A blog covering the health/care ecosystem and people.

Mobilising Healthcare, a new report from Juniper Research, segments the mobile health sector into “healthcare” and “health & fitness” segments. The research summary notes that fitness is a relatively new market compared with health “care,” which has been around for eons. Fitness, the analysts say, “is exempt from government intervention.” Mobile healthcare (“mHealth”) applications explored include SMS health messaging, remote health provision such as cardiac monitoring, electronic health records and personal health records. In mFitness, Juniper looks into mobile tech for athletes and fitness conscious people, and activity tracking including heart function, distance, respiration, and perspiration, among other parameters. mHealth

In game-scoring unit terms, 52 is the number of hours an average American spends seeking health information online each year. The 1 (hour) is roughly equivalent to the approximate total time a patient spends with a physician (an average of 3 visits, with an average time per vision of 20 minutes). Thus, 52:1. This means that the average U.S. health consumer spends much more time DIYing her health using digital information resources than speaking face-to-face with their physician in the doctor’s office. Still, the physician continues to be a go-to source for health information, according to Makovsky, a health communications

More than 127,000 people die every year in America from cardiovascular disease, accruing $17 billion in medical spending. Heart disease is a “costly killer,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, who has calculated The $11 trillion reward: how simple dietary changes can save lives and money, and how we get there, published in August 2013. That $11 trillion opportunity is equal to the present value of lives saved. The solution to bolstering heart (and overall health) and saving money (medical spending and personal productivity) is in food. We’re not talking about genetically engineering anything special or out-of-the-ordinary. We are talking

People who live in U.S. cities with low levels of well-being have twice the rate of heart attacks as people who live in healthier America. That’s 5.5% of the population in sicker America versus 2.8% of the population living in healthy America. The first chart illustrates this disparity, taken from the Gallup-Healthways index that examined 190 metropolitan areas in 2012. Based on this study, it’s good to live in parts of Utah, Nebraska and Colorado, but not so healthy to be a resident in West Virginia, Alabama, and parts of Kentucky and Ohio. Heart disease and diabetes are killing a plurality

Consumers in America are spending more, and especially at the grocery store. Most people say they want to eat healthy — but, although they’re spending more at the food store, one-half of supermarket shoppers say cost is the main obstacle for healthy eating. 2 in 3 U.S. grocery shoppers define health and wellness as being physically fit and active, and over half believe that feeling good about yourself is another facet of health. Not being overweight equals health for about one-half of U.S. shoppers. The Why? Behind the Buy, from Acosta Sales & Marketing, explores buying patterns among U.S. consumers

The notion of consumers’ greater skin in the game of U.S. health care — and the underlying theory of rational economic men and women that would drive people to greater self-care — permeated the agenda of the 2nd annual Consumer Health & Wellness Innovation Summit, chaired by Lisa Suennen of Psilos Ventures. Lisa kicked off the meeting providing a wellness market landscape, describing the opportunity that is the ‘real’ consumer-driven health care: people getting and staying well, and increasing participation in self-management of chronic conditions. The U.S. health system is transforming, she explained, with payors beginning to look like computer

Mainstream media, both print and online, peppered their 2013 Mother’s Day gift suggestions including pod coffeemakers, bangle bracelets, candy-colored accessories and digital health devices. Say, what? In Parade magazine, Mother’s Day 2013 gift ideas included the Fitbit “smart pedometer,” linked to a “buy” site at REI. You can’t get much more mainstream than Parade. In Entertainment Weekly, Bronwyn Barnes, style maven for the magazine, wrote a one-page “Get Ready for Mom 2.0” and her recommendations included the Pebble Smartwatch, the Jawbone Up wristband, and the HoodieBuddie with earbuds built into the drawstrings. Men’s Health told sons and husbands to check

The registered dietitian is an in-demand labor resource for grocery stores around the U.S. Advertising Age covered the phenomenon of the growing clout of dietitians in food chains (April 14, 2013). Let’s dig further into this phenomenon through the Health Populi lens on healthcareDIY and peoples’ ability to bend their personal health care cost curves. Stores such as Giant Eagle, Hy-Vee, Safeway and Wegmans are morphing into wellness destinations, with pharmacies and natural food aisles taking up valuable square footage to meet consumers’ growing demands for healthy choices. Some stores are formalizing their approach to food = health by formulating a

