Ten thousand Americans turn 65 every day; 400 million people lack access to basic healthcare worldwide; 157 million Americans die of chronic disease every year; and 17 billion in hospital readmission penalties have been paid. There is a desperate need for telehealth innovation to help solve many of our most pressing healthcare issues, yet the digital health revolution has been slow to gain traction. Robert Kaul, a serial entrepreneur specializing in telemedicine equipment innovation approaches the problem of telehealth adoption from a medical device perspective, digging into how the medical device industry needs to change to make digital health an everyday experience.
According to Kaul, there are four critical reasons for the failure in telehealth’s uptake:
Medical device kits are too expensive
In general, FDA-cleared medical devices are much more expensive than typical consumer technology such as FitBits and other wearable devices. This puts them out of range for the average consumer.
Medical devices are intimidating
Standard medical devices are not fun or cool to use. The arm cuffs are not comfortable, the interfaces monochrome and show too many numbers, and they have technical issues a normal person might not be able to solve. Even the implications of using a medical device are discouraging as they are reminders of being not well.
Vital signs data are not integrated
In a typical remote monitoring deployment, vital signs are all gathered one at a time, written down and some are inputted into the patient’s records by a healthcare professional. If patients are expected to input vitals themselves, there is too much room for error.
Data is not documented
Across the care continuum, devices are not calibrated against each other. Patient-generated data is rarely trusted by doctors, leading to waste and inefficiency since the same basic tests are run over and over again. Devices also do not record metadata explaining the conditions under which data is recorded, which could be important for the physician to make a wise judgement.
Watch the full video to learn more on designing medical devices for data continuity, affordability, easy end-user experience, data integration, trustable data and AI integration for clinical support.
VIDEO
SLIDE PRESENTATION
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Robert Kaul is the President & CEO of Cloud DX, Inc, a digital healthcare startup based in Brooklyn New York and Toronto Canada. Their Cloud DX Connected Health Platform is revolutionizing personal health monitoring by providing novel metrics, outstanding accuracy and a great user experience at an affordable cost. Cloud DX has been featured in documentaries by HuffPo/AOL, the Smithsonian Channel and the team has won multiple awards including 2015 Startup of the Year for Innovation. Robert has been a speaker at SXSW, HIMSS, Comicon and TEDx. Team Cloud DX is a Top-6 finalist in the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, a 4-year global innovation competition to create a futuristic “Tricorder” that autonomously diagnoses 14 separate health conditions. The winners will be announced in January 2017.
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