Hands to Help Seniors

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for the first time has approved a direct-to-consumer genetic test for disease risk.  This is expected to cause an explosion of new players entering the market.  A California company called 23andMe is now able to sell a test that consumers can use to find out if they have a rare gene variant for Bloom syndrome, a disease which leads to stunted growth and cancer risk in children.  More broadly, however, the FDA has signaled that they will allow companies to create test kits for various diseases, and this is expected to result in a huge change in the way people prepare to grow old.

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I wrote recently about a scam which was targeting seniors across the country.  Now police are warning local residents about the scam which has been hitting the Monterey Peninsula hard.  The Monterey County Sheriff's Office is warning about spoofing scams where con artists call and falsely have their caller ID show up on your phone as coming from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or some other government agency.  They then demand money, and have even threatened to have people's drivers licenses revoked (which even the IRS cannot do).  Over the past two years con artists have reaped $14 million from this scheme.  The IRS commissioner has come out and said the agency never makes their first contact by phone.  Mary Lesher, a Salinas resident, said she's received three or four phone calls last year and one this year.  If you receive such a call, hang up and report the caller to 1-800-366-4484 or go online to www.tigta.gov.

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At last, there appears to be a fix for Medicare payments to doctors and other health-care providers rather than the haphazard annual patchwork that legislators have passed in the past.  There's no guarantee that the bill will pass.  However, many are hopeful that the $200 billion package (over 10 years) that is before the House will go through, avoiding an automatic 21% rate cut Medicare providers will face if nothing is done.  The system has been broken for years because in 1997 a law was passed which ties payments to increases in the economy.  Since then, however, health care costs have risen more quickly than inflation and Congress has passed what has been nicknamed the "doc fix" each year rather than passing something comprehensive.

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Home health care is one of the three major verticals (along with government and education) that cable operators are touting as huge opportunities for expansion.  Earlier this month, Nizhoni Health Systems (a home health company) announced that it would be using Comcast's network.  Cable operators will be able to provide secure networks which can put home care agencies in touch with clients, and things like monitoring vital signs can be sent over secure encrypted networks to the home care agency.  Doctors would be able to check in on these patients that are at home as well.  A patient could be hooked up to a blood pressure or blood glucose monitor which could send test results directly to the physician's office.  Using nanotechnology, throat swabs could even be run to determine if the patient has the latest version of the flu without bringing them to the doctor where they could potentially infect more people.  These are all great advances which will enable clients to remain independent in their own homes while getting the advantage of personal health care monitoring without having to go to the doctor all of the time.

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The weapons that oncologists typically have against cancer have traditionally been surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.  A health care technology company based in India called Perfint has now developed a fourth—an image-guided robotic system.  Dubbed Maxio, it helps doctors get through delicate procedures.  For instance, it can help the doctor insert a needle into a tumor and then monitor the placement and effect on the tumor.  The company says its technology has now been used 1,500 times by renowned hospitals in the U.S. where it received regulatory approval last May.

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