Consumers who patronize Walgreens can get rewarded for tracking their physical activity   For the Steps with Balance program kickoff, self-tracking consumers can earn 20 points for every mile walked or run and 20 points for tracking weight. Walgreens implemented the Walk with Walgreens program in 2012. The program won an Effie Award for an outstanding marketing program. With the success of Walk with Walgreens, the retail pharmacy company has expanded the program beyond simple steps to include weight tracking and health goals for earning loyalty points. The program enables a few of the most popular self-tracking devices to sync so

Digital health is attracting the likes of Bill Clinton, Lupe Fiasco, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Arianna Huffington, and numerous famous athletes who rep a growing array of activity trackers, wearable sensors, and mobile health apps. Will this diverse cadre of popular celebs drive consumer adoption of mobile health? Can a “cool factor” motivate people to try out mobile health tools that, over time, help people sustain healthy behaviors? Mobile and digital health is a fast-growing, good-news segment in the U.S. macroeconomy. The industry attracted more venture capital in 2012 than other health sectors, based on Rock Health’s analysis of the year-in-review. Digital health

I endured what very few people could (or would) do in the past ten days: I traveled to New Orleans to the annual conference of HIMSS, the Health Information Management Systems Society, which features hundreds of suppliers to the health care information technology industry. I returned home to kiss my family hello and goodbye, and a day later flew to Austin for the annual South-by-Southwest conference for music, movie and digital folks. The health track at SXSW has grown over the past five years, and provides a start contrast to “health care” as embodied at HIMSS, and “health” translated through

In 2010, the folks who supported health care reform were massacred by the polls, Bill Clinton told a rapt audience of thousands at HIMSS13 yesterday. In 2012, the folks who were against health care reform were similarly rejected. President Clinton gave the keynote speech at the annual HIMSS conference on March 6, 2013, and by the spillover, standing-room-only crowd in the largest hall at the New Orleans Convention Center, Clinton was a rock star. Proof: with still nearly an hour to go before his 1 pm speech, the auditorium was already full with only a few seats left in the

The restaurant chain business employs 10% of U.S. workers and accounts for $660 bn worth of the national economy. Where restaurant chains are growing fastest is in serving up lower-calorie meals, and it’s been a boon to the bottom-line. The case for lower calories leading to better business is made in Lower-Calorie Foods: It’s Just Good Business from the Hudson Institute‘s Obesity Solutions Initiative, published February 2013. In the report, researchers analyzed nitty-gritty restaurant chain data on servings and traffic from 2006-2011 to sort out whether sales of so-called lower-calorie menu items in 21 chains led to improved business. The chains

In the U.S., we’ll be the #1 oil producer by 2020. We’re the largest national economy in the world (to be surpassed by China before 2030). And, we’re #1 in terms of the lowest taxes paid as a percentage of national GDP. That’s all heartening news for the time being. But we’re also #1 in what I’ll call “un-health:” in auto accident mortality for adolescents, obesity rates, infant mortality, prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, and among other public health metrics. A report from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (NRC/IOM) calls out what JAMA terms The US Health Disadvantage:

Health and wellness motivations among women cross all generations, driving them to purchase products that bolster health as they define it…not how media and stereotyping advertising have typically portrayed it, according to a survey report from Anthem Worldwide, What Women Really Want From Health and Wellness. Over all generations, 3 in 4 women say they make choices to benefit their health and wellness. Anthem asked women about the “external voices” of health/wellness messaging versus their “internal voice.” The external represent societal expectations: over 80% of women expect to take responsibility for their family’s health, and about 70% of women say the

On this day celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr., I post a photo of him in Detroit in 1963, giving a preliminary version of his “I Have a Dream” speech he would give two months later in Washington, DC. As I meditate on MLK, I think about health equity. By now, most rational Americans know the score on the nation’s collective health status compared to other developed countries: suffice it to say, We’re Not #1. But underneath that statistic is a further sad state of health affairs: that people of color in the U.S. have lower quality of health than white

One of the fastest-growing segments at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is digital health. And within that segment, there’s a battle brewing for what technology companies seem to think is the most valuable part of real estate on the human body: the wrist. I counted at least fifty products as I cruised aisles 26000-27000 in the South Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center that had wristbands, usually black, plastic or rubbery, and often able to click in and out of the band for use in-hand, in pocket, or in a few cases, on a

