The Watson Health Cloud will be an open source but secure platform on which care providers and researchers can share and analyze health data for greater insights into trends to improve individual and overall patient outcomes.

IBM, which made the announcement at the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Chicago, also said it has acquired big data healthcare analytics providers Phytel and Explorys, whose software will be used in concert with Watson Health.

The Explorys platform enables healthcare systems to collect, link and combine data from hundreds of disparate sources across their enterprise and clinically integrated networks. This data will be derived from clinical, claims, billing, accounting, devices, community and patient information.

Phytel develops and sells cloud-based services that help healthcare providers coordinate care in order to meet new healthcare quality requirements and reimbursement models.

“Their data sets represent 90 million lives, primarily in this country,” said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president of IBM’s Watson Business Group.

Additionally, IBM announced three new partnerships with Apple, Johnson & Johnson, and Medtronic to optimize consumer and medical devices.

BM will apply Watson Health cloud services and analytics to Apple’s HealthKit and ResearchKit, two features announced with last month’s release of Apple Watch. HealthKit enables the collection of data from the Apple Watch, and ResearchKit enables Apple Watch wearers to take part in massive health data studies by sharing the baseline vital signs and activity data.

Apple engineers have been working with dozens of research institutes, such as the Mayo Clinic, in developing apps that will help in research on Parkinson’s Disease, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, asthma and breast cancer.

IBM will provide a secure research capability on the Watson Health Cloud platform, de-identifying personal data to allow researchers to easily store, aggregate and model information collected from iOS users who opt-in to contribute personal data to medical research.

Johnson & Johnson will collaborate with IBM to create intelligent health coaching systems centered on preoperative and postoperative patient care, including joint replacement and spinal surgery.

“There’s so much we have to learn with this sea of data,” said Len Greer, president of Health and Wellness Solutions at Johnson & Johnson. “We’re going to start this collaboration [with IBM’s Watson Health] with joint replacement surgery… joints, knees and hips.”

Johnson & Johnson recently launched Patient Athlete, a pre and post operative video health coaching program, but Watson’s analytics and “cognitive” capability will enable the program to grow into a virtual patient coach, working with patient data to tailor a post-operative recovery coaching program.

Johnson & Johnson also plans to launch new health apps targeting chronic conditions, such as diabetes and obesity, which take up as much as 80% of $7 trillion global healthcare spending, according to Greer.

Medtronic will leverage the Watson Health Cloud insights platform to collaborate with IBM around delivery of new highly personalized care management services for people with diabetes. The system will receive and analyze patient information and data from various devices including insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors, and use this information to provide dynamic, personalized diabetes management strategies to patients and their providers.

Rhoden said Watson Health will include the open source sharing of code, so that any company can become a partner and develop applications for the platform.

“They’ll be solutions we bring to market, solutions we work with others to bring to market, and startups can even take advantage of the analytics to build future solutions,” Rhoden said.

Read the original article here.

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mHealth miGlass for Google Glass

Google Glass for mHealth streamlines Patient Care and Engagement

iPatientCare, an Integrated Practice Managment and EHR Solutions company has developed an application for Google Glass with aides in patient interaction.

This wearable healthcare technology application is called miGlass.  The application allows Google Glass to communicate with the EHR system to display related radiology and lab reports of the patient.  The reports are projected in the upper corner of the eye and can also capture video and pictures of regions of interest in read time.  These images and video can be attached to the patient record.

Here’s a video featuring miGlass for Google Glass.

Read the original press release by clicking >>>HERE<<<

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iTherm Wearable Medical Device

iTherm Wearable Medical Device

Monitoring a sick child’s temperature throughout the night can be difficult using traditional oral or digital thermometers, according to iTherm founder Marcos Oliva. This wearable medical device uses an armband system, which works with a smartphone app to alert caregivers only if the patient’s temperature is cause for alarm.

The app registers the patient’s temperature data so users can share it with the family doctor. The device, which is designed for children ages one to eight, uses Bluetooth to communicate with phones and tablets. It’s slated to ship this fall.

If you wish to fund iTherm please visit there funding page >>> HERE <<<.

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mHealth – FitBit Activity Tracker

A $100 wireless accelerometer from Fitbit — normally used by healthy people to measure their daily exercise progress — could revolutionize hospital care and perhaps post-acute care as well.

In a paper published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., reported that attaching the accelerometer to the ankles of elderly patients recovering from elective cardiac surgery in the hospital enabled clinicians to measure how many steps each patient took on each day after their operations.

This first-of-its-kind experiment showed the association between a patient’s post-surgical mobility and length of stay and his or her discharge disposition to a skilled nursing facility, home health care or independent living at home.

For example, on the second recovery day, patients who would later be discharged to independent living at home walked six times as far as those who went to a nursing facility or to home health care. Similarly, by the end of the second day, the patients with the shortest hospital stays reached a median of 818 steps, compared to 514 and 223 steps in the intermediate and longer-stay groups, respectively.

