During the opening plenary session at the Health 2.0 conference yesterday afternoon, Dr. Alan Greene, Chief Medical Officer of A.D.A.M. wove historical trivia with mixed metaphors to explain Health 2.0:

The first two presidents of the U.S., Washington and Adams, never shook hands while president, instead they bowed, Greene said. U.S. citizens similarly bowed back. President Thomas Jefferson changed all that, Greene explained, as he shunned displays reminiscent of Old World royalty in favor of the great leveler, the common handshake. Health 2.0 flourishes in similar settings — there can be no more bowing down to doctors, Greene implied. Crowd sourcing health information is the key.

“There’s another kind of handshake,” Greene explained later. “That’s the data handshake.” Greene argued that health data must be easily transferred from one platform to another. “That will make all of these things so [much] more usable,” Greene said. “With that comes mobile — the more we have things usable in a mobile way, the better.”

“A lot of your life happens when you are out,” Amy Tenderich from DiabetesMine.com added. So users of these sites need to record information on scraps of paper and then “go home at the end of the day and type all that information in,” Tenderich lamented. Clearly, that’s a huge barrier to entry for desktop-based services.

While audience members offered potential solutions, one of which included leveraging camera phones for barcode scanning, the key is to make that “data handshake” as simple as possible.

Toward the end of the debate, Greene noted that Thomas Jefferson was also responsible for the introduction of the tomato into our diets. The average kid in the U.S. doesn’t like to eat fresh tomatoes, Greene said. Studies show, however, that the more a child gets involved with the vegetable’s preparation the more likely they will eat it.

“If parents would hand their kid the knife, responsibly, the kid is more likely to eat it,” Greene said. “It’s time in healthcare to stop telling people to eat tomatoes but to give them the knife instead. And if a child goes out and picks a tomato himself, he’s even more likely to eat it,” Greene said. “That’s the Health 2.0 angle.”

“The real game changer, though, is when a child happens to plant a tomato plant,” Greene said. “That’s what we really need: For people to become producers and not just consumers.”

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@Health 2.0 A.D.A.M. launches Medzio app

We have written about A.D.A.M.’s Symptom Navigator application for the iPhone in the past, but now the company has developed an iPhone application that combines symptom navigation, first aid info, GPS-enabled local listings for care centers (with maps and directions) and an upcoming feature called Health Talk, which aims to connect consumers with experts to share thoughts about health topics. The app is now available for free download at the Apple iTunes App Store.

Last week A.D.A.M. wrote attendees headed to the Health 2.0 event that the company will demo Medzio at the show tomorrow. “With A.D.A.M.’s world leading consumer health information as the foundation, Medzio brings together some of the most progressive healthcare companies to create a new and unique Mobile Health Network that offers consumers a powerful and unique way to interact and collaborate on-the-go about their health,” A.D.A.M. writes. “The Medzio Mobile Health Network will assist consumers in determining when and where to seek care, and how much that care should cost.”

We’ll be at the event and will be sure to check out the demo in-person. So more to come later today on mobihealthnews.

Visit the Medzio site for more or read on for some more product info from the company…

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The Health 2.0 Accelerator pre-Health 2.0 conference meeting kicked off yesterday here in Boston with a presentation by the AHRQ’s Special Expert in the Healthcare IT Group, Matthew Quinn. The AHRQ is the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and is a part of the Health and Human Services (HHS) department. Quinn said that his goal was to “open up the mysterious world” of government grants and task orders to Health 2.0 companies looking to get a piece of the billions set aside for health IT in the economic stimulus bill.

Of course, it’s not going to be easy for Health 2.0 companies. As Quinn’s colleague, Senior Advisor on Health Information Technology Issues to AHRQ, Bob Mayes explained, a lot of that struggle stems from the type of person who typically sits at the peer review table, which is where the “who gets what” is decided.

“We are constrained,” Mayes said. “They legally define what a scientific peer review panel is … the types of qualifications required. So it is difficult to influence greatly who sits on these panels. We are talking 30, 40 or 50 people on these panels and there is a great deal of formality around the process,” Mayes continued. “The process [of scientific peer review for grants] isn’t bad, but it does tend to be made up of people with lots of letters by their name. They tend to be older, and let’s just say that they made their contribution ‘not yesterday’. So, in the field of technology we really struggle. Many of them still think that the PC is still the interface in the world of communication. And that’s a real problem.”

