SBR News: Recap of Mid-West BluePrint Health IT Summit

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Pete Eggleston

This post is part of our recap series. As mentioned a few weeks ago, SBR Health was chosen as a finalist for the Mid-West BluePrint Health IT Innovation Exchange Summit in Indiana. Below, CMO of SBR Health, Peter Eggleston has given an overview of the events of this summit.

In the 25-minute matching sessions, where brief presentations or demos were allowed, providers and Innovators were asked to set milestones for next steps if the match appeared to be worthwhile. They either set dates and steps for next steps for further evaluation or plans to set up a pilot or test-bed opportunity.

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SBR Health had a jammed packed day at the recent Mid-West BluePrint Health IT Innovation Exchange Summit in Indianapolis, IN. We were one of ten companies coming together from eight states across the nation to meet innovation and business development representatives from nine healthcare providers and payers. The format was excellent – 15 minutes for both the company and provider/payer to get to know each other and see if there were any areas of mutual interest, then 30 minute sessions for deeper dives to explore ways in which to potentially work together. Videos of some of the general meetings can be seen on the summits website, under Innovation Videos.

While we can’t talk about the specifics of these meetings, I would like to share some areas of interest that seemed to be common in terms of top of mind. Care coordination and patient connectivity seemed to be the largest common problem organizations were seeking solutions for and was on everyone’s “shopping list.” This was followed by improving care transitions and management of complex and high risk patients, especially after discharge. In a similar vein, there was a lot of interest expressed in care delivery solutions into the home, mobile technologies, and several organizations looking for technologies to support “e-visits” and remote patient management solutions. Mobile technologies was expressed in a variety of ways, and seemed to be delivery or engagement mechanism that was overlaid onto the other desires above, rather than a category of interest by itself.

Overall, the Blueprint format seemed to work well, and I was surprised by how quickly everyone engaged and how effective the format was. In fact, I overheard one hospital administrator comment “I wish all my vendor meetings were only 15 minutes long!”

If you attended the Mid-West BluePrint Summit, or have been to a similar setting where you were engaging in brief, but useful meetings, please comment below about your experiences.

SBR Health: 8th Annual American Health Care Congress Exhibition

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Ashley Boyd

SBR Health will be at the 8^th Annual American Health Care Congress Exhibition to explore and evaluate post-reform integration strategies, innovative business and care delivery models, as well as health IT. Featuring two days of educational and networking opportunities, SBR is excited to join other innovators and health care executives to address the present and future challenges facing health care reform, and find solutions for improving the delivery of care.

Innovators from the nation’s largest employers, health plans, hospitals, health systems and physician group practices will unite in discussion of post-reform integration strategies through themed panel discussions, exhibitions and networking opportunities. Discussions will focus on innovative delivery models, such as Accountable Care Organizations, Patient Centered Medical Homes, Bundled Payment Models and Virtual Integration Strategies.

Our work to develop televideo solutions that enable major health delivery organizations to reduce readmissions and increase access are aligned with the theme of this year’s conference—to improve the delivery of care. Our mission and belief that ‘Connection is the best medicine’ is clear. We are honored to join health care thought leaders in developing and implementing solutions for change. The foundation of health care reform is change, and through improved real-time communications capabilities, we’re driving change.

To follow us on Twitter while we’re at the conference, visit our Twitter Page.

SBR at the Sudler Health + Technology Convergence in NYC 2011

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Ashley Boyd

Innovations in health and technology will coalesce at this week’s Sudler Health + Technology Convergence 2011 in New York City.

Sudler & Hennessy, a global healthcare communications agency, believes in the power of ideas and will explore the impact of these ideas at this year’s summit. In the search for seamless and effective healthcare solutions, Sudler is bringing today’s best and brightest in the healthcare sphere together for a day of open dialogue on government, payer, provider and patient needs.

On a mission to explore effective strategies for tech companies in the developing ehealth market, the Sudler Health + Technology Convergence will feature a variety of speakers and panel discussions. The first half of the day will focus on trends in patient advocacy, patient empowerment and technology with speakers that include Sachin Jain, a physician from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dallas Lawrence, the Chief Global Digital Strategist of Burston-Marsteller, as moderator.

