Christ Hospital is piloting a telemedicine program in which primary care doctors consult with patients via smart devices for $49. It might take a while for both the broader medical community and the public to get used to the concept, said Timothy Cappel, executive director of population health for Christ Hospital. "I think the docs, some of them, aren't quite ready for it," Cappel said. "It just feels so different." Despite such reluctance, "it's coming, and it's going to happen," Cappel said Tuesday during a health care panel discussion sponsored by the Cincinnati chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women. "You can schedule a time and have a visit right online."
Darren Gold had a stomach virus the first time he used an app called Heal to summon a doctor to his Beverly Hills home. He liked the Stanford-trained doctor who showed up so much that he called Heal again when his 2-year-old son had a fever, and again when the whole family had colds. The charges—$99 each for the first two visits; $200 for the family—weren't covered by insurance, but Mr. Gold, who owns a corrugated-box company, says that was still a bargain compared with taking time off work to go to the doctor. "Now, whenever my son bumps himself, he says, 'Daddy, we need to get the doctor here,' " Mr. Gold says. [Subscription Required]
UCLA Health System failed to properly secure its records and quickly notify as many as 4.5 million patients in a recent hacking incident, a new lawsuit contends. A Redlands law firm has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Los Angeles resident Miguel Ortiz, a patient of UCLA since 2011, seeking class-action status on behalf of all current and former patients of the health system. Experts have already criticized UCLA for not encrypting patient data after Anthem Inc. was hacked earlier this year. The vulnerable information contained names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, health plan identification numbers, and medical information including patient procedures and diagnoses.
BM says that Watson, its artificial-intelligence technology, can use advanced computer vision to process huge volumes of medical images. Now Watson has its sights set on using this ability to help doctors diagnose diseases faster and more accurately. Last week IBM announced it would buy Merge Healthcare for a billion dollars. If the deal is finalized, this would be the third health-care data company IBM has bought this year (see "Meet the Health-Care Company IBM Needed to Make Watson More Insightful"). Merge specializes in handling all kinds of medical images, and its service is used by more than 7,500 hospitals and clinics in the United States, as well as clinical research organizations and pharmaceutical companies.
With her hair pulled back and her casual office attire, Ellie is a comforting presence. She's trained to put patients at ease as she conducts mental health interviews with total confidentiality. She draws you into conversation: "So how are you doing today?" "When was the last time you felt really happy?" She notices if you look away or fidget or pause, and she follows up with a nod of encouragement or a question: "Can you tell me more about that?" Not bad for an interviewer who's not human. Ellie is a virtual human created by scientists at the University of Southern California to help patients feel comfortable talking about themselves so they'll be honest with their doctors.
Google's venture-capital arm is moving strongly into health care and life-sciences startups, mirroring shifts at the Internet giant. More than one-third of the money Google Ventures invested in 2014 went to health care and life-sciences companies, up from 9% each of the prior two years. The venture group plans to continue investing in the area, looking to capitalize on an explosion of health data and new ways to analyze it, said Bill Maris, head of Google Ventures. "Barring some huge calamity we'll see more interesting things in life sciences in 2015," Maris said. [Subscription Required]