Trending: Virtual Healthcare Gains Broader Acceptance
Original post benefitsnews.com
The Cadillac tax may have been postponed until 2020 but that doesn’t mean employers have put healthcare cost containment measures on the backburner. In fact, new research shows 90% of employers are planning myriad measures to control rising healthcare costs.
The 2016 Medical Plan Trends and Observations Report, released today by DirectPath and CEB, highlights top trends in employers’ 2016 healthcare strategies. Overwhelmingly, employers are continuing to shift a larger share of healthcare costs to employees, often through high-deductible health plans, according to the report.
The use of telemedicine, meanwhile, continues to grow, with almost two-thirds of organizations offering or planning to offer such a service by 2018 – a 50% increase from the previous year.
“Employees often say that they go to the emergency room because it's hard to get a doctor's appointment. With telemedicine, you've got 24/7 access and you don't necessarily need an appointment,” notes Kim Buckey, vice president of compliance communications at DirectPath. “That's certainly a huge driver of avoiding those visits to the emergency room or even the urgent care clinic because telemedicine is typically less expensive than an urgent care visit, as well.”
Buckey says it “makes sense” for employers to investigate telemedicine – the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients via phone calls, email and/or video chat – because employees are increasingly accepting of virtual access to just about everything.
“How many employees now are just grabbing their phones, iPads, or computers when they need information? That's something that people are comfortable with using and they don't have to leave their house to get quality care,” she says.
Spousal and tobacco surcharges are also expected to grow, according to the CEB data. Twelve percent of employers surveyed already have spousal surcharges in place, while 29% expect to introduce them in the next three years. Twenty-one percent of employers already have tobacco surcharges in place, while 26% expect to implement them in the next three years.
“I think we're going to see more and more of those, particularly as employers focus more on wellness initiatives,” says Buckey, adding that a robust communications plan is needed before implementing tobacco or spousal surcharges.
“People don't understand basic concepts like deductibles, co-pays, co-insurance, let alone how to make a decision about what plan to choose, or frankly, what's the best way of receiving care,” she says. “As more and more of these provisions are added to plans, they have the potential of being even more confusing and off-putting to employees, so having a robust communications plan in place that addresses all of these issues [is important]. ... There certainly will be cases where these surcharges aren't going to apply to a large percentage of the population. You just want to make sure that the folks who are affected, understand how they're affected and why.”
Regulatory clarity makes ID protection a more attractive employee benefit
Original post benefitsnews.com
Identity theft is the fastest growing crime and consumer complaint in America, and benefit industry experts say concerned employees are seeking protection as an employer perk more than ever. New regulatory certainty about how identity theft protection benefits are taxed could increase the popularity of the benefit as an employer offering.
More than 13 million Americans fall victim to identity theft every year, which means every three seconds someone's identity is stolen. Increased concern about the crime has individuals clamoring for identity theft protection benefits. How that benefit would be taxed, however, had been a topic of some debate in the benefit industry, with some employers eager to offer the benefit but concerned about the impact on employee income taxes.
In its Dec. 30 announcement, the IRS said it will allow preferential tax treatment for employer-provided identity theft benefits, despite the absence of a data breach. Generally, all benefits provided to an employee by an employer must be treated as income, unless the Code provides an exclusion. Previous guidance from the IRS created an exclusion for identity protection services, but only after a breach and only for individuals whose personal information might have been compromised.
The IRS’s latest announcement notes that several commenters requested guidance regarding the tax treatment of identity protection services provided before a data breach. According to the commenters, these services are being provided with increasing frequency in order to allow early detection of data breaches and minimize the impact of breaches when they occur. In response, the IRS has concluded that its previous guidance should be extended.
“The IRS will not assert that an individual must include in gross income the value of identity protection services provided by the individual’s employer or by another organization to which the individual provided personal information (for example, name, social security number, or banking or credit account numbers). Additionally, the IRS will not assert that an employer providing identity protection services to its employees must include the value of the identity protection services in the employees’ gross income and wages. The IRS also will not assert that these amounts must be reported on an information return (such as Form W-2 or Form 1099-MISC) filed with respect to such individuals,” the guidance states.
