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| Vol. 13 No. 19, September 21, 2016 |
FACTS AND STATS
Healthcare IT Outsourcing Market to Reach US$61.2 bn by 2023
In this report, the global healthcare IT outsourcing market has been evaluated on the basis of the application, the end user, and the regional distribution of the market. Based on the application, the market has been classified into administration, care management, and IT infrastructure management. Among these, the administration segment dominated the overall market in 2014 with a share of 37%. However, the care management segment is projected to expand at the fastest Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 8.30% over the forecast period.
Based on the end user, the market has been categorized into healthcare payers and healthcare providers. In 2014, the healthcare providers segment led this market with a majority share. The increased need for cost-efficient healthcare IT services in large as well as medium-sized healthcare organizations drove the demand for healthcare IT outsourcing in this end-use segment. However, the healthcare payers segment is estimated to record the fastest growth at a CAGR of 7.0% during the forecast period, states the report.
Regionally, the report segments the global healthcare IT outsourcing market into Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, North America, and the Middle East and Africa. North America emerged as the leading regional market for healthcare IT outsourcing in 2014 with a share of more than 40%. However, Asia Pacific is likely to register the fastest CAGR of 10.50% over the forecast period, notes the market study.
http://www.pharmiweb.com/pressreleases/pressrel.asp?ROW_ID=182164
DIGITAL HEALTH
How the NHS Can Prepare for Digital Healthcare
Like so many aspects of our lives, we are now turning to the digital world when it comes to our healthcare. According to Tech Radar, in the first quarter of 2016, around 20 million fitness trackers were sold, while a report by Flurry found use of health and fitness apps grew by 52% last year. So, if personal use of digital tools to monitor healthcare is up, how are our healthcare providers following suit? In order to improve services and save money, the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced the five-year target of the NHS going paperless in January 2013. It is hoped this transition to compatible digital records will allow health data to follow patients around the health and social care system, providing faster access to history, while also enabling patients to have greater abilities to monitoring their health remotely. The desire to go digital has resulted in nearly two thirds (64%) of NHS IT leaders to engage in procuring or rolling out electronic health records. However, this transformation creates a whole set of challenges.
http://www.misco.co.uk/blog/news/03857/how-the-nhs-can-prepare-for-digital-healthcare
Medscape EHR Report 2016: U.S. Physicians Rate Top EHRs
The switch from paper charts to EHRs essentially has been accomplished, although it took a while. Very few physicians these days operate their practices without an EHR: in a recent Medscape survey, over 91% of physician respondents said they use one. Two percent of respondents are currently installing or implementing an EHR, and 3% plan to purchase or start using an EHR within the next 2 years, meaning that it won't be long before nearly every physician is using an EHR.
http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/public/ehr2016
Pharmacist-Physician Communications in a Highly Computerized Hospital
A British study found that computerized physician order entry (CPOE) is not working as well as advocates have hoped. The University of Birmingham study looked at communication between physicians and pharmacists at a busy hospital in Birmingham, England. Doctors only responded to pharmacists' questions about prescriptions one-half the time, and fulfilled their requests about a third of the time, "suggesting uni-directional communication via the CPOE system may not be optimal." The study recommends that systems be designed to facilitate good communication among the professionals.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27505157
MEDICAL GADGETS
Nano-Sized Metal Fish Deliver Targeted Drugs to Your Body
Doctors have long dreamed of delivering drugs to specific parts of your body, and they may soon have a clever way to do it: fish. UC San Diego researchers have developed nanoscale metallic fish (they're just 800 nanometers long) that could carry medicine into the deeper reaches of your bloodstream. Each critter has a gold head and tailfin, as well as a nickel body joined by silver hinges. You only have to subject them to an oscillating magnetic field to make them swim -- there's no need for propellers or a passive (read: slow) delivery system. That, in turn, could make the drug carriers smaller even as they move quickly.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/11/nanofish-drug-delivery/
Optical Device Detects Bacterial Infestation Within Minutes
Spotting the presence of E. coli can go a long way toward preventing the spread of this bacterium through food and water. Currently, testing can take hours, sometimes even over a day, a serious problem as people eat and drink multiple times daily. Researchers from the University of Quebec and Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur developed a new sensor that that detect E. coli within twenty minutes and to do so at temperatures from 20° Celsius to 40° Celsius.
Instead of culturing to be able to detect it, the sensor spots E. coli directly by relying on a bacteriophage that sticks to its body. The bacteriophage is coated over an optical fiber and when E. coli is nearby, it binds with it and in turn changes the optical properties of the optical fiber. When a beam of light is directed over it, the reflecting wavelengths are different depending on whether the bacteria is attached to it or not.
http://www.medgadget.com/2016/09/optical-device-detects-bacterial-infestation-within-minutes.html
HemaApp Accurately Estimates Hemoglobin in Blood Using Standard Smartphone
Measurement of hemoglobin within blood helps to diagnose and manage a number of conditions, but this requires either blood draws or expensive pulse oximeters. At the University of Washington a team of researchers wanted to see whether a common smartphone (Nexus 5) can be used to perform the measurement at a high enough accuracy to be useful for medical practice.
They developed an app called HemaApp that uses the phone’s built-in light and camera to detect the color intensity of blood passing through a finger. The user simply places a finger over the camera lens, making a solid contact, and runs the app to do its thing. The app turns on the nearby LED light, which shines light through the finger, and uses the camera to detect specific features that point to the amount of hemoglobin.
