IKONA, the Startup Using VR to Improve Health Literacy, Starting with Dialysis

CEO and founder Tim Fitzpatrick is leveraging the latest in neuroscience research and VR filmmaking to radically improve health education and patient confidence. 

Kidney disease is a large and growing health challenge, in the United States and globally, thanks in part to rising rates of diabetes and high blood pressure. A full 37 million Americans (15% of the adult population) suffer from kidney disease, according to the National Kidney Foundation, and in 2016, more than half a million people had to be put on dialysis at least 3 times a week just to survive. 

This represents a huge cost to Medicare ($114B in 2016) and efforts are now underway to transition dialysis patients to in-home care, a cheaper and more comfortable alternative. This need for this transition to home became even more acute during the COVID-19 pandemic, but how can resource-strapped dialysis clinics — which currently only spend a few minutes on patient education through paper pamphlets — safely and efficiently transition hundreds of thousands of patients to home care?

Levin is a former CEO of Time Warner

It has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. Jerry Levin, ex CEO of Time-Warner shares his own personal experience with dialysis. Following a severe injury from a fall, with multiple injuries he eventually was placed on hemodialysis while rehabilitating in a skilled nursing facility.  The experience was an eye-opener and less than optimal for his condition and many others.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also provided specific guidelines to address a similar deathtrap: dialysis centers, due to their comparable high volume of older patients (50% of all dialysis patients are over 65) and their history of infections are a very high risk for heightening the spread. More than 725,000 Americans suffer from kidney failure, otherwise known as end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Of these, at least 500,000 individuals are on dialysis.

Receiving home dialysis treatments in a nursing home is not something that is only available to people like me (former CEOs). It could be provided to any patient who needs it. Unfortunately, right now it’s not available to many, which is mainly a function of the red tape and bureaucracy in healthcare. Our current system is characterized by slow decision making, limited willingness to try new and innovative therapies, and stubborn adherence to the status quo of where and how healthcare should be delivered.

But there is a safer way to administer this lifesaving care, and we must urgently make plans to deliver dialysis within nursing home and long-term care facilities, and further to accelerate the provision of dialysis for those able to do it in their home. We must save our elderly and our broader population from this deadly blind spot.

Say Hello to IKONA, the Startup Using VR to Improve Health Literacy, Starting with Dialysis

ObamaCare is the Central Battle over the future Direction of our Country.

Richard Reece MD who blogs at Medinnovation has some profound quotes from Thornton Wilder. From it derives the title of this article. Thorton Wilder,  a quintessential American writer, the author of The Bridge of Saint Luis Rey, Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth,  and the inspiration of Hello Dolly !.  

Some of you will disagree with our view of the Affordable Care Act.

Wilder was a true patriot – a believer that America had created the most dynamic,  creative,  individualistic, and freedom-loving nation on earth.   

ObamaCare is the central battle over the future direction of our country. It cannot stand. It is a looming disaster for patients- especially seniors- for our economy and for the future of health care in America. It will lead to rationing and government control over health are decisions. The quality of care will decline. Medical progress will slow. And the resulting third-rate health care system will likey bankrupt our country.  The federal government is already racing toward a budgetary train wreck, and ObamaCare will only speed us down the tracks.”

Fortunately ObamaCare as it now is written will self-destruct and in the next five years the American Culture will de-construct it.

      Paul Rosenberg in FreemansPerspective.com  in a blog post entitled “Why ObamaCare Will Not Conquer American Culture,” November 1, 2013, in which he says,”Americans expect to choose whenever they want.. Americans expect choices; it is built for individual changes, not collective changes.  This is the DNA of the culture, and no matter what political controlling th liberal ruleship, the culture will simply not fall.

Grace-Marie Turner, James Capretta, Thomas Miller, and Robert Moffitt,  Why ObamaCare is Wrong for America: How the New Health Care Law Drives up Costs, Puts Government in Charge of Your Decisions, and Threatens Your Constitutional Rights (Broadside, a Harper Collins Imprint, 2011) who say, “The passage of ObamaCare was deeply polarizing. Never before had Congress passed - and the president signed into law – such sweeping legislation that was so strongly opposed by so many Americans."  

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Physicians in particular with our ethic of privacy and one on one relationships with our patients will not be misled by this plan which does not justify the means toward an end. We all are adamant about an equitable health care for all.  But this is not the way.

Take heart my colleagues.....the deconstruction will take place by the very people who put it together.....or they will be gone......voted out of office.