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Health Connect South

Month: August 2015

Vitamin C and OBMedical Company

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Vitamin C

Osama Hashmi of Vitamin C

 Vitamin C and OBMedical Company

On this episode of Health Connect South Radio we hosted the CEO and co-founder of Vitamin C and President/CEO of OB Medical Company.  These two companies are creating technology innovations that help two distinct groups, physician practices and expectant mothers in the birthing process, respectively.

Vitamin C’s Osama Hashmi realized that increasing focus on population health management measures meant a need for greater engagement with particular patient groups.  In order to effectively manage chronic diseases such as diabetes or even regular wellness follow up, practices often need to interact with patients to get these visits scheduled.  In many cases, patients won’t take initiative to schedule them themselves.

Hashmi and his colleagues decided to create a platform that interfaces with existing EMR’s that allows providers to ID target populations and create a variety of pre-created content for distribution to patients.  In some cases, it’s a pre-recorded automated phone call that can encourage the scheduling of a follow up visit.  In others, it may be an automated call that queries the patient for particular data such as vitals or blood sugars, quantity of exercise, etc.

In still others, it may be a text or email generated that goes to the patient.  In this way, the providers are able to more effectively “scale” their resources to be able to reach what is often hundreds or even thousands of patients with necessary contact to facilitate follow up.  The end result is better patient outcomes as well as increased revenue for the practice due to scheduling of necessary, yet high-Revenue visits (based on time/acuity).

OBMedical Company saw an opportunity to improve upon monitoring technology used in the OB delivery room.  As I spoke with President/CEO, Weaver Gaines, he explained the technology for the fetal heart rate, contraction frequency/intensity, etc. have not really changed in roughly 40 years.

Today, mothers are tethered to a monitor by wires leading to sensors that are held in place by elastic velcro straps that encircle the mother’s abdomen.  They are challenging to keep in position and can provide limited accuracy in cases where the mother is particularly obese.

OBMedical Company has designed a monitoring device that uses wireless electrodes that measure electrical current through the patient’s skin rather than having to rely on skin tension.  This allows the mother to be able to ambulate in the room during labor while continuing to be monitored.  Additionally, it allows for greater accuracy when the mother is obese.

Osama Hashmi, CEO/Chief Product Officer, of VitaminC  github  linkedin_small1  twitter_logo_small-e1403698475314  facebook_logo_small3

VitaminC

  • Doctor of Medicine, College of Georgia, Georgia Regents University
  • Master of Public Health, University of Georgia
  • Previous Policy Director, Roosevelt Institute, University of Georgia
  • Former Research Assistant, Stanford University

Weaver Gaines, President/CEO of OBMedical Company  linkedin_small1

OBMedical Company

  • Juris Doctor, University of Virginia School of Law
  • Director and Treasurer, Dance Alive National Ballet
  • Chairman, Board of Directors, Florida Research Consortium
  • Adjunct Professor, University of Virginia School of Law

Center for Health Transformation

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Center for Health Transformation

Steve Fraime of WellStar’s Center for Health Transformation

Center for Health Transformation

I hosted Steve Fraime, Director of WellStar’s Center for Health Transformation on this episode.  WellStar is rather unique in its investment in an internal center for health innovation—that’s a department typically seen at academic medical centers.  The WellStar health system engages with their providers to uncover ideas for opportunities to innovate that will improve patient outcomes and patient experience, as well as ideas that will improve work environment for the system.

Steve explained how the Center for Health Transformation initially got its start as a think tank designed to pull together leaders from 20 health systems to identify best practices and facilitate innovation among them.  As the initiative got going, it became evident that often, participants were reticent to share information that was perceived to give a particular organization some measure of market advantage.

Ultimately, WellStar decided they would pull the concept within their borders to focus on internal innovations that will improve their overall performance.  From there, the organization worked to regularly interface with physicians within the system, along with folks in leadership roles to get suggestions for processes that could be improved upon.

Steve talked about two projects that were suggested by providers.  One project that was brought by orthopedic surgeons was to explore the possibility of developing a more reliable means of producing a cast for fractured extremities.  Another was to address the challenge for patients to navigate the large, multi-site, multi-building campuses that constitute the WellStar health system.

