In a rather bizarre turn around just when the US is just waking up to the huge privacy implications of sharing their sensitive medical information with companies like Facebook & Google (who then seemingly think it’s perfectly ok to sell it onto any advertisers who pay them) the American Medical Association has “announced the AMA Health Care Interoperability and Innovation Challenge sponsored by Google to inspire novel examples of mobile health technology—such as wearable devices and applications—that effectively monitor and share medical data between patients and physicians to improve the management of chronic diseases”.

mHealth Insights

“The AMA is working to unleash a new era of patient care through its Integrated Health Model Initiative (IHMI) by pioneering a common data model for organizing and sharing meaningful health data like patient goal, state and functioning, and assembling an unprecedented collaborative effort across health care and technology stakeholders” said AMA President David O. Barbe, M.D., M.H.A.”

This is an incredible turn around as the AMA CEO has been pointing fingers at mHealth and making claims it’s little more than modern day snake oil.

“The winning ideas will demonstrate how the applicant uses patient-generated health data in meaningful ways to have maximum impact on improving physician workflow, improving clinical outcomes, and reducing cost in the health care system. The three best ideas that are submitted to the Challenge by June 7, 2018 will be selected to share $50,000 in credits for Google Cloud”

What a bizarre set of zero-actual-cost prizes. Google is highly profitable and is generating over $100,000,000,000 in annual revenues so why are the prizes being given to promising start ups being paid in ‘monopoly’ money?

I have no doubt the AMA shopped this collaboration opportunity around with Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon and in deciding to work with Google they didn’t agree to be paid for the collaboration with Google Cloud Credits (I doubt most of the executives at the AMA even know what they are).

“assembling an unprecedented collaborative effort across health care and technology stakeholder”

I’m very cynical as it’s very unlikely the AMA hasn’t seen what Apple are doing with Health Records so it just looks like Apple either refused to pay the AMA any money because their focus is on what helps Patients rather than what gets reimbursement (and so they’re going to stubbornly refuse to be positive about their ground breaking work) or this is a last ditch attempt to help steer Patient record control towards Google’s ‘freemium’ ad funded business model on the proviso that the AMA have a seat at the table.

Doesn’t sound promising for the AMA when you consider this along with Google’s track record of taking Medical Records of Patients without consent (aka theft).

FULL PRESS RELEASE: 

CHICAGO – The American Medical Association (AMA) today announced the AMA Health Care Interoperability and Innovation Challenge sponsored by Google to inspire novel examples of mobile health technology—such as wearable devices and applications—that effectively monitor and share medical data between patients and physicians to improve the management of chronic diseases.

“The AMA is working to unleash a new era of patient care through its Integrated Health Model Initiative (IHMI) by pioneering a common data model for organizing and sharing meaningful health data like patient goal, state and functioning, and assembling an unprecedented collaborative effort across health care and technology stakeholders” said AMA President David O. Barbe, M.D., M.H.A. “The Challenge we’re announcing today is an extension of the AMA’s work and will explore possible uses of mobile health technology to provide patients and physicians with a rich stream of medical data that is important for improving care and long-term wellness.”

The Challenge invites the health and technology sectors to present solutions that demonstrate how patient-generated data is captured by mobile health monitoring technology, transferred to a medical practice, and transformed into accessible and actionable information for the patient and physician to improve health outcomes.

Specifically, entrants are asked to present ideas on how to:

• Import (or transfer) patient-generated health data from a mobile device or a mobile application into one or more phases of clinical care. Examples of phases: Assessment of current condition, risk stratification, goal definition (both patient and physician), treatment plan, intervention(s), recording of observed outcomes, re-assessment.
• Extract (or transfer) data from one or more phases of the clinical care and send it back into a mobile application or mobile device so patients can view, track and ultimately act upon the information relative to their goals or share it with other physicians.

The winning ideas will demonstrate how the applicant uses patient-generated health data in meaningful ways to have maximum impact on improving physician workflow, improving clinical outcomes, and reducing cost in the health care system. The three best ideas that are submitted to the Challenge by June 7, 2018 will be selected to share $50,000 in credits for Google Cloud.

To learn more about the AMA Health Care Interoperability and Innovation Challenge sponsored by Google, go to: https://ama-ihmi.org/googlechallenge

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Media Contact:
Robert J. Mills
AMA Media & Editorial
Phone: (312) 464-5970
Email: robert.mills@ama-assn.org

About the American Medical Association
The American Medical Association is the premier national organization providing timely, essential resources to empower physicians, residents and medical students to succeed at every phase of their medical lives. Physicians have entrusted the AMA to advance the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health on behalf of patients for more than 170 years. For more information, visit ama-assn.org.