Any further guidance on the taxability of these benefits will be applied prospectively, it adds.
“This guidance is welcome news for employers that want to offer identity protection services to employees as part of their data security strategy. They may now offer these services without increasing their (or their employees’) federal tax liability. However, employers should be mindful of state and/or local tax laws as they may differ from federal tax law,” according to Tzvia Feiertag, a senior associate in the Labor & Employment Law Department of the global law firm Proskauer.
The preferential tax treatment does not apply to cash received in lieu of identity protection services or to proceeds received under an existing identity theft insurance policy, the guidance says.
Online job searching has doubled since 2005
Original post by Roy Maurer, shrm.org
U.S. job seekers are as likely to look for jobs online as they are to rely on friends and other contacts for connections to the job market, according to a recently released survey.
The survey on the job search methods of 2,001 U.S. adults by the Pew Research Center found that a majority of Americans (54 percent) have researched jobs on the Internet, and nearly as many (45 percent) have applied for a job online. That’s more than double the number from 2005, when 26 percent of Americans told Pew they had used the Internet to look for jobs.
Of recent job seekers—defined as the 34 percent of Americans who’ve looked for a job in the last two years—79 percent reported using resources or information they found online, while 80 percent used professional contacts and personal connections to find work.
“It’s an essential message for recruiters: Job seekers are getting their information about your jobs and your company from the Internet,” said Aaron Smith, associate director of research for Pew.
“I have been sourcing candidates online since 1997 and it has become incredibly easy to locate candidate information online with the boon of social media,” said Kelly Dingee, director of strategic recruiting at Staffing Advisors, a search firm headquartered in the Washington, D.C., area.
Recent job seekers also used employment agencies (32 percent), print advertisements (32 percent) and job fairs (28 percent) to find work.
Americans with higher educational levels are especially likely to use the Internet to seek employment, the survey found. Nearly 9 in 10 (88 percent) of those who are college graduates went online to look for a job, compared with 77 percent of those who attended but didn’t graduate from college, and 69 percent of those who’ve never been to college.
Those who are better educated were also more likely to have relied on professional connections in their most recent job search. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of college graduates did so, compared with 59 percent of those who’ve attended but not graduated from college, and 57 percent of those who’ve never attended college.
Some Lack Confidence in Online Job Search Skills
These days, many resources for job seekers are posted online and employers often expect applicants to find and apply for jobs using the Internet, e-mail or mobile applications.
“Employers push jobs out everywhere, through every social media outlet, job boards, their websites and so on,” Dingee said. “For a job seeker who just wants to take a look and see what’s available, the challenge now is, ‘Where do I look? Google? LinkedIn? CareerBuilder?’ ”
Pew found that a sizable minority of Americans lack confidence when it comes to basic computer-based job search skills such as creating a resume for online use, using e-mail to contact potential employers or filling out a job application online.
Some 17 percent of Americans said it wouldn’t be easy for them to create a resume for online use. Another 21 percent said it wouldn’t be easy to highlight their employment skills using a personal website or social media profile. Roughly 1 in 10 said it would be difficult to find available jobs online or fill out a job application online, use e-mail to contact or follow up with a potential employer, or look up online services that assist job seekers. The percentages were larger among those who have not attended college and those who are currently unemployed.
Dingee stressed the importance of creating a professional online profile. “A LinkedIn profile is a no-brainer,” she said. It should be detailed and users should spend time cultivating a network. “Many employers enable job seekers to submit their LinkedIn profile or a resume these days. Imagine if you’re applying from a mobile phone, which is easier to submit?” Dingee asked.
Don’t Overlook Growing Mobile and Social Opportunities
The percentages of Americans searching and applying for jobs using mobile devices and social media is the survey’s other big takeaway.