The Center for Health Innovation chose to collaborate with the Georgia Tech Capstone project.

Special Guest:

Steve Fraime, BSN, Director of WellStar Center for Health Transformation  linkedin_small1  youtube-logo1  google-plus-logo-red-265px

WellStar Center for Health Innovation

  • Previous Assistant Manager, Emergency & Trauma Services, WellStar Paulding
  • MBA, Georgia State University J Mack Robinson School of Business
  • Masters of Healthcare Administration, Georgia State University
  • BSN, Georgia State University

Innovative Health Technology

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innovative health technologies

Bailey Ernstes, Jake Kazlow, and Jim Sullivan talk innovative health technologies

Innovative Health Technology

On this episode of Health Connect South Radio we featured two Atlanta companies developing innovative health technology.  We hosted Monitor Med Solutions and HealPros to learn about the respective problems their solutions solve.

Monitor Med Solutions was founded by several Georgia Tech students to create a device that would use bluetooth technology to give hydrocephalus patients real-time monitoring data regarding their intracranial pressure via their mobile devices.  Bailey Ernstes and Jake Kazlow, two of the co-founders, joined us to talk about their project.

As Bailey shared, as many as 1:500 babies are born with hydrocephalus, an abnormally-high intracranial pressure caused by a disruption in the normal flow of cerebral spinal fluid.  These patients require that a shunt be implanted that will facilitate modulation of the intracranial pressure and prevent the numerous neurological problems and even death that can occur when pressure rises or falls beyond certain limits.

The challenge for these patients and their families is that the shunt technology itself has not evolved much since its inception.  And, the shunts fail at a rate of roughly 40% of the time, typically due to occlusion.  In most cases, the only way the patients discover there is a problem is when they begin to show symptoms of increased pressure.

Monitor Med Solutions, an Atlanta-based start-up has developed a device that interfaces with the intracranial shunt and contains a bluetooth transmitter.  This enables the user to get pressure readings via an app on their mobile device, potentially allowing them to seek care before neurologic symptoms occur and/or preventing unnecessary ER admissions to seek care.

Jim Sullivan is CEO of HealPros.  This company saw a need for closing the gap in preventive care for patients with diabetes.  The diabetic population is at risk for blindness due to retinal damage that is caused by chronically-elevated glucose levels.  It can take years of asymptomatic progression of the retinal damage for visual changes to occur.  Because of this, many patients do not bother to seek out the recommended annual exams that could identify problematic changes early enough to do something about it.

HealPros utilizes teleimaging capabilities coupled with on-site technologists who can do exams in a physician’s office or even a patient’s home.  The company partners with health plans and physician offices to coordinate visits with patients and conduct the necessary eye exam.

They then communicate results to patient, doctor, and health plan company and can help facilitate getting access to appropriate advanced care if an abnormality is found.

Special Guests

Bailey Ernstes, CEO of Monitor Med Solutions  linkedin_small1  facebook_logo_small3  twitter_logo_small

Monitor Med Solutions

  • BS Biomedical/Medical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • National Merit Scholar
  • Campoamor Study Abroad Scholarship Recipient
  • Previous Research Assistant, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Jake Kaslow, Co-founder and CTO of Monitor Med Solutions  linkedin_small1

monitor med solutions

  •  BS Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

Jim Sullivan, CEO of HealPros  linkedin_small1

healpros

  • BA, MA, Economics & Finance, State University of New York at Binghamton
  • Business Professionals Course, Linguistics and Business Philosophy, The Aji Network
  • Former Analyst, Goldman Sachs
  • Previous Owner, Medical Imaging Specialists

Facilitating Clinical Trials

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Facilitating Clinical Trials

Bethany Bray and Ryan Jones talk Facilitating Clinical Trials

Facilitating Clinical Trials

Since we started Health Connect South Radio we have featured several research organizations who are doing research to uncover solutions to several illnesses such as Ebola, HIV, mitochondral diseases, diabetes, and others.

