OneClickMed Blog

Phoenix Business Journal - by Patrick O’Grady

SkySong, the mixed-use development designed by Arizona State University, is celebrating its one-year anniversary Wednesday amid more businesses that have opted into the center.

Dubbed the ASU Innovation Center, SkySong has sought to create a niche for technology businesses and startup companies that ties together its students and faculty in a partnership offering at the location at McDowell and Scottsdale roads in Scottsdale.

The center has developed a little better than expected, drawing interest from national as well as international companies and pushing through numerous students into new entrepreneurial programs, said Julia Rosen, ASU’s associate vice president for innovation and entrepreneurship.

“Skysong has exceeded our expectations without a doubt,” she said.

The development, which has spread to two buildings, has 44 companies from 11 countries that are its affiliates and it also has more than 30 student ventures from 90 students. SkySong is the home to Arizona Technology Enterprises, the university’s technology transfer arm, as well as ASU Technopolis, Entrepreneurship at ASU and the university’s Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative, which seeks to give students a taste of developing products and business plans.

Getting businesses in to the center is ahead of schedule, and the diversity of business looking for a home has produced some unexpected surprises, such as businesses investing in sustainable technologies.

Ultimately it has been the ties to ASU that SkySong offers that has been among its top drawing cards, Rosen said.

“We’re the only place in Arizona and I believe in the Southwest that can offer what we do,” she said.

Companies large and small are continuing to locate at the center, including the likes of Ticketmaster and Canon. Smaller companies finding a home often are drawn to the connections to ASU as well as the ability to be around other startups.

“It’s perfect for us,” said Patty Johnson, president and CEO of OneClickMed.com, an online site that aims to be an information technology hub for the health care industry. “How we’re going to support our growth is through the university partnership.”

Students also are getting experience, either through the Edson program or through the Innovation Space, which has set up a location on the first floor of SkySong’s north building.

The program allows undergraduate and graduate students at ASU a chance to form teams to develop, produce and market a product. Having a presence at SkySong means the students can learn not just from professors but each other as well as the businesses there.

“My students get internal and external input from all of the companies here,” he said.

Josh Madsen, a senior at ASU who founded skateboard company Genghis Longboards Co. and is a student in the Edson program, said being at SkySong has helped developed his business acumen.

“It’s been absolutely pivotal in bringing my company to the stage it’s at,” he said. “This whole complex is filled with professions from just about every industry. If you need someone with a certain kind of experience, you can find them here.”

Despite a challenging economy, Rosen said SkySong is flourishing, and the hope is that in the next few years it will continue to build a network of companies that are connected through their work at the center.

“There’s tremendous entrepreneurial energy here,” she said. “You read the newspaper and might get one message about the economy, but you come here and it’s a different feel.”

By Jullie Chung, Managing Editor
OneClickMed.com

The World Health Organization has raised the pandemic alert level as cases of swine flu continue to manifest in more countries including Spain, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Israel. However, the elevated alert level does not qualify swine flu as a full-blown pandemic but rather indicates its level of transmission through human-to-human contact. Though transmission is significant this does not mean pandemic proportions are inevitable.

Swine flu first manifested in Mexico City where 152 fatalities have been attributed to the outbreak as of April 28, 2009. The United States has reported 91 cases, 28 of which include a body of students from Queens, New York returning from a class trip to Cancun, Mexico. As of April 30, 2009, there has been one fatality attributed to the virus in the United States. This fatality was a 23 month old infant in Texas. Though the child was in the United States at time of passing, he/she had recently entered the United States from Mexico.

One of the greatest questions asked is: how do I know if I have swine flu? According to the Center for Disease Control common symptoms include fever, coughing, sore throat, body aches, chills, headache, and fatigue. Swine flu can often be accompanied by vomiting and severe intestinal distress as well. It may be difficult to discern at first as symptoms are very similar to ordinary flu. A good indicator, however, is rapid temperature increase and a fever above 101.5°F.