Jeremy Nobel, MD, MPH of the Harvard School of Public Health, will be a featured speaker for the physicians and technology discussion. His lecture ‘New Market and Policy Drivers for Accelerating HIT Deployment and Effective Use: Time to Fasten your Seatbelts’ will focus on ways to better engage physicians to improve outcomes. Elizabeth Boehm, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, will also address the shift from fee-based to collaborative and accountable care.

New ideas will converge in the afternoon working sessions on the reality of convergence in healthcare and opportunities for HIT growth. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with innovative healthcare and technology leaders to discuss and collaborate about possible strategies and solutions for today’s healthcare market.

Louisa Holland, Co-CEO S&H, The Americas, will deliver the closing comments, before the post conference cocktail and networking session.

Stay tuned at SBR Health for live updates, discussion and more.

SBR Health selected to participate in BluePrint Health IT Innovation Exchange Summit

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Admin

SBR Health is BluePrint Health IT Finalist

SBR Health is chosen as a BluePrint Health IT finalist.

SBR Health is proud to be one of 10 finalists chosen from more than 40 applicants for the BluePrint Health IT Innovation Exchange Summit, an event dedicated to accelerating innovation and adoption of transformative, healthcare IT solutions nationwide. The summit will bring together cutting-edge, healthcare providers with innovative, early-stage healthcare information technology companies to showcase and accelerate eHealth innovation across the nation.

Modeled after speed dating, the event introduces technology companies and leading healthcare providers in short 15-minute meetings with the goal of creating the ideal match and fostering a pilot project. Participants start the day by attending seminars on how to foster a successful relationship. Following the meetings, attendees will participate in the preliminary round of 10 introductory sessions. In the afternoon, companies will engage in two longer meetings with the intention of outlining a framework for a potential project.

The SBR Health team is looking forward to connecting with Midwestern hospitals to help them find ways to leverage the benefits of telemedicine among their patient population. Make sure to follow us on Twitter as we engage with some of healthcare’s leading innovators at the summit.

TEDMED 2011

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Christopher Herot

The TEDMED conference took place last week in San Diego, but it has taken me this long to digest all of the content and follow up on all the connections I made there. The general theme of the conference can be summed up in two sentences: There are amazing advances coming in medical technology. These may or may not make it through the FDA approval process in time to save your life.

This was one of the few conferences where it made sense to go to every session. A representative sampling:
•   Eythor Bender of Ekso Bionics demonstrated an exoskeleton that allowed a paraplegic to walk.
•   Daniel Kraft showing what medicine can learn from other fields such as aviation.
•   Calvin Harley of Telome Health describing how we might halt the aging process by regrowing the DNA on the end of your chromosomes. (A Russian researcher on aging cautioned me that you might not want to rush out and start gobbling down the “nutritional supplement” quite yet  – remember Vitamin E?)
•   Architech Michael Graves now in a wheel chair, describing his frustration with poorly designed hospital rooms,
•   Lance Armstrong describing the decisions he and his doctor needed to make in treating his cancer.
•   Quyen Nguyen of UC San Diego, showing a video of a fluorescent dye that binds to tumor cells to make them more visible during surgery.
•   Diana Nyad describing her attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida and her encounters with box jellyfish.
•   Paul Stamets on medicines derived from mushrooms.
•   Gabor Forgacs of Organovo demonstrating an inkjet printer that was modified to “print” organs from a supply of cells.
•   Yoav Medan of InSightec describing one of the breakthroughs that did get FDA approval: a device that uses focused ultrasound to do surgery without making an incision in the patient.
•     Mehmood Kahn, Chief Scientific Officer of PepsiCo arguing that we needed processed foods (albeit of higher quality) if we were to feed the earth’s seven billion inhabitants. (Although e-Patient Dave tweeted that this does not explain high fructose corn syrup.)
•   Dean Kamen describing his frustration in trying to get FDA clearance for a robotic arm he developed for war veterans.
•   Nate Ball, an engineer and beatbox artist demonstrating how he makes all those sounds. On stage. By having Dr. Nguyen thread fiber optics through his nose so we could see an image of his vocal cords as he made various sounds.
•     Charles Pel of Physcient describing a new model of retractor that uses force sensors to back-off before it damages bones or tissue.

Next year, the conference moves to Washington, DC. In a move that can only be described as audacious, Jay Walker plans to double the size of the conference and take on the DC establishment. If anyone has the enthusiasm and resources to do it, it would be Jay.

