Panasonic aims for ‘HealthJam’ to spur tech revolution in health care

“Innovation HealthJam,” a 3-day virtual meeting that took place last week, was successful at bringing people from multiple sectors together to collaborate, and the end of the event is just the beginning of what will be done with the data, according to those involved.

More than 2,400 people attended the conference, including physicians, nurses, health care technology professionals, venture capitalists and others involved in health care and technology. The goal of the program is to gather information to develop innovative technological solutions in the complicated field of health care and create greater patient engagement with disease management, self-monitoring, remote monitoring and other areas. Participants also focused on the best methods, such as social networking, text messaging, gamification, incentives and other strategies. These could potentially be combined to work in devices with health-related sensors or smartphones to keep patients engaged in treatment and provide important health data to physicians.

Technology, medicine intersect

The event was coordinated through an equal partnership between the American Medical Association, the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), Intel, Panasonic, Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA), University of California at Davis, University of California at San Francisco.

The event was spearheaded by Panasonic, which joined with the other groups to use IBM’s Innovation Jam technological platform. The technology uses a proprietary approach to connect users, allow multiple topics and newsfeeds, live chat and other tools. The information shared will later be analyzed by IBM to better understand what topics users were most interested in and to find solutions to problems.

Jerry Kurtze, director of new business and innovation at Panasonic, told Cardiology Today that the report generated by IBM in July will be shared with all who registered and attended the virtual conference.

“I think everybody who is in the health care industry noticed there has been lots of change going on, whether you look at the regulations — such as accountable care — or you look at technology, genomics and so on, and with all this change, technology has become an important piece,” Kurtze said. “We wanted to look at how we could blend things together and how we could make a difference — quicker — in health care.”

Collaboration key

Kurtze said a traditional trade show would not allow the collaboration needed.

“We really wanted to use technology to enable the masses of the full ecosystem to get together and talk about these issues, to debate them, to analyze them, to come up with ideas and to try and work together,” he said.

IBM has been conducting similar events since 2001, but Kurtze said this is the first time it has been done in health care.

Collaboration will lead to innovation if Panasonic’s goals are realized.

“The goal is to change the way everybody thinks because in this health care sector, especially where you have doctors, nurses, insurance companies, plus the actual patients in all different places … there are a lot of different people, and you have to get everybody working together or we don’t think we’ll get the right solutions,” Kurtze said.

The diversity of the participants will be a key to innovation, he added.

“That was definitely one of our goals — if you just have one type of person, it’s not going to be as effective, and that’s part of the reason we did it online for free and in a discussion format so that we could get thousands of people together,” he said.

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Unconventional approach

Kurtze said Panasonic is committed to sharing the information generated because it will take many companies combined to develop effective products. Panasonic “wanted to get people together and learn from the experts and have all of them learn from each other,” and although the information “definitely will have an effect on our strategy,” the company hopes everyone who attended benefits.

John Nosta, president of the NostaLab think tank, also was involved in developing the event and was a principal forum host and commenter. He has a background in cardiophysiology but has been a writer for the past 20 years. He said the turnout from the event and the information shared exceeded expectations, and the unusual format played an important role.

“We have so many health innovation meetings. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t see another invitation, but logistics and time constraints make it almost impossible to participate in these live meetings,” he said in an interview. “We often talk about the digital world and digital engagement, and medicine at a distance, and telemedicine, and all of these important dynamics that are emerging, but then we go back and have conventional meetings, and expect people to get on an airplane and go to Boston for 3 days. It’s almost antithetical to the technology reality that we’re trying to create.”

Promise of the future

Nosta said a meeting such as HealthJam would not have been as effective 5 years ago because so much has changed with technology, including reduction in costs and size of sensors, genomic testing and the ability to crunch data quickly.

“We are at an inflection point or convergence of health, technology and need — there are so many important issues — that we’ve reached critical mass,” he said. “HealthJam very well may be one of the inflection points of change that leverage all of the issues that are emerging today. We’ve come to a new platform of information, engagement and resonance that can drive very powerful social change.”

Kurtze said the direction Panasonic will take with the information acquired during the session is currently unknown.

“Panasonic is like other technology companies out there,” he said. “We see that there are a lot of things going on, whether in care delivery, technology, in focus toward wellness and preventive care, in health care and in patient-centric [care], and we think we have a role to play in that. … I can’t tell you exactly what we’re going to do because this whole thing is in its infancy.” – by Shirley Pulawski