The Metaverse in Medicine can be defined as the medical Internet of Things facilitated using AR and VR glasses. Metaverse is evolving; it holds new potential in healthcare that combines technologies like AI, VR, AR, Internet of Medical Devices, Web 3.0, intelligent cloud, edge, and quantum computing along with robotics to provide new directions to healthcare. Metaverse involves the convergence of telepresence, digital twinning, and blockchain major technological trends, which all have the potential to impact healthcare individually. The Metaverse is already showing signs in digital therapeutics is seeing rapid adoption of this form of therapy, where VR and AR tech in the metaverse enables applications such as cognitive therapy, support groups, psychiatric evaluations, rehabilitation, and even physical therapy with the support of haptic sensors.

On Aug. 4, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declared the ongoing spread of monkeypox virus in the U.S. a public health emergency - the FDA is working to get vaccines to affected communities. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra announced on Aug. 4 that he will declare the ongoing spread of monkeypox virus in the United States a Public Health Emergency (PHE). A press release from HHS states that “This action will further strengthen and accelerate the Biden-Harris Administration’s response in recognition of the continued rapid transmission of monkeypox in the U.S. and globally, and to signal the seriousness and urgency with which the Administration is responding."  The announcement comes on the heels of President Biden appointing Robert Fenton of the Federal Emergency Management Agency as White House National Monkeypox Response Coordinator and Dr. Demetre Daskalakis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as White House National Monkeypox Response Deputy Coordinator.”

Pear Therapeutics, a company that offers digital therapy programs by prescription, has let go of 9 percent of its workforce, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Digital twins are virtual representations of an object or system that spans its lifecycle, is updated from real-time data, and use simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision-making (IBM). By using digital twins to model a person, you can use technologies like natural language processing (NLP) to better understand data and uncover other useful insights that will help improve use cases from customer experience to patient care. Digital twins can be useful in synthesizing this information to provide actionable insights. Kaiser Permanente uses digital twins through a system that improves patient flow within a hospital. In another instance, Roche uses digital twins to help securely integrate and display relevant aggregated data about cancer patients into a single, holistic patient timeline. By building a digital twin, you can compare an individual to other patients – similar in clinically important ways – to see if there are genomic similarities and how certain treatments have impacted them. Creating a digital twin to anticipate patient needs and the length of their stay can be very valuable. For example, creating the digital twin of a patient’s heart enables a doctor to see exactly what’s going on — whether there is scarring from previous surgeries or an abnormality that needs to be inspected further — and make better decisions before an operation, rather than during.

Over twenty years later, we may be reducing medical errors — a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found significant decreases in mistakes in cases of pneumonia, acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and surgery between 2010 and 2019 — but the way we’re reacting to people who disclose them is worrying. To her credit, Vaught did come forward when she realized what had occurred, but Vanderbilt didn’t report the error to the government or medical examiner. When it comes to medical errors, it’s not the so-called crime that’s concerning, it’s the cover-up. Up to 9,000 annual deaths are reportedly attributed to medication errors alone. We also don’t have a very precise definition of medical errors, so the lack of reporting may be motivated more by ignorance than a desire to hide the facts. That lack of definition limits the effectiveness of systems — communication and resolution programs (CRPs) are new ways of reducing errors, hospitals’ safety reporting systems allow staffers to communicate anything that affects patient safety that are in place and are known to work; a recent meta-analysis from 2018 showed a significant reduction in mortality from using the World Health Organization’s surgical safety checklist developed to decrease errors in the operating room. Physicians, prosecutors, and administrators should be working on defining medical errors and training providers on how to optimally use the systems in place rather than penalizing and prosecuting providers who commit errors due to failed systems or whistleblowers.

Smart algorithms will soon diagnose skin cancer, dermatologists consult patients online, and 3D printers will print out synthetic skin to fight tissue shortages. Skin cancer is too common Data from the US Skin Cancer Foundation suggests that each year over 5.4 million cases of non-melanoma skin cancer are treated in more than 3.3 million people only in the US. The annual cost of treating skin cancers there is estimated at $8.1 billion: about $4.8 billion for non-melanoma skin cancers and $3.3 billion for melanoma, which is an insanely huge number. Luckily, digital technologies are on their way to help dermatologists diagnose and treat skin diseases better and more effectively. As you can easily detect if you have a skin problem, and smartphones coupled with super-fast internet connection make it easy to send pictures or footage anywhere, telehealth solutions appeared naturally in dermatology. FirstDerm, DermatologistOnCall, Direct Dermatology, Online Skin Specialist or iDoc24 and you can find many other providers. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Google decided to throw their hat in the ring: the tech giant launched an A.I.-based app to diagnose skin conditions. Many skin cancer types and other skin problems are treated with laser therapies, and a study found that robots might be able to help there.

