GAFAMS, STARTUPS & INNOVATION IN HEALTHCARE by PHARMAGEEK

According to The Alzheimer’s Association, there are over 5 million Americans with Ad. It is the sixth leading cause of death. More than 15 million caregivers provided an estimated 18.1 billion hours of unpaid care at a value of approximately $221.3B. The impact of this disease is also well-illustrated in a recent  PBS documentary.  While it might seem incongruous on the surface to discuss digital technology and a population with significant cognitive challenges, I will illustrate how it can be beneficial at different stages of the disease’s course.

 

Cognitive Assessment Tools.  Most tools for assessing cognitive abilities have been of the traditional written form, as offered by the Alzheimer’s Association.  The ability of digital tools to detect early diagnosis of Ad is important in medical and social planning for the patient and family. Some have taken traditional diagnostic tools and transformed them into a digital platform. Such is the case with Quest Diagnostics’ CogniSense.  A more transformational approach is one seen with a utilization of the Anoto Pen which can measure the writing instrument’s position up to 80 times per second. An exciting study by the Lahey Medical Center and MIT’s Computational Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory looked at using the Anoto Pen versus traditional cognitive assessment tools for Ad and other diseases. This method has already shown advantages over traditional tools, described in an MIT News piece: “… while healthy adults spend more time on the dCDT [digital clock drawing test via Anoto] thinking (with the pen off the paper) than “inking,” memory-impaired subjects spend even more time than that thinking rather than inking. Parkinson’s subjects, meanwhile, took longer to draw clocks that tended to be smaller, suggesting that they are working harder, but producing less — an insight not detectable with previous analysis systems…”  A digital platform called Neurotrack claims it has the ability to detect Ad at its earliest stages by assessing recognition memory, a function specific to the brain’s hippocampal region which is affected early in the course of Ad. Digital assessment tools like these can also save clinician time and offer a better objective patient assessment.

 

Cognitive Improvement tools. A handful of small studies have shown that ‘brain exercise’ in the form of cognitive augmentation games decreases the risk in normal individuals of getting Ad. One would naturally ask if this carries over to those already diagnosed AD. Some earlier studies suggested this was the case. An older review of multiple small studies showed that while they suggest that brain exercises slowed progression of cognitive decay they did not affect mood or the ability to care for oneself.  It is worthy of noting that patients with larger baseline ‘cognitive reserve’ do better to a point then characteristically have a rapidly progressive course. In a previous post, I discussed the merits of music as an ideal digital health tool. Music should be considered as a potentially much appreciated and useful tool.  Relative to Ad specifically, I would reference the incredibly informative and moving award-winning film Alive Inside, documenting the response of patients with severe Ad to music relevant to their personal past. An intriguing interactive game/tool is Tovertafel, a Dutch technology which projects via suspended box visuals onto a table.  There are various exercises and games on the platform which are both enjoyable and mentally stimulating. Less sophisticated yet popular games are offered by the Alzheimer’s Association.

 

Tools for monitoring daily activities. Technologies have been developed to aid patients with mild to moderate disease and their caregivers to make daily activities easier and safer. SmartSole makes an innersole with a GPS locator with an associated smartphone app and call service for alerts. Silver Mother by Sen.se is a customizable digital tech platform (front door position, room temperature, and water and food containers) connecting caregivers with love ones’ activities of daily living.  For patients with early dementia or for caretakers to connect with loved ones at a distance, grandCAREis a very comprehensive platform and service.

 

While one might associate digital tools with those of us who are “connected,” their utility in the realm of Ad can be profound.  I would submit that the potential for digital tech to prolong independence and/or improve lives of caregivers in the home or at a distance must be the subject of clinical studies.  Public health policy might very well change as a result of such outcome studies.

A recent study on blockchain adoption in health care by Blackbook Market Research indicated that a large percentage of payers surveyed, and a small but growing percentage of providers, were either considering deploying or were in the process of implementing, some blockchain solution sets. Blockchain appears to have moved from the awareness and education phase to actual deployment of solutions.

 

“Blockchain can solve two of the biggest problems in health care today," says Lidia Fonseca, CIO of Quest Diagnostics, a leader in lab testing services. She is referring to the gnarly issues of interoperability and data quality. While data quality has long been an issue in health care, the interoperability challenge is a legacy of the massive digitization of patient medical records over the past eight years which have left us with proprietary electronic health record (EHR) systems that don't "talk" to one another. The result is inefficiency and waste, as stand-alone information systems slow down processes and create redundant work. 

Taking a look at the healthcare blockchain pioneers

Some technology solution providers, including IBM and Change health care, along with a number of other companies listed in the Blackbook Research study, have made initial moves in establishing blockchain capabilities and launching solutions. Federal agencies such as FDA and CDC have expressed interest in applying blockchain to find solutions for public health issues.

 

Amazon, with its long-awaited entry into health care, recently announced the launch of blockchain templates for health care, aimed at making it easier for developers to create blockchain-based projects and deploy blockchain networks via open source frameworks. In a sense, Amazon has started the democratization of the blockchain-enabled application development, something we saw before with machine learning algorithms in the wake of the big data and analytics hype a few years ago.

 

A group of large healthcare enterprises, including large payers such as Humana and United Health Group (UHG), along with Quest Diagnostics, UHG subsidiary Optum, and Multiplan Health recently came together to launch a blockchain pilot program to solve for one of the most significant data challenges in health care today – provider data management. Provider data, a fundamental enabler for all manner of healthcare transactions, is a key building block for processing claims and maintaining up-to-date provider directories. Today, most provider data is stored in siloed and independent databases. Provider data quality is estimated to be a $2.1 billion problem today, according to a report by CAHQ, a non-profit alliance focused on creating shared initiatives to streamline the business of health care. By streamlining the inefficiencies in provider data maintenance, participants can have a "single source of truth." It is estimated that up to 75 percent of provider data management costs can be eliminated using blockchain solutions.

What it will take for blockchain initiatives to succeed

While blockchain is coming of age in health care, we’re still in the early stages of the hype cycle for blockchain. The initial mania around bitcoin, the very first use case for blockchain, is now giving way to more carefully considered use cases for business with tangible benefits. Healthcare, a sector that generally lags in the adoption of technologies, is currently in a wait-and-watch mode; notwithstanding the high levels of interest among payer organizations, the Blackbook survey also points to low levels of interest among health systems, citing the undetermined cost of blockchain solutions as the major issue that stops health system executives from committing to a timeframe for deploying the technology. Our best hope is that the early pilots will bring tangible proof points and provide more confidence to the industry in the technology.

 

Health care is a team sport and so is blockchain. The more participants there are in a blockchain network, the better it is for the network and the industry. Pilot programs such as the provider data management initiative by Quest Diagnostics and others will need a much higher level of participation across the industry to reap the benefits of the network effects.

 

As with most transformative technologies, the big challenge is usually not the technology; it’s managing culture and workflow changes, driving collaboration, and an execution focus. In blockchain, there is an added dimension of a commitment and willingness to work across company boundaries, which is an entirely new paradigm for most health care enterprises.

In a unique development, a group of health care industry executives has come together to launch a peer-reviewed blockchain journal to share both the positive and the negative experiences with blockchain in health care.

 

The potential for blockchain to improve health care operating efficiencies is significant. High-value use cases include revenue cycle management, supply chain, clinical trials, and provider data management. The initial pilots will need to demonstrate the real benefits of the technology and lead to higher adoption of blockchain in the coming year.