This week we featured two companies who are facilitating clinical trials through their respective solutions.  Bethany Bray, CEO of AutoCruitment and Ryan Jones, CEO of Florence Healthcare joined us to share how they are working to help new medicines and devices become available more quickly to the community.

AutoCruitment is a technology platform that interacts with a variety of internet search platforms to acquire particular analytics data.  The platform is able to identify internet users who are seeking clinical trials or even ones who appear to be seeking new physicians.

Bethany shared that as much as 40% of the cost of a trial comes from efforts to put out information about the study and recruit appropriate patients for it.

Once a potential patient is identified who might be a match for a clinical trial, AutoCruitment is able to display ads on healthcare related sites that individual visits that will alert them to the availability of the trial.  The algorithms work to position the advertisements in what would be contextually-relevant places to avoid the “stalker” feel some cookie driven ads take on.

From the point the patient follows the ad, the process of providing their information and getting linked up with the prospective trial is straight-forward and elegant, making it simple for the patient and the respective trial.

Many clinical trials involve multiple sites for data collection as well as analysis.  In spite of the technological advancements around patient data over the past decade, in clinical trials, much of the research data is collected or reported on paper documents.

The process of transmitting this data to the other sites that need to access it to move the study forward is cumbersome at best.  In some cases it means analysts and study overseers must physically travel to the study locations to get access to or evaluate the data. In others it means shipping literally truckloads of paper documents to another site.

This logistical logjam is one of the greatest reasons why it can take as long as it does to complete a study, as Ryan explained.  Florence Healthcare is working to tackle this problem by developing a secure technology platform that uses existing hardware such as faxes and scanners to be able to quickly and securely convert the paper data to digital forms that can be readily transmitted to the other study sites or evaluated by study reviewers.

Special Guests:

Bethany Bray, CEO of AutoCruitment  linkedin_small1

Autocruitment

  • Master’s, Translational Medicine & Neuroscience, Merit, Imperial College–London
  • MBA, Georgia Institute of Technology
  • Previous Scientific Consultant, Protokinetix
  • Former Oncology Research Specialist, Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University

Ryan Jones, CEO of Florence Healthcare  twitter_logo_small  linkedin_small1

Florence Healthcare

  • MBA, Berkeley Haas School of Business
  • Young Leaders Council, Atlanta Beltline
  • Mentor, ATDC
  • Former President, Pubget

 

 

Sleep Technology

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ReST Performance

Lloyd Sommers talks ReST sleep technology

Sleep Technology

This week we focused on sleep and sleep technology.  Lloyd Sommers, General Manager for ReST Performance came by to talk about how their company is addressing what is essentially an epidemic of poor sleep across our population.

The Better Sleep Council cites CDC data on the quality of our sleep, stating that poor sleep contributes to depression, weight gain, more disagreements with partners, and more.

ReST has developed what they call the world’s first smart bed, that uses technology to enable adaptation to the user.  The bed is made with a high-tech fabric that is able to detect where there is pressure, how much pressure it is, movement, and temperature.  The bed also connects with a mobile device to provide data regarding sleep quantity and quality, allowing users to track their progress toward improved sleep.

The ReST bed uses multiple air cells within the mattress powered by ultra-quiet pneumatic pumps.  When a person lays on the mattress, it senses where there is pressure and adds or removes pressure in the various cells, allowing the mattress to minimize pressure.  This means the user will be less inclined to need to change position frequently, allowing for longer periods of deep sleep.

Additionally, the ReST bed can interface with smart thermostats such as the Google Nest.  So, when the bed senses rising temperature, it can signal the thermostat to decrease the room temperature.

We were amazed by the technology of the materials in this bed as well as the variety of tech features it employs to facilitate more effective sleep patterns.  The ReST bed will be coming to retailers across the country over the coming months.

Special Guest:

Lloyd Sommers, General Manager, ReST Performance  twitter_logo_small  linkedin_small1  google-plus-logo-red-265px  facebook_logo_small3  youtube-logo1

ReST Performance

  • MBA, Marketing, Management, & Organizations, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management
  • Former Analyst, CBIC World Markets
  • Previous Marketing Manager, Titanium Technologies–North America, DuPont
  • Former President, TERRECON