Gadgetory

hello everyone welcome back to the scene at stage at CES 2017 I'm Lindsay Turrentine editor-in-chief of cnet com and for the next few minutes we're going to focus on what the future holds for the intersection of Technology and health discussing this growing field with experts from pharmaceutical companies and device makers and insurance providers so joining me now to talk about meds and tech and insurance are two luminaries we've got busy bar vice president of innovation and head of Humana health ventures and doctors should be in a loop senior vice president of medical and regulatory affairs at bearing ER ingelheim which I think I got correct okay thank you so much for coming and I wanted to start I think what we the interesting thing that we have to talk about here is how technology can help us reach patients and people who might otherwise be under served in the medical world and Sabina I know that you have a lot of interest in reaching people who might not be part of a conversation about developing pharmaceuticals and why don't you talk a little bit about how you think about technology and what it does now and what it could do to reach people who are otherwise underserved thanks for thanks for your question so my team is working on developing new medicines as well as taking care of those who are on the market and help and support patients now when I think about clinical development of new drugs and what digital and technical innovation could do we are using it already but the future could bring much much more we basically can bring Crillon clinical trials to the patients at the moment the patients need to come to us they need to come to their doctors they need to find an opportunity and yes there are information offerings but if you're really better enabled using electronic healthcare records and other systems to fight the right patients and right physicians for the right trials be able to get more diversity into those patient groups you work with and then work with they're much closer from identifying them getting their data in giving them feedback getting more data I think that can in the future really help making drug development more touchable for the community and hopefully also faster and a little bit simpler so does that mean that there may be people who otherwise you know a typical drug trial would be possibly near where you are physically in a certain urban environment this means we can get more rural participants we could get participants from different backgrounds and ethnicities and how does it how would technology help make that faster it would help make it faster in identifying them earlier and it would make it faster because at the moment you collect data once a patient then visits a doctor for a predefined visit if with technology from variables to what you can could see in the future and smart homes could get a more more fluent and fluid data transfer you might be able to learn much more yes you have you predefined measurement points but you can get much more information and depending on the therapeutic area sometimes when it's also about behavior what you're interested in for example you can get much faster much more so in other words you might get information about how somebody is sleeping or how they're eating without having to ask them I just say how much they move right yet you can get data and you can get data from in the home that has its data that's not typical that you would see in a clinicians office and so that helps research because you can get data in context about what's actually happening we think about it at Humana about being able to have ways for our seniors to be able to stay in the home because we can have more monitors more ways of allowing them to interventions before something bad happens and they end up in the hospital so you think that there is technology that will be available to consumers that will help them talk to say their families about their personal health but then also to their insurance providers at the same time or do you see that this is still sort of fragmented what are the challenges around getting into people's homes and getting that data for you as an insurance provider right now so we while we are an insurance provider we actually are a very health focused company we're very consumer focused and or consumer-facing company and many of our members are where Medicare Advantage providers or our members are senior citizens and living in the home and we want them to be in the home for as long as possible so in order for that to happen we can provide more kinds of tools for them to be able to have more smart monitoring kinds of devices not just in their home but on their person that the downside of that and I think we're at a tech conference we all love technology here that's why we're here the downside of that is that we don't want to become so overly reliant on these little tech devices in the home to take care of mom and grandma that we forget that actually health is driven by human connection and by voice and by touch and and if we if we get too reliant on technology as the solve we're going to miss the whole point of what health is about which is about heart and empathy and love and connection do you think and they're all kinds of strange to the show right that people need physical touch for instance to feel healthy do you think that there's a there's a role either one of you for for bringing for this personal technology for data collection and monitoring to get people to make that human connection more often I mean we talk a lot about VR headsets the work that Facebook is doing with oculus and you can see that not that far down the road they're probably thinking about how we have a virtual human experience as ironic as that sounds is that something that you think about that sends it could make it more often but more importantly it could lead to this interaction at the right point in time but often the question is when is the right point in time when does someone need support and to better find that moment in time that valuable moment I think that's that's where a lot of opportunity lies another challenge I think in addition to that you really need to Intel as human beings i think is especially from our perspective how valid are the dead are you collect right how good is the quality and there are a lot of regulatory aspects which they need to be taken into consideration because in the end if you develop a new medicine or if you have a medicine on the market the data you collect need to pass a certain standard and you need to be really able to rely on it so that they find regulatory acceptance and it isn't just about data data is something that you need for research it's something that we all need but it's what you do with that data and how you create personalized interactions we were just talking about how data and analytics are great but we actually don't want to give information to people we want to give going to communicate with them we want to find ways to communicate with them in personalized ways and so that means really understanding how they want to be communicated with and what kind of intervention they need so the data is fabulous and it's the first step but it actually isn't the solution have you seen an implementation of technology in