The shocking aspect of MedLion’s new approach to primary care is its cost: $59 per month for an adult, $39 per month for seniors, and $19 per month for a child.  How is this possible?

There is an interesting read in yesterday’s Forbes Blogs. Why President Obama's Health Care plan missed the mark  In a post from Todd Ganos, he describes a new model of primary care deployed by MedLion in Northern California. 

According to Ganos, up to 40% of our primary care costs are associated with billing.  If you take out interaction with insurance companies (billing) doctors can keep costs down and spend more time with each patient.

Of course, we still need to figure out Major Medical healthcare model but think about it – if each of us focused on wellness being and staying healthy perhaps would catch medical issues before they become major.

Just a thought – what do you think?  Have any of you seen or heard of other healthcare providers practicing this model?

I just finnished reading an article from Which (www.which.co.uk) on the IFA consumer electronics show.  In it they took a look at the Tablet PC space.  There will be a considerable increase in the number of tablet PCs this year.  Which is calling many of them "more advanced" than the iPad.  In light of Apple embracing Flash, perhaps Apple is stepping up to the challenge.  Read the complete article here

Blue Marble Game Co sees extreme value in the iPad and has two titiles, in development, supported by the iPad but we look forward to incorporating other technologies.  What technologies are you using or excited about?

I was just forwarded this link from a collegue. The floor device senses movement of your feet and translates that into actions on a video game, actions on a keyboard.  It looks really cool and would be a wonderful device for foot rehabiliation activities.

Excerpt from: Multitoe floow shows us the logical next step

"Hasso Plattner Institut have put together a multitouch floor that recognizes individual users by their shoe pattern and responds to such universally familiar actions as stomping your feet and tapping your toes."

How would you use this device in your rehabiliation center?

This is a reprint from the www.hometelemed.com web page.  It is an introduction to an amzing device, the Rejoice that shows a great deal of promise in the rehabilitation space.  Imagine your patients having a suite of apparatus like this in their homes. . .

This video was put together by Alberta Innovates and published in mid-March. It features interviews with ReJoyce inventors Dr. Jan Kowalczewski and Dr. Arthur Prochazka, as well as clinical trial investigators Dr. Mary Galea and Su Ling Chong. Ginny Bockman, a study participant, is also featured.

Here’s the transcript:

Dr. Prochazka - “As far as we know, this is the first large-scale study of in-home telerehabilitation in the world. I think this is the first study where we have learned how to interact with people in their homes, take them right through a training program of many weeks, measure the outcome, and then also, of course, develop the technology that allows all of this to happen.”

Dr. Kowalczewski - “I really hope it reaches as many people as it can. The reason why I’m saying this is because we’re seeing such positive results in our studies. I really hope that anyone that’s had a stroke or spinal cord injury can really benefit from this.”

Su-ling Chong - “In conventional therapy, you go to a place and you just do the functional tasks. We sneak the functions into the game, and patients enjoy it. Most of the time I have to tell the person that their hour is up because, usually, they just want to keep going.”

Dr. Galea - “A device like the ReJoyce is useful for people because it can be installed in their own home very simply, and people can use it in the comfort of their own home without needing to travel. The telerehabilitation enables the therapist to keep in touch with them, monitor their progress, and deal with any difficulties they might be having. That is a very important way to of continuing to enable people to continue improving without tying them to the hospital’s apron strings. It allows them to get on with their own lives.”

Mrs. Bockman - “When I woke up in the hospital, I couldn’t move my arms; I couldn’t move my hands and I thought, “how am I going to live my life?” When I started doing this [ReJoyce telerehabilitation], a lot more things started coming back to me. I’m able to hold my brush, with my hand, brush my own hair, brush my own teeth, feed myself. Senses have also gone back to playing with a Sony Playstation. I can kick my husband’s but on a lot of games, and I’m happy with that.”