Google Match Intro at I/O Conference Wisely Shies Away From "Health"

Google left out a crucial word in previewing its Google Fit data-aggregation platform this week: “health.”

Even though Apple played up the “health” angle in announcing its exciting but hardly groundbreaking HealthKit platform earlier this month, Google place the emphasis squarely on fitness. “We want to support users maintain much better track of their fitness ambitions,” Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play developers, stated for the duration of the Web giant’s yearly Google I/O developers’ conference.

“Before Google Fit, I was attempting to track and keep track of my bike rides through my bike computer, and then my weight coaching through a specialized app, and it was a large hassle,” Powers stated.

I can relate. I track my own, regular bike rides by means of a bike laptop, a GPS cycling app and a wristwatch with built-in heart-charge monitor. None of the three factors are connected to each other, and I often feel that although I’m on my bike, I’m a living, rolling instance of how wellness data lives in silos. Except for one particular issue: When individuals in well being IT talk about overall health data, they are actually referring to healthcare information. Though wellness and healthcare affect each other, they are not the same. Fitness is a form of self-care that can boost well being, but it, too, is distinct from healthcare.

That is not to say there isn’t some overlap, or that there will be convergence at some point, but Powers wisely avoided that discussion in enjoying up Google Fit, which the firm is calling a set of open APIs for aggregating information from numerous devices, like wearables. After all, she was speaking to a area total of tech developers.

Powers demonstrated how Google Fit assists a excess weight-reduction coaching app called Noom pull in exercise information, nutritional information and the user’s excess weight and “talk right to my Withings scale,” as she said. She also mentioned connections with Adidas and Nike goods.

There’s undoubtedly a cynical cause for talking about fitness and not health: the failure of Google Wellness, an overhyped, underused personalized overall health record that garnered massive headlines from a fawning consumer and tech press just for the reality that it was from Google. (Those of us who cover healthcare for a residing saw through the smokescreen.)

As a somewhat of a cynic myself, I really do not discount this concept one bit, but there is a far more practical purpose why “health” was nowhere to be identified in this presentation: fitness and healthcare nonetheless are distinct markets.People who are into fitness and participatory sports spend lots of money on gear and devices, but when it comes to healthcare, Americans anticipate a person else — typically an insurance coverage business — to spend the bill. However everybody eventually requirements healthcare, healthcare is a difficult promote to a customer audience. Fitness is a significantly less difficult sell to a hugely devoted subset of the population.

Google Match Intro at I/O Conference Wisely Shies Away From "Health"

Reduction in GP funding puts total NHS at threat, BMA conference to hear

BMA conference will hear that a real-terms reduction in funding of £450m more than the previous 3 many years has been coupled with a 40m improve in annual demand for appointments over the past five. Photograph: Burger/Phanie/REX/Rex Functions

Patients are being put at chance by “brutal disinvestment” in general practice and are now often waiting two weeks for appointments, the chair of the British Health-related Association’s GPs’ committee will warn on Wednesday.

In a speech at the yearly BMA conference, Chaand Nagpaul will warn that basic practice is “imploding”. He will say that a reduction of £450m in funding, in real terms, above the previous three years, coupled with a 40m boost in yearly demand for appointments above the past five years has place the potential of numerous surgeries, and that of the total NHS, at danger.

“The straightforward truth is that demand has far outstripped our impoverished capacity, denying patients the care and access they deserve. We’re forced into providing a conveyor belt of care at breakneck velocity, up to 60 instances in a day, extra to by an open-ended volume of mobile phone calls, property visits, repeat prescriptions, outcomes, reviews and hospital correspondence. This is unmanageable, exhausting and unsustainable, and puts safety and quality at threat.”

Nagpaul will say waiting instances for appointments are getting longer as the end result of rising pressures. “Waiting occasions are inevitably acquiring longer since the enhanced demand has not been matched with elevated capacity,” he will say. “GPs will rightly prioritise urgent difficulties. What is getting squeezed are patients with schedule issues.

“This is paining GPs. We want to give prompt and great care but it really is just proving impossible. It truly is frequent that sufferers wait over a week, some two weeks. The Royal College of GPs has accomplished a survey which exhibits that waits will enhance to two weeks in a big amount of practices in the coming year.”

Speaking before the address, he mentioned thousands could be left with no a readily available local GP altogether due to the fact of the abolition of the minimal practice cash flow guarantee (MPIG). The MPIG supports surgeries facing tough circumstances that demand added funding but is getting phased out more than a 7-year time period that began in April. Some practices have misplaced a third of their funding as a consequence of its abolition, jeopardising their quite survival, mentioned Nagpaul, who is calling for the decision to scrap the MPIG to be put on hold.