The lack of diversity in clinical trials unfairly skews American medicine and costs billions of dollars a year in early deaths and poor health. The 2022 National Academies report showed that progress had been made on representation of white women in trials, but had stalled for people in underserved racial and ethnic populations. An analysis created for the NASEM report using the Future Elderly Model developed by the USC Schaeffer Center found that hundreds of billions of dollars will be lost over the next 25 years due to reduced life expectancy, shortened disability-free lives, and fewer years working among populations that are not proportionately represented in clinical trials.

If just 1% of health disparities were alleviated by improved diversity in clinical trials, the Schaeffer model estimates that would result in more than $40 billion in gains for diabetes and $60 billion for heart disease. Among its bundle of recommendations, the National Academies’ committee urged the FDA to study new inducements for sponsors that meet clinical trial representativeness criteria, including tax credits, fast-track eligibility, exemption from some FDA application fees, and extended market exclusivity for drugs. The National Academies report recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, and other federal agencies write new regulations and impose new requirements for diversity in clinical trials. The authors were members of the committee that wrote the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, and Engineering report “Improving Representation in Clinical Trials and Research: Building Research Equity for Women and Underrepresented Groups.”

In 2021, the U.S. virtual visits market was valued at over $5 billion. Around $250 billion in healthcare spending could be saved by using virtual care, which in turn, lead to high adoption of virtual visit across U.S. Chicago, Aug. 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to Arizton’s latest research report, U.S. virtual visits market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 27% during 2022-2027. It is expected to expand at an exponential growth rate in the next two years due to the increasing demand for virtual visits. The surge in virtual visits in the US has been mainly observed during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to augur well for the market in the upcoming years.

Like most cash-strapped startups, Ruth Health began leveraging social media to advertise the company. But the content proved “offensive” to those platforms: Early in 2020, Instagram took down a post that used the word “vagina.” On Pinterest, one of Ruth Health’s ads showing a breastfeeding woman was flagged for inappropriate content. “It quite frankly puzzles us, but unfortunately if we want to do this on the platform, we have to abide by the rules they set,” Wu said. “We have to talk about it right upfront because we know these issues are out there, and (founders) need to have a plan around how they’re going to market what they’re building, given where the hurdles are,” said Naseem Sayani, cofounder and managing director at Emmeline Ventures.

“We believe that a pleasure-first product, the product that creates erotica, is a sexual wellness product,” said Gina Gutierrez, co-founder and chief creative officer at Dipsea. “I can confidently say that it makes investors second-guess investing in sexual wellness businesses,” Gutierrez said. The Lowdown, a London-based femtech startup, also experienced getting flagged on Meta platforms. “We don’t allow people to facilitate, encourage or coordinate sexual activity on Instagram,” the platform said. “It’s just another barrier for women trying to find information about this kind of stuff,” said Matilda Lucy, digital marketing strategist at The Lowdown. Despite the barriers to social media marketing, startups have found ways around big platforms. “It’s a barrier to growth and conversion, but it’s not a dealbreaker because there’s so many ways to reach that end consumer … it actually becomes about, how creative is that founder being around navigating around those hurdles?” said Emmeline Ventures’ Sayani From the startup perspective, Dipsea has invested a larger share of marketing dollars in podcast ads, capitalizing on the shared audio platform.

The Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software Market research combines a quantitative assessment of overseas markets with a fresh perspective on the target industry. The Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software Market research study examines the market’s primary features and prospects, as well as market constraints and significant competitors, firm profiles, and general strategies for acquiring a footing in local and marketplaces. By evaluating historical data and future projections, this report predicts the total market size based on a worldwide scenario. Overall, the report would provide critical market data to forward-thinking clients aiming to prosper in the worldwide Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software business. The business report provides a thorough and reliable examination of micro and macroeconomic issues, as well as market value interpretations that are anticipated to affect industry trends.

The report gives insight into the prospects of the worldwide Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software market, which will assist rivals in increasing their profit share. Individuals as well as industries involved in the Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software market can find the research report a reliable source of advice and insight, as it provides significant business statistics. The Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software research report also provides a quantitative examination of the many factors that have contributed to the sector’s development, including nations, suppliers, forms, and market scale, as well as market aspects. Consumers will be able to define the number of factors that sustain and monitor the Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software business growth register using the Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software market research. In addition, the Chronic Care Management (CCM) Software sector reflects an in-depth industry environment, development prospects, and market shares with the aid of product divisions, primary industries, implementations, and geographical research.

