HealthContentAdvisors

MediaPost reports on FDA views on usage of social media advertising by Pharma. “The FDA hasn’t squarely addressed the role of social media in drug advertising to date. But an agency official offered some insight on the subject in a recent interview with Mark Senak, a Fleishman Hillard executive in Washington, D.C. who separately runs the EyeonFDA blog.” Article also quotes Waterfront Media and HealthCentral execs about slow pickup in advertising by pharma on social media sites.

Add Wellpoint to the list of insurers being sued by AMA &/or NY atty general Cuomo. Similar class actions suits have been filed against Aetna & Cigna for using the Ingenix db that led to overcharges to patients for out-of-network care.

Press release on study published in NEJM online 3/25/09 that reports that only 1.5% of US hospitals use comprehensive electronic medical records systems that connect various depts, lab reports, prescription info. Link to int. with primary author/researcher included in release. Study conducted by Harvard Sch. Public Health, Mass General, and George Washington Univ; Ashish Jha of HSPH was lead author.

Elsevier launches Innovation Explorers, an online community of research scientists & librarians, to help involve customers in the design of products.

David Rothman describes his experience trying to get a price quote for an information product that was promoting a 30-day free trial. Illuminates pricing practices by medical publishers that vary customer-by-customer.

TechCrunch reports that Trusera, a recent entry on “health 2.0″ patient social-networking scene, will run out of money by end-of-April if it can’t raise more funds. Started by ex-Amazon exec in Seattle. Comments on post point out key problems: crowded field and lack of revenue model.

AP article on importance of “getting it right” when spending $19B on electronic medical records investment. Emphasizes the importance of ability to transfer data between systems.

Greenhill SAVP partners with Valhalla Partners and High Peaks Venture Partners on an $8M investment in Flat World Knowledge. Flat World, based in Nyack, NY, publishes open source textbooks and charges only for print-on-demand, audio textbooks and ind. chapter sales.

DeepDyve (formerly Infovell), a Health Content08 Innovator, adds Steve Wozniak to its advisory board. DeepDyve released a new interface recently that is clear and simple, yet offers access to body of information not available through standard web search engines.

Wolters Kluwer’s medical coding s/w, ProVation, is profiled by AARP with a focus on WK Health’s Clinical Solutions group in Minneapolis (which now employs 130).

John Halamka,MD, offers definitions and descriptions of terms used in healthIT, along with some commentary on adoption rates and potential for healthIT. Worth a read.

Article highlights rapid adoption of the iPhone as a medical device to communicate info to patients. Further evidence to support my commentary last week that interfaces,design & convenience of electronic medical devices needs to be improved.

Discusses business-rule management systems (BRMS) usage for clinicians. BRMS is really just another acronym for clinical decision support tools that rely healthcare data analytics. Article points out that such systems are only as good as the quality of the rules that are applied in the s/w–and I would add only as good as the quality (and quantity) of the data in the system that is mined to determine the recommendations. Article also refers to what has been called “alert fatigue”; that is, if too many warnings are flashed each time, and most are very rudimentary, clinicians will start ignoring the warnings about potential adverse effects, etc.

Press release from HHS describing $268M in ARRA (Stimulus bill) funds available to hospitals to treat most vulnerable patients.

Notes from Conference Board’s event on Employee Health in San Diego, Mar 09. See additional related posts via this post. Addressess incentives for healthy behavior.

Press release includes link to bios of council members. “Recovery Act Allocates $1.1 Billion for Comparative Effectiveness Research The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today announced the members of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. Authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the new council will help coordinate research and guide investments in comparative effectiveness research funded by the Recovery Act.”

A biting indictment of current state EMRs for failing to consider workflow needs of clinicians by MedInformaticsMD on Health Care Renewal blog. Post includes a reading list of articles that offer reviews of various healthIT systems–mostly reviews that point out inadequacies of EMR systems to-date.

Article describes benefits of “information therapy”, which is defined as some combination of patient education and wellness programs, at Kaiser and other closed-system medical groups. Key point is that electronic health records and personal health records are far more useful (and will likely be adopted at faster rates) if information can be integrated and customized for each constituent group. More in this week’s lead article.