Since swine flu is transmitted person-to-person in much the same way as “standard” influenza, steps to prevent catching the virus are also very much the same: wash your hands regularly with soap, avoid contact with people already sick, avoid touching communal contact surfaces, cover your nose and mouth when sneezing or coughing and wash your hands immediately after, drink lots of fluids, and stay well rested.

Prescription antiviral drugs have been proven to help alleviate symptoms. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency authorization for expanded use of the antiviral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza. Additionally, the CDC’s Division of Strategic National Stockpile has released one quarter of its antiviral drugs in addition to personal protective equipment and respiratory protection devices to help contain and control the virus in outbreak areas.

The Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization continue to investigate the outbreak and work towards definitive solutions for prevention and control of the virus. But the best prevention at present is awareness and taking simple steps towards avoiding contact with the virus. Above all, if you feel ill or come down with flu like symptoms, the CDC strongly urges you stay home and avoid contact with others.

by Jullie Chung, Managing Editor
OneClickMed.com

For seven years now the United States has had to call upon our armed forces to represent the United States and defend freedom far from home. In a state of war lives are always at risk, and the men and women of our Armed Forces are put in harm’s way. At no point is this ever taken lightly, and even in times of peace ongoing research is constantly dedicated to improve and ensure the welfare of our soldiers in every scenario and under all conditions they may be faced with.

Combat Casualty Care is an area of research that is of prime importance in the field of military medicine. Military organizations such as the Department of Defense, the US Army Medical Research and Material Command, the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, and the Military Operational Medicine Research Program dedicate much of their time and resources to the research and development of techniques and devices to improve the quality and outcome of combat casualty care.

Combat casualty care refers to a system of pre-hospital care administered under combat conditions. This type of care includes battlefield care as well as trauma care administered once the soldier is removed from the combat environment and is en route to a medical facility. The ongoing goal of research in this field is to decrease the battlefield mortality rate, to reduce the morbidity of injuries sustained in combat, to reduce the medical foot print left on the battlefield, and to overcome the myriad of complications arising from the need for medical attention in combat situations.

When considering the logistics and/or chaos of battlefield conditions, there are a wealth of arenas where military medicine seeks to make improvements and provide solutions. Just one of these areas is in the sphere of soldier status and monitoring.

Similar to static patient monitors that exist in ambulances and hospitals, military medicine has been conducting ongoing research for more than ten years towards development of an active, real-time system to monitor and observe the physiological status of each individual soldier while out in the field. Referred to as the Warfighter Physiological Status Monitor (WPSM), this device has recently been tested and is undergoing constant development and improvement.

Like a hospital patient monitor, the Warfighter Physiological Status Monitor relays information such as heart rate, respiration, and core temperature. However, each soldier is monitored remotely from a central command as opposed to the individual being hard-wired to a static monitor. Soldier monitor feeds can route back to locations as immediate as the Commanding Officer, or as remote as a central command location.

The functional goal of the WPSM is to provide a comprehensive, on-going assessment of soldier status at all times under all conditions. With real time information from each soldier, officers can better assess and estimate the risk of any given operation based on soldiers’ vital signs and responses to the given environment. Additionally, under live or “hot” combat situations, individual monitors provide key information to rapidly locate, identify, triage, and treat any combat casualties.

Conceptually, the WPSM will monitor every aspect of the soldier’s combat state. Aside from the obvious vital signs, researchers are developing algorithms to assess soldier function and performance in long term heat or long term cold exposure, uphill and downhill slope conditions, load carriage, and terrain adaptations. Physical monitoring will extend as deeply and intricately as body orientation, skin temperature, fluid retention, soldier sleep cycles, rest and activity ratios, and even ballistic impact detection and assessment.

Ultimately, the WPSM will be equipped to provide feedback on soldiers’ mental status as well. This capability will be key in assessing and monitoring soldier readiness and fitness for any given combat situation. Cognitive function, psychomotor functions, mood, and anxiety level can all be transmitted based on algorithms drawn from empirical information such as blood flow to the brain, pupil responses, voice fluctuation, cardiac parameters, glucose levels, and electroencephalography.

