S1:E1 - Role of Telehealth / Remote Patient Monitoring with COVID-19

Listen to Dr. David Shulkin, Ninth Secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs serving under President Trump and the Under Secretary of Health serving under President Obama.  In addition, Dr. Bob Arnot, Senior Medical Correspondent and Tech Advisor and Dr Mehrdad Shafa, Population Health Management and Patient Centered Care discuss COVID-19, what we know about it and how can we work together to combat it.   Remember this was very early days in the Pandemic in the US (Spring 2020).

Questions that were addressed include:

• Most of us are all sheltered in our homes and taking this very seriously, how big is this going to get?  What should we be prepared for?
• How is this outbreak different or the same from previous outbreaks?
• Do you think this will be coming back in the Fall?  Or still be here?
• Telemedicine / Telehealth and Remote Patient Monitoring is rapidly being adopted in order to change the point of care to home.   Dr. Shulkin, how is the VA leveraging Telehealth, Telemedicine and Remote Patient Monitoring?
• With all the changes to Telehealth, Telemedicine and Remote Patient Monitoring and new technology / solutions that are the marketplace today, how can we leverage it with COVID-19?
• Where is our biggest bang for the effort?  (Stay-at-Home, Vaccines, Anti-Virals, Experimental Therapies, etc.)
• What are we doing to protect highly vulnerable populations? (Special Needs, Seniors, Chronic Illness, Nursing Homes, Clinical Trials, etc.).  How can we leverage Telemedicine / Telehealth and Remote Patient Monitoring to provide greater protection around this population?
• There is an example of a Thermometer company, Kinsa (San Francisco) that now has over 1 Million Thermometers (Data Points) in households in the US.   They have Heat Maps that show hotspots in near real time where temperatures are raising.   A week ago they showed a hotspot in New York, Washington and Illinois, but Florida was on Fire.   It is reported that CDC takes up to 3 weeks or more to get Flu data from Providers.   
• What is your opinion on how Telehealth / Telemedicine and Remote Patient Monitoring could provide a significant amount of biometric data points in the home to be fed to Analytic and AI models to see trends emerge in real time (or predictive)?

Please visit www.newnormal.buzz to see Webinar episodes from this past spring (2020) when we brought experts together to try and sort out our pathway forward with COVID-19. (How accurate were their warnings and predictions).

Visit our complete New Normal podcast site at: www.newnormal.buzz