[ Will smartwatches quash the mobile health device market? Read Smartwatches Could Outshine Wearable Fitness Gadgets. ]

These associations were not surprising, according to the study’s authors. However, they noted, “It is critical in the face of changing demographics and financial rules that we measure functional measures of recovery for individuals and populations. Functional status and variables such as mobility will impact discharge disposition, patient satisfaction, social support required, falls, hospital readmission, and ultimately health care costs.” In addition, they said, the Fitbit data gave them the ability to intervene early when a patient’s mobility was less than expected.

David J. Cook, MD, the study’s lead author, told InformationWeek Healthcare that up to now, the only source of in-hospital mobility data has been nursing notes. Nurses try their best to record this information, he said, but they’re busy and the data is often incomplete.

In contrast, Cook noted, the [Fitbit] data is 100% reliable. “You’re not dependent on someone reporting it or not reporting it. It’s objective and complete data. This technology represents the ability to acquire data on patients all the time.”

This change has profound implications for hospital care. For starters, doctors have anywhere, anytime access to this data online, allowing them to intervene earlier when patients are having difficulties. “By acquiring this data effectively and reliably, we were able to identify patients who were having trouble with mobility and intervene right there,” Cook said. As a result, patients who were having problems could see physical therapists earlier than they might have otherwise.

Second, he pointed out, the data allows clinicians to build models of “recovery norms” for certain kinds of patients who have had particular procedures. The next step is to look at how changes in practice affect those norms, Cook said. “For example, with strategies for earlier mobility or pain management, we can start to look at the impact of practice changes on patient recovery.”

Alone or in conjunction with other remote monitoring devices, accelerometers like Fitbit’s can also be used to measure the recovery of discharged patients at home or in post-acute-care facilities. For example, if a patient who has congestive heart failure goes home with a wireless accelerometer and starts to fail, they’ll move less, and the clinicians monitoring them can pick that up right away. “This [mobility] is likely to be predictive of patients who are going to have medical visits, whether to a doctor’s office, an ER or a hospital admission,” Cook said.

Cook believes that the same kind of technology will also be used to monitor patients in assisted living and skilled nursing facilities. “This is going to impact health and wellness in ways we haven’t been able to do before because we weren’t able to acquire accurate data and weren’t able to know what was normal and what wasn’t,” he said.

In the Mayo Clinic study, the accelerometer, which normally uploads data to a smartphone, instead sent the data to a radio antenna interfaced with an in-room computer. From there, the information was transmitted to the Fitbit website, where it was aggregated and displayed on a dashboard.

Cook said that alert values based on normative data were indispensable to helping nurses and doctors make use of the accelerator information. “We can look at 200 patients discharged after heart failure, and at who gets admitted and what their mobility changes were and what their blood pressure and heart rate changes were, and then we have an algorithm that says, of the 50 patients on your dashboard, 48 are in green, one is yellow and one is red. For the one in red, you pick up the phone and make a call.”

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Using standard medical sensors connected directly through the universal audio port of virtually any mobile device, the proprietary interface, called the Vital Signs DSP (Digital Signal Processor), provides precise monitoring of blood oxygen levels, blood pressure and body temperature which are displayed on the mobile device’s monitor.

The availability of an accurate, affordable mobile medical diagnostic tool has sweeping applications in the medical/clinical and consumer markets as well as in the developing world where 64% of mobile phone users are found.

LGTmedical’s technology, which includes applications for pulse oximetry, temperature and blood pressure monitoring, requires no external signal processors, microcontrollers, power sources or displays. Users just download a proprietary app that allows their mobile device to drive a low-cost standard medical sensor.


The company plans to launch its flagship product, the Phone Oximeter, into clinical markets in 2013, with blood pressure and temperature applications to follow. This new technology platform supports ultra-low cost product design, which will make these applications affordable for everyone. LGTmedical’s mHealth devices are expected to cost between $10 and $40, which is significantly less than competing products on the market today.

The Phone Oximeter will enable mobile devices to provide non-invasive measurements of blood oxygen levels. After downloading the app, a standard medical sensor attached to the patient’s finger is connected to the audio port of any phone, tablet or laptop. The sensor detects concentrations of oxygen in the blood and displays the readings in colorful symbols on the mobile device’s monitor making pulse oximetry easy to use and accessible.

[Click here to watch the video…]

Driven by the explosive growth of mobile phones and tablets and the pressing need to improve health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs, the global mHealth market is projected to reach US$ 23 billion by 2017, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mobile monitoring services will account for the largest share of the global market (approximately 65 per cent), expected to reach US$ 15 billion in 2017.

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[Click here to read the article]

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The goal of this device was to aide in early diagnosis of pneumonia.  StethoCloud uses a special microphone caled a ‘stethomic’ that plugs in to the smartphone’s audio jack.  The application also guides users in the proper method for listening to a patient’s breathing.