A year after raising $100 million, weight loss-focused digital health startup Calibrate has laid off 24 percent of its employees.

"As a result of the restructuring, the company extends its runway and accelerates its path to profitability," a Calibrate spokesperson emailed Becker's.

Despite vaccine availability and the reopening of clinical offices after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, telehealth remains a popular choice for orthopedic patients, according to published results. “In conclusion, interest in orthopedic telehealth was steadily growing prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and remains significantly elevated beyond pre-pandemic levels despite the reopening of clinical offices and the introduction of vaccine availability across the country,” the researchers wrote in the study.

We have been proactively working with medical device sterilizers to reduce the amount of EtO they use while still effectively sterilizing products to help ensure they meet the EPA’s standards for ethylene oxide emission levels. Over the past few years, we have prioritized reducing the use of ethylene oxide and several actions to develop programs and initiatives to support innovation in medical device sterilization. For example, we launched the EtO Sterilization Master File Pilot Program for premarket approval (PMA) holders of high-risk devices that enables certain changes between sterilization processes and facilities that reduces the amount of ethylene oxide concentrations used to sterilize medical devices without compromising safety and effectiveness. Collectively, these programs encourage new ways to sterilize medical devices that reduce the potential impact of ethylene oxide on the environment and public health, and we are committed to continuing to prioritize these efforts. Our supply chain program is ready to work with industry to help prevent and mitigate potential shortages due to reduced supply of certain ethylene oxide sterilized medical devices.

Astellas Pharma: Astellas is opening a new integrated biotechnology campus in South Francisco to house key research, medical and development and commercial and administrative operations. Additionally, the center includes a new research team that is focused on harnessing chemical biology techniques in support of the company’s oncology drug development programs and pipeline. The company, which is focused on developing treatments for pain and cancer, said that the layoffs were necessary to “to address the challenging operating landscape and better position Heron to improve the lives of patients while creating long-term value for shareholders.” Although no specific numbers in regards to employee cuts were given, cost reduction is definitely a priority for the company as they are looking toward cutting operational costs down to between $12M and $14M. The layoffs are part of the company's plan to focus on advancing its most advanced product candidates and reduce operating expenses. Eisai: a Japanese pharmaceutical company, also announced plans to cut costs by reducing staff in conclusion to H3 Biomedicine, a US-based subsidiary. Assembly Biosciences: Assembly Bio, a clinical-stage biotechnology company, said that it would be reducing its workforce by 30% in order to focus on its most advanced programs. X4 Pharmaceuticals: X4, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, announced that it was reducing its workforce by approximately 20%.

–  Adventist HealthCare has selected Innovaccer Inc., the Health Cloud company to be their next-generation population health management and value-based care partner. “By unifying patient data on the Innovaccer Health Cloud, we can identify opportunities to deliver more timely and relevant care to continually improve our patients’ care experience.

Driven by a desire to deliver the outcomes that matter most to patients, their families, and society, Eva uses her ability to collaborate and build transformative partnerships with those looking to push boundaries, drive healthcare innovation, learn from past lessons, and co-create a better future together. She shares her key insights on the necessity of collaboration to transform healthcare and how to evaluate partnerships to ensure mutual benefit for all. As Eva moves into her new role as General Manager for Roche Slovenia, we’ve met to talk about why she believes partnerships are the key to advancing healthcare transformation and innovation. Our conversation is taking place just weeks after Eva wrapped up her Healthcare Innovation Talks series in which she was in conversation with several healthcare ecosystem partners. 

Together they discussed and shared key insights into some of the more innovative approaches stakeholders can be taking to partnering as they seek to prepare for the healthcare system challenges – and opportunities – of the future. The last time I experienced such a transformational moment in healthcare was back in 2003 when the sequencing of the human genome took medicine to a new level,” Eva says. Advancements in technology and a renewed spark for healthcare innovation paves the way for novel partnerships It’s at these crossroads that the insights that lead to healthcare innovation happen,” Eva says. What is new is that stakeholders from different parts of the healthcare system and beyond are coming together and they are also willing to use new partnership approaches. There’s even an openness to explore so-called “user innovations” – partnerships that have no formal contracts and that do not involve any monetary exchanges, Eva says. The students had the chance to work on some of the biggest topics in healthcare and Roche had the opportunity to spot talented students who might want to join our company,” Eva says. Eva, who joined Roche BeLux in 2019, together with her team set up several innovative partnerships between Roche and various stakeholders, including an exciting collaboration with Academics, AI experts, and Hack Belgium, a think tank that has brought together 60 ecosystem partners to provide practical solutions in Ophthalmology to prevent, diagnose, and treat sight loss, as one example. 

