AI for telehealth & the latest in health tech at CES – STAT

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Chatbots help telehealth companies rethink the front desk

Most telehealth companies haven’t cracked the code to profitability yet. But a growing number are hoping automation — whether it’s text-based chatbots, questionnaires, or followups — could help them trim costs and treat more patients with fewer resources. And as Amwell CEO Roy Schoenberg points out, automation could help telehealth companies tap into a potentially more lucrative chronic care market by helping them check on patients more frequently. Still, experts warn there are risks to an overreliance on automation, including the sidelining of patients who don’t speak English or who can’t navigate the tech. “Patients who are more on the margins, who have more difficulty accessing the system, are going to have even more trouble accessing the system,” Peter Yellowlees, a psychiatrist at UC Davis Health, told Mohana. She has the full story.

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What’s interesting from CES 2022 (so far…)

The annual Consumer Electronics Show is off to a somewhat muted start after many companies and attendees pulled out at the last minute following fears about the Omicron variant, but there have still been some announcements of interest so far.

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• Home blood pressure monitor maker Omron laid out the roadmap for how it will build up an ecosystem of health services around its products, including a broad expansion of its remote patient monitoring services in the U.S. and a global launch of a hypertension-focused service in the U.K. The company also teased an upgraded version of its Omron Connect app as well as a budding AI research program to predict cardiac events in collaboration with Kyoto University.
• Withings, well-known for its consumer health wearables, announced a new souped-up connected scale “with the ability to monitor segmental body composition, heart rate, and vascular age” as well as “nerve activity and heart rhythm using a 6-lead ECG.” It will be available after the device receives Food and Drug Administration clearance.
• Connected lightbulb company Sengled announced a Smart Health Monitoring Light, which the company claims will be able to monitor health. The kicker, that got the attention of some critics, is that by connecting multiple bulbs and you can create a virtual map of …….

  Source: https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/06/telehealth-health-tech-ces/

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