Check out more photos of the event here.

Day Two: SBR Health at the WHITv7.0 Conference

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Admin

Day two of the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology (WHIT) conference got off with less of a bang than Monday – hard to match the energy Todd Park put forth yesterday.

Today’s keynote was delivered by Peter Tippett, MD, Vice President of Connected Healthcare Solutions at Verizon who was to speak on the revolution in HIT being enabled by the marriage of the Cloud and mobility. Although very interesting, his keynote ended up pretty much being an hour long advertisement for Verizon. Not that this was all bad, as Verizon is doing a lot of interesting work applying science to uncovering falsehoods in current security dogmas. For instance, Peter presented how Verizon is attempting to make data more secure. By studying, then releasing information on data breaches and publishing the data at www..com/databreach, the updates will appear on their blog at securityblog.verizonbusiness.com.

What I find particularly interesting is that the length of a password does not significantly reduce the chances of being compromised. However, Tippett stated that most attacks come from remote access, so just doing port scans followed by locking down open ports would reduce data breaches by 70%!

I also found his discussion of the Verizon LTE was enlightening. Evidently Verizon uses a lower frequency than other carriers so their 4G service works better at penetrating buildings such as hospitals as these lower frequencies get around walls better.

In a panel session on mHealth, Joe Kvedar, MD, Founder and Director of the Center for Connected Health, spoke of his center has found that patients are starting to do a better job at more effectively taking care of their health. This is being enabled by connected consumer devices like the new iPod Nano that can track your daily steps. He also stated that this is a timely convergence with the change in the way healthcare is being paid for, where healthcare providers need to become better at managing their populations health so these tools could not be coming at a more plotting time.

I found the rest of the day pretty mediocre with the exception of a presentation by Cynthia Galbincea, Executive Director of Marketing Communications at the Cleveland Clinic. Galbincea spoke on their mobile strategies, stating they are seeing a lot of demand from consumers for wellness and information applications, and have been very active in developing and deploying these types of applications, especially in support of their branding strategies. From their doctors, their organization is seeing the largest uses of their iPads for sharing information with their patients, assisting with diagnosis, as well as tracking patient’s progress on them. Cleveland Clinic’s mHealth strategist, Tony Crimaldi stated they are focusing exclusively on iOS development, and with that, mainly applications for iPad devices as these are the preferred device with their clinicians.

That’s it from the final day of WHITv7. Overall, a pretty impressive line up of thought leaders and innovators and I’m looking forward to more high quality innovation events such as this one from the World Congress.

This Week: SBR Health at the WHITv7.0 Conference

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Pete Eggleston

I’m onsite in Vienna, VA for two days attending the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology (WHIT) conference and thought I would share some highlights of the first day with our readers.

Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Department of Health and Services, kicked off the event, giving a fantastic, animated and passionate keynote on a confluence of market and health policy forces that have created an extraordinary environment for health innovation. I especially like his insightful remarks on how information liberation – new initiatives allowing patients to download and transfer their own data – is creating especially significant opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Vivian Funkhouser, principle of Health IT at Motorola, spoke about issues around managing the exploding number of devices to use in acute care settings. Her talk focused on the need to create scalable wireless infrastructures and multiple use devices.

Expanding on this topic, Brian Wells, an Associate Chief Information Officer for the University of Pennsylvania Health System talked about mobile device adoption within the health system and what they are doing to support the iPad is the device of choice. He asserted their users are overwhelmingly wanting iOS enabled applications – in fact, not one person has come to him to ask why applications were not being supported on Android or RIM devices. Brian also found that support issues for the iPad applications they have deployed are extremely low – iPad users generated .05 calls per user over 6 months. However, getting wider adoption of the devices is not without it’s challenges – one of the biggest issues he is facing is that their system just spent millions of dollars to put PCs in patient rooms for the physicians to use. So, it is still an uphill fit to convince leadership to purchase and deploy more mobile devices like the iPad. If he had it his way, Brian stated he would replace all the COWS (computers on wheels) with iPads!

In the afternoon, Will Yu, Special Assistant of Innovations and Research Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) spoke on how now is the best time to innovate in healthcare, as the market and incentives are aligned. He elaborated on how his office is attempting to create the ecosystem for their programs to be coordinated with healthcare innovator’s efforts, outlining their innovation framework which is based on communication, collaboration and support.

