It’s been announced that ActiveCare, a provider of telehealth and Personal Emergency Response (PER) solutions has entered an agreement to acquire 4G Biometrics — a company who’s technology helps healthcare and insurance providers, as well as employers, manage risk and reduce costs associated with employees diagnosed with diabetes.

Diabetes management, and chronic care management in general, remains a huge issue that mobile and digital technologies are aiming to streamline.  Diabetes trails only cardiovascular disease as the most expensive disease to treat.  4G Biometrics helps people with Diabetes manage their disease and avoid acute events that cost healthcare and insurance providers millions of dollars per year by providing near-real-time blood glucose monitoring through Bluetooth-enabled devices.  When specific data points with any irregularities are spotted, the information is instantly communicated to individuals/care providers based on profiles defined by medical providers.

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The long-awaited and anticipated digital health accelerator “StartUp Health” has officially launched it’s Website and opened its doors in New York City.

The new initiative has the bold aim of cultivating over 1,000 digital health startups over the next ten years, which it hopes will generate more than 100,000 jobs.  StartUp Health is chaired by Jerry Levin, former Chairman of TimeWarner.  Levin’s co-founders, Steven H. Krein and Unity Stoakes, founded OrganizedWisdom together, which is a so-called “digital doctor’s office” and patient portal, among other ventures.

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The Continua Health Alliance and several of its member companies were in attendance at this year’s CES to show off a variety of innovative personal connected health devices — some of which leveraging new technology such as the Bluetooth Health Device Profile (HDP) and NFC.

The alliance had a large presence within the concurrent Digital Health Summit and was joined by member companies including AnyDATA, Bluegiga, Freescale, Nonin, Renesas, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Wind River.  All of which demonstrated “Continua Certified” connected health solutions mostly aimed at managing chronic medical conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, congestive heart failure and asthma/COPD.

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A panel of experts, convened by the World Health Organization, has put out an eHealth “call to action.”

The 19-member leadership team convened in Bellagio, Italy, where they discussed the global relevance of eHealth initiatives, a category that encompasses both telemedicine and mHealth. The panel claims that aid agencies such as PEPFAR, USAID, the World Bank, and the Global Fund spend from $3 billion to $5 billion on eHealth initiatives.

These initiatives are designed to use information and communication technologies to improve world health. However, the group claims that there is little to no data that demonstrates the success of these programs. Thus, the Bellagio team claims that there is no proof that these systems function well or produce positive health outcomes.

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A primary goal of the eHealth and mHealth movements we’re seeing these days are to increase access to, and the quality of care — especially in remote or underdeveloped regions of the world.  A new initiative introduced recently in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is a prime example of this.

A company called Health Innovation Systems has partnered with the Brazilian Health Ministry to give every citizen access to their own patient-centric health record in the cloud, delivered through a solution called “Vitacare.”  Rio de Janeiro is a prime testing ground for such an initiative as it’s been found that as much as 75 percent of the population doesn’t have a general practitioner.

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The state of California just introduced a new bill that makes telehealth services easier to access for patients and easier to administer for physicians.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed into law “The Telehealth Advancement Act of 2011,” which eases restrictions on telehealth provisions in the state — especially in terms of requirements for in-person contact before providing telehealth, and on the locations from which telehealth visits can be made and received.

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As the healthcare industry turns its focus to new digital and mobile technology, ensuring patient data and other sensitive areas are kept secure has become a major issue for hospitals and other healthcare organizations.

A new report out from PwC claims healthcare companies aren’t as prepared as they should be.  The report, entitled “Old Data Learns New Tricks: Managing Patient Privacy and Security on a New Data-Sharing Playground,” shows that despite advances in electronic health records (EHRs) and security technology, healthcare organizations have yet to adopt privacy measures on a large scale.

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