He accused the government of getting gone back on a guarantee to help 98 practices recognized by the NHS as at threat of closure. “They said final year they would supply support and now these practices are obtaining they have no assistance,” he said. “They have reneged on their guarantee.”

He explained that surgeries particularly at chance had been people that typically delivered care to vulnerable communities, be they in rural regions, inner cities or universities with massive, transient populations. Though there may be perceived to be more choices for these living in urban areas, no practices have spare capacity, according to Nagpaul, who said the closure of surgeries would place even much more pressure on individuals left to select up the pieces.

The BMA is launching a campaign known as Your GP Cares to strain the government into supplying far more GPs, practice nurses and buildings. The amount of GPs as a proportion of all medical doctors in England has fallen from from 34% to 26% in two decades and numerous current GPs are producing ideas to retire early, Nagpaul says, whilst junior physicians are increasingly shunning the profession, with 451 training areas unfilled final 12 months, since of the workload and anxiety related with the task.

He will say in his speech that the fight for the survival of common practice is the fight for the survival of the NHS itself, as just a six% reduction in GPs seeing individuals would double the numbers attending presently overstretched A&ampE departments if they went there instead.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Individuals Association, mentioned she recognised the picture painted by Nagpaul and that the risk of surgery closures was “extremely worrying. It could take place, especially in rural regions. We regularly hear from sufferers, and members of the public tell us how lengthy they have to wait, especially if they want to see a named GP, familiar with their situation. They frequently have to wait two to 3 weeks, which you cannot do if you’re unwell.”

A Department of Well being spokeswoman accused Nagpaul of “scaremongering”. She explained: “The quantity of GPs has gone up by one,000 given that 2010 and we have taken difficult choices to safeguard the NHS spending budget so we can strengthen family doctoring, reform out-of-hospital care and enhance GP entry for 7.five million men and women.

“GPs agreed to be at the heart of our radical strategies for more personalised neighborhood care in return for cutting their targets by more than a third to cost-free up more time with individuals. GPs’ premises must be fit to aid supply a single, seamless service for the elderly and the most vulnerable.”

Reduction in GP funding puts total NHS at threat, BMA conference to hear

Tim Kelsey speaks at the NHS Confederation conference: today in healthcare - reside

Great morning and welcome to our coverage of the final day at the NHS Confederation conference in Liverpool.

You can catch up with our coverage of yesterday’s events at the conference – which saw speeches from Jeremy Hunt, Norman Lamb and Andy Burnham – right here. And Wednesday’s website is here.

Today’s speakers incorporate Tim Kelsey, the NHS England national director for individuals and information, who will be discussing “the huge information revolution”, and how it will place sufferers and citizens in management.

We caught up with Kelsey earlier in in the yr at the Nuffield Trust’s health policy summit.

And the ultimate plenary speaker of this year’s conference will be clinician and campaigner Kate Granger, who wrote for the network just lately about her #hellomynameis social media campaign, which encourages care experts to introduce themselves properly to patients.

You can comply with the conference remotely by way of the Twitter hashtag #confed2014, and if you are in Liverpool, you can discover us at stand H71.

Tim Kelsey speaks at the NHS Confederation conference: today in healthcare - reside

Jeremy Hunt speaks at the NHS Confederation conference: today in healthcare - live

Dwell

Kind by:

• Newest first


• Oldest very first

9.19am BST

Norman Lamb. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA Wire/Press Association Images

Norman Lamb opens his speech by telling delegates that the NHS is “a exceptional organisation” but patients “can be left with a a distorted see, so we have to seem at the other side of the coin”.

He adds:

In the last 5 years the NHS has managed without big actual terms increases in funding this is totally unprecedented, this is an tremendous testament to the workforce and also to the leadership across the technique.

NHS finances will be 1 of the largest problem dealing with whichever government is in spot after the up coming election, says Lamb:

The NHS is not well made to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

He says the wellness support wants a vision that meets users’ wants, and funds offered now ought to be used in the greatest achievable way to support sufferers. The changes won’t come from Whitehall, says Lamb:

We have tested that method to destruction.

eight.36am BST

Great morning and welcome to day two of our coverage from the NHS Confederation annual conference in Liverpool. You can catch up with what took place yesterday – such as speeches by NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens – here.