In a compact, lightweight, weather-proof form, researchers hope to integrate the Warfighter Physiological Status Monitor as part of the Future Force Warrior combat system.

Recently, the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine and the Civil Support Team-Weapons of Mass Destruction (CST-WMD) conducted a field test of a Warfighter Physiological Status Monitor prototype. The WPSM was utilized in enclosed environment situations (i.e. tunnels, sewers, septic tanks) in order to test the efficacy of the unit in remote locations, as well as to monitor the physical state of the wearer under those conditions. Additionally, the WPSM was tested with firefighters in limited access locations. Both series of prototype tests yielded positive results and provided important feedback on the physiological state of the user while performing their required task.

Though under development with a focus on use in the military, the success of the Warfighter Physiological Status Monitor would serve the civilian sector as well. In conjunction with recent advancements in telemedicine, remote status monitor technology could assist greatly in providing more advanced medical treatment for individuals in rural settings, as well as assisting the elderly or those in critical condition with limited mobility or access.

The Warfighter Physiological Status Monitor is just one of many combat casualty care solutions under research and development. In the interest of protecting and caring for the soldiers of our armed forces, military medicine continues to advance ideas and technology to provide contingencies and answers for all possible combat casualty care obstacles.

by Jullie Chung, Managing Editor
OneClickMed.com

Telemedicine continues to be a rapidly growing industry within the medical world. Providing global access for medical professionals and medical care to even the remotest locations, telemedicine is a valuable application for practicing clinical medicine.

Telemedicine is generally defined as the exchange of medical information via phone, internet, or other network or electronic means for either consultation or treatment of medical conditions.

The term telemedicine is often confused with “e-health”. E-health is more commonly used as a blanket term that incorporates telemedicine as well as other concepts such as telehealth. The World Health Organization describes e-health as, “the cost-effective and secure use of information and communications technologies (ICT) in support of health and health-related fields including health-care services, health surveillance, health literature, and health education, knowledge, and research” (World Health Organization 2005). Telemedicine itself refers only to the direct dispensing of clinical, medical care.

Telemedicine is most commonly practiced in either real time (synchronous) form, or store-and-forward (asynchronous) form. Real time telemedicine entails the direct interaction between medical professionals or between physician and patient. It could be as basic as a phone consultation, video-conferencing between specialists, or as intricate as the relay of real time medical images and data using networked diagnostic or procedural equipment.

Store-and-forward telemedicine is an indirect means of communication where medical data (i.e. diagnostic images, patient records, monitoring information) is stored and then transmitted at a later date. This form of telemedicine does not require the presence of both parties and is conducted more at the convenience of the sender.

The concept of telemedicine has been in development since the 90’s but has made exponential leaps in capability since then. There have been major advancements in the development and implementation of the end-to-end telemedicine architecture required for information to be transmitted. Network infrastructure has been optimized for speed as well as for security in order to keep all exchange of information HIPAA compliant.

Additionally, medical research and development has allowed for more advanced medical equipment and supplies capable of transmitting data along the telemedicine superhighway. Going beyond the simple video-conference, physicians are now able to utilize tools such as examination cameras, electronic stethoscopes, laptop based ultrasound systems, electrocardiograms, and x-ray scanners to feed information immediately and accurately to a second party in real time. These systems provide opportunities for clinical care in even the remotest of locations.

The application of telemedicine has both national and global scope. In the United States institutions such as the University of Arizona College of Medicine have developed and implemented active and far-reaching telemedicine programs. Senator Robert Burns and Dr. Ronald S. Weinstein partnered in developing what is today the Arizona Telemedicine Program. Funded by the Arizona State Legislature back in 1996, this telemedicine program is state mandated and provides telemedicine services to geographically remote locations within the state of Arizona, to the Native American population, and the Department of Corrections rural prison facilities.

