Industry Insight

Digital Health Tool Helps COPD Patients

Early intervention facilitated by a digital health application for reporting symptoms of COPD provides key benefits for patients, according to the results of a two-year clinical study.

COPD is a serious chronic respiratory disease that is often characterized by flare-ups, called acute exacerbations, in which the patient may experience increased coughing, mucus, shortness of breath, wheezing, and a feeling of tightness in their chest. If exacerbation symptoms are not detected and treated in a timely fashion, they can escalate, leading to repeated trips to the emergency department, hospitalizations, disability, and a diminished quality of life.

The Pennsylvania Study of COPD Exacerbations (PA-SCOPE), led by Gerard J. Criner, MD, FACP, FACCP, founding chair of the department of thoracic medicine and surgery at Temple University School of Medicine, and director of the Temple Lung Center, revealed that COPD patients who used a digital health application to report their daily symptoms and received same-day treatment recommendations from their health care provider experienced fewer and less severe COPD exacerbation symptoms, which led to an improvement in daily symptom control, lung function, and activity status.

The digital health application allows COPD patients to report their respiratory symptoms and peak expiratory flow measurements, which were assessed by a computer algorithm and compared with initial values to achieve a symptom deviation score—a measure of how serious the symptoms are relative to the patients' baseline metrics. Scores in excess of a predetermined threshold were reviewed by a nurse and referred to a physician who prescribed treatment. The application allowed health care providers to initiate treatments that were optimized for individual patients' symptoms on the same day that COPD symptoms worsened.

“Previous studies at other sites have questioned the efficacy of various telemedicine solutions in COPD patients, but those studies have not used a solution that enables same-day treatment in response to worsening patient symptoms,” says Criner, who served as the principal investigator of the study. “We have been studying digital health solutions for COPD symptom management for over a decade and are pleased that the improvements we have seen in our patients in response to early identification and intervention has been documented in this clinical study.”

The study also revealed an encouraging degree of reporting compliance by moderate to severe COPD patients who used the digital health application, as evidenced by the high rate of daily symptom reporting sustained over a prolonged period.

While the study failed to enroll the number of patients needed to show either a mortality benefit or reduction in hospitalization days prior to the end of study funding, results were in the predicted direction. “Future studies are needed with greater numbers of patients enrolled to be able to address that outcome, and additional research is already under way with that aim,” says Francis Cordova, MD, medical director of the Lung Transplantation Program at Temple University Hospital, and lead author on the study.

The technology employed in the study is a precursor to the solution currently offered by Temple University spin-off company HGE Health Care Solutions. “The clinical research being conducted at Temple continues to reveal the ability of telemedicine and digital solutions to provide meaningful, measurable results for COPD symptom management,” says Michael J. Markus, PhD, CEO of HGE. HGE's application is also supported by Temple's recently launched Center for Digital Health.

— Source: Temple University Health System

Forecast: NLP Market to Reach $2.67 Billion by 2020

According to a market research report, “Natural Language Processing Market for Health Care and Life Sciences Industry by Type (Rule-Based, Statistical, and Hybrid NLP Solutions) — Worldwide Forecast and Analysis to 2015–2020”, published by MarketsandMarkets, the global health care and life sciences natural language processing (NLP) market industry is expected to grow from $1.1 billion in 2015 to $2.67 billion by 2020, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.2%. In the current scenario, North America is expected to be the largest market on the basis of spending and adoption of NLP solutions for the health care and life sciences industry.

The market report defines and divides the NLP market into various segments with an in-depth analysis and forecasting of revenues.

NLP technologies, which assist machines in understanding both written and spoken human language by analyzing human to computer interaction, are gaining traction in health care and life sciences industry as there is an explosive growth of unstructured clinical data available in EHRs. NLP techniques extract important information from the vast amount of clinical data and analyze it effectively for enhanced processing and analytics. Due to this, numerous health care providers are looking for solutions that incorporate high-end NLP technologies.

The demand in this market is highly driven by the tremendous increase in unstructured clinical data. Furthermore, the increase in the usage of Internet and connected devices are some other factors pushing this market and creating value in the market. Many niche players such as 3M, IBM, Cerner Corporation, Nuance Communication, Microsoft, health Fidelity, Apixio, Dolbey Systems, and many others have emerged in this market and are expected to evolve in coming years.

The NLP market is broadly segmented by type of solutions into rule-based NLP, statistical NLP, and hybrid NLP; by type of technologies into recognition technologies and operational technologies; by type of services into professional services and support and maintenance services; by deployment model into on-premises and on-demand; and by region into North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East and Africa.

This research report also identifies the factors driving this market, restraints, challenges, and opportunities impacting it along with the future roadmaps. Additionally, the report emphasizes on key adoption trends, evolution of NLP techniques, attractive market opportunities, and business cases in this innovative market. MarketsandMarkets expects a significant growth trend of NLP solutions in various industries as there is a massive rise in the demand of enhancing the customer experience and machine-to-machine techniques.

The rule-based NLP technologies in the health care and life sciences industry has high adoption rate compared with other types of solutions in the NLP market. However, the statistical NLP type is expected to grow with higher CAGR. Also, due to lower cost of integration and installation of NLP solutions, the professional services segment is holding the majority of market size as compared to support and maintenance services.

— Source: MarketsandMarkets

Bolder Healthcare Solutions Acquires The ROI Companies,
Avectus Healthcare Solutions

Bolder Healthcare Solutions (BHS) has acquired The ROI Companies (ROI), a provider of health care revenue cycle management services. ROI will continue to be led by its founder and CEO Chris Wunder and its experienced management team. ROI provides critical services to hospitals and physician groups including insurance billing and follow-up, self-pay billing, coding, eligibility, consulting, cash acceleration, and collections. ROI is headquartered near Baltimore, with offices in Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

BHS has also acquired Avectus Healthcare Solutions, which coordinates third party liability accounts and resolves complex workers' compensation accounts for hospitals and trauma centers. With the addition of Avectus and ROI, BHS now has more than 1,500 employees in the United States and India serving over 500 clients across 47 states. BHS operates from 14 locations including two wholly owned service centers in Kolkata and Hyderabad, India.