Right now sees a trio of political speeches at the conference, starting up with an update on integration and the Far better Care Fund by Norman Lamb.

Jeremy Hunt, the wellness secretary, is due to speak at three.15 and Andy Burnham, the shadow wellness secretary, will address delegates at twelve.thirty.

Guardian health correspondent Denis Campbell reports that Burnham will use his speech to pledge to roll back the extension of competitors in the NHS that has occurred underneath the coalition if it wins subsequent year’s common election. Campbell writes that Burnham will commit to scrapping Area 75 of the Overall health and Social Care Act as part of a dismantling of guidelines which Labour claims waste essential assets.

A day-to-day blog from the Guardian healthcare network, rounding up news, comment, blogposts and tweets across the sector

‘) jQuery(‘.related-galleries-slot’).load(‘http://gdn-galleries.appspot.com/elements/galleries/relevant/box?webpage-url=’ + window.place.href) }

Jeremy Hunt speaks at the NHS Confederation conference: today in healthcare - live

These days in healthcare: Simon Stevens speaks at the NHS Confederation annual conference

Hello and welcome to the dwell blog from the Guardian’s local community for healthcare specialists. We are reporting from the NHS Confederation yearly conference, which will hear speeches from Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, Rob Webster, chief executive of NHS Confederation and Sir Stuart Rose, NHS adviser and former chief executive of Marks and Spencer.

In advance of the occasion, Dennis Campbell, health correspondent for the Guardian, wrote that only an injection of income can avert an NHS crisis. He writes:

Abruptly the rhetoric around the NHS has got extremely dramatic. The support is “at a defining second”. Says who? None other than Simon Stevens, NHS England’s new chief executive. His self-declared mission: to make the NHS sustainable. No pressure, eh? Interestingly, the ex-Labour unique adviser personally wooed by David Cameron to consider the occupation appears relaxed about being noticed so broadly as the service’s saviour.

He continues:

The Much better Care Fund, which is due to get almost £2bn out of hospitals’ £40bn-odd budgets from April 2015 in purchase to set up new services elsewhere, is a specific issue. Hospital bosses – doubtless self-interested, declare the expected 15% reduction in emergency work just is not achievable. The King’s Fund says it is “totally unrealistic” to count on that the necessary new solutions will have been produced elsewhere by April to permit this kind of a big and overnight switch of sources to occur painlessly.

Campbell has also reported that Simon Stevens is expected to say thatthe NHS must turn into planet leader in personalised medicine. Stevens will use his first main policy speech to embrace the prospective of what he calls an ongoing “worldwide health care revolution” that holds out the prospect of sufferers obtaining a much better likelihood of beating conditions this kind of as cancer.

And, Tim Kelsey, director of patient involvement at NHS England, has written that a much better NHS demands freedom for leaders. He writes about the Hurley Group – an NHS organisation that runs a variety of practices and GP stroll-in centres across the capital – which has developed a services that allows patients to seek the advice of their GP employing an on the internet instrument that captures a history which the GP can use to triage remotely.

He adds:

The well being and care services needs to learn how to liberate employees and patients – tapping into this power source is key to sustainable substantial-top quality outcomes for individuals, carers and clientele. I have made a emphasis on promoting transparency (greater data) and participation (frequently via innovative makes use of of technological innovation) as crucial to a wellness service centered on the requirements of the people it serves, but they are also instruments of leadership.

Tim Kelsey says the health service requirements to understand how to ‘liberate employees and patients’.

These days in healthcare: Simon Stevens speaks at the NHS Confederation annual conference

AstraZeneca to showcase new cancer medication at US conference

AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot is beneath pressure from traders to provide top-marketing remedies after fighting Pfizer’s bid. Photograph: Reuters

AstraZeneca will this weekend give an update on the three cancer medication that were at the centre of its succesful defence towards a £69bn takeover proposal by its US rival Pfizer.

Nearly a week soon after winning its battle for independence, the British pharmaceutical group will showcase some of its new treatments at the world’s greatest cancer conference in Chicago. All three experimental medicines, which treat lung and ovarian cancer, are to be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) yearly meeting, and AstraZeneca declare their progress is ahead of rival medication.

AstraZeneca’s boss, Pascal Soriot, is below pressure from traders to supply top-offering treatments and demonstrate that the drugmaker can thrive on its own after fighting off an undesirable approach from Pfizer, which was forced to drop its curiosity on Monday. As component of his defence approach, Soriot had pledged a 75% increase in annual product sales to $ 45bn (£27bn) by 2023, with the new cancer remedies enjoying a important function in the forecasts.