Some 28 percent of job seekers—including 53 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds—have used a smartphone as part of a job search. Among these Americans who have looked for a new job in the last two years:
- 94 percent have used a smartphone to browse or research job listings.
- 74 percent have used a smartphone to e-mail about a job.
- 50 percent have used a smartphone to fill out an online job application.
- 23 percent have used a smartphone to create a resume or cover letter.
“Mobile use will continue to change recruiting,” Dingee said. “As recruiters we have to make it easier for job seekers to find, apply for and share the jobs we have available.”
More than 1 in 3 social media users have relied on social media to research jobs and have used social media to tell friends about available jobs where they work. About 1 in 5 have applied for a job they learned about through social media, and 13 percent of social media users say information they’ve posted on social media helped them get a job.
“Younger users are especially active at utilizing these platforms for employment-related purposes, but many older users are taking advantage of social media when looking for work as well,” Smith said. “Roughly one-quarter of social media users ages 50 and older have used these platforms to look for work or to let their friends know about job openings, and 11 percent of older social media users have applied for a job they first found out about on social media.”
Mobile gadgets, longer hours worsening sleep
Original post shrm.org
Lack of sleep hasn’t gotten as much attention as other well-known employee health-risk factors, such as insufficient exercise, poor nutrition and high levels of stress. But sleep deprivation results in poorer health and lower productivity, and the problem appears to be getting worse, according to an October 2015 report by MAXIS Global Benefits Network, a partnership between insurance providers MetLife, in New York City, and AXA France Vie, in Paris.
The report, Sleep: A Business Case for Bedtime, notes that corporate culture often confuses long hours on the job with high performance. But lack of sleep—typically, less than six hours nightly—significantly impacts workers’ cognitive abilities and overall health.
Researchers at Cornell University’s Institute for Health and Productivity Studies analyzed medical claims from 138,820 workers younger than 65 who were covered by self-insured, employer-sponsored health insurance plans. They found that both medical and indirect costs (such as those related to missed work, or lack of concentration while at work) were about $1,253 higher per individual for workers who had insufficient sleep than for those who got enough sleep.
Smartphones and tablets may be making the problem worse on two fronts:
- They make it easier—and often expected—for employees to stay wrapped up in workplace issues late into the evening.
- “They emit blue light that the eyes confuse with daylight, lowering the presence of sleep-inducing melatonin in the brain,” Dr. Lena Johns, MetLife’s global medical and wellness director, said in an interview with SHRM Online.
“Most of the time, employees don’t know how this is harming them,” Johns explained, “because when they look at their Facebook or their messages, they get a kick of dopamine, which is very addictive. But these blue-light devices also stop melatonin from being produced. You want to educate your employees that this is what’s happening and, as a consequence, they will struggle to sleep or won’t reach a deep level of sleep and will be fatigued the next day.”
What Employers Can Do
As an example of efforts employers can make to address sleep deprivation, Johns noted that French car manufacturer Renault provides sleeping pods and encourages employees who feel fatigued to take a 20-minute power nap between 1 p.m. and 3.p.m., “which it feels is the ideal time. Even if [employees] don’t sleep, just going in there and powering down lets people unwind and relax.”
Another example: Dutch-based Shell Oil has a fatigue risk-management program, Johns said. “This system looks at staffing levels and workloads to forecast if employees have enough time to sleep each night. And that information is factored into crew policies and shift-work overtime policies,” she noted.
Johns also recommended focusing on the following areas:
- Education and awareness. Education can be provided by holding seminars with sleep-deprivation experts, sharing relevant online articles with tips on improving sleep, incorporating getting sufficient sleep into wellness program goals and making managers sensitive to issues relating to sleep-deprived workers.
- Prevention and screening. Encourage managers to make schedules more predictable, or promote telecommuting. Health assessments can screen workers for sleep disorders. For employees who volunteer to take part in sleep-screening efforts, wearable devices can report back on how much sleep they’ve had, Johns said. “This [data collection] allows for individual assessments so individuals can determine what’s causing their sleep loss and provides for personalized interventions.” (For more on wearable devices, see the box below.)
