Things &Thinks XI
In the eleventh edition of Things &Thinks, I have collated thoughts about the long road to market for digital health products, a fantastic deconstruction of a ‘digital’ pregnancy kit and some reflections by Oliver Burkeman. There are some interesting tidbits at the end; happy reading!
Digital health news-The long road to market!
The sensor-driven mobile health technology has been in the news for the last couple of weeks. Of course, by now everyone knows that Apple added new capabilities to AppleWatch, incl blood oxygen measurement. While this capability existed in Apple’s competitors, Apple seems to have enhanced detection capabilities through better sensors. Apple will also gain from the all-in-one kind of a platform.
Fitbit received a 510(k) clearance from US FDA- not the first one to enter the market, this nonetheless adds to the fitness tracking company’s growing array of health sensors.
What does this mean for the patient and the physician? The challenges that face healthcare innovations finding the right market and start making an impact are enormous, even when your product is doing whatever it claims it’s doing.
Two such recent examples come to mind-
- Apple researchers studying the Apple ECG sensor’s implementation in the Apple Heart study know this quite well. The study wants to evaluate atrial fibrillation that often goes undetected and late detection can have more serious evenutalities. A total of 420,000 participants have been enrolled into the study, in a very non-traditional way, all via the Apple Health platform. The catch is in the next phase- around 2,200 participants got notifications about possible AFib. However, only 945 of those participants followed up with a study visit. These thoughts by Dr Turakhia, a Stanford physician involved in the study, make so much sense-
It’s not easy to keep patients involved. You can’t keep sending them notifications and push alerts to remind them to do this in the study. So how do we incentivize them? How do we do this in a way that makes sense, but in a way that is generalizable?
- The second such observation comes from the EU side, where Jessica Shull, European lead at the Digital Therapeutics Alliance-
What we’re looking at is countries where there are these frameworks, products have been approved, they’ve been shown to be effective, they’ve even been shown to have healthy economic data, but physicians still aren’t prescribing at the rates that we would hope.
Deconstructing a ‘digital’ innovation
@foone, who calls themselves Hardware / software necromancer, deconstructed a ‘digital pregnancy test’ and what follows is just a a fantastic read into how a seemingly simple fix on an existing solution can add value. Turns out the ‘digital’ test actually has a simple non-digital traditional strip and ‘the whole point of the digital part, the battery, IC, LEDs, and photodiodes… is to read the lines and tell you “PREGNANT” and “NOT PREGNANT” instead of “||” or “|+”’
Do read the whole thread!
Enlargement and minor discomfort
Oliver Burkeman, Guardian columnist, has wonderful reflections about general wellbeing, ; two stand out for me-
- When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness-major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response.
- Everybody is totally just winging it-the lesson to be drawn isn’t that we’re doomed to chaos. It’s that you — unconfident, self-conscious, all-too-aware-of-your-flaws — potentially have as much to contribute to your field, or the world, as anyone else.
Tidbits
- Clinical trial interventions using artificial intelligence (AI) now have guidelines for standardized protocols and reporting in SPIRIT-AI & CONSORT-AI.
- As we start adapting digital health, data security threats are increasing-Only 44% of healthcare institutions met national cybersecurity standards in 2019.
- The Ig Nobel 2020 awards were announced last week-while almost all of the entries are worth reading (and amusement), the management one takes the cake!
I look forward to your comments, thoughts and likes!
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