While the built-in light is not too bad, the team also tested the app while using a nearby incandescent bulb in addition to the camera light, as well as with the help of a small accessory light attached to the phone. The amazing thing is that in their small study on 31 patients, the HemaApp with the attached light accessory was as accurate (82%) as Masimo’s Pronto (81%) in estimating hemoglobin count. The app without any accessories, and relying only on its own light, had an accuracy of 69%, which is pretty impressive as well.
http://www.medgadget.com/2016/09/hemaapp-accurately-estimates-hemoglobin-blood-using-standard-smartphone.html
GLOBAL WATERCOOLER
UK to Establish a Digital Academy for Healthcare Professionals
The government will invite universities to host a new NHS digital academy that it hopes will also encourage a new generation of chief information officers to drive advances in digital health technology. Another strand of the plans sees 12 trusts picked to act as digitisation pioneers. They will receive up to £10m and be expected to deliver pioneering approaches to digital services and help others in the NHS to learn from their experience. The government wants these 'global exemplar' trusts to partner with an 'international organisation of their choice' to expand their digital health knowledge.
http://www.pmlive.com/blogs/digital_intelligence/archive/2016/september/uk_to_establish_a_digital_academy_for_healthcare_professionals_1128805
Health Technology Company RightEye Gets Rights to Digital Eye-Tracking Tests for Autism, Parkinson's
Bethesda, Maryland-based RightEye, a health technology company that makes a cloud-based eye-tracking technology system and software, announced it has acquired the exclusive rights to two eye movement tests: one that aids physicians in quickly identifying early stages of autism in children 12 to 40 months old, and another to detect Parkinson’s disease in all ages.
RightEye’s proprietary software works by detecting eye movement as patients are shown a video, sometimes wearing 3D glasses. The eye tracker is attached to the bottom of a large gaming screen, which reads eye movements so the software can interpret the reactions and generate an instant electronic report that is sent to the physician. The tests take a few minutes, and each scenario requires the patient to follow graphics on a screen. Some tests are as simple as a moving dot around a circle, but others are complex and require more involvement from the patient in order to test reaction time.
http://www.mobihealthnews.com/content/health-technology-company-righteye-gets-rights-digital-eye-tracking-tests-autism-parkinsons
TRENDS
How Cloud-Based Technologies are Impacting Healthcare
The healthcare industry’s migration to the cloud is inevitable; it is only a matter of time that all healthcare organizations adopt cloud computing &take advantage of this rapidly growing and useful technology. The growing trend in the healthcare industry is for all organizations to transition to the adoption of cloud computing and utilize the leading technology.
http://www.pcquest.com/how-cloud-based-technologies-are-impacting-healthcare/
Future Medical Wearables Could be Powered by Body Heat
Researchers at NC State think that they have developed a new way to harvest body heat and turn it into electricity. The team has developed a patch that's roughly a centimeter squared, that would attach to a person's bicep. The device would then be able to generate anything up to 20 Microwatts, a significant increase on previous technologies. It's not enough to power a smartwatch, but it's possible that it may be enough to juice a medical sensor, reducing the number of bulky cables a patient has to trail around them.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/14/future-medical-wearables-could-be-powered-by-body-heat/?sr_source=Twitter&utm_content=bufferb7f5e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Will the "Femtech" Revolution Really Offer a "Digital Contraceptive" and Detect Diseases through a Phone?
But could we really be entering an age when women can use their smartphones as a form of “digital contraceptive?” Yes, said Berlin, Germany-based Clue’s co-founder and CEO Ida Tin — setting up an intriguing verbal exchange with the moderator, TechCrunch reporter Sarah Buhr.
Tin, whose Clue app“is designed to make tracking your fertility accurate, fast and friendly,” suggested that by incorporating a few data streams, “you might come to a point where you can really enable a woman to take out her phone and she can see if it’s a day she can get pregnant. And then you have a digital contraceptive, which is obviously a huge market opportunity in the world.”
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/techflash/2016/09/will-the-femtech-revolution-really-offer-a-digital.html
Treating Pain with Virtual Reality: Interview with AppliedVR CEO Matthew Stoudt
AppliedVR is an exciting company that is using virtual reality to treat pain and anxiety in both inpatient and outpatient settings. The VR applications are designed by a multidisciplinary team for maximum therapeutic effect. Applied VR runs on the Gear VR and has two applications currently, Pain RelieVR and Anxiety RelieVR. Both have been shown in early studies to not only be effective, but in some cases superior to VR alternatives with similar gameplay/setting but lacking the targeted multidisciplinary design.
AppliedVR was kind enough to send us over demos of both of their applications. Pain RelieVR is an interactive game where you are attacked by an onslaught of slightly creepy but cute teddy bears. The bears are dispatched easily by looking at them and pegging them with an auto-launching cannon. The game is simple but the setting and art design is creative and fun. I can definitely see this functioning well as a distraction from painful or frightening stimuli.
http://www.medgadget.com/2016/09/treating-pain-virtual-reality-interview-appliedvr-ceo-matthew-stoudt.html
ELECTRONIC HEALTHCARE ARTICLES
A Model for Measuring Industry-Wide Adoption and Capability of Healthcare Analytics and Data Warehousing in the USA
The United States (US) healthcare industry is undergoing three major, overlapping developments in the evolution of data management and information technology utilization: (1) Data collection, characterized by the adoption and meaningful use of electronic medical records; (2) Data sharing, characterized by the adoption of health information exchanges; and (3) Data analysis, characterized by the adoption of enterprise data warehouses and analytic tools.
http://www.longwoods.com/content/23078
Gaps in Primary Healthcare Electronic Medical Record Research and Knowledge:Findings of a Pan-Canadian Study
Relatively recently, the tide has begun to shift in the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) in Canadian primary healthcare (PHC) (Canada Health Infoway 2011). EMRs are being promoted as a tool that can assist in improving healthcare in Canada (Health Council of Canada 2011).
http://www.longwoods.com/content/23927
INFOWAY UPDATE
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