- Behavior modification. “Employers can help employees to change some of their habits, like late-night logging into computers and looking at Facebook or Twitter just before they go to sleep,” Johns said.
Addressing Shift Issues
Late-night shift workers are more prone to getting sick. “There’s a disruption of their circadian rhythm, which is the natural time clock,” Johns said. “People who work in shifts have poorer immunity and are 2.9 times more likely to get colds and infections. There’s higher risk of hypertension and stroke.”
When night workers finish their shifts, it’s often daytime, “so they could use something to block the sunlight from entering their eyes,” Johns said, such as by wearing a blue-light blocking sunshade that looks like amber-colored sunglasses. By reducing exposure to daylight, night-shift workers are more likely to be able to sleep, and sleep soundly, once they’re home in bed.
Education can be targeted directly to the shift workers about when they should go to sleep in the morning, when they should wake up prior to their shift and what kind of light they should have during their night shift.
“It’s time to draw attention to this,” Johns said.
Protect trade secrets, avoid the burn
Original story posted by Roy Maurer on Society for Human Resources Management website.
An appellate court recently struck down a company’s trade secrets misappropriation claims because the company failed to protect its intellectual property (IP) as confidential or proprietary.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled in Head Over Heels Gymnastics Inc. v. Ware that defendant Harriet Ware did not steal her former employer’s trade secrets because the information at issue was never identified as such.
Ware was hired as an at-will employee in 2006 to work with gymnasts at Head Over Heels gymnastics academy in Norwell, Mass. When she accepted the position, Ware acknowledged that she had received and understood the employee handbook, which failed to include a noncompetition covenant or any mention of trade secrets.
Head Over Heels maintained a list of the people who trained at the school, including their names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. The information was available to all employees and was never identified as confidential or proprietary.
When Ware was terminated in 2012, she opened an academy of her own, taking approximately 30 Head Over Heels gymnasts with her.
The company sued, alleging that Ware misappropriated its trade secrets, violated her duty of loyalty by contacting its customers and unfairly competed with it.
The court held that because Ware was an at-will employee, she owed Head Over Heels no particular duty of loyalty and was free to “plan to go into competition with ... her employer and take active steps to do so even while still employed.” Further, absent a noncompetition agreement, Ware’s ability to compete with Head Over Heels was not constrained. Lastly, the court determined that Ware did not misappropriate her employer’s trade secrets because the school’s customer list was not legally considered a trade secret.
The court said that in determining whether information is proprietary to a business, “we look to the conduct of the parties and the nature of the information.” A determination about confidentiality is based on several factors, “including the extent to which the information is known outside of the business, the extent of measures taken by the employer to guard the secrecy of the information and the ease or difficulty with which the information could be properly acquired.”
Head Over Heels argued that everyone at the company understood that its customer list was intended solely for the purpose of the business and was neither publicly known nor available.
Nevertheless, the court ruled that, “as a matter of law, the [customer lists] are not trade secrets or confidential proprietary information. It is undisputed that the [customer lists] were available to all staff and employees and were distributed to Head Over Heels’ gymnasts and their families. The broad dissemination and availability of the [customer lists] indicates that Head Over Heels was not trying to guard the secrecy of the information. Importantly, much of the information found in the [customer lists] was readily available in the public domain and could have been easily obtained.”
The court therefore deemed Head Over Heels’ trade secret claims “unrealistic.”
Employer Takeaways
What can employers do to protect against confidential information being used by a former employee? “For starters, if you have confidential information, let everyone with access to it know that it is confidential, either through a designation in the company handbook, when they are given access to the information for the first time or any other obvious way,” said Shepard Davidson, a partner at Burns & Levinson LLP based in Boston.
Limiting access to the information and keeping it secure are additional ways to preserve confidentiality, he said. Training and reminding departing employees about their confidentiality obligations during exit interviews are also good ideas.
