"virtual care" articles

Parks Associates supports Partners Healthcare's 2009 Connected Health Symposium & Expo from October 21-22 in Boston, Massachusetts. The Connected Health Symposium asks how information technology -- cell phones, computers, the Internet and other tools -- can help people manage chronic conditions, maintain health and wellness, and age with independence. What’s up for discussion? Sessions include: - The Amazing Effects on Health of Personal Social Networks -- and How to...

Mobile carriers to open new market opportunities in healthcare with wireless technologies The U.S. market for wireless home-based healthcare applications and services will grow at a five-year cumulative annual growth rate of over 80% and become a $4.4 billion industry in 2013, according to Wireless Healthcare: Analysis & Forecasts. The report from international research firm Parks Associates predicts the push for healthcare reform from the Obama Administration will ultimately...

GE Healthcare struck another R&D alliance in the home patient monitoring sector in less than a year after the Quietcare deal. This time, its partner is Intel. Like the Quietcare deal, the partnership also allows GE to co-market Intel’s Health Guide, a home health monitoring gateway product. The two companies will also contribute a combined $250 million over five years on R&D in this field. Intel is fortunate to land GE as a partner and distributor as the latter’s health...

Last week, Walgreens kicked off a campaign to begin offer free basic medical care through its walk-in clinics in retail stores. Recipients of the free care must be people that recently lost their jobs and their immediate family members. There are other strings and restrictions. For instance, annual exams and vaccinations are excluded. Walgreens’ Take Care Clinics are not as widely available as its drug stores. The retail clinic chain now has about 340 stores in 30 metro locations, or...

Israel-based medical diagnostic device and system maker Aerotel introduced GeoSKeeper, a new telecare safety monitoring system, to the market this month. Aerotel partners with GEBOA SA, a Switzerland-based security system distributor, to market the product under the brand AlarmTouch™ GPS in Europe. The solution is actually an enhanced personal emergency response system (PERS) with an embedded quad-band GSM/GPRS modem, a built-in speakerphone, and an active GPS receiver. If the wearer...

J&J, the world’s largest consumer and healthcare product company reported annual sales figures yesterday. CEO William Weldon told analysts that the company is prepared to make selected acquisitions to strengthen its position in the healthcare side. These are his words: “This economic environment creates opportunities we may never see again, so we need to be in a position to go after them.” To elaborate on his thoughts, Mr. Weldon indicated that two of the areas that...

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) officially launched a PHR pilot on Tuesday in the states of Arizona and Utah. According to the design of the pilot, it will run for about a year before CMS considers the next stage. Four PHR service providers, including Google Health, HealthTrio, NoMoreClipboard, and PassportMD, contracted with CMS on this pilot. These providers will compete with one another in these two states trying to sign up users. To incentivize providers as well as...

Last week, President-elect Barack Obama openly pledged to computerize the nation’s medical records in five years. The promise is ambitious, as I remembered talks about computerized medical records dated as far back as in 1999. Will Obama accomplish this goal? The first barrier is himself and his administration. I am impressed with his resolve and courage to take on this issue in his first year. But the reality is that the economic recovery is the national priority and if he has...