A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

Can we age more slowly? And if so, what impact would senescence — delaying aging — have on health care costs on the U.S. economy? In addition to reclaiming $7.1 trillion over 50 years, we’d add an additional 2.2 years to life expectancy (with good quality of life). This is the calculation derived in Substantial Health And Economic Returns From Delayed Aging May Warrant A New Focus For Medical Research, published in the October 2013 issue of Health Affairs. The chart graphs changes in Medicare and Medicaid spending in 3 scenarios modeled in the study: when aging is delayed, more people qualify

Women and binge drinking…job and financial stress…sleeplessness…caregiving challenges…sex…these were the topics covered in Health 2.0 Conference’s session aptly called “The Unmentionables.” The panel on October 1, 2013, was a rich, sobering and authentic conversation among 7 women and 1 man who kept it very real on the main stage of this mega-meeting that convenes health technology developers, marketers, health providers, insurers, investors, patient advocates, and public sector representatives (who, sadly, had to depart for Washington, DC, much earlier than intended due to the government shutdown). The Unmentionables is the brainchild of Alexandra Drane and her brilliant team at the Eliza

This is a personal post about a very personal idea: medical rights and freedom of choice. When it has to do with your child, especially when she is a minor, then it’s ever-the-more personal. I have permission to use my daughter’s name, Anna, for this post. Anna’s public high school hosted a flu vaccine clinic this week. As I believe and live the mantra that health is where we live, work, play and pray — that health is not locked up isolated in a doctor’s office or hospital bed — I embrace the role that schools can play to bolster

A cadre of pioneering Americans has been meaningfully using personal health information technology (PHIT), largely outside of the U.S. health care system. These applications include self-tracking and wearable health technologies, mobile health apps, and digital medical tracking devices like glucometers that streamline tracking and recording blood glucose levels. In the meantime, only 21% of doctors surveyed by Accenture currently allow patients to have online access to their medical summary or patient chart – very basic components of the electronic health record. We know what’s primarily driving health providers’ adoption of health IT: namely, the HITECH Act’s provisions for incentives. But

In game-scoring unit terms, 52 is the number of hours an average American spends seeking health information online each year. The 1 (hour) is roughly equivalent to the approximate total time a patient spends with a physician (an average of 3 visits, with an average time per vision of 20 minutes). Thus, 52:1. This means that the average U.S. health consumer spends much more time DIYing her health using digital information resources than speaking face-to-face with their physician in the doctor’s office. Still, the physician continues to be a go-to source for health information, according to Makovsky, a health communications

Only 1 in 4 U.S. adults over 30 know what “personalized medicine” (PM) really is, and only 8% of people feel very knowledgeable about the concept based on Consumer Perspectives on Personalized Medicine from GfK, published online in August 2013. GfK surveyed 602 online adults 30 years and over between February and March 2013 drawn from the company’s KnowledgePanel sample of U.S. adults. Only 4% of people who have heard of personalized medicine describe it accurately as “medicine based on genome/genetic make up.” About one-half of people (52%) defined PM as medical care, treatment, or medicine geared toward individual needs. The poll

The news this week that Fitbit attracted $42 million investment capital follows Withings’ announcement of $30 million (including Euro11 million from BPIFrance, the French national investment fund), Jawbone’s recent acquisition of Bodymedia for $100 million in April 2013, and MyFitnessPal raising $13 million earlier this month. The quick arithmetic for these four companies alone adds to roughly $200 mm in a few months going to these brands, which are feverishly competing for the heartbeats and footsteps of people who are keen to track their steps and stay healthy. Can you keep up? You need a new kind of activity tracker to track

  Most Americans are concerned about their ability to for medical bills, even when they have health insurance. As a result, most are comfortable asking their doctor about how much their medical treatment will cost. People are becoming savvier health care shoppers largely because they have to: 37% of people in the U.S. have an annual health insurance deductible over $2,000, according to the Spring/Summer 2013 Altarum Institute Survey of Consumer Health Care Opinion, published on 11th July 2013. Many of the media stories coming out of the Altarum survey since its publication have been about people and their trust in

