I just returned home from a trip to Washington D.C. where Halo Monitoring was invited to participate in a NIH Workshop on personal motion technologies for healthy independent living.  It was exciting to be present for a multidisciplinary workshop.  The team included 20-25 top scientists, physicians, engineers, and clinicians discussing assistive technologies.

Speakers included representatives from NIH, NIA, NIBIB, Alzheimer’s Association, CAST/AAHSA, and a number of leading research universities.

I was the lone CEO/entrepreneur in the group and was honored to be invited to the workshop and sit with such an esteemed group.

Presentations covered -

• Detecting motion patterns as early indicators of illness, disease
• Remote monitoring technologies
• Coping with impairments
• Cognitive impairments
• Rehabilitation and exercise at home
• Addressing the needs of the caregivers

Of course, I spoke on myHalo – gave an overview of our unique and advanced remote monitoring system for the elderly.  I also spoke to how we are currently serving seniors, saving lives, and improving the quality of life.  I also spoke to challenges with mass adoption (primarily awareness and financial hurdles).

The workshop also provided a fertile venue for deep discussion on a variety of topics -

• Use cases, experiences, and lessons learned form clinicians deploying assistive technology or remote monitoring
• Political, social, and financial challenges to overcome – such as reimbursement strategies, privacy concerns, the best modalities for sensing, senior reactions to devices and technologies.
• Care models – how technology must be integrated into existing care models or models must be changed
• Compliance challenges – ensuring seniors adhere to the program providing benefits
• Healthcare reform, CLASS Act – which provides for a national insurance trust providing cash benefits for those providing informal care for elderly adults, including support for products and services. Details should be available by late 2011.

I am very excited to see workshops like these as it provides a forum for sharing ideas and discussing volatile topics.  Since we began our mission nearly four years ago, we have seen much progress in the industry; however, it is still clear that we have some hurdles to overcome before the right technology is readily available and accessible for those seniors that need it most.  We are proud to be recognized and on the forefront of this effort.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 26th, 2010 at 1:54 PM and is filed under Halo Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.