(My educated guess is that Mayes was implying that mobile phones are the interface in the world of communication. If so, agreed.)

Quinn explained that AHRQ only gives grants to not-for-profit organizations — typically academic institutions — but that doesn’t mean that those organizations cannot have for-profit partners. Quinn suggested that Health 2.0 companies looking to leverage the stimulus dollars should partner with the non-profits who have a track record of good “grantmanship”, or winning government grants.

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Will doctors stick by Palm?

Despite reports that twice as many doctors have iPhones this year than last year, a post over at WirelessDoc predicts that since many doctors have all their contact data and text files on the Palm Desktop software a good number will continue to carry Palm branded devices. That’s good news for the Palm Pre.

Dr. Bill Koslosky over at WirelessDoc writes: “I’ve seen a couple of posts on the mostly inactive palm-med listserv about MDs looking to replace their old Palm Tungsten PDAs as the batteries no longer keep a charge. They have all their contact data and text files on the Palm Desktop software, but need a new handheld to re-sync.”

Certainly anecdotal, but it makes sense. By many accounts the Palm Pre is the first true contender in the iPhone era, and those Palm Tungsten PDA batteries are not removable — no option but to upgrade.

“Of course, the Palm Pre and the new WebOS are about to be released,” Koslosky writes. “I’m switching. I’ll lose the third party apps that I’ve enjoyed using on my Treo 700p like Agendus, but I’m willing to move on. I’m hoping that porting the old data to the new OS won’t be much of a problem.”

According to a new report from Manhattan Research, the percentage of physicians in the U.S. using smartphones increased to 64 percent. The group increased by 20 percent between 2008 and 2009, the study found. The number of physicians using iPhones doubled, Manhattan Research found.

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iPhone Med Apps: 3rd fastest growing group

According to a report by Ben Lorca over at O’Reilly Radar, out of the 20 categories of iPhone applications, the “Medical” category has added the third most new applications in the past three months. The number of medical applications for the iPhone grew almost 133 percent during the period. The “Books” and “Travel” categories took the first and second places for most new apps added during the past 12 weeks. The medical category now holds 1.1 percent of the iPhone’s applications marketshare.

O’Reilly Radar also determined that the “incubation” period, or the time it takes Apple to run its quality assurance tests on medical apps increased from an average of four days in January-February to an average of seven days in March-April. Wonder if all the talk of FDA regulation spooked them?

(Read on for more)

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Windows Mobile-powered ultrasound phone

A couple of computer engineers at Washington University have developed a medical imaging device by combining a USB-based ultrasound probe with a Windows Mobile smartphone. Microsoft awarded William D. Richard, Ph.D., WUSTL associate professor of computer science and engineering, and David Zar, research associate in computer science and engineering, a $100,000 grant in 2008 to bring the concept to fruition.

The device’s imaging probes can be used for imaging the kidney, liver, bladder and eyes; endocavity probes can be used for prostate and uterine screenings and biopsies; vascular probes can be used for imaging veins and arteries for starting IVs and central lines.

“You can carry around a probe and cell phone and image on the fly now,” said Richard. “Imagine having these smartphones in ambulances and emergency rooms. On a larger scale, this kind of cell phone is a complete computer that runs Windows. It could become the essential computer of the Developing World, where trained medical personnel are scarce, but most of the population, as much as 90 percent, have access to a cell phone tower.”

“Twenty-first century medicine is defined by medical imaging,” said Zar. “Yet 70 percent of the world’s population has no access to medical imaging. It’s hard to take an MRI or CT scanner to a rural community without power.”

For more on the “ultrasound phone,” check out this article from the Washington University site.

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Sensor for sleep apnea and heart attacks

The FDA recently approved a 15-centimeter wireless sensor that aims to reduce hospitalizations by automating early detection of heart failure. The waterproof sensor is attached to the patient’s skin and transmits data to a mobile phone or similar device in the patient’s pocket. The system monitors heart and respiration rates, patient activity, and accumulation of body fluid. The data is then sent to servers and run through algorithms that detect anomalies and notify physicians if a patient needs care.

San Jose-based start-up, Corventis, is currently marketing one version of the technology. Scripps Health Eric Topol demonstrated the Corventis system during his keynote address at the CTIA conference earlier this month.

