Contenders, i dont know. [laughter] the communicators announcer live coverage of the white house Correspondents Dinner today on cspan. Announcer cspan, brought to you by americas Cable Companies 32 years ago. And now on your screen, the Convention Hall to the International Tradeshow and the communicators is on location. This week, we will look at some of the technology that is coming out, and look at some of the people who are bringing that technology. This is the communicators. Now i want to introduce you to dr. Michael blum at the university of california, san francisco. Dr. Blum i am the director of the university of california san franciscos center for Digital Health innovation, and we look at patient portals and things like that, but we are also working at a very transformative time and we look at traditional patient care moving into new technology that will have dramatic impact and have a transition out of this time where we have patience who patients who are managed and we are looking at Preventative Care and wellness preservation and we are actually transitioning to the best thing that we can do, but to keep you out of our grasp altogether, and that means wellness management, prevention, but that means when you are, you give out some of these im using new technologies to help manage some of those diseases, and transmitting the knowledge out of these new digital technologies, these new sensors, algorithms cloudbased technologies all of these new buzzwords, and get that knowledge to your provider, so you have a doctor, a nurse, a physicians assistant, all of those people who can provide care to you, means that you dont have to come to the office and sit anymore and look at the white walls and wait for things to happen. In these new technologies, they are all here. These sensors are all getting invented and started to come to the patients who are here, and there is a Big Partnership with samsung in a very big way, and they are all here, so that is why i am here. Peter slen peter did you talk . Dr. Blum i did, we talked with samsung and discussed new collaborations that are happening and medical centers and Big Technology companies who have been leaders and asking about what they are doing in health care and why are they in health care and we looked at this and really explained how you have to bring together these two very different organizations, these two are friend dnas and cultures and as an Academic Health center, we are not going to build a huge cloud database, that is what they are going to do. They are great at that stuff. But they dont know anything about the clinical process or Clinical Trials or biological systems. So we are working on these novel partnerships and trying to marry the two of them. Peter you are also the head of the new center for Digital Health innovations at ucsf which is looking at a number of different technologies, so we have that. Dr. Blum thats right, and we come up with really interesting ideas that are based on frontline problems, and they are doing research, and they say, here is a problem that has plagued us for years and we look at the Digital Solutions to these platforms so if we have this great solution and the technology you can bring to it, now you have a problemsolving technology as opposed to a lot of the technologies that come to an engineering space. We would invent a great new technology and now lets go find a problem that we can solve with it. We develop a solution and then we build it out from proof to concept and then if it is relevant to our trial, then we may be taken to another local institution and proves that it works in more than one institution. And then a scale it out and bring it to the rest of the world. At the end of the day, our responsibility is really to create innovation and invention and new innovations and get it out of california and out nationally. We cannot do that by ourselves so we created the center for Digital Health innovation so we can create a very large example of this and we also work with startups. We work with startups as well as Midsize Companies and big sized companies and we started with over 100 startups last year and now we have very good relationships with three or four startups that are moving through the process and it is really exciting and we are on the leading edge of this transformation that is going on in health care. Everyone thinks that Health Care Reform means that Health Care Exchange and Health Insurance are changing, but there is a much deeper change happening. Peter can you give an example of how we are you just how we are using Digital Health today . Dr. Blum traditionally, if we were worried about your heart rhythm or your Blood Pressure, you would come to the office and get an ekg and we would take your Blood Pressure and we would try to make dedication adjustments based on that. But it is kind of silly if you think about that, because you live your life and you are going to your cardiologist and your primary care dr. And they see you one time a year, but these are things that are happening every single day. Now we have technology that can look at your blood rate continuously, look at your heart rate continuously, and send that up to the cloud, and we know this thing is changing in you even before you notice. Or you can be telling us, all i have something very terrible going on with my heart rhythm, and then we can look at it and say, oh there is nothing, so you dont have to come into the office. Kind of like a problem that you have with your car and you experience that problem and you take it in and it never does anything wrong at the dealership. Now there could be a little bit of a creepy factor going on in there because we are watching and we are seeing what is going on but one way about this is that it is keeping people healthy and we are going to discovered incredible new insights as to what is going on and when you watch over time and when you are not looking at this spot checking. And the vast majority of this is done through Clinical Trials, or you can go to the office and visit once or twice a year, and then we do that for a lot of people but those might not be relevant to you as an individual, and they might not he relevant as far as periodic developments because they were small snapshots in time. When you think about what your Blood Pressure should be then when you are just in the office having it measured, there is a difference, so on the cusp, we are looking at a very big difference in the past 150 through 200 years. We also have a trial going on call be Healthy Heart study where we have new devices and new sensors and redeveloping the grandfather of cardiology studies called