Closing the day with a well presented keynote, Paul Grundy, MD, the Global Director of Healthcare Transformation, IBM, spoke on new delivery models to drive down costs and improve care, focusing primarily on giving a very compelling argument for the Primary Care Medical Home model. He had perhaps one of the best and shortest definitions for a PCMH I have heard to date:

“A relationship based team with a project manager.”

One of the more poignant remarks he made to show how bad our current state of medical care coordination was that his cat is in a care registry so that no vaccinations missed, but his wife has to remember to get her own mammograms scheduled.

I’d be interested to hear your feedback on that last remark in the comments section.

That’s it for today – please check back tomorrow when I’ll report on some of the highlights for day two. –Peter Eggleston, Chief Marketing Officer SBR Health Inc.

Visit SBR Health at the American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 National Conference & Exhibition

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Admin

Pediatrics is the talk of the town here in Boston. The American Academy of Pediatrics 2011 National Conference & Exhibition is this weekend with physicians, students and leaders in healthcare from around the globe gathering in Boston to discuss the hottest topics and trends in pediatric practice. The theme for this year’s conference is the prevention and treatment of childhood obesity.

Considered the premier pediatric educational event, the AAP conference exhibits some of the most innovative developments in medicine, services, resources and technology. A highlight at this year’s conference is the new Pediatric Office of the Future that will host an impressive variety of available technologies designed to deliver more efficient and higher quality medical care. The four Office of the Future areas include ARRA/HITECH/Meaningful Use, Patient Engagement, Practice Management and Design and Connectivity/HIE.

We are excited to be an exhibiter at the Office of the Future and will be on hand to demonstrate our solutions for reducing readmissions and driving patient referrals through simple and secure video communications platform that links physicians, patients and specialists across all distances. By enabling healthcare providers to quickly and more securely integrate videoconferencing into their workflow, our solutions make it cost effective and easy to improve the coordination and quality of care while at the same time enhancing rather than changing clinical and IT workflows.

Find us and other leaders in healthcare at this year’s Office of the Future exhibit space at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center from Oct. 14-18.

Welcome to SBR Health

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Admin

In 2008, I was serving as Chief Product Officer for a company started by some Stanford University graduates to address a need they saw for a video communication product that was as inexpensive and as easy to use as consumer products like Skype but that had enterprise-level collaboration tools and military-grade security. The initial markets for this new company’s products were users throughout the intelligence community, the military, and other government organizations. With the government market now firmly established, I began looking for commercial market opportunities, and to that end, I began analyzing the database of more than 5,000 businesses that had downloaded the free trial product from the company’s website. One thing that intrigued me was the number of users in healthcare who had downloaded and were using our product. When I called many of these users to inquire how they were utilizing our product, I found they were looking for an easy and low-cost way to communicate with their patients wherever they were, an application that is an aspect of telemedicine.

The term telemedicine can be used to describe any kind of healthcare delivered at a distance using a communication media such as remote data monitoring, store-and-forward transmission of images, or interactive video. Until recently, the specialized equipment and expensive network infrastructure required by video made it impractical unless the patient was a great distance from the doctor. It’s no surprise that some of the most extensive implementations were in places where the population was dispersed over a vast distance, such as Nebraska or Northern Ontario. Still, a number of the healthcare professionals I talked to felt that the real benefits of video were yet to be realized. If the cost and complexity could be brought down, there was a much larger population of patients who may not need to travel long distances but still could be better served if they could avoid traveling. These patients were in local community hospitals, rehab facilities, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, or in their own homes.

However, after much additional interaction with a variety of forward-thinking healthcare professionals using our televideo platform, we learned that simply reducing the cost and complexity of televideo technologies did not solve the larger problem of how to utilize these technologies seamlessly in existing IT and clinical processes. In effect, we discovered something that proved to be true throughout healthcare: The success of any technology depends only 10% on the technology itself and 90% on how that technology is integrated with the organization’s workflow and protocols. It isn’t that the healthcare community is crying out for more, cheaper technology, but that it needs solutions to facilitate the delivery of care in a more efficient and effective manner.

Out of this discovery, SBR Health was born. We exist not to create televideo products; rather we strive to create healthcare solutions that are video-enabled.