This year marks the tenth anniversary of the launch of the first handheld ultrasound scanner, GE Healthcare’s Vscan, yet the market has largely failed to live up to expectations. In 2018, sales of handheld ultrasound accounted for less than 2% of the $6.9 billion global markets for ultrasound equipment. The relatively high cost and limited performance of early generation handhelds were limiting factors. Steady product improvements over the years, coupled with fresh innovation from new market
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Digital Twin Technology: Should Healthcare Jump on the Bandwagon?
While healthcare is known for not jumping to conclusions very fast when investing in new technology, the industry starts to pick up the pace. Such “newcomers” as blockchain, IoT, VR, and AR get a well-deserved appraisal and become an integral part of next-gen custom healthcare software aimed at supporting personalized treatment and predictable patient outcomes across a wide range of conditions.
We anticipate that the digital twin technology has good chances to become the next addition to the
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Why 2018 May Have Been A High-Water Mark for Digital Health Funding
Notwithstanding the quite significant stock market turmoil for publicly traded healthcare companies in recent months, the level of private investment activity continued to be quite strong this past quarter. According to Rock Health, 1Q19 registered just under $1.0 billion of investments made in 61 healthcare technology companies, which while below the trailing two year quarterly average of $1.4 billion, still suggests an annual investment pace running toward $4.0 billion. StartUp Health, which
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Healthcare BPO: Assessing Your Outsourcing Services Maturity
In the healthcare market, there is increasing demand for outsourcing services that can bring strategic insights, optimization, and efficiencies to critical operations, particularly among health plans.These partnerships speak to the dramatic shifts in how health plans are sold and purchased today, but also to the maturity of the healthcare business process outsourcing (BPO) industry itself.Years ago, BPO was more tactical than strategic—lifting and shifting units or processes to a far-flung
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What The Failure of Microsoft’s HealthVault Means for the Future of EHRs
Microsoft recently announced that it is officially shutting down HealthVault at the end of this year. HealthVault was Microsoft’s attempt at a web-based personal health record system. You probably never used it -- it suffered low adoption. But while HealthVault will shut down, mobile apps that collect and store your personal health information and share it with your healthcare team are poised to revolutionize medicine and wellness practice.
The downfalls of HealthVault included its focus on
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How Can Health System Command Centers Reduce Cost Growth?
Scott Newton, DNP, RN, MHA, EMT-P, VP of Care Model Solutions at Teletracking In our decentralized care landscape, health system command centers (HSCC) are coordinating high-quality care through complex and integrated delivery networks (IDN). Recently, command centers were recognized by KLAS and Gartner as a new model of care delivery with the potential to impact clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. That means in addition to improving routine health system operations—and increasing
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We Need Less Focus on Perfecting Physicians Using Carrots and Sticks
I’m not sure what the relevant analogy might be, but I’ll take a shot, nonetheless.
Let’s say we poured billions of dollars into improving highways and city streets, but the local commute for residents continued to get longer, more frustrating, less effective.
Or, maybe we also dumped billions into school systems, but student test scores only got worse.
I ask if these comparisons are relevant after reading about a recent study published in the Lancet, which suggests that poor
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The Four Cs: A Call to Action for Digital Health Tools
The United States spends more of their GDP on healthcare than any other developed nation, and yet it produces some of the poorest outcomes — notably in the field of maternal and infant health.
The advent of digital health has presented the opportunity for a paradigm shift in the delivery of care, and support from investors and policy-makers shows that as far as they’re concerned, digital health is not a new frontier for healthcare, but the current playing field.
A staggering $14.6B in funding
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Where’s the Evidence? Barriers to Analyzing Digital Health’s Impact
The digital health industry continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. In 2018, venture funding for digital health companies approached a record $8.1B in funding, according to Rock Health. These companies are striving to address important healthcare issues by developing products and service offerings in various categories like genome sequencing, analytics, telemedicine, mobile apps, and population health management tools—all with the promise of increased insights and patient engagement, and
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Amazon Alexa Is Now HIPAA-Eligible, What’s Next for Healthcare?
Big News, But Just The Beginning
These days, big news stories in healthcare are just as likely to come from large technology companies as from major healthcare institutions. Case in point: In early 2018, Amazon created a huge stir in the industry early by announcing a venture with JPMorgan and Berkshire Hathaway that promised to go after the “hungry tapeworm” that is the cost of healthcare in the
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