Notwithstanding the fact that most phones on U.S. streets are “smart” ones, most adults surf the net for health information, and most people try to change a health habit each year, Americans haven’t adopted healthier long-term relationships with food. The International Food Information Council has conducted the Food & Health Survey: Consumer Attitudes Toward Food, Safety, Nutrition & Health poll since 2006, thus enabling us to track peoples’ attitudes and behaviors over the past several years. The latest polling results appear in Is it Time to Rethink Nutrition Communications? A 5-Year Retrospective of Americans’ Attitude toward Food, Nutrition, and Health online in

Wired magazine, longtime evangelist for all-things-tech, has played a growing role in serving up health-tech content over the past several years, especially through the work of Thomas Goetz. This month, Wired featured an informative section on living by numbers — the theme of a new Wired conference held 15-16 October 2012 in New York City. This feels like the week of digital health on the east coast of the U.S.: several major meetings have convened that highlight the role of technology — especially, the Internet, mobile platforms, and Big Data — on health. Among the meetings were the NYeC Digital Health conference, Digital

The first day of the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco kicked off with a video illustrating the global reach of the Health 2.0 concept, from NY and Boston to Mumbai, Madrid, London, Tokyo and other points abroad. Technology is making the health world flatter and smarter…and sometimes, increasing problematic fragmentation, which is a theme that kept pinching me through the first day’s discussions and demonstrations. Joe Flowers, health futurist, offered a cogent, crisp forecast in the morning, noting that health care is changing, undergoing fundamental economic changes that change everything about it. These are driving us to what may

Good food is a key component of health. So when Humana partners with Walmart to discount good-for-you foods, it’s a sign in the market that two of America’s most visible health brands are looking to motivate people to eat healthier — and, to be sure, drive sales in the growing health marketplace. This unique partnership brings together one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies with the world’s largest retailer. The venture joins HumanaVitality, a rewards program providing incentives for members (currently, about one million) to make sound health decisions, and Walmart, who will offer 5% savings on products that

Using social networks for health is no longer a pioneering, first-wave adoption activity: Facebook has gone mainstream in health. What’s the indicator that says we’ve hit the tipping point in consumers going Health 2,0, beyond Paging Doctor Google? A story in the July 2012 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine titled, Miracle on Facebook. What’s powerful about this is that articles on health social networks have been largely focused in health IT trade publications, business magazines like Forbes  (focusing on sustainbale business modeels) and technology channels such as Fast Company and Wired. Looking at Good Housekeeping’s ad pages, its readership is mostly

To get to be 100 years or older requires exercise, social connectedness, and good sleep, according to a majority of centennarians polled in UnitedHealthcare’s 100@100 Survey, 2012 Report of Findings. The key findings of this fascinating survey are that: Centenarians have better eating and sleeping habits than Boomers. One-half of centenarians regularly exercise. The most common forms of exercise are walking or hiking, muscle strengthening, gardening, indoor cardio exercise, exercise classes, and yoga/Tai Chi or other mind/body/spirit forms. Social networks bolster health, with most old-old people communicating with family or friends nearly every day And, laughter is a vitamin, with most

On May 23, 2012, Pfizer announced its teaming with EatingWell magazine to launch a mobile app for patients on Lipitor. Eight days later, on May 31, 2012, generic versions of Lipitor will hit the market. Lipitor is the best-selling drug in pharmaceutical history, to-date. Sales of the product top $125 billion. While generic atorvastatin has been available in the U.S. since November 2011 from two manufacturers, low prices for the generic will drop to $10 or less for a month’s supply at the end of May. This is Pfizer’s first foray into a prescription drug-affiliated app. The free mHealth app,

Dr. Andrew Weil, the iconic guru of all-things-health, was joined by a panel of health stakeholders at this morning’s Edelman salon discussing Wellness Ignited – Now and Next. Representatives from the American Heart Association, Columbia University, Walgreens, Google, Harvard Business School, and urban media mavens Quincy Jones III and Shawn Ullman, who lead Feel Rich, a health media organization, were joined by Nancy Turett, Edelman’s Chief Strategist of Health & Society, in the mix. Each participant offered a statement about what they do related to health and wellness, encapsulating a trend identified by Jennifer Pfahler, EVP of Edelman. Trend 1: Integrative

