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The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Update ⋅ Paul Sonnier ⋅ Jan 15, 2018 ⋅ #309
Dear Group,
I’ve published one issue of my newsletter since last week’s group announcement, which you can read below and via the following link: The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Newsletter for Jan 11
Also, please note that I’m available to deliver my keynote address at conferences and corporate events. You can also advertise in my group announcements, newsletter, and on my website. My professional bio is viewable here and my full list of services is viewable here. I can be contacted via my LinkedIn profile.
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The Fourth Wave: Digital Health Newsletter for Jan 11
The biggest news in digital health this week didn’t emanate from JP Morgan or CES. European regulators have granted CE mark approval to Cambridge, MA-based rHEALTH for their portable diagnostic blood test for the genetic-based bleeding disease hemophilia A. Reporting in IEEE Spectrum, Emily Waltz aptly points out that this paves the way for moving blood tests out of the lab and into the hands of consumers and patients. While the addressable market for this particular test is small, the CE Mark demonstrates that portable blood diagnostic devices are viable. Founder and CEO Eugene Chan states that: “We see this as a stepping stone for making a name for ourselves in the hematology space,” which he plans to pursue “one test at a time.”
On a related note, Nima has announced a portable peanut allergy tester. The self-contained consumer device adds to the company’s product portfolio, which also includes a gluten detector. Users place a piece of food into the single-use testing tube and sensors plus chemistry are then used to detect the presence of peanuts or gluten in approximately three minutes.
LIVING AND SOCIETY
Miriam Kramer says she deleted Facebook from her phone and that you should, too.
Above image via the artist Banksy: “BOOM!”
An episode of the Netflix show “Black Mirror” features a small, uncommunicative robot with a pistol that, apparently of its own volition, pursues a woman through a forest. According to Murtaza Hussain, the episode reveals our fear of robots and algorithms we can’t control. Unsurprisingly, a 2015 study by Chapman University found that 3 of the top 5 fears Americans have are related to emerging technologies.
A new video game from Laundry Bear Games called “A Mortician’s Tale” will help you think differently about death and the personal, as well as family decisions related to end-of-life wishes. Michael Moore writes that the game is “sort of a primer for understanding the Death Positive Movement. The tenets of the movement mainly focus on wanting to destigmatize discussions of death, allow for more open talk about death and dying, as well as empower people to make their end-of-life wishes and to involve themselves in caring for their dead if they want.”
Segway’s new Loomo robot for the consumer market is touted as a friendly companion that will autonomously follow you around, entertain you, take pictures of you, and even carry groceries and backpacks. Any similarities to the robot mentioned above in the Black Mirror episode is totally coincidental and you have nothing at all to worry about. Just don’t give Loomo a pistol.
As a result of smart toy maker VTech’s lax security that exposed data from millions of parents and children, the FTC has fined it $650,000. The Hong Kong-based company makes watches and cameras plus enables parents to create online profiles of themselves and their children. The profiles were discovered to be accessible to anyone on the company’s websites.
Biometric firm BI2 Technologies will supply 31 sheriff’s departments that are part of the Southwestern Border Sheriffs Coalition with free biometric iris recognition equipment for three years. The company’s Inmate Recognition Identification System registry enables law enforcement personnel to enter the iris biometric information on suspects, identify them, previous offenders, and inmates in seconds.
It turns out that the tweets people send could be used to identify whether they are at risk of bipolar disorder. It’s hoped that by identifying symptoms as they are developing and before they manifest completely treatment can begin earlier. Researchers at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan say that in testing, the method they developed detected early signs of bipolar disorder with an accuracy of more than 90%.
HEALTHCARE
According to health insurance provider Centene, over 1.4 million signed up and paid for its insurance plans via the federal Obamacare marketplace as of Jan. 7. According to CEO Michael Neidorff, “The growth in the exchange has been so dramatic… We had planned on incremental growth, but not that much,. We’ve had people working all weekend, playing catchup.”
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)plans to guide interoperability of healthcare data information networks using a framework and agreement harnessing a private sector organization. ONC will select a group using a competitive bidding process. Comments on the draft framework can be submitted until February 18.
WEARABLE TECH
Omron plans to launch a smartwatch with a built-in blood-pressure cuff this year. Called the “HeartGuide”, the system can perform measurements while you sleep, share data with your doctor, and also serve as a fitness tracker.
Myant—which makes the “Skiin” brand underwear products for men and women that monitor vital signs like heart rate, breathing rate, and temperature—will use Energous wireless charging to power its clothing.
SOLOS smart glasses, which provide turn-by-turn navigation, visual notifications, group chat, and music for cyclists, are now optimized to work for runners. Features include elapsed time, speed, pace, cadence, and heart rate.