“The good news is that a company’s efforts in this regard are measured by a standard of reasonableness, not perfection. So if you have information that you believe is important, confidential or propriety, take some time to set up reasonable systems to protect that information,” Davidson said.
Follow Roy Maurer on Twitter at @SHRMRoy
The App Will See You Now, But May Not Get The Diagnosis Right
Originally posted by Martha Bebinger on July 9, 2015 on khn.org.
There’s a warning out today for those who go online or to apps to figure out why they have an upset tummy or nagging cough or occasional chest pain. Symptom checkers, those tools that ask for information and suggest a diagnosis, are accurate only about half of the time.
The finding is from a Harvard Medical School study that reviewed 23 sites, such as WebMD, the Mayo Clinic and DocResponse. One third listed the correct diagnosis as the first option for patients. Half the sites had the right diagnosis among their top three results, and 58 percent listed it in their top 20 suggestions.
Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, one of the study’s authors, urges patients to be cautious when using these tools.“These sites are not a replacement for going to the doctor and getting a full evaluation and diagnosis,” he says. “They are simply providing some information on what might be going on with you.” About a third of U.S. adults use the sites, although not necessarily in place of going to the doctor.
Some of the diagnostic questions are also used by nurse triage phone services and, Mehrotra says, these online tools are about as accurate as the call-in lines offered by many insurers and physician groups. “[They are] better than just a random Internet search,” he said.
Researchers entered the symptoms of 45 patients from vignettes used to train medical students. The Mayo Clinic’s first online diagnosis was right only 17 percent of the time, but had the correct diagnosis on a list of 20 in 76 percent of cases. Dr. John Wilkinson, who works on Mayo’s symptom checker, says the tool directs patients to medical research and prepares them to talk to their doctor.
“We’re always trying to improve but if most of the time the correct diagnosis is included in the list of possibilities, that’s all we’re attempting to do,” he says.
The diagnosis accuracy rate for physicians is 85 to 90 percent. But Jason Maude, who runs a high performing tool called Isabel, says he does not want a Web versus doctor showdown.
“The whole point is not to set the patient against the doctor or replace the doctor, but to make the patient much better informed and to ask the doctor much better questions, and then together they should do a much better job,” he says.
Isabel ranked well in the study, showing the correct answer more than 40 percent of the time in the first diagnosis and 84 percent in the top 20 answers. Those high results, Maude says, may be because the site lets patients type in their own description of symptoms. They might describe a “tummy ache” or “stomach cramps” rather than the more clinical choice of “abdominal pain” used by many online symptom checker tools. And Isabel asks just two or three questions before patients describe their problem, as compared to sites that ask patients to click through 20 questions — steps Maude said may discourage use.
Clarifying how and why patients use these tools is critical, say the study’s authors. They could reduce unnecessary office visits or inform patients as they talk with their doctors. But for some, the tools may encourage people to seek unnecessary care.
Mehrotra says patients used symptom checkers more than 100 million times last year, a fact that may stun some physicians.
“While most doctors know patients are going to the Internet to search for medical advice, in terms of these symptom checkers, I’ve been surprised that few of my colleagues even knew they existed,” he says.
The Most Dangerous Identity Theft Threat
Originally posted by Adam Levin on August 6, 2015 on huffingtonpost.com.
Last weekend, TheUpshot published the most dangerous identity theft threat: the non-expert's tendency to underestimate the magnitude of problem. The piece in question argued that the consequences of most identity theft have been exaggerated (by identity theft experts like me), and that, "only a tiny number of people exposed by leaks end up paying any costs."
The main source for TheUpshot's argument seems to be the 2015 Identity Fraud Report (covering data from 2014) published by Javelin Strategy and Research, which found a dramatic increase in account takeovers (i.e., when a fraudster is able to get through the authentication process on an existing credit account and make charges) but an overall decrease in the amount of money lost to identity-related fraud.