the home that you think is particularly compelling when it comes to having this kind of human augmented or additive human experience you want talk about yeah I mean I think when you talk about in the home the question is what you mean do you mean the variable do you mean something which you can attach to a device for example to like like we are having a partnership with propeller health where you can add a device to an inhaler that that's in a kind of the first stages so so what technology are you talking about that that's kind of the question so there are first examples but in the end how do you link everything together you need to connect the patient the provider the insurance company or the health system in order to really get to meaningful information in the end and have something to talk about and learn from and sometimes it isn't just the home sometimes it's a device that's smarter and it can be mobile you know a Livan go some of you guys are probably familiar with LaVon go which is a smart glucose meter which has intervention it goes its data goes to the cloud it has intervention and coaching built right in so it can engage and communicate with our members and in a way that they want to be engaged with at the time that matters the most so it isn't so much plopping a robot or a device in the home it's what solution are you trying to provide for and what's most personalized and how do you do it in a human way so that doesn't seem like nagging it's so or or creepy right like this thing is watching me like no because you know we were we were talking earlier with I was starting with some colleagues and that sometimes we think about monitoring the home is this way that we can help keep you know grandma and grannies safe and it makes us feel great like Oh phew I don't have to worry about grandma granny but really it may be that that isn't the best solve for Grandma it may not be the right answer might make us feel better but it may not be the thing that makes grandma feel better she wants to get out of the home she wants to get out she wants to engage she wants to be with people and the kinds of kinds of smart home devices that can be there that can help her remember to go to an appointment things that can help her not feel nervous if she's running late those kinds of things are going to help her stay engaged outside of the home there is there's so much promise in this and thank you so much to both of you for coming to talk about it we're going to take a short break and we're going to bring back three more experts working in this space and we're going to continue to talk about how we get the numbers and the information that matters thank you very much hi I'm Lindsey turn time with Cena and we are back to continue our conversation about health and technology in the home joining me now are Colin Lawler CEO of ResMed and consumers sleep dr. ted smith of revonnah CEO and Rick Valencia the president of Qualcomm life and and we have a lot to talk about in a short period of time let's talk about how really technically and what's talking about the technology behind gathering the data that we were talking about earlier in this segment there's so much exciting development going on right now in both treating people at home and getting the information that we need to treat them and I want to start with you and talk about Qualcomm a little bit and then really exciting work you're doing with x prize and the tricorder I know you're looking way into the future how do you think about accurately gathering data that's actionable you bet so what we're doing is we're we've been focused on building the Internet of medical things where we see every time in the very near future where to manage a patient's care better we're going to need to manage it continuously in the hospital in the home and everywhere in between so we've been building this network that helps us capture this data from patients wherever they happen to be makes the devices that they use to manage typically a chronic condition or maybe they've recently been discharged from the hospital and they're in a sensitive period we want to help their caregivers better manage their care and so we've worked with medical device manufacturers of all sorts plus pharmaceutical companies plus provider organizations to get these devices not only connected but also working interoperable they weren't really designed to work together and typically a patient with a chronic condition isn't using just one specific device in an island there they're working with multiple medical devices and they need to work together and they need to send a single stream of data that's meaningful to a doctor's so that's what we're primarily focused on and our partners are typically the the service companies that deliver on the care and they're the ones that we deliver up the data in a meaningful way and they're the ones that present it to the patient so so the patient can act on that data without having to worry about multiple screens multiple logins multiple issues that they have to do with so you're talking about for instance somebody who's diabetic and having their their blood monitor and their insulin pump talk to each other and then integrate that data in a meaningful way exactly so that so that when they get information it's not a flood that they have to sift through exactly right and they may also have a CPAP at home and so and typically there are these patients sleep isn't isn't in isolation they have sleep issues because of a chronic condition or they may have a chronic condition because of their sleep issues so having that data having it come together in one stream and having our our partners very quickly able to connect with these other companies and their medical devices and that stream of data is what Qualcomm is all about that's what we call the Internet of medical things getting all these devices connected so the doctors can manage their patients wherever they happen to be not necessarily just in the hospital or in the doctors make sense so calling you CPAP came up you're working on you tell us a little bit about what you're doing and you're working on on the intersection of that information and and products that actually help you sleep better absolutely absolutely so sleeps a huge issue a huge health issue and it's connected to almost every significant chronic disease and the great thing about technology is we have more and more potential to measure asleep and understand it but up until now it really hasn't been good enough in terms of the accuracy and we think that that's the key issue that's available this year and what why we decided to announce the launch with dr. oz and Pegasus of sleep score labs so we've developed a technology which is truly reliable and precise that enables you to objectively understand your own sleep but we can also use that to help companies in the 58th billion dollar sleep aids market evaluate which products work and which ones don't and there's a whole gap in that area and we're setting out to make a big difference but at the heart of it it's not just data it's about accurate data because in the system we've all generated a lot of data for the last number years but particularly in sleep inaccurate data is a big problem and that's something that we need to do a lot about