It’s something of a grand experiment and it’s being being hosted this weekend on the campus of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. What it is might be called a miniconference, but let’s not call it that. “Mini” indicates smallness, and there’s nothing small about this event, even if it is only a single day affair. Let’s call it a full fledged conference. The students attending will like that. It’ll make them feel important and so grown-up — which they are, actually...

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Digital Health has experienced a glorious boom in the last decade and is expected to reach $379.3 Billion by 2024 with 25% of the growth occurring between 2016 and 2024. Patient management can now be done on user-friendly platforms; physicians can remotely monitor their patients with mobile devices and telemedicine; and personal trackers and genetic testing are allowing patients easier access to their own health data. Clearly, we understand the kind of power technology has on improving the delivery of care and management of disease...

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In a Jan. 2 New York Times opinion piece, Eric Topol, MD, professor at the Scripps Research Institute, and Kathryn Haun, a federal prosecutor who teaches a course on cybercrime at Stanford Law, take aim at what they call "quite a paradox": the fact that most patients still can't readily access their own health data, even as there's "an epidemic of cybercriminals and thieves hacking and stealing this most personal information"...

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The previous section of this article paused during a discussion of the accuracy and uses of devices. At a panel on patient generated data, a speaker said that one factor holding back the use of patient data was the lack of sophistication in EHRs. They must be enhanced to preserve the provenance of data: whether it came from a device or from a manual record by the patient, and whether the device was consumer-grade or a well-tested medical device. Doctors invest different levels of trust in different methods of collecting data: devices can provide more objective information than other ways of asking patients for data. A participant in the panel also pointed out that devices are more reliable in the lab than under real-world conditions. Consumers must be educated about the proper use of devices, such as whether to sit down and how to hold their arms when taking their blood pressure...

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He has found that successful companies pursue gradual, incremental steps toward automated programs. It is important to start with a manual process that works (such as phoning or texting patients from the provider), then move to semi-automation and finally, if feasible, full automation. The product must also be field-tested; one cannot depend on a pilot. This advice matches what Glen Tullman, CEO of Livongo Health, said in his keynote: instead of doing a pilot, try something out in the field and change quickly if it doesn’t work...

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Vocera Communications’ and Extension Healthcare’s solutions blend to take pressures off clinicians in hospitals and improve their responses to patient needs. According to Brent Lang, President and CEO of Vocera Communications, the two companies partnered together on 40 customers before the acquisition. They take data from multiple sources–such as patient monitors and electronic health records–to make intelligent decisions about “when to send alarms, whom to send them to, and what information to include” so the responding nurse or doctor has the information needed to make a quick and effective intervention.

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For the past five years, HealthTap has been building a network of doctors and patients who exchange information and advice through information forums, messaging, video teleconferencing, and other integrated services. According to CEO Ron Gutman, all that platform building has taught them a lot about what health app developers need–knowledge that they’ve expanded by listening to hospitals and third-party app developers over the years. On Tuesday, November 1, HealthTap announced a comprehensive cloud platform pulling together all these ideas. The features in the press release read like a wish list from health app developers...

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