35% of consumers who have been altering their food intake to lose weight are eating fewer processed foods, according to a recent Nielsen Global Survey. This percentage has grown from 29% in 2008. Health and wellness is one of three driving forces shaping food in 2012, according to JWT‘s What’s Cooking: Trends in Food. The other two forces, technology and foodie culture, combine with health/wellness and yield some interesting consumer trends in the milieu of food. JWT’s top food issues to watch are: – Fooducate – Nutrition scores – Fat taxes – Health and fresh vending machines – Gluten-free –

At the ConvUrgent Care Symposium in Orlando, attendees from the worlds of clinics, ambulatory care, hospital beds, pharmacies, medical devices, life sciences, health information, health IT, health plans, academic medical centers and professional medical societies came together to share and learn about the morphing landscape of retail health. The topline message: primary care is everywhere, and based on the response to my keynote talk this morning, every stakeholder segment gets it. My mantra, courtesy of the U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin: don’t look at health in isolation, that is, where the doctor and hospital are. Health happens wherever the person

‘Tis the season of weight loss plans, particularly among women, as this NPR story discusses. For the weight loss industry, this first quarter of the new year is akin to Black Friday for retailers the day-after-Thanksgiving. Special K called January 2, 2012, as National Weigh-In Day. To commemorate the event, Kelloggs commissioned a survey among women to find out what “inspires and tires” them when it comes to losing weight. Two-thirds of women in the U.S. started or re-started a weight management plan on January 1st, 2012. Other times of the year when women initiate weight-loss plans are to prep

When I would meet up with clients and friends during the latter half of 2011, people whom I hadn’t seen for months would do a double-take when they saw me. “What have you done?” they have asked. In this first post of 2012, I will share with Health Populi readers my story of 2011 — a year of living health-fully for me. One of the blessings of my work-life is that I have access to some of the great minds in health and health care. But not until I began to personally harness their wisdom, intentionally incorporating what they’ve learned into my own life-flow and

Per capita calorie intake has grown by 9 to 30 calories a day since the 1980s. Portion sizes have grown; as a result, so has the level of overweight and obesity in America. By 2020, 83% of men will be overweight or obese in the U.S.; so will 72% of U.S. women, according to Mark Huffman in a paper presented to the American Heart Association meeting in November 2011. “An individual’s decision to eat is not a result of personal weakness, but rather is determined, to a great extent, by the many environmental cues that have emerged since the early

The signs of the primary care crisis in America are visible: A growing number of visits to the emergency room for treating commonplace ailments Waiting lists for signing up with and queuing lines to see primary care doctors Fewer med students entering primary care disciplines Maldistribution of primary care practitioners (PCPs) in underserved areas, rural, exurban and urban. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act will (try to) enroll at least 30 million newly-insured health citizens into the U.S. health system. That’s the objective: whether being insured will actually provide people access to needed primary care is a big question given the current supply of

Apple has supplanted Google as the world’s #1 most valuable brand, worth more brand-wise than Microsoft and Coca-Cola combined (#5 and #6). the other most valuable global brands are IBM, McDonalds, AT&T, Marlboro, China Mobile, and GE. Technology brands have significantly grown in value with consumers allocating more personal disposable income to products like tablet computers and smartphones, even in the face of recessionary economics the world over. Technology companies are now 1/3 of the top 100 brands. Millward Brown, the brand consultancy that is part of WPP, the global communications firm, has conducted the BrandZ top 100 most valuable

As health citizens the world over vow to lose N zillion pounds in this first week of 2011, they’ll go beyond buying into Weight Watchers’ tempting offer to join “for free” (not really, folks), purchasing Home Shopping Network’s “Today’s Special” Earth brand Exer-Trainer sneaker, and getting motivated by Jillian Michaels gut-busting workouts on The Biggest Loser (her last season, by the way). People wanting to lose weight will adopt mobile health apps in record numbers in 2011. This category of mHealth apps is among the largest and most downloaded apps available. By the fourth quarter of 2011, most phones on the street

Americans trust their supermarkets and local hospitals more than other industries they deal with. while tobacco and oil companies remain at the bottom of the trust-list for U.S. consumers, health insurance and managed care aren’t much ahead of them. Pharmaceutical companies rank fairly low, with only 11% of U.S. adults seeing them as “honest and trustworthy.” As a result, nearly one-half of Americans would like to see increased regulation on pharma. Over 1 in 3 Americans would like to see managed care and health insurance companies more regulated. The latest Harris Poll has found that oil, pharmaceutical, health insurance and tobacco are