Generation Health, based in NJ, plans to expand Boston area presence. Generation is developing a PBM-like service for genetic testing.

Reference to recent study that analyzes impact of incentives in ARRA (Stimulus Bill) on e-prescribing. Estimates usage will double in 5 years and will reduce adverse drug events.

Glaxo seeks to diversify into vaccines and consumer businesses in order to hedge against poor outlook for blockbuster drug development.

The Stimulus Bill (ARRA) raises issue of whether PHR providers (GoogleHealth and Microsoft HealthVault, in particular) need to sign business associate agreements with providers before they exchange data (to be consistent with HIPAA requirements which haven’t been applied specifically to PHR vendors before). Story points out that Mayo and Cleveland Clinic have yet to transfer any data to HealthVault and GoogleHealth respectively, even though they announced that they were working together over a year ago.

MedAdvant, a revenue cycle management (RCM) services provider that was acquired by Marlin Equity Partners in January, rebrands itself Capario.

Health IT implementation services company, Vitalize (Reading, MA) acquires r3 Health Partners (Santa Ana, CA), a competitor.

Through partnerships with HealthGrades and Joint Commission, Med-Avantage (which creates provider directories for health plans) enhances its directories with hospital quality measures.

Hospital Value Index (www.hospitalvalue.com), a comprehensive index of hospital quality, affordability, efficiency, and patient satisfaction, releases latest study results. Produced by Data Advantage, a private healthcare info company based in Nashville, Hospital Value Index integrates measures on over 3000 hospitals, using multiple data sources from CMS (e.g., Medicare spending, HCAHPS scores) and some additional sources.

Xconomy interviews David Cerino, general manager of health care solutions at Microsoft. Cerino describes evolution of Microsoft’s HealthVault, its health care platform.

Margaret Hamburg, former health commissioner in NYC, is leading candidate for FDA commissioner.

NIH announces the availability of $1.5B in research grants from ARRA to be distributed for: medical research (at least $200M); construction grants for research facilities ($1B); and grants for purchasing research equipment ($300M).

Practice Fusion, which promotes its free ad-supported electronic medical records s/w has partnered with LDM Group, St. Louis, to offer its ScriptGuide that provides physicians with custom patient education info for certain chronic diseases.

Allscripts sells its medication unit to A-S Medication Solutions for $26M. Allscripts had announced that they would sell the unit last month.

CVS Caremark plans to close about 16% of its existing MinuteClinics until fall. CVS now has about 460 clinics (not including the 16% to be closed).

Minneapolis-based Muve licensed technology from Mayo Clinic and developed the Gruve. “The Gruve tracks every movement and calculates the number of calories each burns. Then after being synched up with Muve’s accompanying Web site, the device matches that information against the wearer’s weight goal.”

Interview with Jonathan Bush, CEO of Athenahealth, a web-based s/w (SaaS) company that provides billing, EMR and other services to physician practices. Based in Watertown, MA. Bush comments on $19B of stimulus money targeted to EMR expansion. Also comments that Athenahealth plans to expand its sales & marketing in 2009.

Late in posting this story that has circulated widely over the last week about Medical Justice, which is trying to encourage physicians to have patients sign waivers saying that they won’t post comments on web physician review sites like Angie’s list or others. We reported on this in earlier blogs, too.

Using technology from Baltimore-based VISICU, a telehealth company that allows hospitals to remotely monitor ICU patients, Anchorage’s Providence Alaska Medical Center launches an eICU.

Great post and related comments from E-patient Dave about the importance of including patient input/comments into medical web 2.0 applications like Medpedia. My further comment: the patient-created content also needs to be “peer-reviewed”, organized and aggregated in a way that leads to useful analysis by professionals and patients/consumers.

Oops, I forgot to annotate this story last week. Thomson Reuters 2008 earnings. Healthcare group within professional division reports 4% increase in revenue (CC) and 0% increase in operating margin. TR is selling Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) product, which has declining revenue.

MedImpact customers will soon (summer 09) be able to store prescription info on their HealthVault PHRs. “Headquartered in San Diego, MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Inc., is the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit management (PBM) company that does not sell drugs. MedImpact clients include Fortune 500 corporations and employers, unions, managed care organizations, insurance carriers, third-party administrators, as well as local, state and federal employee programs.”

