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GOOGLE TAKES ON DIGITAL HEALTH FROM MULTIPLE ANGLES: Tech giant Google continues to build out an extensive healthcare ecosystem. The company announced two new healthcare services just in the last week:
- Machine learning and genomic sequencing: The Google Brain team and Verily Life Sciences, Alphabet's health subsidiary, have teamed up to introduce an open source version of DeepVariant, the machine learning tool that can strengthen the accuracy of genomic sequencing. DeepVariant, which will be available on Google Cloud, is part of Google's broader goal of helping the healthcare community better understand the genome and to provide them with deep learning-based genomics tools. The tool earned the highest accuracy rating at the FDA's Truth Challenge in 2016, and has improved another 50% since, making it an effective tool, according to Healthcare IT News.
- Google Search for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): Google has partnered with two US groups, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the National Center for PTSD, to introduce a new search feature that could help people identify if they suffer from the disorder. Mobile users that perform a Google search for PTSD or related queries will automatically be offered resources and a clinically validated screening questionnaire to test their likelihood of having PTSD. The group hopes that offering the online version of the PC-PTSD-5 screening tool on a convenient platform will encourage more people experiencing symptoms to seek help - it's estimated that only about half of the 14 million US adults who experience PTSD seek professional help for the condition.
Google's recent efforts in healthcare go beyond machine learning and search. In the last few months, the company announced a slew of partnerships with health IT businesses, launched a start-up focused on urban health, and acquired a mobile vitals tracking start-up. If the firm continues to use its massive reach and technical expertise - Google has seven services that boast over 1 billion users, processes 3.5 billion Google Search requests per day, and is the fourth largest cloud provider globally - it will be a major disruptor to the healthcare industry.
NET NEUTRALITY ROLL BACK COULD STYMIE TELEMEDICINE ADOPTION: US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai believes that fewer restrictions on internet service providers will lower barriers to telecoms to developing high speed internet in rural areas and that could help telemedicine thrive, according to FierceHealthcare. Rural areas are a key market for telemedicine because healthcare providers are often scarce and high speed internet is a necessary component for providing the service. Pai's comments come as the FCC prepares to roll back former US President Barrack Obama's net neutrality regulations. Stripping back regulatory oversight, Pai says.
The counter argument is that high-speed internet may become cost-prohibitive for some hospitals and telemedicine companies. The Obama-era regulations sought to ensure that internet service providers (ISPs) couldn't throttle companies' connectivity speeds even when they used significant bandwidth - hospitals that offer telemedicine consume considerable bandwidth. The roll-back could mean that ISPs begin charging hospitals more for higher and faster data usage. That could limit telemedicine uptake due to budget constraints, according to Eagle Telemedicine chief operating officer Robert Annas.
It's too early to tell how the rollback will impact telemedicine, but usage and adoption remain strong for now. Telemedicine is one of the fastest growing segments of mobile health - in early 2017, roughly 53% of US healthcare providers planned to expand their offerings and services, according to a Foley and Lardner survey. As telemedicine continues to become more entrenched in healthcare, it's likely that providers and patients will become reliant on the service.
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HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM SUFFERS SIGNIFICANT DATA BREACH: The data of more than 18,000 patients from Detroit's Henry Ford Health System were either viewed or stolen during a security breach in October, according to FierceHealthcare. The healthcare provider informed patients that someone had gained access to email credentials for some of its employees, which allowed them to view the names, dates of birth, and medical information of patients. Breaches aren't uncommon in the healthcare industry and they are expensive - in the US, roughly 90% of hospitals reported having a breach in the past two years, amounting to $6.2 billion in costs each year, according to Becker's Hospital Review. As healthcare becomes more digitized and cybercriminals become even more aggressive in trying to steal sensitive data from patients, data breaches will likely increase. Healthcare systems must be more proactive in strengthening cybersecurity protocols, such as training employees on security practices and introducing multifactor authentication to mitigate the threat of breaches.
CHINA-BASED DIGITAL HEALTHCARE PLATFORM GETS $60M IN FUNDING: Medlinker, a China-based social networking platform for doctors, has raised $60 million in its latest round of funding, according to MobiHealthNews. The company connects doctors with each other, healthcare institutions, and insurance firms. Medlinker's mobile app and cloud service also enables doctors to share data, medical records, approve appointments, and engage with patients. The network has seen early success since its founding in 2014 - there are now over 430,00 verified doctors on the platform. Medlinker's total funding now amounts to over $100 million, reflecting the region's rising interest in digital health solutions - China's digital health market is expected to expand from $3 billion in 2014 to $110 billion in 2020, according to BCG. It's likely that the region will to see even bigger investments going forward, especially as more digital health providers enter the growing market.
IN OTHER NEWS...
- University of Missouri researchers are leveraging wearable sensors to track nurses during their shifts in the intensive care unit. The device tracks what nurses are doing in real time in order to identify bottlenecks and heavy workloads in order to improve performance and safety.
- EpicMD, the telehealth platform provider has raised $3 million in a Series A funding round, according to HIT Consultant. The funding could be used to expand access to the virtual care platform, which currently allows its patients to connect with over 600 board-certified doctors in the US 24 hours a day.
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