Topol said one unique characteristic of the Corventis solution is its ability to monitor fluid levels in a patient’s body through its impedance detector, which measures buildup of body fluid through indirect electrical measurement. That can serve as a proxy for built up fluid levels in the lungs, which leads to shortness of breath and puts pressure on pulmonary arteries. That threatens to cause heart failure and may lead to hospitalization to remove fluid.

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Continua: TV box could be mHealth home hub

The Continua Health Alliance’s Executive Director Chuck Parker moderated a few sessions at the World Health Care Congress last week in Washington D.C. and also gave a brief presentation on the Alliance’s mandate. Interestingly, Parker revealed that Continua is considering the television set-top box as one potential hub for wireless health devices.

Continua is an organization created as a non-profit, open industry alliance that is working to create interoperability for connecting personal health monitoring devices. The end goal is to create an “ecosystem for health and fitness” devices, Parker said.

Worldwide there are about one billion adults overweight right now and 860 million people with chronic diseases, Parker said. About 600 million are 60 years old or older, he said.

Our current healthcare system does not help us maintain health moving forward, Parker explained, it doesn’t allow us to track healthy lifestyles. Besides those with chronic conditions and the elderly, Continua wants to help “the worried well” keep track of their lifestyle choices and basic biometric data like: weight, blood pressure, glucose levels, cholesterol, activity levels and vital signs.

In the future, Continua hopes to enable the extension of healthcare into the home where initial triage of non-emergency conditions could take place and could be supported by images, email, chat and video.

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Mobile app calculates x-ray exposure

Canadian radiologist Dr Mark Baerlocher partnered with Tidal Pool Software to develop an iPhone application that estimates a person’s exposure to radiation from X-ray machines, CT scans and other known sources, according to a report from medGadget. The app, called Radiation Passport, costs about $3 and crunches metrics the user enters in about their lifestyle and medical tests taken — then, it provides an exposure and risk assessment.

For more on Radiation Passport be sure to visit the application’s info page at Tidal Pool Software’s site.

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NY doc first to use Allscripts iPhone EMR

A pediatrician in Sarasota Springs, NY is the first user of the EMR iPhone application Allscripts announced at the HIMSS event last week, according to a report in Healthcare Informatics. As we reported last week, the application allows clinicians to access Allscripts’ EHR at any time from an iPhone or iPod Touch. The app includes a patient’s medical summary: history, lab results and medications. It also lets users communicate with local emergency rooms and includes e-prescribing functionality.

The pediatrician is with Community Care Physicians, PC, a physician-owned and governed multispecialty medical group of 200+ physicians and other clinical providers. The group is based in four counties in the Albany, N.Y. area.

“Physicians are quick to adopt technology that delivers clear benefits to their patients while making their own lives easier, and Allscripts Remote delivers on both counts,” Glen Tullman, CEO of Allscripts stated in the company’s press release that announced the launch of the EMR app. “For any physician who uses iPhone or plans to, there’s no better way to connect to real-time information and new capabilities that not only make it easier for them to make informed clinical decisions, but save them time. It’s all about connecting.”

The press release also compared the launch of the iPhone EMR app to the launch of BlackBerry email service years ago: “Just as the Blackberry was designed to maximize email access, so Allscripts remote takes advantage of iPhone graphical capabilities to provide fast, easy access to the Electronic Health Record.”

Check out the original report in Healthcare Informatics here.

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Motorola: Mobiles save clinicians 39 mins/day

Health Populi recently posted a review of Motorola’s Mobility Barometer report that the company shared at the HIMSS event last week. One of the key takeaways from the report: Hospital worker productivity increases after certain mobile applications are adopted. Workers get back about 39 minutes per day on average.

According to Motorola, the key benefits of adopting mobile applications in the hospital are reduced manual errors, increased order fulfillment accuracy, increased productivity, increased accuracy in compliance, quality reporting and regulatory requirements. Key challenges include the cost of hardware, software, integration an support; difficulties integrating mobile apps into existing infrastructure; and interference and performance problems.

Health Populi suggests that challenges need to be overcome through innovative pricing, SaaS, and milestone-reaching arrangements. The publication also reminded readers that security and integration are the deal breakers and makers for health organizations.

During a presentation at HIMSS Motorola’s Vivian Funkhouser shared some of the findings of the Mobility Barometer report: While research shows that healthcare IT adoption has plodded along for years when it comes to mobile communications adoption, the report also demonstrated that the infrastructure and communications group of wireless health services — like using mobile devices to improve efficiencies in care at clinics — has finally reached a tipping point.

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