How quickly things can change from promise to disappointment in healthcare innovation.
Telemedicine kiosk operator HealthSpot abruptly shut down last month, then filed for liquidation last week. The company had 70 percent of its pricey kiosks sitting in storage, waiting for customers that never materialized, and four times more liabilities than assets.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
In a webinar on April 16 at 1pm ET, Aneesh Chopra will moderate a discussion with executives from DocuSign, Velatura, and behavioral health providers on eConsent, health information exchange and compliance with the CMS Final Rule on interoperability.
Let’s set the Wayback Machine to 2013, though.
Just three years ago, HealthSpot tried to be the darling of International CES. An e-mail one of my colleagues came across this morning while cleaning out the inbox gushed (emphasis in original):
At CES 2013, HealthSpot will unveil a breakthrough telehealth system that provides high-quality medical diagnostics to patients anytime, anywhere. We’d like the opportunity to brief you on this unprecedented healthcare technology and provide you a quick demo during CES.
As you know, telemedicine until now has primarily consisted of telephone consults between physicians and patients. HealthSpot has built a telehealth platform establishes face-to-face dialogue, sets a path to follow up treatment, maintains a readily-available medical record, and documents electronic prescription information as part of the patient medical record.
“We are making it possible to seamlessly deliver advanced healthcare through modern technology,” said HealthSpot CEO and Founder Steve Cashman. “We are not just hardware; we are not just software; we are a complete integrated network of traditional doctor care and cutting-edge telemedicine. We are healthcare reinvented.”
In addition to briefs, HealthSpot is sponsoring a luncheon panel in partnership with the CEA and featuring today’s telehealth thought leaders.
That’s a lot of hyperbole and buzzwords. In the end, it proved to be a losing strategy, and HealthSpot joined the boneyard of so many would-be healthcare reinventors.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
That luncheon with “thought leaders” couldn’t have been cheap, either.
Photo: HealthSpot