To think that the 2015 Javelin report minimizes the threat of mega data breaches to consumers is to misread it. To suggest that the threat is overstated is both simplistic and harmful to consumers. The article focuses too much on account takeover resulting from big-name hacks like Target (a very common form of identity theft). Meanwhile, it gives nowhere near enough attention to the very real and long-lasting effects of more serious forms of identity theft - the kind that's committed using Social Security numbers - and the equally big-name hacks like Anthem, Premera, and the Office of Personnel Management that exposed millions of records containing that data.
The Buck Doesn't Stop With the Bank
TheUpshot dismisses the consumer cost of most data breaches (beyond lost time and annoyance) because "several laws protect consumers from bearing almost any financial losses related to hackers." TheUpshot continues, "...banks and merchants, like Target, must bear the cost. But even their losses have been dropping in recent years, as data security experts have learned new strategies to prevent intrusions from turning into theft."
First of all, banks do not bear all the costs if they can help it. They pass it along to the company that caused the problem in the form of fines and penalties, and in some cases the company is only alleged to be the cause of the problem. It is very hard for small businesses to fight card companies on these charges. So when it happens, it can be a near extinction-level event, or force price changes. And, of course, that cost often manifests itself at the consumer level.
Additionally, according to at least one recent report, the cost of a data breach to businesses has not been going down, as stated by TheUpshot. On May 27, IBM and the Ponemon Institute jointly reported the cost per breached record had increased by 12% over the preceding year, from $145 to $154, and that the average total cost of a data breach to an enterprise rose a not inconsiderable 23% to $3.79 million.
And it bears repeating: While it's all very populist and fair-weather foppery to say that companies like Target and Home Depot can foot the bill of a breach, the same cannot be said of smaller businesses--after all, breaches are not confined to big companies.
5% Is a Huge Number
TheUpshot's big reveal: "The more troubling identity theft, in which new accounts are opened in an unsuspecting person's name, make up only 5 percent of the total figure given by Javelin."
To the uninitiated eye, 5% sounds like a small number. But it's missing context.
"Although we have no data to support what percentage of breaches turn into identity theft cases," according to Brent Montgomery, Fraud Operations Manager at my company IDT911, "5% is a lot."
In 2014 there were 12.7 million identity fraud victims, according to Javelin. Just 5% of that total is 635,000 consumers--hardly a negligible number.
Montgomery then highlighted the essence of the problem here: "There are so many breaches on a daily basis that information can be pieced together from one breach to another giving a criminal all they need to complete the puzzle."
TheUpshot fails to account for the long tail of identity theft--the fact that scams are pieced together using data harvested from countless individual and corporate compromises oftentimes sold and resold on the data black market. A scam that happens today may use data that was compromised three years ago--especially when Social Security numbers are involved since their only expiration date is when the holder of those nine digits expires.
Another problem with using the Javelin report is that the data is extrapolated from a relatively small sample of the population, whereas the Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book for January-December 2014 is driven by hundreds of thousands of pieces of consumer-reported data. That matters here because on page 13 of the Sentinel report, you will find a higher incidence of new account creation (12.5%) than fraud on existing accounts (4.9%).
There Are Very Serious Identity Theft Threats
While instances of new account fraud and some signs of existing account takeover can show up on your credit reports (you can get them for free once a year on AnnualCreditReport.com), other types of identity theft are less detectable - until they really cause damage. Of greater concern is what does happen to consumers whose information falls into the wrong hands--specifically their most sensitive information. Mentioned nowhere in the article is tax fraud, a crime that is most definitely on the rise and cannot be resolved easily or quickly (think: 6-12 months). Equally absent in this Panglossian take on what really is an identity theft epidemic: medical identity theft, which is extremely difficult to detect, equally difficult to resolve and can have potentially life-threatening consequences.
The bottom line is that while it's easy to dismiss identity theft experts as being the equivalent of "the soap company that advertises how many different types of bacteria are on a subway pole without mentioning how unlikely it is that any of those bacteria would make you sick," it is irresponsible to downplay the various serious risks now facing millions of Americans whose most sensitive personal information has been exposed in the breaches of Anthem, Premera, Sony Pictures and the Office of Personnel Management, to name a few. The threat for them is very real, and long-term--perhaps a lifetime.
