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West Wireless Health co-founders launch $100M fund for startups that cut health costs
The husband-and-wife co-founders of the West Wireless Health Institute (La Jolla, CA) formed a $100 million investment fund whose investments will be directed to companies that lower health care costs. Gary and Mary West said they will not individually profit from investments made by their West Health Investment Fund, because it will instead commit its returns to medical research. The fund said it will provide risk capital for companies developing wireless medical devices and other technologies that “diagnose, monitor and treat conditions on a continuous and ambient basis,” pairing those technologies with care coordination, advancing device interoperability, and aggregating and mining data to improve clinical research, population health monitoring and treatment for individuals. The fund will target “primarily early stage opportunities with a strong preference for pre-commercial and early commercial companies. Its preferred investment candidates will value strategic partnership in addition to investment capital.”
Read more about the fund

Company wins $1M TATRC grant toward orthopedic devices that fight bacteria
Semprus BioSciences (Cambridge, MA) received a $1 million grant from the U.S. Army Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) to develop the world's first orthopedic devices designed to reduce biofilm formation, the foundation for most bacterial complications associated with medical device implants. The company's Semprus™ Technology organizes, manages and harnesses water molecules on a medical device surface, significantly reducing attachment of proteins, cells, bacteria and other biological matter. Semprus will work with TATRC to adopt the company's technology to orthopedic substrates, including titanium. The technology is designed to dramatically reduce complication rates in orthopedic devices implanted in US service members. Semprus presented initial findings in a poster session at the recent Advanced Technology Applications for Combat Casualty Care (ATACCC) military trauma conference in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
Read Semprus' overview of the market for its technology

Two grants totaling $700K available toward cross-state telemedicine licensing efforts
The US Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) is soliciting formal proposals from State professional licensing boards, alone or in partnership with national organizations of professional licensing. Two responding state boards or state board-led groups will be awarded grants from the $700,000 available for the Licensure Portability Grant Program (LPGP). The program's primary purpose is to support state licensing boards in reducing statutory and regulatory barriers to practicing telemedicine across state borders. “This competition will seek projects that can clearly serve as national models and have implications for overcoming State statutory and regulatory licensure barriers to cross-state practice of telemedicine,” HRSA wrote in its solicitation. Closing date for applications is Jan. 17, 2012.
Read the solicitation for the Licensure Portability Grant Program

Army test transmits data from mobile device to repository in under 60 seconds
The US Army's Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4) has been working with the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) and Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) to successfully transmit electronic point-of-injury data from a commercial device to a central repository, Army LTC William Geesey, program manager of the Army's Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4), posted on his blog. In one test at Fort Dix, NJ, medical personnel using the Samsung Galaxy S, Motorola XOOM, and Dell Streak 5 needed less than 60 seconds to transmit data from the hand-held device to the military's AHLTA-T electronic health record, using a cradle connected to an MC4 laptop. Data was synched with AHLTA-T, and submitted to the Theater Medical Data Store, the web-based application used for viewing medical treatment information recorded in combat zones.
Read LTC William Geesey's blog post

With $20K Verizon Foundation grant, UVa-Wise to develop telehealth curriculum
A $20,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation (New York, NY) will fund the development of one of Virginia's first telehealth nursing curricula at the Department of Nursing at UVa-Wise (Wise, VA). The project—a partnership of UVa-Wise, the Healthy Appalachia Institute and the University of Virginia Office of Telemedicine—is designed to teach nurses the knowledge and skills required to use telehealth technologies to improve health care access and services, which is being implemented in the college's nursing curriculum this fall. The project also includes a regional telehealth symposium for practicing health care professionals, intended to address how telemedicine fits into patient and community health care, as well as emerging uses of telehealth. Other Virginia colleges and universities are expected to use the UVa-Wise telenursing curriculum once it is developed.
Read more about plans for the UVa-Wise telenursing curriculum

Enterprise videoconference market grew 34% year-to-year, to $5.4B
The enterprise telepresence and video conferencing equipment market will grow to $5.4 billion by 2015, Market research firm Infonetics Research predicted in its Enterprise Telepresence and Video Conferencing report for the second quarter. According to Infonetics, The global enterprise video conferencing and telepresence equipment market jumped 21% to $683 million between the first and second quarters of 2011, setting a record high for quarterly revenue. Compared with the second quarter of 2010, the market is up 34%. According to the report, the number one vendor in the space is Cisco, which sequentially increased its videoconferencing and telepresence system revenue 33%, and now holds over half the global market share.
Read about the report, and click to view chart