so we're delighted to announce that today I've heard I went as I've been talking to all of you backstage there's been at this actually an undercurrent of concern about inaccurate data its head this is something you probably think about a lot based on what you do once you explain a little bit about what you're thinking about as you're designing apps to help streamline this sure so r Yvonne systems is very much focused on helping us all make that shift from sort of fitness sort of lighter weight understandings of health and well-being which are great in those categories but are different than your experience at the hospital they're different than having clinically valuable information that can really change how long you live either the quality of your productive years right these are serious matters and they really do require a little more rigor a little better data and so r Yvonne is very very much focused on how can we establish the quid pro quo for those patients because everybody has the great idea that people should just donate their data to a clinical trial or donate their date I mean guess what everybody else everybody has something else to do today than that so we're focused on to help get something back after we give away our information so if I give away my blood sugar I get something out of it is a quid pro quo I mean quit if I'm not delivering some value immediately to the patient in our case we develop machine learning algorithms to help them determine how serious their symptoms are when they're short of breath and you know that's actually helping them it's helping us because they're contributing those data insights we're getting high quality data but we're in return handing them actionable information relieving anxiety the kinds of things that you're excited about when you talk about smart homes like oh my life is better for this stuff we need to do that in health care like we don't need to study people on a petri dish we need to help them have better lives and I think we're all committed to that case everybody kind of complain a little bit about the accuracy of the data that we collect through consumer devices Rick how far out do you think we are from from getting up Saul having wearables or sensors in our homes like in our beds that are that are you know ready we have them today it's really a matter of how we integrate them and how we treat that data once we receive it now there are different levels of quality certain devices were made as consumer devices and they weren't intended to be real medical devices but medical grade quality devices is what this group here is primarily focused on and yeah it's the probably the biggest challenge is patient Association making sure you know that it came from a very specific patient because the doctor is not going to be willing to act and tell that person to do anything differently unless they're absolutely certain that in context what is that what is that person doing when that reading is being taken but in terms of data accuracy I think the the really big challenge beyond those two is it once the data is received how do you treat that how do you what do you run that data against the algorithms that come in and give you an actionable insight as a clinician providing care or as a patient who can take that on themselves it's manageable and and and I don't think it's an issue of the technology's not there I think it's a matter of again how we integrate that that technology and and make that data more meaningful not through the next generation of technology but through through insights that we have already today I think we have clearly two major challenges it's true that some data is very reliable generally speaking if you have a blood pressure monitor or glucose monitor the data from that's reliable and generally if you're active and you're using a device to help you count your steps that's reliable but there's a lot of other areas where the data isn't reliable and sleep is obviously something we are greatly concerned about we see the Delta between devices which are poor and devices which are good overestimates people sleep by between an hour and an hour and a half that's the difference between you've got chronic insomnia or you're perfectly normal and that's not good enough so we think you've got to do both so we've set out to solve the accuracy problem first but we've also coupled it with sophisticated personalized coaching engines to help people to know what to do with the what changes in their lifestyle what changes in their activity and their daily lives can help improve it and I think both are important and particularly when we're talking about serious issues we've really got to make sure that the data is robust sleep score labs is about doing that just about a minute left but I want to ask each of you I would maybe dead how far out do you think we are in terms of this is it's a hard question but how many years until most people feel like they trust the devices that they're using in their home and that they are hot that they keep with it because we know that when people have trackers they use different devices they often just ditch it how long do you think it's gonna take well I mean here so I'm not going to answer your question with the number because this is being recorded but the I think the inflection point has been the shift towards your device is completely passive right it sits on the nightstand so I didn't ask you to strap anything on remember to charge it all that you know you guys revolutionize the industry with a lot of passive bluetooth just siphoning and sucking the data right and and that's the change so when I had used my Amazon echo at home I'm delighted that I don't have to do anything right and that as that continues I think you're going to see the healthcare use cases materialized immediately because the friction is in all the stuff the way it was originally conceived but we all know people don't want to have extra stuff really they don't want to think about it set it forget it that's really where we're going so we're here today we just haven't caught up with the vendor community that's making this stuff if you think about even your phone when you think of your phone as technology usually it's because it's the problem it's it's an experience that you're really looking for in that phone and everything else you do and in health care the same things so i'll go back to a point you made earlier and that is i think we'll get there when the payoff is big enough and the path unfortunately isn't big enough today to tell a patient that if you keep doing what you're doing you're going to die sooner and a not-so-good death it's got to be more media and it could be in the form of an experience but it could be in the form of cash we have a program with united healthcare where people can learn $1,500 a year towards their health costs if they're just active that's great we're gonna have to wrap it up I could talk about this for a very long time so I'm sorry that we have to say goodbye but thank you so much for joining us here and and thank you to all of our guests on this panel still much more to come here on the scene at stage live in Las Vegas next up we are going to have a lot more exciting programming including nvidia who's here down thank you very much