吃瓜不打烊

Skip to main content

The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.

Subscribe Follow Us
  • Trump 2.0

    Trump 2.0

    • Agency Watch
    • State Watch
    • Rural Health Payout
  • Public Health

    Public Health

    • Vaccines
    • CDC & Disease
    • Environmental Health
    All Public Health
  • Audio Reports

    Audio Reports

    • What the Health?
    • Healthcare Helpline
    • 吃瓜不打烊 Minute
    • An Arm and a Leg
    • Health Hub
    • HealthQ
    • Silence in Sikeston
    • Epidemic
    All Audio
  • Special Reports

    Special Reports

    • Bill Of The Month
    • Common Ground
    • Diagnosis: Debt
    • The Body Shops
    • Priced Out
    • Guns, Race, and Profit
    • Broken Rehab
    • Dead Zone
    • Denied
    • Opioid Settlement Tracking
    • Eleven Minutes
    All Special Reports
  • More Topics

    More Topics

    • Elections
    • Healthcare Costs
    • Insurance
    • Prescription Drugs
    • Health Industry
    • Immigration
    • Reproductive Health
    • Technology
    • Rural Health
    • Race and Health
    • Aging
    • Mental Health
    • Affordable Care Act
    • Medicare
    • Medicaid
    • Children’s Health
    All Topics

  • Medicare Advantage Billing Probe
  • School Vaccine Mandates
  • Weight Loss Drugs Coverage
  • Opioid Settlement Money
  • Abortion Pill Access

Morning Briefing

Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

  • Email

Monday, Dec 16 2019

Full Issue

Frustrated With Cumbersome, Clunky Diabetes Devices, Patients Are Turning To DIY Technology

Many feel like the tools available on the market weren鈥檛 built by people actually living with the disease, and so those with technology experience are taking matters into their own hands. In other health and technology news: virtual reality, the data Catch-22, prosthetics, cyberattacks, and Apple's push into the health industry.

One night, 18-month-old Hazel Lumpkin woke up with her diaper completely soaked with urine. Her parents, Matt and Melody Lumpkin of Pasadena, Calif., rediapered her in a larger size, hoping that would fix the issue. But Hazel continued to saturate diaper after diaper. As a childhood fan of鈥 鈥淭he Baby-Sitters Club鈥 鈥 a book series featuring a young girl with Type 1 diabetes 鈥 Melody recalled the connection between frequent urination and diabetes in children. (Kim, 12/14)

Doris Moss has always loved dancing. Now in her 80s and suffering from a form of dementia, it has become more important than ever, as hearing a good beat will spur her to get up and move around. And so her daughter, Angela Pearson, who lives with her mother in Ellenwood, Ga., and is her primary caretaker, has turned to a new technology for people with Alzheimer鈥檚 and other forms of dementia: a touch-screen application known as SimpleC Companion, that can be set to play some of Moss鈥檚 favorite music 鈥 along with recorded reminders to drink water and take medication 鈥 at various points of the day when Pearson is away from the house. (Kalter, 12/15)

When Bri Cawsey began running in 2008, she quickly got hooked on the sport and wanted to get faster. So she did what many runners do and bought a GPS watch that would give her real-time feedback on her pace, mileage and other metrics. First, she enjoyed the data readout. Before long, she connected her watch to an app that helped her track calories, as well. Then she added a second watch, more sophisticated than the first, and began comparing the data from the two for better accuracy. By about 2012, Cawsey found she couldn鈥檛 do anything without a tracking watch on her wrist. (Loudin, 12/14)

Phantom pain was all that Keven Walgamott had left of the limb he lost in an accident over a decade ago 鈥 until he tried on the LUKE Arm for the first time in 2017, and told researchers that he could 鈥渇eel鈥 again. The arm is a motorized and sensorized prosthetic that has been in development for over 15 years by a team at the University of Utah. Researchers around the world have been developing prosthetics that closely mimic the part of the human body they would replace. (Dhar, 12/14)

New Jersey鈥檚 largest hospital system said Friday that a ransomware attack last week disrupted its computer network and that it paid a ransom to stop it. Hackensack Meridian Health did not say in its statement how much it paid to regain control over its systems but said it holds insurance coverage for such emergencies. (12/13)

Attacks on hospitals and health systems, who have been digitizing their operations and record-keeping, have proven to be hugely disruptive, in some cases leaving small physician groups unable to recover. Victims have been forced to cancel some elective procedures, shut down computer networks to prevent further spread of the virus and temporarily revert to using paper records. (Evans, 12/13)

The Apple Watch continuously monitors numerous health metrics and doubles as a virtual clinical trial site. AirPods, Apple鈥檚 wireless ear buds, function as basic hearing aids, and its health record app lets users pull in data from health care providers. ...Over the past decade, Apple has nabbed roughly half a dozen startups with specialties that could prove critical for health care disruption, from speech recognition and sleep tracking to health record consolidation and hospital mapping. (Brodwin, 12/16)

This is part of the Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
Newsletter icon

Sign Up For Our Newsletter

Stay informed by signing up for the Morning Briefing and other emails:

Recent Morning Briefings

  • Friday, August 7
  • Thursday, August 6
  • Wednesday, August 5
  • Tuesday, August 4
  • Monday, August 3
  • Friday, July 31
More Morning Briefings
RSS Feeds
  • Podcasts
  • Special Reports
  • Morning Briefing
  • 吃瓜不打烊
  • Republish Our Content
  • Contact Us

Follow Us

  • RSS

Sign up for emails

Join our email list for regular updates based on your personal preferences.

Sign up
  • Editorial Policy
  • Privacy Policy

漏 2026 KFF