Can your smartphone tell you if you have depression?
Originally posted by Carina Storrs on CNN.com on July 15, 2015.
Getting a diagnosis of depression usually involves filling out questionnaires about your mood and undergoing lengthy interviews with a psychiatrist. But smartphone apps might be able to handle some of that work, and at least tell you if you are at risk of depression, simply by collecting GPS and other data, according to a new study.
Researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois tested an app they developed called Purple Robot. It uses data from a number of sensors in the smartphone that detect location, movement, phone usage and other activities to assess if a user is likely to have depression.
"The main reason for the development of the app is to see if we can objectively and passively identify if people are depressed," said Sohrob Saeb, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University who is one of the developers of Purple Robot.
In the study of Purple Robot, Saeb and his colleagues at Northwestern and Michigan State University looked at GPS or phone usage data among 28 participants for two weeks.
They found that Purple Robot could identify 87% of the participants in the group who were determined to be at risk of depression according to PHQ-9, a nine-question test for depression, based only on GPS data on how much users moved between their regular locations. The more users moved around, the less likely they were to fall into the at-risk category.
In addition, by identifying the participants who used their phone the most, including everything from texting and playing games but not talking on the phone, Purple Robot could detect 74% of those in the at-risk group. Data on both GPS and phone usage were not available for enough participants to let the researchers see how well Purple Robot performed when both data sets were available, Saeb said.
However, PHQ-9 is only a screening tool that tells you if you have an above-average chance of having depression and is not enough to diagnose depression, said Dr. Scott Monteith, clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University, who has not been involved in developing or researching Purple Robot or other smartphone apps.
The way the test was used in the study, with a low cutoff score, it probably incorrectly identified many of the participants as being at risk of depression who were not, he added.
To get a better idea of the effectiveness of Purple Robot, the researchers are going to do a study involving more participants over a longer period to see if the app can detect changes in behavior over time, Saeb said. In addition, the group will see if they can improve Purple Robot's ability to spot depression by including additional data, such as how long people talk on the phone and who they talk to.
Depression is a debilitating illness that affects about 17% of people at some point in their lives. Meanwhile, it is estimated that by 2025 more than 5 billion people in the world will have a smartphone, and their sensing capability will be above and beyond that of today's iPhones, Androids and Blackberries.
There are probably hundreds of apps that promise to improve your mental health, from offering tests to gauge your depression risk to providing information about depression treatments. Others, like Purple Robot, are in the development stage.
Optimism and DBSA Wellness Tracker are two of the apps on the market that track your mood. Ginger.io goes further and analyzes data such as how much users move around on the weekends and how long they talk on the phone, as well as users' reports of their health, to alert them and their health care providers about concerns with their behavior and mental health. Ginger.io, which is in use at about 30 medical centers, is available through health care providers and as part of research studies.
However the problem with all the apps that are designed to warn about depression risk is that their effectiveness has not been demonstrated, Monteith said.
It is not clear how good these apps are at picking out people who have depression, Monteith said. What's more, it is not clear how these apps would be "embedded into a broader continuum of care" to ensure that a person or their doctor went from getting an alert from the app, for example, to that person getting a diagnosis of depression and getting proper care, he added.
Even if researchers can get a better handle on the effectiveness of these apps, there are still numerous questions regarding risks, especially about the data they collect not being secure and private, Monteith said.
"The data from these types of apps could potentially end up in anyone's hands, if the data are moved offshore, which a lot are," said Monteith, who co-wrote a recent article on health care data privacy. Another way data security could be compromised is that when a company is bought, the buyer may not have to adhere to the original terms and conditions about how the data are used, he added.
Experts including Monteith worry that once data get into the wrong hands, that could potentially jeopardize a person's ability to get a job, get life insurance or get a loan.