Robertson Global, Telemedicine Africa to offer RHealth Advisor app within SADC
Robertson Global Health Solutions Corporation (Saginaw, MI) and Montana Healthcare Solutions Pty Ltd (Johannesburg, South Africa) signed a commercial agreement with Telemedicine Africa to provide medical support and services directly to Africa's medically underserved population through Robertson's RHealth Advisor mobile app. The app will be offered as a natural extension of current telemedicine projects to national health departments and key healthcare providers across the 15 countries comprising the Southern African Development Community (SADC). RHealth Advisor can be customized for various languages and lesser skilled health providers, and can also be adapted to various regions throughout Africa to assist in determining local disease prevalence statistics, according to Robertson and Telemedicine Africa.
Read about RHealth Advisor and download a video presentation

New Bluetooth digital scale and companion app allow users to track weight
iHealth Lab (Mountain View, CA) has rolled out in the US its new digital scale, which uses Bluetooth technology and an accompanying mobile application. The iHealth™ Digital Scale enables an unlimited number of users to measure, test, track, graph and share weight information, using their iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad. The scale is available for purchase on ihealth99[dot]com, in Target and Best Buy as well as select national retailers for $69.95. A companion iHealth Digital Scale App for iOS devices can be downloaded free from the Apple App Store. The app allows users to establish a personal profile using gender, age, height and starting weight—then track weight fluctuations over time and record results in relation to daily activity, time of day, diet and exercise. Users can email their doctors, friends, and family their one time or long term results, or post them to Facebook or Twitter.
Read the iHealth™ Digital Scale Operation Guide (PDF download)
Purchase the iHealth Digital Scale App

$31M deal adds 14 acres to site planned for suburban St. Louis telemedicine center
Mercy (St. Louis, MO) paid developer Sachs Properties $31 million to acquire 14 acres in the St. Louis suburb of Chesterfield, MO, part of the property the Catholic healthcare group intends to develop into a $90 million “virtual care center” envisioned as a top-tier telemedicine facility, local news website Chesterfield Patch reported. The virtual care center [News Alert, Oct. 18] will include $590 million in technology, and serve Mercy's 30 hospitals and more than 200 outpatient facilities in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, generating 300 to 400 professional jobs. Mercy bought the majority of the site for the planned virtual center, 24 acres, five years ago from Tri-Star Properties for $21 million.
Read more about the virtual care center, and view daytime and nighttime renderings

Web-based solution helps doctors gather field medical data in Middle East
The second phase is being launched for a project designed to improve care quality and health outcomes for patients while containing costs on eight US military bases throughout Area Support Group-Kuwait. The George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates (GW-MFA) collects, tracks, and manages medical information gathered from field physicals in the Middle East, and from patient encounters, using WebChart by Medical Informatics Engineering (MIE; Fort Wayne, IN). Phase Two will give physicians the ability to collect medical data in the field even when they have limited Internet access, then automatically synchronize the information with WebChart when Internet access is available. Also in Phase Two, MIE is creating an electronic telemedicine application to support Maritime Medical Access, the flagship telemedicine service of GW-MFA. In Phase One, implemented in January, MIE developed a Web-based system to help GW-MFA physicians in the Middle East more easily and quickly record and manage medical information.
Read about WebChart Now, designed for solo or small practices

EHR market climbing to $6.5B peak in 2012, Frost & Sullivan report projects
The nation's market for electronic health records (EHRs) will peak next year at $6.5 billion, almost seven times the $973.2 million recorded for 2009, due to factors that include financial subsidies through the US Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, an analysis by Frost & Sullivan concluded. U.S. Hospital EHR Market, 2009–2016: Charting the Course for Dramatic Change also reports that the market will begin to retrench due to increased market saturation and growing price competition. However, the rate of hospital EHR adoption is expected to expand significantly over the next several years, particularly for advanced EHRs designed to meet Meaningful Use criteria, the report added.
Read the report's table of contents