Two weeks ago at the company’s AnalystDay conference, Greg Wasson, the CEO of Walgreens, told the audience that the pharmacy chain was on a mission to “own well.” In the New York Times magazine dated November 12, 2010, an article titled Fresh Approach  talks about Walgreens work in low-income Chicago neighborhoods coupling with greengrocers to bring “food oases” to inner cities. Two weeks ago, I learned that Walgreens is teaming with Orbitz to provide travelers’ health services. Married to an international banker who travels globally, I am pleased to know he can get his esoteric inoculations in local, convenient retail mode. Walgreens’ data found that 25% of

What do Dora the Explorer, Scooby-Doo and Shrek have in common? They’re persuading kids to eat less nutritious food, according to a study in the July 2010 Pediatrics journal (Volume 126. Number 1). A team from The Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity studied children’s taste for food that’s sold in cartoon-character themed packages, versus products in plain packaging. The verdict? Kids think the cartoon-themed food tastes better.  The study was done among 40 so-called “ethnically diverse” children 4-6 years old in New Haven, CT, preschools. Health Populi’s Hot Points: Since Vance Packard wrote the seminal book on advertising, The Hidden

Health is not just the purview of  health care companies. It’s the job of all industries, according to consumers who live in 11 countries the world over. The headline finding of the 2010 Edelman Health Engagement Barometer is that Health is the New Green. As green has been a sustainability strategy for business these past several years, Health is following in Green’s footsteps, as Nancy Turett, Global President-Health for Edelman says, “to both propel and protect businesses.” Look at the chart: while nearly all consumers believe that bio/pharma, health providers, and the over-the-counter (OTC) and personal care industry should engage in health

New Yorkers who frequent Au Bon Pain, KFC, McDonald’s and Starbucks who noticed calorie counts on menu labels ordered 106 fewer calories at the point-of-purchase than people who didn’t pay attention to the information.   Here’s evidence that labeling in fast-food destinations works.   At the annual meeting of the Obesity Society in Washington DC this week, researchers are presenting results on how transparency of calorie information motivates many health citizens to change their choices based on nutritional knowledge.   Reuters reports some details from the study. Researchers in New York polled 10,000 diners at 275 locations of the most

U.S. adults spent $33.9 billion on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in 2007. The largest expenditure on CAM was on self-care costs of $22.0 billion, the largest component of which was $14.8 billion spent on non-vitamin, non-mineral natural products. In addition, Americans spent $11.9 out-of-pocket (OOP) on practitioners such as chiropractic, osteopathic manipulation, naturopathy and chelation therapy; $4.1 billion on yoga (equal to 12% of the total), $2.9 billion on homeopathy, and $0.2 billion on relaxation techniques.   The National Health Statistics Reports series published Costs of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Frequency of Visits to CAM Practitioners: United

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by Americans has held steady since 2002; however, the types of therapies adopted have changed over five years. The Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States, from the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, follows up the agency’s 2002 report. This round, NCCAM offers more details on the use of CAM in kids, as well as CAM use by demographic factors including racial and ethnic groups.   CAM is “Complementary” when used with conventional medicine, and “Alternative” when used as a substitute. The most commonly used CAM

  George Washington ate and drank here. Now, there’s a Walmart Supercenter in that spot. There’s an important crossroads in my vicinity where four major highways meet; it’s called King of Prussia, which is the intersection of the Schuylkill Expressway (I-76), the Pennsylvania Turnpike, US 422, and US 202. A new Walmart Supercenter opens at this intersection today. Across-the-street from the new Supercenter are Neiman-Marcus, Bloomingdales, and Nordstrom, along with hundreds of other retail chains in the shopping mecca known as the King of Prussia Mall. So Walmart’s on my mind. Walmart has become a sort of touchstone for me

We’d rather be healthy than wealthy, according to a new survey from Manning Selvage & Lee (MS&L), the PR firm that’s part of the global communications company, Publicis. MS&L polled Americans’ beliefs on health and self-esteem. Three-quarters (72%) of Americans say that being physically healthy is a symbol of personal success. 91% of Americans said they’d rather be described ads “healthy” than “wealthy.” 71% said they’d rather be seen as someone who “looks really healthy” vs. someone who’s nicely “put together or well-dressed.” These will be glad tidings for MS&L’s client base. MS&L serves a global health clientele which includes