The best way to keep data secure, at least from hackers and thieves, would be to make sure the users control their data, such as by keeping it stored encrypted on their phone, and have apps analyze the data on phones, and never have it sent back to the app developers or other companies, according to Dr. Deborah C. Peel, leader of Patient Privacy Rights, a nonprofit advocacy organization. Monteith is on the advisory board of Patient Privacy Rights.
As for Purple Robot, some of these concerns may not apply for now. Saeb and his colleagues work with encrypted data. However if they eventually make the app public, if they can demonstrate its effectiveness, they would have all the data on secure servers at Northwestern. This type of data centralization, even on secure servers, is a "honeypot" for hackers, Peel said.
So far, the analyses that Purple Robot is doing are really only for research purposes, Saeb stressed. In addition to the work he is involved in, there is also research on whether the app can pick up signs of bipolar disorder among users.
The app gets its name because the color of Northwestern University is purple, and because the developers hope the app can act like a robot and automatically alert a user of his or her mental health risk and also make recommendations to possibly mitigate the risk, such as using the phone less or getting out of the house, Saeb said.
Despite concerns surrounding these apps, Monteith said he is "totally in favor of research [on them], that's what we need to do." However, he urged that researchers consider both effectiveness and risks in their studies. "We need to look at what the FDA looks at" when deciding whether to approve medical treatments and devices, Monteith said.
Communicating With Your Doctor On Facebook May Be The Future Of Healthcare
Originally posted by Carolyn Gregoire on June 20, 2015 on huffingtonpost.com.
We communicate with our friends, our families and our coworkers via email and Facebook, and apparently, most Americans also wish that they could keep in touch with their health care providers this way.
A national survey of 2,252 pharmacy customers conducted by Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health highlights the gap between what patients want from their health care providers in terms of communication and engagement, and what they're actually getting.
"This study tells us that for most patients, healthcare isn’t quite ready for the future," Joy Lee, a post-doctoral fellow at the university, told The Huffington Post.
In fact, there's something of a patient engagement paradox in healthcare, Lee said.
"On the one hand, doctors, policymakers, and researchers often talk about the need to engage patients," she explained. On the other hand, many patients are already engaged -- in Facebook and other online communities. Yet instead of embracing this connection, medicine is preoccupied with confidentiality and drawing professional boundaries.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents -- who were generally educated, healthy and regular users of Facebook -- said that they were very interested in using Facebook and email to communicate with their physicians and to manage their health. More than half of respondents also said that they wanted to use their physicians' websites to access health information.
More than a third said that they already communicated with their doctors via email, and 18 percent said they connected with their doctors on Facebook, a surprising finding considering that many health care providers have rules barring this mode of interaction with patients due to privacy concerns and ethical guidelines for physicians.
Young adults -- as well as caregivers, patients with chronic conditions, and regular Facebook users -- were more likely to communicate with their doctors via email and Facebook.
Lee emphasized that of course, it's critical to safeguard patient information. But "Health care organizations need to figure out how to take advantage of resources like Facebook," she added.
They're already on the way. As part of the growing telehealth movement, many doctors and health care organizations have electronic systems that patients can use for things like messaging, accessing test results and personal information, and health tracking.
"Many patients are interested in [these services] but few are actually using them -- possibly because patients don’t know they’re available," Lee said. "Doctors and health care organizations should take steps to publicize and educate patients of these opportunities. Either way, it starts with a conversation between patients and doctors on how they prefer to communicate online."
The study was published this month in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Anatomy of a Hack
Originally posted by Zurich American Insurance Company.
Once hackers set their sights on a target with access to sensitive company information, attacks may ensue from multiple directions – in the office, at home or on the move. Anatomy of a Hack describes what you and your company can do to help limit exposures.
The risk of having sensitive company data lost and stolen has grown exponentially over the last few years, largely due to the increased use of the Internet and the interconnectedness of everything we do. As the likelihood of a data breach continually escalates, so does the cost.
Read more here.
Check out the “Anatomy of a Hack” infographic here.
Copyright © 2015 Zurich American Insurance Company