People who live in U.S. cities with low levels of well-being have twice the rate of heart attacks as people who live in healthier America. That’s 5.5% of the population in sicker America versus 2.8% of the population living in healthy America. The first chart illustrates this disparity, taken from the Gallup-Healthways index that examined 190 metropolitan areas in 2012. Based on this study, it’s good to live in parts of Utah, Nebraska and Colorado, but not so healthy to be a resident in West Virginia, Alabama, and parts of Kentucky and Ohio. Heart disease and diabetes are killing a plurality

Consumers in America are spending more, and especially at the grocery store. Most people say they want to eat healthy — but, although they’re spending more at the food store, one-half of supermarket shoppers say cost is the main obstacle for healthy eating. 2 in 3 U.S. grocery shoppers define health and wellness as being physically fit and active, and over half believe that feeling good about yourself is another facet of health. Not being overweight equals health for about one-half of U.S. shoppers. The Why? Behind the Buy, from Acosta Sales & Marketing, explores buying patterns among U.S. consumers

The American health infrastructure is not First World or First Rate, based on the outcomes. This, despite spending more on health care per-person than any country on the planet. Two seminal reports are out this week reminding Americans that our return-on-investment in health spending is poor. The first research comes from JAMA titled  The State of US Health, 1990-2010:  Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors. There is some good news in this report at the top line: that life expectancy for Americans increased in the two decades from 75.2 years to 78.2 years. But this positive quantitative outcome comes with

Employers who provide health insurance are getting much more aggressive in 2013 and beyond in terms of increasing employees’ responsibilities for staying well and taking our meds, shopping for services based on cost and value, and paying doctors based on their success with patients’ health outcomes and quality of care. Furthermore, nearly one-half expect that technologies like telemedicine, mobile health apps, and health kiosks in the back of grocery stores and pharmacies are expected to change the way people regularly receive health care. What’s behind this? Increasing health care costs, to be sure, explains the 18th annual survey from the National

It’s called “primary” care for a reason: it’s first and foremost important in the health care services a person can use. In its report, Primary care: our first line of defense, The Commonwealth Fund explains why primary care is crucial to one’s individual health, and how primary care is morphing into medical teams and patient-centered medical homes. And that’s a good thing for you and me, the Fund says. That’s because people in the U.S. who have a primary care doctor have 33% lower health costs and 19% lower risk of dying than people who see only a specialist (Source:

While there is big uncertainty about how health reform will roll out in 2014, and who will opt into the new (and improved?) system, health cost growth will slow to 6.5% signalling a trend of moderating medical costs in America. Even though more newly-insured people may seek care in 2014, the costs per “unit” (visit, pill, therapy encounter) should stay fairly level – at some of the lowest levels since the U.S. started to gauge national health spending in 1960. That’s due to “the imperative to do more with less has paved the way for a true transformation of the

The notion of consumers’ greater skin in the game of U.S. health care — and the underlying theory of rational economic men and women that would drive people to greater self-care — permeated the agenda of the 2nd annual Consumer Health & Wellness Innovation Summit, chaired by Lisa Suennen of Psilos Ventures. Lisa kicked off the meeting providing a wellness market landscape, describing the opportunity that is the ‘real’ consumer-driven health care: people getting and staying well, and increasing participation in self-management of chronic conditions. The U.S. health system is transforming, she explained, with payors beginning to look like computer

Health, happiness and engagement among employees are closely-linked and drive productivity in the workplace. But there’s a gap between the kind of wellness services employers offer workers to bolster health, and the programs that people actually want. The current state of employer wellness programs is described in a survey conducted by Virgin HealthMiles and Workforce, The Business of Healthy Employees: A Survey of Workplace Health Priorities, published in June 2013. There’s a gap between what workers want for wellness and what employers are offering. Most-demanded by workers are health on-site food choices desired by 79% of employees; but, only 33%

If you have health insurance, chances are you take several actions to bolster your health such as take vitamins and supplements (which 2 in 3 American adults do), take medications as prescribed (done by 58% of insured people), and tried to improve your eating habits in the past two years (56%). Most people with insurance also say they exercise at least 3 times a week. Fewer people who are uninsured undertake these kinds of health behaviors: across-the-board, uninsured people tend toward healthy behaviors less than those with insurance. This is The Prevention Problem, gleaned from a survey conducted by TeleVox

Mainstream media, both print and online, peppered their 2013 Mother’s Day gift suggestions including pod coffeemakers, bangle bracelets, candy-colored accessories and digital health devices. Say, what? In Parade magazine, Mother’s Day 2013 gift ideas included the Fitbit “smart pedometer,” linked to a “buy” site at REI. You can’t get much more mainstream than Parade. In Entertainment Weekly, Bronwyn Barnes, style maven for the magazine, wrote a one-page “Get Ready for Mom 2.0” and her recommendations included the Pebble Smartwatch, the Jawbone Up wristband, and the HoodieBuddie with earbuds built into the drawstrings. Men’s Health told sons and husbands to check

The registered dietitian is an in-demand labor resource for grocery stores around the U.S. Advertising Age covered the phenomenon of the growing clout of dietitians in food chains (April 14, 2013). Let’s dig further into this phenomenon through the Health Populi lens on healthcareDIY and peoples’ ability to bend their personal health care cost curves. Stores such as Giant Eagle, Hy-Vee, Safeway and Wegmans are morphing into wellness destinations, with pharmacies and natural food aisles taking up valuable square footage to meet consumers’ growing demands for healthy choices. Some stores are formalizing their approach to food = health by formulating a

I can think of 3 reasons why workers at Cummins Engine are blessed: They are employed. They receive health insurance from their employer. They are about to be able to access a tool designed to help them become better health care consumers. Cummins, based in Columbus, Indiana (far from Silicon Valley), has 24,000 employees and dependents who will be covered by this plan. The company ranked 186 on the Fortune list and has 46,000 employees worldwide. So the firm’s health spending would be in the range of many millions of dollars. I found the company’s employee health plan HealthSpan offering

  Exploiting Big Data in industry is Big News these days, and nowhere is the potential for leveraging the concept greater than in health care. McKinsey & Company estimates that harnessing big data across five dimensions of health care could yield nearly one-half trillion dollars’ worth of value in The ‘big data’ revolution in healthcare. The chart summarizes McKinsey’s calculations on the value of Big Data in health care at its maximum. Before digging into the value potential, just what is Big Data in health care? Statistics and information are generated in the health care system about patients: say, during visits

The Boston Herald was one of the first newspapers talking about CVS requiring workers to disclose personal health information…”or pay a $600 a year fine,” as the LA Times succinctly put the situation. The story is that CVS Caremark, the pharmacy and Rx benefits management company, is implementing a health screening program to measure height, weight, body fat, and blood pressure. These metrics are commonly collected in the process known as health risk appraisals (HRAs), which most large employers have begun to implement to help employees prevent the onset of chronic disease (think: “metabolic syndrome,” diabetes combined with overweight, for

Digital health is attracting the likes of Bill Clinton, Lupe Fiasco, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Arianna Huffington, and numerous famous athletes who rep a growing array of activity trackers, wearable sensors, and mobile health apps. Will this diverse cadre of popular celebs drive consumer adoption of mobile health? Can a “cool factor” motivate people to try out mobile health tools that, over time, help people sustain healthy behaviors? Mobile and digital health is a fast-growing, good-news segment in the U.S. macroeconomy. The industry attracted more venture capital in 2012 than other health sectors, based on Rock Health’s analysis of the year-in-review. Digital health

If it’s March, it must be time for South by Southwest (SXSW), the annual conference weaving music, film and interactive tracks of speakers and conferees that overcrowds and excites Austin, Texas, with a cool vibe and even cooler ideas. I’ll be participating on Sunday 10 March 2013 at 5 pm on a panel, Sitting Will Kill You: Can Mobile Save Us?, featuring Fran Melmed, developer of the HotSeat app that nudges us to all Get Up Offa Our Things when living our typical sedentary lives; Peter Katzmarzyk, public health researcher who knows all about the relationship between too much sitting

Wearing his Walking Gallery jacket painted by (im)patient advocate, Regina Holliday, Dr. Eric Topol evangelized the benefits of digital medicine and consumer empowerment in health care, largely summarizing his epic (pun intended – wait for Hot Point, below) book, The Creative Destruction of Medicine. A founder of the West Wireless Health Institute (now known as West Health), Dr. Topol is a physician and researcher at Scripps and was recently named as editor at Medscape. A new piece of Topol Trivia for me is that GQ magazine called him a rock star of science. Dr. Topol is one of the more

It’s America Saves Week (February 25-March 2, 2013). Do you know what your savings rate is? If you’re in the center of the American savings bell curve, you probably don’t have a savings plan with specific goals and don’t know your net worth. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they have sufficient emergency savings for unexpected expenses like a visit to a doctor. However, only one-half of non-retired people believe they’re saving enough for a retirement where they’ll have a “desirable standard of living.” This six annual survey by the Consumer Federation of America, the American Savings Education Council, and the

The proliferation of mobile health (mHealth) apps appears to be an abundant cornucopia of “lite” tools that look simple to access and easy to use. But this growing menu of a la carte choices that promise to keep us healthy, track our numbers, and access useful health information can also, in the words of three Dutch health researchers, “drive us crazy.” Why mobile health app overload drives us crazy, and how to restore the sanity, by Lex van Velsen and colleagues, makes the case that the plethora of mHealth apps available in online app stores is a fragmented, disorganized marketplace

On a recent Whole Living segment on Martha Stewart’s Sirius XM radio channel, I learned of the artisan chocolatier, Gnosis. The company, whose name is Greek for “knowledge,” grew out of the kitchen of a holistic health counselor, Vanessa Berg, who began to make nutritionally-infused sweets for her private clientele. Word-of-mouth made its way to a buyer from Whole Foods, who subsequently did a deal with Berg to sell Gnosis goods in some of the company’s stores in New Jersey and New York. Here’s a link to the radio interview. Chocolate is a health food for this company, and for

Consumers want multiple functions on single devices, smooth transitions from one screen to another, and value-laden experiences in the post-recession economy. I wrote about this phenomenon during the week of the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show, highlighting Accenture’s survey on consumer attitudes toward technology — the connected home as consumer medical home. In the fast-evolving mobile health (mHealth) era, the consumer-facing suppliers are fast-responding to these customer demands. This is fostering consumer-centered interoperability in mHealth. On the health care system and professional side of health IT, getting to interoperability remains elusive and slow-going, with a customer base (hospitals, physicians) that’s not

Health and wellness motivations among women cross all generations, driving them to purchase products that bolster health as they define it…not how media and stereotyping advertising have typically portrayed it, according to a survey report from Anthem Worldwide, What Women Really Want From Health and Wellness. Over all generations, 3 in 4 women say they make choices to benefit their health and wellness. Anthem asked women about the “external voices” of health/wellness messaging versus their “internal voice.” The external represent societal expectations: over 80% of women expect to take responsibility for their family’s health, and about 70% of women say the

Consumers are looking for electronic devices that do many things, don’t care much about what platforms they use, like the convenience that cloud computing enables, and are bringing their own devices to the workplace for productivity, conference calls, and communication. Accenture has studied the wired consumer and developed this infographic, which illustrates these four key findings. Accenture says it’s “an open playing field” when it comes to consumer technology: there are many suppliers who can develop products and sell into this market, where consumers seem pretty agnostic relative to operating systems and even brands — as long as the devices

One of the fastest-growing segments at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is digital health. And within that segment, there’s a battle brewing for what technology companies seem to think is the most valuable part of real estate on the human body: the wrist. I counted at least fifty products as I cruised aisles 26000-27000 in the South Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center that had wristbands, usually black, plastic or rubbery, and often able to click in and out of the band for use in-hand, in pocket, or in a few cases, on a

Over one-third of U.S. consumers plan to buy a new fitness technology in the next year, especially women. They’ll buy these at mass merchants (females in particular, shopping at Target and Walmart), sporting goods retailers (more male buyers here), online and at electronics stores like Best Buy. These potential buyers consider themselves in good or excellent physical health. They’ll see the latest applications on retail store shelves in pedometers, calorie trackers, fitness video games, digital weight scales, and heart rate monitors that will be launched this week at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In advance of the

  41% of Americans are comfortable using websites that allow them to check health symptoms. Furthermore, 25% of people trust online symptom checkers, mobile apps and home-based vital sign monitors as much as they trust their doctor. In fact, roughly the same proportion uses these tools instead of going to see the doctor, according to a consumer survey from Royal Philips Electronics (Philips). The infographic illustrates some of Philip’s top-line findings from this poll, conducted among 1,003 U.S. adults 18 and over in November 2012. Over one-third of Americans also believe that technology allows them to monitor their health — a

  Nurses, pharmacists and doctors rank tops with Americans when it comes to honesty and ethics. Most people also rate engineers, dentists, police officers, clergy and college teachers as high on honesty metrics. Lawmakers (THINK: Congress) and car salesman fall to the bottom of the honesty-and-trust roster, who only 1 in 10 Americans believe act with honesty and integrity. Other low-ranking professions on this list are HMO managers, stockbrokers, and folks in the advertising business. Welcome to this year’s Gallup Poll on consumers’ perceptions of honesty and ethics in 22 professions in the U.S. Gallup measures six health care professions

Notwithstanding the fact that most phones on U.S. streets are “smart” ones, most adults surf the net for health information, and most people try to change a health habit each year, Americans haven’t adopted healthier long-term relationships with food. The International Food Information Council has conducted the Food & Health Survey: Consumer Attitudes Toward Food, Safety, Nutrition & Health poll since 2006, thus enabling us to track peoples’ attitudes and behaviors over the past several years. The latest polling results appear in Is it Time to Rethink Nutrition Communications? A 5-Year Retrospective of Americans’ Attitude toward Food, Nutrition, and Health online in

The ubiquity of mobile phones, increasingly smart ones (one-half of all mobile phones in the U.S. ), means people are walking around, working, playing and driving with self-tracking devices and ultra-mini computers in their pockets and totebags. 52% of smartphone owners seek health information on their phones, and overall 1 in 3 people seek health information on all mobile phones — nearly doubling the percent of those seeking health info via mobile in 2010 (17%). People who are sicker, caregivers, and those who have had a big change in health are also more prone to using phones for health, as

Grocery stores are incorporating farmers market-like shelves into produce departments, offering shoppers locally grown fruits and vegetables. Kraft Foods is reinventing itself as a health brand, with   Consumers are shifting away from white starchy breakfast foods toward beans and greens. These are a few of the food-meets-health trends from the past quarter that reflect how American health citizens are incorporating new food habits into overall health behaviors. Let’s begin with the October 11, 2012, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, which focuses on obesity, food, and health policy. Along with an excellent overview of Obama v. Romney

The first day of the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco kicked off with a video illustrating the global reach of the Health 2.0 concept, from NY and Boston to Mumbai, Madrid, London, Tokyo and other points abroad. Technology is making the health world flatter and smarter…and sometimes, increasing problematic fragmentation, which is a theme that kept pinching me through the first day’s discussions and demonstrations. Joe Flowers, health futurist, offered a cogent, crisp forecast in the morning, noting that health care is changing, undergoing fundamental economic changes that change everything about it. These are driving us to what may

The average annual premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance in 2012 are double what they were a decade ago in terms of both total premium and worker contribution increases. The picture shows the story, according to the 2012 Employer Health Benefits Survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). This annual survey polls small, mid-size and large employers to assess their updates for providing health insurance and prescription drug coverage to active and retired employees. The percentage growth of health costs in the past year were a “modest” 4%, according to KFF. Modest is a relative term: this single digit increase is indeed much

Just as people go online for travel planning. photo development. and financial transactions. they’re looking for health engagement with their doctors and health records online, too. Harris Interactive heralds this as The Age of the Healthcare Consumer. Harris Interactive polled U.S. adults and found that people are interested in a range of technologies for engaging in their health, arrayed in the chart: when asked which would be important for health providers to implement, consumers said (NET = very important + important): – Online medical record access to visits, Rx, test results, and history, 65%. 17% of consumers said their doctor

With “Zero” large employers expecting to drop health insurance, as reported in the Washington Post, companies are getting creative and innovative about how to manage workers’ health and wellness, while addressing ever-growing costs. One strategy that’s getting more traction is the re-invention of the onsite health center. Towers Watson‘s 2012 Onsite Health Center survey report, finds that one-half of employers view establishing an onsite health center as a linchpin to enhancing productivity and health in the workplace. Following close behind productivity is the onsite health center’s promise of reducing medical costs, improving access to care, and the traditional reason for providing onsite

Employee benefits make up one-third of employers’ investments in workers, and companies are looking for positive ROI on that spend. Health benefits are the largest component of that spending, and are a major cost-management focus. In 2012 and beyond, wellness is taking center stage as part of employers’ total benefits strategies. In the 2012 Wellness & Benefits Administration Benchmarking study, a new report from bswift, a benefits administration company, the vast majority of large employers (defined as those with over 500 workers) are sponsoring wellness programs, extending them to dependents as well as active workers. Increasingly, sticks accompany carrots for

Target, the beloved retail channel for many design-minded value-conscious consumers, has opted in to mobile health through its purchase of SMARTCOACH mobile health coaching devices. SMARTCOACH is part of a growing category of wearable devices that monitor health behaviors like walking and calories consumed. What differentiates SMARTCOACH is the “coach” element, which provides real-time feedback throughout the day. Most other devices in the market simply track and record data. And it’s feedback loops that more experts say are key to sustaining health behavior change. Target will bring the device into stores for purchase in the fall. Like some other wearable

I tore out a two-page ad from the June 17, 2012, New York Times Magazine sponsored by Fidelity Investments with the headline, “Your genetic secrets may not be a secret much longer…and we see opportunity.” The ad copy went on to talk about the emerging era of personalized medicine and big data to help patients…and to be an investment growth area. Fidelity has launched a video online as part of its ThinkingBig series at Fidelity.com/thinkingbig which talk about this complex issue. Fidelity is onto something big here. In the first iteration of the Edelman Health Barometer survey, launched in 2008, we

Half of patients globally expect that mobile health will improve health care. These health citizens expect that mobile health will help them manage their overall health, chronic conditions, how they manage their medications and measure and share their vital health information. Welcome to the new mobile health world, a picture captured in PwC’s report, Emerging mHealth: Paths for growth, published in June 2012 and written by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Patients’ views on mHealth are bullish, and while most doctors and payors share that vision, they also expect mHealth to come into focus more slowly, recognizing the institutional, cultural and

Increasing intake of fruits and vegetables, coupled with remote health coaching and financial incentives, together help people adopt and maintain healthy behavior changes. This is the conclusion of a randomized controlled trial using mobile technology, published in the May 28, 2012, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. Dr. Bonnie Spring of Northwestern University’s Department of Preventive Medicine led the study. The researchers developed the trial, called Make Better Choices, to sort out which behavior changes would enable people to reduce major risk factors for cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes. Four combinations were assessed in the intervention among 204 people: Increasing fruit

Transparency, data-based pharmacy decisions, incentivizing patient behavior, and outcomes-based payments will reshape the environment for marketing pharmaceutical drugs in and beyond 2012. Two reports published this week, from Express Scripts–Medco and PwC, explain these forces, which will severely challenge Pharma’s mood of market ennui. Express-Scripts Medco’s report on 9 Leading Trends in Rx Plan Management presents findings from a survey of 318 pharmacy benefit decision makers in public and private sector organizations. About one-half of the respondents represented smaller organizations with fewer than 5,000 employees; about 20% represented jumbo companies with over 25,000 workers. The survey was conducted in the

The price of physician services, proliferation of clinical technology and the cost of obesity are the key drivers of higher health spending in the U.S., according to The Commonwealth Fund‘s latest analysis in their Issues of International Health Policy titled, Explaining High Health Care Spending in the United States: An International Comparison of Supply, Utilization, Prices, and Quality, published in May 2012. The U.S. devotes 17.4% of the national economy to health spending, amounting to about $8,000 per person. The UK devotes about 10%, Germany 11.6%, France, 11.8%, Australia 8.7%, and Japan, 8.5%. On the physician pay front, primary care