All of the partnerships are focused on developing practical, workable, and useable frameworks that will empower all of us to reach our own health goals within a system that makes efficient use of limited resources and delivers optimum results for individuals and society,” Eva says. We will have the partnerships that will innovate the way we design and deliver healthcare,” Eva says. When evaluating potential ecosystem partnerships, Eva McLellan has distinguished 5 key elements for healthcare executives to consider. “Ultimately all of this will lead to the outcomes that matter most to patients, their families, their doctors, their nurses, and society,” Eva says, adding that placing more emphasis on the outcomes healthcare systems are achieving is going to become increasingly important as demand for already strained resources intensifies. By bringing the different parts of the healthcare system together, it will be possible to address problems such as fragmented care pathways, disjointed data collection, and an inability to accurately measure outcomes, Eva says. In other words, working in partnership is one of the key components required to successfully implement Value-Based Healthcare, she says. We have a new generation of thinkers, visionaries, architects, and innovators that is ready to replace the traditional model of transactional healthcare with responsive, nimble, outcomes-focused systems that put people’s health goals front and center.

Artificial intelligence, wearable sensors, virtual reality, medical robots, social media and the like – in a couple of years, disruptive technologies will completely change the way patients and doctors think and act about healthcare. A cultural transformation of how disruptive technologies that provide digital and objective data accessible to both caregivers and patients leads to an equal level of doctor-patient relationship with shared decision-making and the democratisation of care. Unlike before, digital technologies, social media, wearables, and trackers provide medical data and knowledge to many more stakeholders in healthcare beyond doctors. As patients have access to online medical information sources, patient communities on social media, wearables and health sensors providing medical data, they could present more questions and more knowledge related to their own health. The patient might assume a more “mature” position, while the doctor might become a guide in the jungle of digital health instead of being a declaratory reference point. Currently, and in the future more than ever, physicians should team up with technology to provide their best performance and the most efficient care to their patients.

As technology provides more and more responses to numerous medical questions that were answered by medical professionals before, personal patient-doctor communication will become less frequent and more valuable. Also, neither artificial intelligence nor virtual reality or health trackers will be able to solve complex cases, so in general, creativity and problem solving will become skills to nurture and look for in the future generation of medical professionals. As the landscape of medicine is as diverse as the metabolic composition of the human body, technological change affects the various medical specialties differently. The illustration shows that medical specialities that rely heavily on medical imaging and laboratories, will be significantly influenced by the digital health revolution including radiology, pathology – and other non-diagnostic fields, such as nephrology, rheumatology, haematology and dermatology. Chatbots could even become the first line of primary care – meaning that patients might only get a doctor’s appointment if the A.I.-based chatbot could not offer sufficient medical help. Moreover, artificial intelligence-based predictive algorithms could help epidemiologists better fight disease outbreaks, gene therapies, and digital contact lenses make eye care more efficient, virtual reality, exoskeletons or exercising machines could shorten rehabilitation time or alleviate pain. Certain medical fields will most likely experience a different effect of digital health technologies.

All specialities where human factors such as empathy and caring attention are the core of the practice, high levels of creativity and problem solving, and quick decision-making abilities will override any technological solution in the majority of cases. Regarding emergency medicine, portable diagnostic devices or medical drones can significantly reduce the time until a patient receives a proper diagnosis or specific treatment, but the ambulance crew will always remain indispensable on the spot. As the technological revolution has a different impact on every medical specialty, the necessary skill-set for successfully picking up the ins and outs of a healthcare field also widely varies. However, we could discern some general skills and principles based on the requirements of the digital age and technologically boosted healthcare. For decades, the medical community has left the single most important player out of every major decision regarding healthcare: the patient. Medical students and doctors should understand and embrace the idea once and for all that the patient is at the centre of our universe. Patient design should be the mantra of medical students, but physicians should also remind themselves from time to time – as it is still not as axiomatic as tourists around La Tour Eiffel.

Medical students, physicians, nurses and other medical professionals should try health apps, fitness trackers, and wearables themselves to be able to recommend those to patients. Besides, if they familiarise themselves with fitness and health technology, it will also get a lot easier to understand their patients’ concerns and questions about them, while they will realise that the recommendations are not just the results of pharmaceutical or other medical company sales representatives’ successful sales tactics. Knowing how to search for, find and assess information; assessing the quality of medical websites; knowing how to work with empowered patients should all be essential skills for physicians of the near future. Patients submit their cases to the site, and medical students, retired doctors, nurses or even laypeople offer their potential diagnoses. On top of that, interconnectedness and access to quality medical information by the patient communities can provide knowledge pockets that find their way to the literature years later.

