Last Friday at the British Consulate in Cambridge, three innovators described emerging technologies that are changing how and where healthcare is delivered–and the challenges of bringing those  technologies to market.

Jacqueline Thong, CEO and Co-Founder of Ubiqi Health, in Boston,   is developing mobile tools to track and use data on patient compliance.  Bringing Ubiqui’s  first product–which measures the impact of life style changes on  migraine headache sufferers, to market–has been slow,  Thong said, but over the course of 18 months, her company  acquired 15 thousand users,  developed a reporting system, and assessed  results.  While, originally, her company had expected reports on impact to be shared only with providers, her team found that patients were interested in knowing their results–and that when provided access,  their compliance and positive outcomes increased.

Thong  emphasized the emphasized the importance of measuring impact and showcasing findings to potential partners.  Merck and the Joslin Diabetes Center are now interested in testing the device with their patients, as are other pharma companies, payor organizations interested in cutting costs, and physicians, Thong said.

Mira Sahney, General Manger, Gynecology Business at  Smith & Nephew  Endoscopy, is building a women’s health division at the company.  She is in the process of commercializing a minimally invasive surgical tool for use in doctors offices that removes fibroids and polyps which have long been a leading cause of  hysterectomies. While, in Europe, use of the minimally-invasive procedure (hysteroscopy) in doctors’ offices  is  encouraged and financially incentivized,  introducing it to the US market has been challenging, she said.

Medicare reimburses differently depending on the location but in any case, will not pay for the procedure if performed in the doctor’s office. Getting FDA approval for a new product can take years, she said. “You need promoters.” “What is more, the American College of Gynecology  is slow and conservative;  private insurers can  see and implement the benefits but are moving slowly.  Anyone seeking to market  a paradigm-shifting device must be  prepared to work at the “micro” level, she emphasized. “commercialization is completely different in every market.”

Peter Vicars, President and CEO of VGo Communications, in Nashua,  NH,  emphasized the importance of focus in introducing a new product. His company has developed a “telepresence robot” that can moved around a space to provide  video-like audiovisual information  — by someone at a computer many miles away.  Vgo robots can be used for security, advertising and in homes and schools, Vicars said.

For example, a child with immune deficiency could not go to school, but by sending a robot in his place, he could observe the goings on and interact with students and classmates.

Robots are being  used by families to communicate with patients in nursing homes–and are also  used by health providers to monitor patients.  For example,  at a children’s hospital found that they had a 50% readmission rate–not because the doctors had done anything wrong but because parents tended to panic and bring their kids back to the hospital in case of the slightest worry.  To cut back on expensive readmissions,  one of the doctor now sends a Vgo robot home with every patient. He can then see what’s going on, thus making a virtual house call.

The possibilities seem endless, Vicars said, but it’s crucial to focus in order to determine “is there an opportunity and can you capitalize on it?”

The program was developed and moderated  by Tanya Kanigan, Founder of  Proof of Market,  which helps engineering driven companies identify and develop opportunities for their technologies and services in life science and healthcare markets.

—Anita M. Harris

 

 

 

 

By Will Holt

On August 20,  the Boston Globe published a front-page story by staff writer Noah Bierman titled “Brown, Warren pledge holds up.” In January, Bierman writes, Senator Scott Brown and Professor Elizabeth Warren agreed to keep third-party ads out of the Massachusetts Senate race despite their recent inundation of airwaves elsewhere across the country.

This agreement between the Republican incumbent and his Democratic challenger comes only two years after the decision in the now-infamous Citizens United case, in which the United States Supreme Court effectively ruled — to put it rather bluntly — that money is speech and corporations are people in the realm of campaign finance law. Whatever one thinks of either Warren or Brown, they’re certainly bucking a national trend.

With an eye toward the rest of the country in this heated election season, Bierman writes that over $90 million have been in spend in 13 states with Senate races this year alone. None of this money, trickling down from political action committees (PACs) and other interest groups, has so much as paid for a sound bite in the election here in Massachusetts.

You have to wonder how the candidates are making this work in what might very well be one of the country’s most acrimonious, grudging, and competitive Senate race this year. But early on they came up with a relatively simple solution: every time a third-party group runs an advertisement, the party that benefits from the advertisement’s message must make a donation to charity directly out of its own coffers.

The Brown-Warren pledge represents a model for the rest of the country, one that should be strictly adhered to in an election season that promises to be rife with a slew of misinformation and even outright lies. And while I’ll refrain from coming down in this post for one candidate or the other, I should mention that I have a great deal of respect for both Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren in light of this agreement. At least the candidates are speaking for themselves.

–Will Holt also blogs at Letters from a Bay Stater, where this blog initially appeared.  http://williambrianholt.wordpress.com/

 

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning  marketing and communications firm.

Cambridge startup  Latitude News and Public Radio Exchange (PRX) have  launched a  podcast series aimed at bringing global stories with local importance to new audiences.

Latitude was founded earlier this year by veteran BBC producer Maria Balinska to bring “a new  brand of global storytelling connects on an emotional level to audiences who are curious about the world,” Balinka said.  Its  journalists–based in Cambridge and abroad, use  a Website, social media and podcasts to crowdsource stories that connect Americans with the world.

PRX operates public radio’s largest distribution marketplace, offering thousands of audio stories for broadcast and digital use. Signature PRX programs include the Moth Radio Hour, RadioLab, This American Life, KCRW Music Mine and the Public Radio Player.

Under an agreement announced earlier this week,  Latitude will produce 12 podcasts and broadcast segments for PRX showcasing a distinctive editorial style that links Americans to the rest of the world.

The first podcasts launched this week; one looks at why the US faces a shortage of cod and Norway does not; the other examines the role that one US preacher has played in the anti-gay movement in Uganda.

The Latitude News podcasts are hosted by award-winning journalist Daniel Moulthorp.

Moulthorp  is co-founder of The Civic Commons. He is also a former program host of 90.3 WCPN’s Sound of Ideas and co-author, with Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari, of the best selling book Teachers Have it Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers (The New Press, 2005).

John Barth, Managing Director of PRX, said, “The extension of Latitude News to podcasts and broadcast is a natural step as PRX reaches engaged audiences hungry for more meaningful  international stories.”

“We’re thrilled to work with PRX to illustrate how our new brand of global storytelling connects on an emotional level to audiences who are curious about the world,” Balinska said.

The podcasts and segments are made possible by a grant to PRX by the Open Society Foundations aimed at expanding global storytelling for American audiences.

http://www.prx.org/group_accounts/142068-latitudenews

–Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is a writer and communications consultant  in Cambridge, MA.

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group–an-award-winning strategic communications firm based  in Kendall Square, Cambridge.

 

 

 

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On Sunday, I drove up to Revere to take in the    annual Sand Castle Competition…As always the entries were amazing–I had to wonder how  on earth (so to speak) the artists managed to build them.

Especially enjoyed “Skin and Bones,” a fish within a fish–

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few entries surprisingly downbeat–perhaps, as my friend C suggested, picking up on the general zeitgeist:
For example, “The Earth Cries…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And “Everyone has a dark side” –a woman with her  back to viewers–and,on  the ocean side, a frowning ghoulish character facing the ocean.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Winner was “To Bee or Not,” a very intricate sculpture of an insect (to which my photo does not do justice–the light was very tricky).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would have liked to have jumped in the water (it was hot, even as early as 7 AM) but the tide was just starting to come in…so the beach was loaded with small stones and shells and the water a bit murky. Maybe go next year to see the artists at work?

 

 —-Anita Harris