The firm will existing clinical information on its lung cancer treatments AZD9291 and MEDI4736, and the outcomes of an intermediate phase II research performed by the US Nationwide Cancer Institute on an ovarian cancer treatment method.

About thirty,000 doctors and scientists from the pharmaceutical sector, academia and the public sector are anticipated to attend the conference. Soriot is attending along with his best scientists.

Dubbed the “new wonderful white hope” in the battle against cancer, AZD9291 shrank tumours in more than half of individuals who had designed resistance to established treatments, in accordance to an early review. The experimental remedy for non-tiny-cell lung cancer, the most widespread form of lung cancer, was developed in Cheshire and has been granted breakthrough treatment standing by the US drug regulator.

It took just 10 months for AZD9291 to go from early to late-stage clinical trials, skipping the intermediage stage. Bahija Jallal, who runs AstraZeneca’s biologics arm MedImmune, told the Guardian: “It really is not quite frequently that you have a molecule that shows you action very early, at the first dose in phase I. What we can promise is we keep that momentum until finally we deliver it to individuals. When you have one thing like that on your hands it becomes almost a duty to carry it to individuals as quickly as feasible.”

Analysts at UBS note that the early final results are from a large examine, “which helps make this a a lot a lot more robust signal of efficacy” than benefits reported by AstraZeneca’s US rival Clovis Oncology for a related drug. UBS added that the outcomes “ought to considerably improve confidence in a late 2015 filing [for regulatory approval] and 2016 launch of this compound.”

Another AstraZeneca lung cancer drug, MEDI4736, has been quick-tracked to late-stage clinical trials and is being tested in blend with other compounds. AstraZeneca is in a race with Roche, Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb, who are doing work on equivalent medicines, to be very first to industry, and was the first to start late-stage testing, with a filing planned for 2016 or earlier.

Jallal stated immunotherapy, which harnesses the body’s immune method to fight disease and underpins the AZD9291 and MEDI4736 therapies, had enhanced dramatically. Ed Bradley, who heads oncology investigation and development at MedImmune, stated: “We’ve learned in excess of the last 10 to 15 years how to detect the techniques the cancer cells escape immune detection … You can now get the brakes off or place the gas on the immune program and we are seeing very durable responses in a selection of tumour sorts so we truly think that this can be transformational. The elegance of immunotherapy is that it is extended-lived.”

The new immuno-oncology medicines also have far less significant side effects than chemotherapy and other conventional treatments.

If they make it to marketplace, AstraZeneca’s new medication could flip out to be big moneyspinners – the firm forecasts peak annual sales of $ 6.5bn for MEDI4736 and $ 3bn for AZD9291 – though some City analysts have questioned whether these estimates are overly optimistic.

Pfizer’s presentations at ASCO will be a lot more lower crucial. The organization already presented its principal new cancer drug, palbociclib for breast cancer, which has been granted breakthrough therapy standing, at a conference in San Diego in April.

AstraZeneca to showcase new cancer medication at US conference

Nick Clegg"s press conference: Politics dwell website

Yesterday we identified that David Cameron has some thing in common with Politics Dwell readers (or at least the ones who post beneath the line every Thursday morning) they are all fed up with Nick Clegg. Cameron, apparently, is so exasperated by the Lib Dems that he is taking into consideration ruling out another coalition after 2015, even if he wins most seats but is quick of a bulk. Today we’ve locate out what Clegg has to say about all this, since he is holding his month-to-month press conference.

After that there’s plenty on in the Commons. Here’s the agenda.

9.45am: David Laws, the education minister, provides evidence to the Commons training committee about underachievement in white operating class youngsters.

ten.15am: Nick Clegg holds his monthly press conference.

12pm: David Cameron and Ed Miliband clash at PMQs.

twelve.30pm: Jeremy Hunt, the wellness secretary, makes an announcement about the potential of Mid-Staffs NHS Foundation Trust.

About 1.30pm: MPs begin a debate on the bedroom tax. It is on a Labour movement opposing the government’s try to shut the loophole that means folks who have been living in the exact same area considering that 1996 are exempt.

I strategy to focus nowadays on the Clegg press conference, PMQs and the Mid Staffs statement. But, as usual, I will also be flagging up any breaking political news, posting summaries with a round-up of all the day’s developments, and highlighting the most intriguing political posts on the web.

If you want to comply with me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Nick Clegg"s press conference: Politics dwell website