In 2019, the company launched its first commercial device: Milli Trainer, a pelvic floor dilator with adjustable sizing to help women dealing with painful sex. The femtech sector coined by the founder of the fertility tracking app Clue in 2016 has steadily risen in the ranks of venture capital funding as more and more startups dedicated to women’s health have sprung up. Among those startups raising funding in 2022 are Ruth Health, a telehealth startup dedicated to lactation support and postpartum care such as pelvic floor exercises, raised $2.4 million in seed funding in April.

From using artificial intelligence to predict and diagnose disease to expanding hospital-at-home programs, hospitals and health systems have joined a variety of health tech companies in innovative partnerships. Pediatric health system Akron (Ohio) Children's Hospital is partnering with healthcare data and analytics company Health Catalyst to provide analytics for decision-making to its two hospitals and 54 care locations. Fort Myers, Fla.-based Lee Health partnered with telehealth and remote patient monitoring Health Recovery Solutions to create a virtual health program for patients with congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension and post cardio-thoracic surgery patients.

U.S. hospitals, health systems, and physician practices continue to face historically high operating expenses that increased patient volumes and revenues could not counteract, leading to negative margins for the sixth straight month in 2022, according to data from Kaufman Hall’s National Hospital Flash Report and Physician Flash Report. The median Kaufman Hall year-to-date operating margin index for hospitals was -0.09% through June, for a sixth straight month of cumulative negative actual operating margins. Total expenses for hospitals dropped slightly in June, down 1.3% from May due to a slight decrease in patient acuity, but are up 7.5% from June 2021 and are up 9.5% year-to-date. Similarly, while provider compensation dropped in physician practices, expenses continued to escalate with increased patient demand, inflation, and a competitive labor market for support staff leading to a new high for total direct expense per provider FTE in Q2 2022 of $619,682 up 7% from Q2 2021 and 12% from Q2 2020.

Rather, these numbers refer to those who tuned in worldwide to watch video game live streams of Ibai Llanos (Ibai), David Cánovas Martínez (TheGrefg), and Joaquin Dominguez (elxokas), respectively. These streamers gathered those numbers remotely in less than one day for only one live stream event. Viewers wire money during live streams to their favourite streamers as donations which can range from $5 to $500. As the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of live events and the closure of cinemas, people headed towards streaming platforms on their computers instead for entertainment purposes. Let’s see what the medical events industry can learn from them, because surely if people can invest in virtual entertainment, a similar appeal can be extended to more noble causes. Below are the 3 main aspects the medical events industry should import from streamers. If you join in on a live stream from Ibai Llanos (Ibai), who is currently one of the most popular streamers, you would be one among the hundreds of thousands of viewers. For live medical events, the obvious advantage is reaching a wider audience who otherwise wouldn’t be able to join the physical event. The Patients Included badge already helps events stand out as empowering patients, and merging it with digital live streams will definitely be a plus. Professional streamers make a living out of streaming thanks to sponsorships and affiliations. Through such interactive content, medical events can even gain traction with audiences traditionally outside of the industry; and sponsors won’t be shy to invest in such initiatives. Medical event speakers and organisers could get insights from a non-gamer like Hikaru Nakamura, the chess grandmaster turned Twitch superstar. We started building a community of aspiring medical futurists through these live events.

The draft publication 800-66 focuses on helping inform the industry about security issues around electronic protected health information, or ePHI, which runs the gamut of patient data from lab results to hospital visits within the context of the HIPAA Security Rule. Also included are resources made available to help healthcare organizations protect ePHI from ransomware and phishing, two common threats that are rapidly evolving. The draft document includes advisories for education, training and awareness of personnel at healthcare organizations, as well as methods to help protect organizational data and the resources that store and access ePHI, including zero-trust architecture and digital identity guidelines. In June, the HHS published guidance on "strengthening cyber posture," but healthcare organizations continue to ask for more government help managing their security challenges.

The Global Femtech Market is expected to reach USD 63.35 billion by 2027, according to research released by Maximize Market Research titled “Global Femtech Market by Type, Technology, Application, and Geography: Industry Analysis and Forecast.” The need for digital technologies in the healthcare business is fueling growth in the worldwide Femtech market. The market for femtech products is expected to increase as women’s concerns about hygiene and health grow. Additionally, a lot of businesses and the government have invested heavily in the global femtech market, which has affected demand.