of hospitals are using traditional segmentation strategies to break up their patient populations in order to coach them towards better care in ways that make the most sense for their psychological profile. TriHealth and Carolinas HealthCare are taking different tactics, but I would lean more towards what Carolinas is doing, which is to take not just psychological data from questionnaires, but to layer EMR and demographic data on top of that to understand exactly how these patients should be cared for, what interventions might work best, and how they might be coached towards better care. As testing/monitoring technologies become even more robust (and cheaper), this sort of segmentation will become even more accurate. The early data shows increased satisfaction and outcomes, which makes sense. What's The Status Of The Biggest API In Healthcare? | Rock Health rockhealth.com A quick overview on the status of FHIR (the interoperability standard for health care APIs).  Report: Corporate venture capital bullish on seed stage health investments medcitynews.com In many of the recent reports regarding venture funding, there has been a jump in the number of corporate VCs and the amount they have invested in companies. Google Ventures, McKesson, Kaiser, Cambia, Comcast, and others have come forward as power houses in digital health and health tech investing. This report is fascinating to me as a way to parse out different trends in corporate VCs. For me, I think part of why Corporate VCs make so much sense in health care is the potential to connect products with buyers and the knowledge around selling into health care which can be such slog. My guess is we will see more and more health systems (Digntiy, UPMC, and others already have) throw their hats into the ring along side traditional corporate VCs. A few high level take aways: 1) Most folks expect Corporate VCs to increase their output in 2016 (which we’ve already seen with UPMC, and others) 2) Corporate VCs tend to stick to earlier stage funding (this surprised me, I would have thought CVCs would stick to later stage given risk profiles) 3) Almost 20% have yet to make a single investment Lessons From More Than A Decade In Patient Portals healthaffairs.org Pretty interesting study on the impacts of patient portals and secure e-mail via Kaiser Permanente (posted in Health Affairs). It’s easy for folks to assume that more technology = better outcomes (even though that is often not the case); however, it seems as though when it comes to patient portals and secure e-mail, it very well may be. Folks that used secure e-mail had better outcomes as measured by, “Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) performance measures, such as glycemic (HbA1c), cholesterol, and blood-pressure screening and control measures.” Further, they had higher levels of medication adherence. The elephant in the room here, which the study mentions, is technology disparities and access to patient portals. Obviously, not every demographic has access to a computer, and my gut tells me there may be a chicken and egg problem when it comes to the outcomes (i.e. are the sorts of people that are e-mailing with physicians predisposed to have better outcomes/higher adherence…)Regardless, it’s interesting to see some of the stats and a fairly comprehensive study on the subject. Quote of the Week: “Even if it's "free," as was the case with both the Microsoft and Google offerings, most people find tracking their health to be, in some sense, an admission of frailty, imperfection and mortality. Except for occasional blips related more to vanity (weight loss is the prime example), when it comes to our health most of us are in denial. So when people talk about technology for patient engagement, I tend to pause and wonder: Should we be building apps and services just for patients, or for the people who care about them too?”- Dr. Alan Pitt, The Health Care Blog Events: SVHealth April - Silicon Valley www.eventbrite.com “Are you interested in learning more about how healthtech is changing our lives? Come to SVHealth for it's April event! Watch this month's keynote presentation is by Alexander Grunewald, Global Head of Healthcare Innovation Investment Strategy at Johnson & Johnson. Learn about and engage with exciting health technology companies: 3scan.com, Hygeiais.com and Lumity.com are doing. Network with other health innovators in the area!” This Digest is curated by: R. Scott Munro - Utility Infielder @ DocMatter www.startupdigest.com I am a classical languages nerd turned digital health geek. I spend my days researching medical device, pharmaceutical, and biotech companies + helping clinicians efficiently collaborate.I have a passion for the intersection of health and technology, and wholeheartedly believe we are at the beginning of the most exciting eras of healthcare. Do you enjoy receiving this? Please share it:     Tweet     Share   Carefully curated by Health Startup Digest with Revue If you don't want these updates anymore, please unsubscribe here.