Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Wearables May Be Hot, But Telehealth Has Yet To Explode In Popularity With General Public
Stat: CEO's Aim: Make Telehealth More Than ‘An Exercise In Convenience’
The year was 2007. To raucous applause, Apple CEO Steve Jobs proudly strode across the Macworld stage to reveal a device that would change history: the iPhone, the first mobile phone to be more tablet than telephone. The same year, a small digital health startup called American Well connected its first patients and doctors online. So it felt especially appropriate, in the eyes of CEO Roy Schoenberg, for the Boston-based telemedicine company to be selected last year as a key research partner for the Apple Heart Study, the iPhone maker’s most ambitious health research project to date. The study was designed to see whether the Apple Watch and its heart-rate sensor could properly spot irregularities in people’s heartbeat. American Well linked study participants who got a confirmed abnormal reading to remote clinicians with whom they could talk through their diagnosis. (Brodwin, 1/20)
The Wall Street Journal: Hospitals Give Tech Giants Access To Detailed Medical Records
Hospitals have granted Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. the ability to access identifiable patient information under deals to crunch millions of health records, the latest examples of hospitals’ growing influence in the data economy. The breadth of access wasn’t always spelled out by hospitals and tech giants when the deals were struck. (Evans, 1/20)
Bloomberg: IBM Proposes Artificial Intelligence Rules To Ease Bias Concerns
IBM called for rules aimed at eliminating bias in artificial intelligence to ease concerns that the technology relies on data that bakes in past discriminatory practices and could harm women, minorities, the disabled, older Americans and others. As it seeks to define a growing debate in the U.S. and Europe over how to regulate the burgeoning industry, IBM urged industry and governments to jointly develop standards to measure and combat potential discrimination. (Brody and Carville, 1/21)
St. Louis Public Radio: Mizzou Engineers Build A Wearable Device To Keep People Cool On Hot Days
Engineers at the University of Missouri-Columbia are developing a wearable device that could provide much-needed cooling on extremely hot days. The device is a small wired patch made out of a special type of porous plastic that doesn’t require any fans, pumps or electricity to cool the wearer. The technology reflects sunlight away from the body to reduce the person’s exposure to heat. (Chen, 1/20)