Distribution deal fits IneedMD like an EKG Glove
IneedMD (New York, NY), the manufacturer of the EKG Glove, together with its marketing arm Paragon National, entered into a $155 million, three-year non-stock agreement with Affirmative Solutions (Woodstock, GA), to distribute the glove across the US and in 15 undisclosed foreign countries. The FDA-cleared EKG Glove is a disposable, mitt-like device with 10 embedded EKG sensors and corresponding printed circuits, capable of sending results directly to a doctor's smart phone or computer. By year's end, IneedMD said, EKG Glove distribution and use will be at 50,000 units, with a projected increase to 1.875 million units for 2012, valued at close to $31 million, and 3.75 million units worth close to US$ 62 million for 2013.
Read more about the EKG Glove

1-800MD offers telemedicine services at a savings to Choice Privileges members
Choice Privileges, the loyalty program from lodging franchisor Choice Hotels International (Silver Spring, MD), has partnered with National Benefit Plans (Troy, MI) to offer guests a telemedicine program through 1-800MD. For $120 annually—a $60 savings from the regular price—members of Choice Privileges can join 1-800MD and earn 2,500 bonus points usable towards free nights, car rentals, other travel rewards and more. 1-800MD promises round-the-clock access to US-based, licensed, board certified physicians over the phone or through secure email and two-way video from anywhere.
View a list of the conditions treated by 1-800MD

Movers & SHAKERS

At its 2011 ATA Fall Forum, held last month in Anchorage, AK, the American Telemedicine Association named two winners of its Fall Forum Presentation Awards. Julie Hall-Barrow, EdD, associate director for the Center for Distance Health at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (Little Rock, AR), won the Best Presentation award for Telemedicine via HIE Image Sharing, while Andrew Tubman, CMT, co-founder and chief of music therapy for Musical Health Technologies, received the Most Innovative Presentation honor for mSinging for Health…Laura M. Clapper, MD, former corporate medical director for clinical effectiveness and innovation at Sharp Community Medical Group (San Diego, CA), has been named CMO of OneRecovery (Solana Beach, CA)…Paul Flanagan, JD, formerly of Express Scripts (St. Louis, MO) and Shands HealthCare (Gainesville, FL, and Jacksonville, FL), has been named VP of compliance and privacy at Precyse (Wayne, PA, and Alpharetta, GA)…Ingenious Med (Atlanta, GA) named Mark Adams, CPA, as CFO, and Jim Keener, MBA, as CTO. Mr. Adams was formerly president and CEO of A.D.A.M. Health Solutions at Ebix (Atlanta, GA), while Mr. Keener previously served as vice president of development at VeriSign (Mountain View, CA), where he managed the design, development and support of a large scale wireless billing platform…John Bright, former head of the sales team at Henry Schein Medical Systems (Youngstown, OH), has been named VP of sales and marketing at Medsphere Systems (Carlsbad, CA)…Christophe Sevrain, CEO of CJPS Medical Systems (Auburn Hills, MI), announced the company will no longer charge connectivity fees for caregivers to access patient data when using VitalPoint HOME…Robert Coughlan, MD, FRCP, a consulting rheumatologist in Merlin Park University Hospital (Galway, Ireland), is now utilizing a telemedicine clinic to Roscommon County Hospital…David Jenkins, director of health and education for the Falkland Islands, discussed telemedicine techniques applicable to remote parts of the UK with The Guardian…The Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi has selected Pradeep Kumar, head of the telemedicine department at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS; Ranchi, India), as research analyst for a brain mapping project being conducted by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, captain of the Indian national cricket team, to learn more about consumer response to neuromarketing.

• Digital Pathology Association 2011 Pathology Visions Conference
  October 30–November 2—Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego, CA
  More Info
  
  
• 2011 mHealth Summit
  December 5–7, 2011—The Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, MD
  More Info
  
  
• Georgia Partnership for TeleHealth 2012 Annual Spring Conference
  March 14–16, 2012—The Ritz-Carlton, Reynolds Plantation Lake, Oconee, GA
  More Info
  
  
• Med-e-Tel
  April 18–20, 2012—Luxexpo Exhibition and Congress Center, Kirchberg, Luxembourg
  More Info
  
  
• ATA 2012: 17th Annual International Meeting & Expo
  April 29-May 1, 2012—San Jose McEnery Convention Center, San Jose, CA
  More Info
  
  
• Global Connected Care Conference and 3rd MediTour Expo
  May 6–8, 2012—Flamingo Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas, NV
  More Info
  
  

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