healthcare

Ice, snow and healthcare at your fingertips. The mHealth Summit was acquired by HIMSS in February 2012. The summit was billed at that time as "the largest gathering focused solely on the intersection of health and mobile information technology." This year, the glossy for the mHealth Summit event was subtitled "Healthcare at your Fingertips" – a play on the mobile health device innovation and investment hype.  During an icy and snowy few days, there was the usual gnashing of teeth about whether mobile healthcare delivery is a broadly adopted reality and will really be at your fingertips any time soon. The conference tackled some thorny global issues – obstetrics and women in developing countries, new ventures/investment and helping developers think about wireless innovation. Surprise -- the event had at least three scheduled sessions (Yayyy!!!) about older adults, aging in place, and the presence/absence of apps for seniors.

How did we get people to quit smoking? Do you remember the early days when 'Smoking is bad for your health' ads (based on published research) emerged? In the 1960s, 44% of adults smoked. I thought of the research-based ads this week when Pew Research released an enormous report (94 pages) called The Diagnosis Difference, funded by the California Healthcare Foundation. In its many pages, the report makes two key points: 1) People with chronic diseases are less likely to have Internet access than those without chronic diseases --72% versus 89%, thus described as the "17-point difference." 2) Those with chronic diseases who are online use the Internet to find information as well as other people who share their chronic disease(s).  And – one more thing – 43% of the 65+ surveyed had two or more chronic conditions. Now you know, but what should you do?

It’s a new era – patient engagement – but does that include seniors? According to a recent health journal article, welcome to the era of patient engagement. What’s that?  “Empowering patients to actively process information, decide how that information fits into their lives, and act on those decisions is a key driver to improving care and reducing costs.” Like many of the heavily-invested Health IT improvements over the years, patient engagement strategies offer the industry a feel-good approach to preaching to and reaching the converted – those tech-enabled individuals with a fetish for looking stuff up and tracking it (see Google Health). Ah, but those with the least access to technology may need the most engagement -- they're not likely to peer at their patient portals. At last Pew count only 13% of the 65+ even looked online for information as a diagnostic tool. And fewer than half of those followed up with a medical professional based on what they found.

May 30 marked the beginning of the AARP Life@50+ National Event in Las Vegas – and it also marks the results of the Health Innovation@50+ event sponsored by the Thought Leadership team led by Jody Holtzman at AARP. The finalists are noted below, with their descriptions drawn from the AARP website.  Not noted are two firms, Lively and CareMerge, that we have described following the 2013 What’s Next Summit in Chicago. Here are the other eight finalists, all information is from the AARP site: