A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

Today I am keynoting the OSF Digital Health Symposium in Peoria, IL, discussing The State(s) of Digital Health. A double-entendre intended, one of the states I’ll be discussing is the migration of acute care back to peoples’ homes, embedded with sensors, householders donning smart rings, and rooms fitted with Internet-of-Things for health and well-being.             In this context, news that Samsung has begun to partner with Ashley, the national furniture dealer, struck me as interesting and important. I visited the Samsung Health House at CES 2024 last January: here is my write-up about what I

In a super-divided electorate like the U.S. with about 60 days leading up to the 2024 Elections, we might assume there are no “purple” areas of agreement between the Red (Republicans) and the Blue (Democrats) thinking in PANTONE color politics. Surprisingly, there are many health policies on which Democrats and Republicans concur, as found in a series of YouGov polls conducted in May 2024.                         YouGov fielded the health policies poll in five waves online, each among roughly 1,100 U.S. adults in May 2004. This bar chart summarizes health

AARP found that 7 in 10 people ages 50+ are “app-receptive” for health and wellness apps in Unlocking Health and Wellness Apps: Experiences of Adults Age 50-Plus, a summary of research conducted with U.S. consumers 50 and over from AARP.           The methodology for this study included only older consumers who were comfortable in downloading apps to smartphones or tablets, and were willing to do so — whom AARP considered the target audience for this research. In addition, the respondents surveyed were also at least interested in trying apps designed for health and wellness, thus dubbed “health

Health care access is a challenge in rural and urban areas, cities and suburbs, and across more demographic groups than you might realize, as we see wait times grow for appointments, primary care shortages, and delays in screening plaguing health systems around the world. In the Future Health Index 2024, Philips’ latest annual report presents a profile of the state of health care focused on how to provide better care for more people.             For the report, Philips surveyed a total of 2,800 healthcare leaders consisting of 200 respondents in 14 countries: Australia, Brazil, China,

Welcome to post #2 of 3, publishing the results of three dialogue sessions between Richard Kaufmann, CISO of Amedisys, and me. The timing of our conversations, tracking both Richard’s and the company’s evolving approach to cybersecurity in health care, has coincided with the Change Healthcare breach and ransom that emerged in February 2024. This second blog of the three is being edited just days after Andrew Witty’s testimony to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee which convened a hearing on May 1st themed, “Hacking America’s Health Care: Assessing the Change Healthcare Cyber Attack and What’s Next.” UnitedHealth Group acquired Change Healthcare

“If data is everywhere, how do you protect it?”  This thought has been on my mind well before the Change Healthcare hacks (that’s plural) with which U.S. health care stakeholders are still dealing as this post goes live on the Health Populi blog. It’s a question posed to me in conversation with Richard Kaufmann, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) with Amedisys. I’m grateful for the opportunity to explore in depth the many facets of cybersecurity in health care  with Richard – the growing threats, the impact on providers, the state of technology and innovations to manage risks, and his evolving

Three major milestones marked March 2024 which compel us to note the growing role of patients-as-consumers — especially for self-prescribing medicines and medical devices. This wave of self-prescribed healthcare is characterized by three innovations: the Opill, GLP-1 receptor agonists, and Dexcom’s Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) system that’s now available without a prescription. Together, these products reflect a shift in health care empowerment toward patients as consumers with greater autonomy over their health care when the products and services are accessible, affordable, and designed with the end-user central to the value proposition and care flows. Let’s take a look at each

The growing movement of health care to the home is evident by a growing list of point solutions featured at CES 2024. Digital health has been a fast-growing category of consumer-facing devices at CES for over a decade. But with the growing ubiquity of connectivity, cloud computing, sensors and this year AI “everywhere,” a person’s home as their health-hub is an increasingly practical scenario.               I track many categories of products at CES each year, and this year added into my portfolio the smart kitchen and smart bathroom. We’ve had components of these two

Even with serious concerns about personal data privacy and lack of integration, “connected products” are an integral aspect of peoples’ everyday lives. That’s the central thesis in a timely report from Capgemini Research Institute, Connected products: Enhancing consumers’ lives with technology.           This study is well-timed as we begin a week-long exploration into the latest technology innovations being unveiled at CES 2024, the annual mega-conference hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). For the consumer research, Capgemini’s team polled the perspectives of 10,000 consumers age 18+ in November, among people from 13 countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany,

Not known for its salubrious qualities, Las Vegas will nonetheless be a locus for health, medical care, and well-being inspiration next week when the Consumer Technology Association convenes the annual CES featuring innovations in consumer technology.               Ten years ago here in Health Populi, I wrote about New Year’s Resolutions for Health and the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. Then, one-third of consumers were keen to buy health tracking technology but most of those people were healthy, CTA’s research found. I talked about the “battle of the (wrist)bands” witnessed at CES 2013, and spotted the

“Do personal health trackers belong in the doctor’s office?” Software Advice wondered. “Yes,” the company’s latest consumer survey found, details of which are discussed in a report published on their website. Unique to this study is the patient sample polled: Software Advice surveyed 876 patients in September 2023 to gauge their perspectives on wearable tech and health. Note that the patient sample was limited to consumers who had seen a health care provider in the past two years and who also owned and used a personal wearable health device such as an Apple Watch or Fitbit. Thus, the responses shared

“What omnichannel really means: hearing the customer wherever they are and making them feel heard, valued, and understood.” That statement comes from Qualtrics’ explanation of omnichannel experience design. The very human needs of feeling one is heard, is valued, and is understood, underpin the rasion d’etre of omnichannel marketing. And these very values are those that underpin the trust between patients and providers and the large healthcare ecosystem.         It’s Telehealth Awareness Week, led by the ATA. I celebrate and support the effort; this Health Populi post explains the Association’s mantra that Telehealth is Health, and that

An aging U.S. population with a preference for growing older at home — and a fiscally challenging health care financing outlook — are setting the demographic and financial table for the shift of medical care to peoples’ homes discussed in The State of Health at Home Models: Key Considerations and Opportunities, published by the American Medical Association (AMA).             Note that this framework has been developed by the AMA, the largest professional organization of doctors. While moving health care to the home will involve quite different workflows and disruptions to current general medical practice, it

In 2023, U.S. consumers’ purchases of technology in their households will contract this year. Consumer-facing health-tech categories won’t be spared, we learn in the 2023 U.S. Consumer Technology Ownership & Market Potential Study, an annual update from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA).             On the upside, smartwatch market penetration held steady in 2023, as this favorite form of wearable technology is “providing consumers a personalized digital health and fitness dashboard at their fingertips.” Many of these new smartwatch purchases will be cellular-enabled, blurring the space between smartphones and watches. One in five households intends to purchase

Using the Internet and mobile health apps are as mainstream as swiping left for a date and researching features in a new car, based on the Digital 2023 Global Overview Report from Meltwater. The broad coverage of this kind of research can’t be accomplished by just one entity, and Meltwater acknowledges the partners who brought them to this research-party: these included data.ai, GSMA Intelligence, GWI, Locowise, Ookla, PPRO, SemRush, Similarweb, Skai, and Statista. In this 400+ page report, you can find most datapoints you’re interested in covering the global consumers’ use of the internet, mobile apps, and social media. I

Consider the key drivers of supply and demand in health care, globally, right now: On the medical delivery supply side, the shortage of staff is a limiting factor to continuing to deliver care based on the usual work-flows and payment models. On the demand side, patients are taking on more demanding roles as consumers with high expectations for service, convenience, and safe care delivered closer to home — or at home. This dynamic informs The Future Health Index 2023 report from Philips, launched this week at HIMSS 2023. This is the eighth annual global FHI report, with detailed country-specific analyses to

As we enter the week’s brainstorms and deal-making prospects this week at the annual JP Morgan meet-up for healthcare, I’m kicking off Health Populi’s posts this week by diving into two major reports published in sync with this meeting that’s so pivotal and important for the digital health community: the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) 2022 Annual Report on Healthcare Investments and Exits and the 2022 Global State of Digital Health Report from FINN Partners and Galen Growth               SVB notes that venture funding in healthcare fell in terms of both deals and dollars each quarter

While CTA forecasts a sobering consumer technology revenue picture for 2023, one of the few bright spots is health and fitness technology services, expected to increase by 9 percent in 2023.             For the forecast, CTA looked at various spending categories, including gaming, automotive and transportation tech, video and audio streaming, consumer electronics (like big-screen TVs), and fitness and health devices. The chart illustrates that consumers’ spending on software and services is expected to hold steady in 2023, still above pre-pandemic levels.             On 3 January, in the annual #CES

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped nearly three years between 2019 and 2021, from close to 79 years down to 76. We ended 2022 with this new, sobering statistic from the Centers tor Disease Control (CDC). We begin 2023 with the opening of CES 2023, the world’s largest annual meet-up of consumer electronics innovators, companies, and retailers. How can digital health and other consumer-facing technologies help our health? First, consider the stark data point(s), and then we can better respond to the question’s answer in the Hot Points, below.                 In case you

For over ten years, digital health technology has been a fast-growing area at the annual CES, the largest convention covering consumer electronics in the world.           When the meet-up convenes over 100,000 tech-folk in Las Vegas at the start of 2023, we’ll see even more health and self-care tools and services at #CES23 — along with new-new things displayed in aisles well outside of the physical space on the Las Vegas Convention Center map labeled “digital health” at this year’s CES in the North Hall.         Some context: my company has been a member

In just the past few months, we’ve seen the launch of Amazon Care, Instacart adding medical deliveries, and The Villages senior community welcoming virtual care to their homes. Welcome to the growing ecosystem of hybrid health care, anywhere and everywhere. In my latest post on the Medecision portal, I discuss the phenomenon and examples of early models, focusing in on Evernorth, a Cigna company.                 As we add new so-called “digital front doors” to health care delivery, we should be mindful to design in access and equity and avoid further fragmentation of an already-fragmented

Most doctors see the advantages of digital health tools like telehealth, consumers’ access to their health information, and point-of-care workflow solutions, the American Medical Association found in a survey of 1300 physicians, published in September 2022.             The AMA first conducted research with physicians and their views on digital health in July 2016. This year’s study was designed to compare current clinicians’ perspectives with those garnered in the 2016 and 2019 studies. There is a clear and positive shift of doctors’ adoption of and appreciation for digital tools, with “growth in enthusiasm” concentrated in tele-visits, the

“Partnerships, including JVs and alliances with other healthcare organizations and with new entrants, are just one way to access new capabilities, unlock speed to market, and achieve capital, scale, and operational efficiencies” in health care transformations. “In an environment with continued competition for attractive assets and significant capital in play from institutional investors, these partnerships may also be the most accessible way for organizations to capture value in expanding healthcare services and technology value pools,” we learn in Overcoming the cost of healthcare transformation through partnerships from a team of health care folks with McKinsey & Company.      

The goal of self-care for health-making is to improve lives by scaling health-and-wellness accessible to all, Bayer believes, giving people more control over their personal health. Self-care work-flows must be based in science to ensure products and services are trusted and deliver on their clinical promise, Bayer explains in Science-Led Self-Care: Principles for Best Practice, a paper published this week which the company intends to be a blueprint for the industry.                 Bayer recognizes that self-care is growing among health consumers around the world — albeit underpinned by peoples’ cultures, demographics, and “readiness”

In another factor to add into the retail health landscape, Dollar General (DG) the 80-year old retailer known for selling low-priced fast-moving consumer goods in peoples’ neighborhoods appointed a healthcare advisory panel this week. DG has been exploring its health-and-wellness offerings and has enlisted four physicians to advise the company’s strategy. One of the advisors, Dr. Von Nguyen, is the Clinical Lead of Public and Population Health at Google….tying back to yesterday’s post on Tech Giants in Healthcare.         Just about one year ago, DG appointed the company’s first Chief Medical Officer, which I covered here in

I’ve returned to the U.S. for a couple of months, having lived in and worked from Brussels, Belgium, since October 2021 (save for about ten days in March 2022). Work and life slow down in Europe in July and August, giving us the opportunity to return to our U.S. home base, reunite with friends and family, and re-join life and living this side of the Atlantic. The timing of my return to the U.S. coincides with a retail health hurricane of big announcements shaking up the health/care ecosystem. Among these events are Amazon’s plan to acquire One Medical, Apple’s publication of

With only 1 in 10 people in the U.S. thinking their lives are the same as they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, about one-half of Americans believe that remote work, virtual community events, and telehealth should continue “once the pandemic ends.” As of mid-May 2022, most people in the U.S. have resumed activities like socializing with friends and neighbors in person, going to restaurants and bars, traveling, meeting with older relatives face-to-face, and returning to exercising in gyms.                     But a return-to-nearly-normal isn’t a universal phenomenon across all people in America:

Consumers continued to invest in and use several technologies that supported self-care at home in 2021, with plans to purchase connected health devices, sports and fitness equipment in the next year.                 But these purchases will be made with greater attention to budget and value consumer mindsets firmly focused on (and stressed by) inflation. The 24th Annual Technology Ownership & Market Potential Study from the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) tells us that Americans in 2022 will have to manage challenging economic headwinds, shopping for technology is preparing people for their new normal —

Each year, the first Sunday in June marks National Cancer Survivors Day. This year’s NCSD occurred two days ago on Sunday, 5th June. When you’re a cancer survivor, or happen to love one, every day is time to be grateful and celebrate that survival of someone who has come through a cancer journey. We all know (or are) people who have survived cancer. We know that the recipe for battling cancer goes beyond chemotherapy. We know of the resilience and grit required in the process: body, mind, and spirit. “Celebrate Life” is the mantra of NCSD, as this year’s campaign

Four in five U.S. physicians were using telehealth to care for patients at the end of 2021.             Among those doctors who were not providing telehealth by late 2021, just over one half never did so during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the 2021 Telehealth Survey Report from the AMA. This report provides insightful  context for the upcoming annual ATA Conference for 2022, being held in-person in Boston kicking off May 1st. The meeting will be a strategically important, as the title of the conference asks: “What Now? Creating An Opportunity in a Time of

Access to the Internet has been a key determinant of health — or more aptly, death — during the COVID-19 pandemic. Americans lacked Internet access were more likely to die due to complications from the coronavirus, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open this month. The study’s key finding was that for every additional 1% of people living in a county who have access to the Internet, between 2.4 and 6.0 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 were preventable. The paper asserts that, “More awareness is needed about the essential asset of technological access to reliable information, remote work, schooling

There’s more evidence that doctors and patients, both, want to use telehealth after the COVID-19 pandemic fades. Doximity’s second report on telemedicine explores both physicians’ and patients’ views on virtual care, finding most doctors and health consumers on the same page of virtual care adoption. For the physicians’ profile, Doximity examined 180,000 doctors’ who billed Medicare for telemedicine claims between January 2020 and June 2021. Telemedicine use did not vary much across physician age groups. Doctors in specialties that manage chronic illnesses were more likely to use telehealth: endocrinology (think: diabetes), gastroenterology, rheumatology, urology, nephrology, cardiology, ENT, neurology, allergy, and

The four top trends to watch for this week at CES 2022 are transportation, space tech, sustainable technology, and digital health, based on Steve Koenig’s annual read-out that kicks off this largest annual conference featuring innovations in consumer electronics. Last night, Steve discussed these trends for media attendees, of which I am one (gratefully) participating in #CES2022 virtually from the hygienic comfort and safety of my home health hub (more on that later in this post). All four of these mega-themes impact health and well-being in some way. “Space Tech?” you  might wonder. Yes. My friend Dorit Donoviel can be

I cannot recall a season when so many health consumer studies have been launched into my email inbox. While I have believed consumers’ health engagement has been The New Black for the bulk of my career span, the current Zeitgeist for health care consumerism reflects that futurist mantra: “”We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run,” coined by Roy Amara, past president of Institute for the Future. That well-used and timely observation is known as Amara’s Law. This feels especially apt right “now” as we enter 2022,

“More than a year and a half into the COVID-19 outbreak, the recent spread of the highly transmissible delta variant in the United States has extended severe financial and health problems in the lives of many households across the country — disproportionately impacting people of color and people with low income,” reports Household Experiences in America During the Delta Variant Outbreak, a new analysis from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, NPR, and the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. As the HLTH conference convenes over 6,000 digital health innovators live, in person, in Boston in the wake of the delta

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) announced that Robert Ford, CEO and President of Abbott, will give a keynote speech at CES 2022, the world’s largest annual convention of the technology industry. This news is a signal that health care and the larger tech-enabled ecosystem that supports health and well-being is embedded in peoples’ everyday lives. Digital health as a category has been a growing feature at CES for over a decade, starting with the early wearable tech era of Fitbit, Nike, Omron and UnderArmour, early exhibitors at CES representing the category. By 2020, the most recent “live, in person” CES,

“The simple fact is that the federal and state governments are doing almost nothing to help people who have a broadband service available that partially meets their needs but abuses them with regular price hikes, spotty reliability, and poor customer service. Local governments will continue to step in to build better networks because communities have very few other options.” That “necessity is the mother” motivation to build broadband comes from Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). [FYI, Mitchell’s Twitter handle is @communitynets]. Mitchell is quoted in the story, New data

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a reappraisal of value-based care, a shift to remote and virtual care, and acceleration of healthcare stakeholders’ investments in Artificial Intelligence-based solutions, Philips discovered in the 2021 Future Health Index, the company’s latest survey conducted among 2,800 health care leaders working in 14 countries. This week at the 2021 annual HIMSS conference, Philips is “making the case for moving to the cloud,” discussing the Philips HealthSuite, a cloud-based platform for connecting providers and patients, devices (and the data they generate), and care across the health care continuum. That’s a big promise and vision, so to kick

In the Age of COVID, over 90,000 new health apps were released, as the supply of digital therapeutics and wearables grew in 2020. Evidence supporting the use of digital health tools if growing, tracked in Digital Health Trends 2021: Innovation, Evidence, Regulation, and Adoption from IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. IQVIA has been closely following the growth, investment in, and clinical evidence for digital health since 2013, when I reviewed their first paper on “mHealth” here in Health Populi.  Then, IQVIA evaluated the universe of about 40,000 apps available in the iTunes store. In today’s report, the company quantifies

Wherever you live in the world touched by the coronavirus pandemic, you felt (and were) stress-tested. Both you were, and your home was as well. In this year’s 2021 annual report by Deloitte into Connectivity & Mobile Trends, their report details How the pandemic has stress-tested the crowded digital home. This analysis was done, as it is every year, by the Deloitte Center for Technology, Media & Telecommunications. Deloitte’s Center commissioned an online survey among 2,009 U.S. consumers to gauge five generations of peoples’ perspectives on connected life in the context of COVID. The report covers the various life-flows of

Two studies published in May 2021 illustrate the value and importance of telehealth to patients in 2020, and a disconnect among many C-level executives working in hospitals, academic medical centers, and other care provider organizations. Together, the two reports from J.D. Power and BDO illustrate some mis-alignment between the demand and supply side of telehealth. On the consumer demand side, patients’ growing use of telehealth in the COVID-19 pandemic along with more frequent digital contacts with health plans bolstered member satisfaction, discovered by the J.D. Power 2021 U.S. Commercial Member Health Plan Study. J.D. Power has conducted the U.S. Commercial

“Compare digital health to airlines, cruise lines, and other industries” and the sector looks quite privileged, opined Matthew Holt in a discussion on a study diving deeply into the State of Digital Health, conducted by Catalyst @ Health 2.0 and sponsored by WIPFLI.. The research was conducted among 335 respondents, which included 182 digital health companies polled between November 2020 and March 2021. Digital health companies represented 60% of the sample, the other 40% of which were consulting firms, subsidiaries of providers/payers/life science companies and tech corporations, and investors. As Matthew called out, the digital health sector has a relatively

While the “in-person” visit to a doctor or medical professional continues to rank first as consumers’ most-trusted information source, the virtual doc or clinician rose in trust during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Euromonitor’s latest read on Consumer Health: Changes in Consumer Behaviour during COVID-19 . The first four most-trusted sources for health information in 2021 remained the same short-list from 2020: doctors in-person, pharmacists, nutritionists and dieticians, and government or NGOs. But fifth place slipped from family and friends to the pharma industry, and sixth in line went to virtual doctors or medical professionals rising from 9th place in

Investments in the digital health sector have fast-grown in the past decade, reaching $14bn in 2020 based on Rock Health’s latest read on the market. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the field across many industry segments. With such turbocharged growth on the supply side, Beazley, experts in specialty insurance, explores the risks of digital health and wellness in a new report, Digital health, telehealth and wellness: Attitudes to risk and insurance. With great potential for both innovation and reward comes great risks: Beazley points to the facts that, over two-thirds of digital health companies lack insurance coverage for medical malpractice for

Expanding omni-channel, data-driven, cost-effective health care in the community, tailoring that care, and attending to mental health paint the picture of health through the lens of CVS Health. The company published the Health Trends Report 2021 today, calling out ten forces shaping health care this year. Those themes are, The Year of the Pharmacist The Next Step Forward in Cardiac Care Cancer Needs a Better Roadmap The EHR Hits Its Stride The Mental Health Shadow of COVID-19 Tailor Care to the Older Patient More Agents that Predict Disease Paying for the New Medical Miracle Virtual Care Goes Mainstream, and Diabetes

The growing use of APIs in health information technology innovation for patient care has been a boon to speeding development placed in the hands of providers and patients. Using APIs can help drive interoperability and make data “liquid” and useable. APIs can enable “Data liberación,” a concept proposed by Todd Park when he worked in the Obama administration. Without securing patients’ personal health data leveraging APIs, those intimate details are highly hackable explained in All That we Let In, a report from Knight Ink and Appr0ov. It is likely that behind growing health data hacks is the marginally greater financial

At the start of CES 2021, I had the opportunity to catch up with Karsten Russell-Wood, Portfolio Marketing Leader, Post Acute & Home, Connected Care at Philips. We brainstormed just as CES 2021 was going to “open,” virtually, for the consumer electronics conference’s first all-virtual meeting. Philips, a longtime major exhibitor at CES, created an entirely new online experience for the CES attendees – a sort of virtual gallery of different exhibits that are accessed from a single point in a “room” with various entry points. One of the company’s key messages for CES 2021 was health care delivered outside

“Yes,” we concurred on our session convened by the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) EDGE session today. “We” was a trio including Antoinette Thomas (@NurseTechExec1), Chief Patient Experience Officer with Microsoft, David Ryan (@DavidPRyan), former long-time Global Head of Intel’s Health/Life Science business; and, me. Antoinette posed three questions for all of us to brainstorm, addressing various aspects of health equity. We covered, The theory that telemedicine should increase health equity — where are we and what are the barriers to getting there? The role of social determinants of health in creating equitable opportunities for health citizens; and, Entering a post-pandemic world,

The coronavirus pandemic disrupted and re-shaped the annual CES across so many respects — the meeting of thousands making up the global consumer tech community “met” virtually, both keynote and education sessions were pre-recorded, and the lovely serendipity of learning and meeting new concepts and contacts wasn’t so straightforward. But for those of us working with and innovating solutions for health and health care, #CES2021 was baked with health goodness, in and beyond “digital health” categories. In my consumer-facing health care work, I’ve adopted the mantra that our homes are our health hubs. Reflecting on my many conversations during CES