GenomeQuest, an HC08 Innovator, releases new functionality that allows easy annotation and visualization tools to its sequence data management solution.

The new MediSlate “mobile clinical assistant” was created specifically for healthcare professionals in a clinical environment with drop-resitant and spill-proof features that allow cleaning & disinfection. Also has touch screen that can be used with gloves.

Google Health adds feature that allows users to share data with doctors, family or trusted friend. Also, added ability to print out wallet-sized medical profile.

Getwell network, an in-hospital network that “delivers personalized information, education and communications tools at the bedside” via the television, raises 3rd round from previous investors (Valhalla Partners, Grosvenor Funds, Point Judith Capital, Village Ventures) and adds Johnson & Johnson Develpment Corp to the list of investors.

Articles points to ties between med school faculty and pharma companies at Harvard Med.

Tara Parker-Pope of NY Times writes about how concept of comparative effectiveness needs to trickle down to patients to change the current environment where doctors and patients too often seem to chose drugs & therapies based on theory that “if it costs more, it must be better”. Also makes the point that focus on wellness, not just treatment, is needed.

John Halamka’s excellent post on range of quality measurement tools needed to improve our healthcare system–both clinical and administrative.

Rick Siegrist will succeed Melvin Hall who has been CEO for almost 9 years. Siegrist came to PG in January when PG acquired PatientFlow Technology. PatientFlwo focuses on streamlining hospital operations to reduce overcrowding, wait times, and delayed surgery. Press Ganey is a leading research & consulting firm to hospitals and one of the largest HCAHPS vendors.

Good collection of analysts opinions on likely acquisition activity in the medical device sector.

Medtronic will begin reporting payments to physicians that exceed $5,000 beginning in March 2011 for payments beginning January 2010. Fees include consulting fees, royalties or honoraria.

Boston-based AMICAS has agreed to acquire Emageon for $39M. Previous offer to buy Emageon for $64M was terminated when Health Systems Solutions could not secure funds from its banker (Stanford International Bank). Note, Stanford is also principal stockholder of HSS. Emageon is public and latest 10K for 2007 reports rev. of $104.6M and negative earnings. Emageon also got an $9M escrow payment from HSS. Both AMICAS and Emageon provide medical imaging systems and software.

Article from Chattanooga Times Free Press reports on the significant investment in time & money to implement electronic medical records in small practices, but concludes that the investment pays in a few years in lower costs and improved efficiency.

Research carried out on behalf of Wolters Kluwer’s Provation Medical indicates that existing CVIS sytems are not delivering promised ROI due to lack of acceptance & usage by some physicians who continue to use dictation & transcription services.

Nashville-based ConnectivHealth divests VerusMed to focus on HealthTeacher, which provides health & wellness educational materials for the K-12 market. ConnectivHealth retains Discovery Hospital, a collabortation with Discovery Communications, and PeerClip, a provider of reviewed medical news to medical & healthcare professionals. VerusMed was sold to Intellerus, a new entity headed by Roscoe Smith, fmly of PBI, McGraw-Hill, and Agent Media Corp.

NY Times reports on study published in NEJM (based on clinical trials sponsored by Boston Scientific)that provides evidence that stents are as effective as coronary bypass in many cases.

DNA Electronics, a spinoff of Imperial College London, has announced a partnership with Pfizer to carry out trials of its prototype handheld device that assesses risk of adverse reactions to drugs. From the press release: “The device undergoing trials is the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Doctor, or SNP Dr (pronounced ‘snip doctor’). It is a portable technology that gives fast accurate spot test results for specific DNA sequences that indicate how we are likely to respond to certain drugs. The SNP Dr works by analysing genetic variations found in DNA called Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). SNPs are the parts of human DNA that make us all respond differently to disease, bacteria, viruses, toxins or medication.”

Delmar, a Cengage Learning company, acquires Concept Media,a publisher of nursing education multi-media content.

Title is midleading; article describes key areas of healthcare innovation that are progressing and being financed by PE companies. All the companies profiled include incentives or monitoring/coaching to encourage healthful behavior and compliance with disease management programs. Profiled companies include: Availity, HealthEdge, Prematics, Triveris, Health Hero Network.