A woman has received a bionic hand that can actually feel. The system reportedly works “brilliantly,” and has full finger movement, with soft, tactile fingertips that send signals to a separate computer, which sends the info to her brain using electrodes attached to nerves in her arm.
INNOVATION
Photo-chemically active nano sensors developed at the University of Oxford could be used in hand-held medical devices for non-invasive diagnosis and therapy, plus as biosensors for safeguarding against chemical poisoning and food contamination.
An electronic pill that ‘sniffs’ gut microbiome gases and transmits that data to a mobile phone has passed its first human trials. Developed by scientists at Australia’s RMIT University, the ingestible device could one day help to diagnose gastrointestinal ailments, including irritable bowel syndrome.
Related: “What Is a Digital Pill?” Emily Prapuolenis takes a look at Proteus Digital Health’s version in this WSJ video.
FUNDING AND M&A
EHR vendor Allscripts has purchased cloud-based EHR provider Practice Fusion for $100M. As a result, Allscripts expands its presence to approximately 30,000 ambulatory sites with about 5 million patients seen per month.
Fitbit has invested $6M into glucose monitoring patch startup Sano. This positions Fitbit to better compete in the diabetes wearables market against companies like Apple and Dexcom.
Cityblock Health has raised $20.8M in funding. The company is focused on improving healthcare outcomes for Medicaid and Medicare recipients living in cities by connecting them with personalized care teams “comprised of physicians, coaches and technological tools to drive preventive healthcare.”
InTouch Health plans to acquire TruClinic, which will reportedly enable it to expand into direct-to-consumer telehealth services that let patients consult with their physicians from their own homes. InTouch Health is known for its enterprise telehealth platform.
GENOMICS
Illumina has launched a new next-generation sequencing system. Named the “iSeq 100”, the device is the first of its type to be listed at under $20,000. It’s also just one cubic foot in size, making it the most compact of any Illumina sequencer. According to Francis deSouza, President and CEO, “For under $20,000, any researcher can have access to the accuracy of an Illumina sequencer in their lab. The iSeq 100 offers robustness and reliability for a broad range of applications ranging from germline and somatic tumor profiling to 16S microbial analysis and targeted gene expression.” Dr. Pardis Sabeti, a professor of immunology and infectious disease at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health stated that: “The addition of the iSeq 100 has great potential to transform infectious disease surveillance.” Other applications include rapid microbiome sequencing, testing for foodborne pathogens, and monitoring hospital acquired infections.
In the UK, six drug companies will decode the genes of 500,000 Brits and make the data public by 2020 via the UK Biobank. The Biobank currently contains medical records, test results, and psychological assessments of 500,000 volunteers. The expanded genetic data will be comprised of “exome” sequencing as opposed to full genome sequencing, but will reportedly capture “the parts most important to drug makers—the genetic sequences that code for proteins, the building blocks of life and, when they go awry, the cause of most health problems.” According to Sek Kathiresan, who studies the genetics of heart disease at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA, this new effort will increase the value of information contained in the Biobank “100 times for drug development, and 10 to 100 times for biology.”
It turns out that CRISPR may not work in all people, as over 65% could be immune to genetic-engineered therapies created using the technology. This is due to antibodies to Cas9 residing in their blood. Cas9 is one type of cutting protein used in CRISPR gene editing. In a paper by Stanford University’s Matthew Porteus and his colleagues, they indicate that this immune response may “hinder the safe and efficacious use” of the CRISPR-based therapies and possibly “even result in significant toxicity to patients.”
For the first time in space, an unknown microbe has been sequenced. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t alien DNA. The microbes turned out to be common organisms that are frequently associated with the human microbiome. According to NASA, astronaut Peggy Whitson is the first person to take DNA samples from unknown microbes found on the International Space Station (ISS), process them, and then identify them while still in space. The project used a miniPCR thermal cycler to amplify the DNA samples and a portable MinION sequencer from Oxford Nanopore to sequence them.
Gene-editing tool CRISP has been used to create a bull that will father only male offspring. This would be of value to beef ranchers because males grow bigger and faster, which means more beef production output for the same inputs. This could also help address food insecurity.
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Copyright © 2018 Paul Sonnier, Story of Digital Health
Paul Sonnier
Author ⋅ Speaker ⋅ Technologist ⋅ Social Entrepreneur
Book: The Fourth Wave: Digital Health
Contributing Editor, Innovation & Tech Today
Founder, Digital Health group on LinkedIn
Creator, Story of Digital Health
Twitter: @Paul_Sonnier
San Diego, CA, USA
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