the framingham studies, and we are going to redo that with 5000 people over about 40 different years and we are going to redo that study that had 5000 people over about 40 different years and we are going to do it with 100,000 over a short. Of time, and they dont ever have to come in and cs, and we can get all of that information. Peter what do these sensors look like and where does one wear them . Dr. Blum these used to be very big and very bulky but they are rapidly getting very miniaturized. There are certainly are some that are big but some of the major cardiology vendors have implant a bold devices where you can watch your heart rate all the time, but i think an incremental improvement as opposed to a traditional approach to it will be a much less invasive approach to it, and it used to be really wanted to monitor your heart rhythm, we would have you be hooked up at we would have you walk around with a big box about one week or two weeks, and now we have this very small thing where you stick it on your chest and it talks to user your phone and you can upload the information right then. So that is a very good example. So samsung has developed a watch that will measure your heart rate your Blood Pressure, your heart rate variability oxygen saturation, and a whole new host of sensors that we have not been able to do without taking blood before will be coming down the road as well. There are lots of engineers try to figure out how to use a Sensor Technologies that we have not even thought of. We are now getting into that star trek kind of stuff. Peter you mentioned earlier there was a creepy factor. Dr. Blum one thing i tell startups when we talk all the time is that you have to give up privacy from the get go. A lot of these developers are young and they grew up with facebook or snap chat and they dont really think about this, so they have to get into the new mode of thinking and they hold it very dear to them and this is health care, so when you are designing a basic technology, youve got to build private security into that, and such to a point where there is federal Security Issues around that point. Then the question is, do we want to combine this data with other peoples data, and how do you do that and protect privacy . Eventually we are going to be collecting data, and eventually we will collect genomes and there is no way to have the same genome unless you are an identical twin, and even that can be problematic, so we have these very fine data sets, but at the same time, we have that power of combining all of that data and so it raises the point that we should have a very open, honest, and fundamental discussion of how much privacy that we need and are we willing to give up that privacy with our Health Care Data from it Health Care Data . At the other end, you are combining all of this with the big data sets and you want to protect this and then you get tremendous power and you can go to other people but you might not want your Health Insurers to see parts of this and your employers, but we can take care of all of that stuff and we can get to where we are going to become triple on that spectrum but we have to get past the loud yelling that everything has to be ultraprivate and we are going to make more laws to make sure that and it hinders instead of advances the field and Everyone Wants to believe that data has to be protected but new regulations and new penalties about how it needs to be private hinders things. We have not had a natural naturally known National Discussion on this Information Exchange which is one of the biggest problem and causes of that because we do not know who is who because we do not have a national database. All of the countries with a Good Health Care system has a national database, but we have very vote goal advocates who do not want that very vocal advocates who do not want that. Peter how much is this going to cost . Dr. Blum the center for Digital Health innovation does not look at things that are more elaborate and more expensive, we look at relatively commoditybased technologies so you get the obvious stuff, like if i can prevent you from getting really sick and going into the hospital, that is a very aches savings, and it keeps you out of my budget. So if we can do prevention better than we can also help with Behavioral Health issues and weight issues and Smoking Cessation and things that we really know that can take a difference make a difference, then that kindle along way, and if the technology is done right the technology is not really that expensive. The technologies are getting much much cheaper, so hopefully, the goal and the desire that we dont and to the system, but we prevent that things from happening and prevent people from going back to the hospital we can do with this new technology. Peter five years down the road, how do you see this new technology . Dr. Blum i think what we hope to see is that it becomes integrated into your life in a not creepy kind of way that allows us to already keep track of a person ends helps them, think about aging and elderly grandparents, someone you dont want to put into a facility someone that you can provide support to, maybe they are not as active as much and they dont have much going on, or i see their Blood Pressure is too low so i can call the doctor and say, maybe we need to check on them. So it levels of monitoring that people feel comfortable with so it is going to vary for everyone just as long as they are more comfortable with these technologies, it is going to change over time. Peter how do you view the Technology Issues . Dr. Blum i am little am a little bit of a geek at heart and i was an engineering undergrad before i went to medical school, so i was taking apart broken things and some not so broken things when i was at the house and it is just a fantastic time to be working in this space and we really have the opportunity to fundamentally transform in a way that will really center people, and again, i am not talking about a way of rearranging your Health Insurance, but how we provide care for you and how we keep you in a healthy place. Peter do websites like web md. Com webmed. Com help you . Dr. Blum initially, i would say yes, and we were fearful that someone would come into our office and plop down a piece of paper and say, tell me what this means, and this really rarely every happens. It is actually pretty rare where i have a difficult discussion about going and explaining to them that they went to a website that is not viable and it does not have good data, and so they go to a website and they educate themselves and they have a much better starting place for a conversation and having an educated