The expected price for this incredible innovation? ….$20

The StethoCloud works by collecting data from specific sources.  The algorithms interpret the results based on established medical standards and appropriate recommendations are made.

According to the World Health Organization pneumonia is killing approximately 1.4 million children a year under the age of 5, which is more than any other disease.

What the Video of  StethoCloud

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• 9 Wearable Devices For Healthcare

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However unless you have $3,995 for a single user license you probably aren’t going to read it.

The criteria for remote or wireless patient monitoring devices is that they have features that allow them to share data outside the immediate patient care area.  Features from these devices range face-to-face interaction to remote tracking ability. Many of these systems now have to functionality to integrate with EMRs or electronic health records.

Some of the devices are cable of monitoring patient vital signs, blood gas monitors, blood pressure, glucose meters, pacemakers, ICD monitors and the list goes on.

The report covers three product categories; Wireless and remote patient monitors, patient data processing applications and equipment and EMR data transfer equipment that communicates and transfers data to a hospital’s electronic health record.

Many companies have entered this growing field. Among the offerings discussed in the report are the following:

• Abbott
• American Medical Development (AMD) Telemedicine Products
• American TeleCare
• Cardiocom
• Carematix
• Cybernet Medical Corporation
• Drager Medical
• GE Healthcare
• GlobalMedia Group
• Honeywell HomMed
• Intel
• InTouch Health
• LifeWatch Technologies
• MedApps
• Medtronic
• Philips Medical Systems
• Roche
• St. Jude Medical
• Second Opinion Telemedicine Solutions, Inc.
• Welch Allyn

 There are four primary markets for these new technologies:

• Hospitals;
• Home healthcare;
• Nursing homes; and
• Other (including first responders, institutional, physician offices, and military)

Disease categories being monitored remotely:

In addition to providing market sizes by venue serviced, the report also breaks out the market for remote and wireless patient monitoring based on the disease category being monitored by these devices for the following categories:

• Asthma Monitoring
• COPD Monitoring
• CHF Monitoring
• CHD Monitoring
• Cancer Monitoring
• Diabetes Monitoring
• Other Disease Monitoring

Patient data processing applications and equipment use algorithms to evaluate monitoring measurements for a patient’s specific condition(s). Usually, these can be customized by the physician, with reports sent to the physician. In the market for high-tech patient monitoring systems, the applications and equipment are either integrated into the patient monitoring system or are add-ons to the measuring systems. As with data processing, EMR data transfer equipment and applications for this report are either components of, or add-ons to, patient monitoring systems. This report does not include EMR applications.

Most players in the market are discussed as part of Kalorama’s competitive analysis of the remote patient monitoring market. In addition, as part of our coverage of the marketplace for remote and wireless systems, several major manufacturers are profiled in detail in this report.

Related Articles:

• Wearable Devices For Patients

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BodyMedia Link Armband Medical Wearable Device

BodyMedia Link Armband

BodyMedia’s Link Armband, a body-monitoring armband equipped with Bluetooth wireless technology, communicates directly with a smartphone app. The device provides real-time, up-to-the minute streams of information such as caloric burn data, physical activity level, and steps taken.

The armband collects physiological data using four sensors that capture more than 5,000 data readings every minute. The raw data includes measurements of heat flux, skin temperature, motion, and galvanic skin response. BodyMedia says proprietary algorithms convert these readings to capture key parameters that directly affect people’s health and wellness: calorie burn, physical activity duration, steps taken, and sleep duration and efficiency.

BodyMedia also offers a subscription-based service called Activity Manager that lets users enter their own body parameters and goals for a running progress report. Goals can include steps taken, time spent in moderate and vigorous activity, nutritional analysis, and sleep efficiency.

9 Wearable Devices For Patients Health

1. IntelliVue MX40
2. BlueLibris
3. BioHarness BT
4. Body Motion Patch
5. Zoll LifeVest
6. Basis B1
7. Nike FuelBank
8. FitBit Ultra
9. BodyMedia Link Armband

Originally Posted in Information Week

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Fitbit Ultra Medical Wearable Device

The tiny Fitbit Ultra tracks a user’s steps, distance, and sleep, as well as counting calories burned. Wireless uploads are automatically sent to user’s personal dashboard on Fitbit’s site, where free online tools show how the user’s physical activities add up. An iPhone app also lets users log workouts, diet, and food goals.

Fitbit Ultra not only holds an accelerometer but an altimeter that tracks the number of stairs or hills climbed each day. To keep you going, the tracker also displays motivational messages when you start moving.

9 Wearable Devices For Patients Health

1. IntelliVue MX40
2. BlueLibris
3. BioHarness BT
4. Body Motion Patch
5. Zoll LifeVest
6. Basis B1
7. Nike FuelBank
8. FitBit Ultra
9. BodyMedia Link Armband

Originally Posted in Information Week

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