Health 2.0: How to Use Data Around You to Lead a Healthier Life

Health 2.0 once again exceeded my expectations with their 7^th Annual Fall Conference, this year in Santa Clara. Needless to say, I have too much to share in just one post. Today I’ll focus on Tuesday’s morning hot topic, Big Data. In rapid fire, leaders in health data aggregation and comprehension spoke and presented demos.

Here is a snapshot of a few companies that presented in Big Data: Tools and Applications for Individuals.

Ben Wolin, Co-Founder and CEO, Everyday Health

• Everyday Health has self-learning data algorithms that personalized your healthcare exploration. Using over 6.9 billion data points, 4.5 billion newsletter opens and many fancy data algorithms, they are able to tailor healthcare information for you
• Essentially, they are the Pandora for health, but with much more data
• They have proved $2.3 billion in healthcare savings so far

Gideon Mantel, Executive Chairman, Treato

• Treato lets patients comment on their prescription drug use and then shows how those drugs fare alongside their comparable medications
• Using crowdsourced patient data, you can easily see which medications cause which types of problems for patients
• Below, Tecfidera (BG-12) has worse feedback then Copaxone and Tysabri for MS treatments. You can dig in deeper on the website to see exactly why, and what patients have listed as top concerns for the drug

Philippe Schwartz, President, Withings

• This year Withings, maker of the smart body analyzer scale and blood pressure monitor, has come out with an activity tracker, the Withings Pulse
• The device can differentiate between walking and running automatically as well as measure your heart beat
• A more detailed post on the Pulse to come!

John De Souza, President and CEO, MedHelp

• MedHelp has created apps to track a variety of health events, such as women’s health, diet and mental health
• They are releasing an app that lets you get instant feedback on your lab results, and grants you access to health coaches who can give you advice when something doesn’t look right (such as cutting back on salt if your lab tests show high cholesterol)
• The app also allows for involvement from your friends and family into helping you keep a healthy lifestyle. As Peter Tippett, CMO & VP of Verizon said, “Social is what drives change in individuals – it’s the little nudge that helps you quit smoking, it’s not you, it is your surround sound.”

Marvin Ammori, Co-Founder and CEO, Silica Labs

• Marvin showed us how Google Glass can be used in healthcare, from recording a doctor-patient interaction so that the patient can rewatch the interaction later, or by recording a surgery so that a specialist far away can help, or by creating a surgery checklist for a surgeon in the operating room
• Glass can even be used in the battlefield to tap into the activity monitors of soldiers to tell a medic which injured fighter needs the most immediate help

Bill Davenhall, Global Manager, Health and Human Services, ESRI

• I’ve posted on ESRI before – I think it is an excellent tool to see geographic health information
• The ESRI Geomedicine application lets you see the heart attack rate as well as the toxic release inventory of an area
• Every triangle is something that is bad for your health in your neighborhood
• The dashboard also gives a walk score (San Francisco at 97, is excellent)

Everest: Share Dreams and Reach Goals

Everest is an application that helps users take a dream and work on turning it into a reality. The app focuses on three goals at a time and within each goal the user can plan steps, set reminders, record thoughts and upload photos. You can follow friends with similar goals or see what the Everest community has accomplished. The application is beautiful and after uploading a few steps, quotes and photos, it is easy to see how nicely the journey to achieving your goals can be captured all on one interface.

SkinVision: Track Changes in Your Skin

SkinVision is a mobile app that tracks changes over time for various skin conditions, such as benign moles that may become atypical and thus have a higher chance of developing melanoma. Since the majority of melanoma is affected by UV radiation, the app also shows the UV Index for your location.

The app has a mathematical algorithm developed by a team of dermatologists, mathematicians and computer scientists. The algorithm analyzes the picture of your mole and lets you know how you should proceed – stay alert, monitor changes, or notify a doctor in the area. The app can then pull doctors near your location and can also remind you when to take another snapshot of your mole – say in 3 or 6 months.

While certainly not a substitute for a doctor when you have a concern, the app does a great job of keeping track of potential issues long term. It serves as a preventative measure, and one we should all take.

Medicine X: The Future of Medicine and Technology

I spent the weekend at the Medicine X conference at Stanford University. For those of you who missed the exciting conference, you can check out some of the taped speakers at MedX Videos and Talks.

Here are a few startups I found particularly interesting:

Aidin was created for discharge planning professionals to make the process of finding post-acute care for their patients, efficient and easy.

SwiftPayMD is a payment system for physicians to capture and post charges for each day’s services, for quick and correct billing.

Symcat takes BIG DATA (hundreds of thousands of patient records) to estimate what your ailment might be through a series of questions.

 

Definitely looking forward to Medicine X 2013. See you there!

DermLink: Answers About Your Skin in 24 Hours

Telemedicine is another field leveraging smart phones to bring doctors faster to your aid. DermLink is an online platform where you can upload images of suspicious skin conditions and within 24 hours hear back from a local dermatologist. Although restricted to the website for now, an iPhone and Android app is in the works.

What’s neat is that the DermLink software automatically checks for picture quality and rejects unusable and blurry photos. Also, it only takes about 5 minutes to submit your case. What’s not so neat is getting charged $99 upfront for my self referral. While the process of getting a referral from my next general check up and then seeing a dermatologist may take up to six months and $40 in copays, since I have no immediate concerns, I think I’ll just wait it out.

Still, if something important comes up and I can’t wait to go through my primary doctor, I’ll be using DermLink immediately.