patient is a much better place to start from. Peter michael blum, ucsf, head of the university of california, san franciscos center for Digital Health innovation. Thank you so much for being here, it was great talking to you. One of the things that we notice here in the las vegas is this area is for startups and new companies and new technologies and what we have here is the nsf center for sensorimotor neural engineering technologies. As you can see we have a number of Industrial Partners participate here and that helps us to go through this Breakthrough Technology that we develop and get into the virtual realm. Peter what do you do and what is your role with this technology . I am a phd student in the bioengineering department at the university of washington, and so the center in itself is a partnership between a couple of different universities, and we work with m. I. T. And San Diego State university, and all of this through a funded research center. The center as a whole is working on trying to help people with disabilities try to regain a motor functions, whether it is someone with a stroke or spinal cord injuries, so their motor functions are damaged. We are developing technologies to report to the brain and use that signal that will help the person either control through eight computer cursor or an interface type network or a robotic arm. We are actually just trying to restimulate the body and bridge that gap across the spinal cord if it is a spinal cord injury. Peter you got some examples here, so why do you walk us through it . We have a quarterlong course that i worked on and this is a shorter Term Solution to try to help people who have a stroke to redevelop their motor functions. When someone is in the hospital they get sent home with a set of directions, they tend to not follow through all of the way but mostly because they are not as engaging as they could be, but some people just get discouraged because they do not see their functions increasing so we created a game that goes through the tasks of what a person should be doing. This was a really simple example of the person who is instructed to move her hand back and forth before a sensor, and hopefully this is a little bit more fun and engaging for them and it also provides realtime need back as to how they are doing. Peter so this is the sensor here and i am so just wait it and forth a little bit and peter there you go there you go [laughter] this kind of get your forearm to reactivate a little bit, and the more your body can exercise the more your brain can retrain and get the information it needs to get full mobility. One of the things we are working on started last march is to get funding to try and work with patients in february to get feedback in terms of developing more games and better games and work on that, and one of our end goals is to go to the patient treatment and therapy process and so we are looking forward to that. Peter dr. Graham, what has been your role in this process . Dr. Graham this is actually a start up, and the start up is for commercialization and it provides support to services for people who wants to start a company, and that can include funding and coaching on how to start a business. Peter this is terry grant and terry graham and tyler lighting livey at ces international in las vegas. Announcer we also visited a tech show and talked with representatives regarding technology. Peter what is the product that you are demonstrating here on capitol hill . We are demonstrating a mobile medical lab that we are showcasing here tonight and we want millions of americans to be safe with their medical records in their hands and so the blue button association would give americans easy access to their records, but this will help you download information from medical care and it will help you to try to download this record and to print this so it is very user friendly with several pages of text in english. You can run this on your phone and gives you your medicare records, your v. A. Records and you can have this on your phone in english and then you can share it anywhere with your doctors. Peter i am going to hold this if that is ok and then you can push the button. All right, so the icon is called blue button, and it is a passwordprotected app, and we have an easy one here just for me to remember, but you should make it more difficult, and this is an app with different memberships for your family. This individual has a disability and is under medicare and this person is a veteran and so because she is on medicare with this app she can look at her blue button medicare records and you can look at something that is very user friendly. You can read your medical records directly on your phone. It is not in the cloud, it cannot be hacked, it is safely on your phone. Your medication is listed in all of its detail and when you are asked you can see all of your conditions, and you can see my name because it identifies records, and we download the records and everything is there. Same thing here, same thing for dod, you can download the dod records, and they can carry their records on their phones thanks to blue button and they have their v. A. Records and their dod records. Peter is this available now . Absolutely. Peter is this a free app or does it cost . I wish it would be free, but if it were free, we are a Small Company and we have already spent millions on this app, so peter so is it simply an interface that makes your data more clear . It is a way of seeing your records in plain english and this is critically important so it can assemble all of your information like this so you have all of your medications right there and you can look at it up and a can give you an explanation as to what this drug is for, and if you speak spanish, this app can speak spanish to you. Peter thank you so much for talking about blue button permit blue button. Announcer youre been watching the communicators on cspan. Cspan, created by americas Cable Companies 30 years ago. Announcer on the next washington journal, asher orkaby discusses the latest on yemen. And cenk uygur discusses Hillary Clinton on the young turks. And peter moskos discusses police shooting. Washington journal, live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. Announcer and is live coverage on cspan of the 2015 white house Correspondents Dinner. We are at the entrance to the washington hilton where the Correspondent Dinner has been held for about 40 years. You will see the journalists politicians, and hollywood stars arrive, and you will hear later president obama and cecily strong, from saturday night live as tonights entertainment. Tickets are 300 a person