On a global level, organizations like the International Society for Telemedicine and e-Health have already established telemedicine possibilities in diverse countries across the world including Nigeria, China, India, South Africa, Russia, Indonesia, Singapore, Democratic Republic of Congo, Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Europe. Telemedicine extends the reach of clinical and medical care into areas of the world otherwise inaccessible to modern medicine.

But telemedicine provides benefits and solutions even on a local scale, enhancing the quality of in-home medical care, skilled nursing care, and hospice care. For the elderly, disabled, or those under critical care, telemedicine can eliminate the difficulty of transport to an outside facility for certain care. According to the Telemedicine Information Exchange–funded by the National Library of Medicine–Medicare now covers telemedicine treatment for nursing home patients residing in facilities that support end-to-end telemedicine network capabilities.

In this information age telemedicine is one more bridge to shorten distances and enhance access and efficiency. With more and more facilities, cities, states, locations, and countries becoming telemedicine-ready, we can look forward to a time where medical treatment can be readily provided wherever needed.

ONECLICKMED PRESENTS AT HEALTH CONTENT08

OneClickMed recently had the honor of being one of twelve companies selected to be featured in the Health Content08 Innovators Showcase. We were given the opportunity to introduce the OneClickMed web portal to a host of industry professionals and marketing elite.

Produced by Health Content Advisors, a division of InfoCommerce Group, Health Content08 was a conference specifically geared towards commercial health content producers and syndicators. Taking place at the Park Hyatt in downtown Philadelphia, PA from November 12-13, the conference hosted a distinguished panel of guest speakers covering healthcare topics from consumer-driven healthcare to innovations in evidence-based medicine. This year’s keynote speaker was Mr. West Shell, III, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Healthline Networks.

OneClickMed was pleased to receive a wealth of positive feedback from other innovators and long-standing industry professionals alike, and looks forward to rapid progress and development thanks to many valuable opportunities and insights garnered from our Health Content08 experience.

OneClickMed would like to extend our deepest appreciation and gratitude to the Innovators Showcase Advisory Board for inclusion in this year’s conference, to Russell Perkins, Managing Director of InfoCommerce Group, to Janice McCallum, Managing Director of Health Content Advisors, and to all those who helped to make OneClickMed a part of Health Content08. We deeply appreciate your support of our vision and are profoundly grateful for providing such a unique and prestigious opportunity for us to share our company with the industry.

Health Content08 Sponsored by: BerkeryNoyes, Really Strategies, Inc., and ICYOU™.

Health Content08 Guest Speakers:

• Jack Barrette, CEO and Founder of WEGO Health
• Deborah Breen, Director of medical Market Development, EBSCO Publishing
• Danny Ezrol, Vice President, Strategy & Business Development, HealthGrades
• Richard D. Forman, Managing Partner, Health Venture Group, LLC
• Nancy Greengold, MD, MBA, Vice President and Medical Director, Hearst Business Media
• Helen Hobart, President, StayWell Consumer Health Publishing
• Dr. Sundeep Karnik, Senior Vice President, Strategy & Development at Elsevier Health Sciences
• Gary D. Kennedy, CEO and Chairman, RemedyMD
• Janice McCallum, Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group and Health Content Advisors
• Teri Mendelsohn, President, Mendelsohn Consulting, Inc.
• Tom O’Connor, Managing Director, Berkery Noyes
• Linda Peitzman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Wolters Kluwer Health
• Russell Perkins, Founder and Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group
• West Shell, III Chairman And Chief Executive Officer, Healthline Networks
• Dr. Rishi Sikka, Chief Medical Officer, Praxeon
• Carolyn Wong Simpkins, MD, PhD, Business Development Manager, BMJ Point of Care
• Nina Sossamon-Pogue, Vice President of Media, BenefitFocus
• Megan St. John, Managing Director, InfoCommerce Group
• Benjamin Wolin, Co-Founder & CEO, Waterfront Media