HealthContentAdvisors

a division of InfoCommerce Group

Headlines for Mar 24-29

  • Posted March 29th 2009
  • by Janice
  • » Springer for sale

    Peter Suber’s blog summarizes stories about Springer’s owners, PE companies Candover & Cinven, hiring UBS & Goldman to seek potential buyers. According to FT, they want to sell 49% of Springer. But, asset sales are also possible. Springer publishes STM & B2B books, journals & magazines, and has strong collection of medical & pharma info, including Current Medicine Group and Humana Press.

  • » Pharma use of social media ads

    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.

  • » NLM Selects ADAM’s Multimedia Encyclopedia for MedlinePlus

    MedlinePlus, the consumer health database from NIH’s National Library of Medicine, partners with ADAM Corp to include ADAM’s Multimedia Encyclopedia. Interesting reversal of the typical pattern where US gov’t health info is incorporated into commercial apps. In this case, commercial health content is incorporated into gov’t resource.

  • » AMA Sues Wellpoint over Out-of-network Payments

    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.

  • » Journal Articles Question Plan for Digital Health Records - NYTimes.com

    NY Times writes about another article in upcoming NEJM about electronic medical records, which cautions about suitability of some of the EMR systems being sold and urges an open s/w platform be used to facilitate interoperability. Authors also point to the importance of looking beyond automating routine tasks to “how the technology will be used to improve clinical performance,” said Herbert S. Lin, a senior scientist the National Academy of Sciences, an advisory group to the government.

  • » Study Finds U.S. Hospitals Extremely Slow to Adopt Electronic Health Records, Citing Cost - March 25, 2009 -2009 Releases - Press Releases - Harvard School of Public Health

    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.

  • » OptumHealth and Rodale Offer Consumers “100 Smart Choices” for Better Health - FOXBusiness.com

    OptumHealth, the health & wellness division of UnitedHealth, partners with Rodale to publish “100 Smart Choices”, a book that offers health & wellness advice to consumers.

  • » Elsevier Partners with Communispace

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

  • » Official Google Blog: Two new improvements to Google results pages

    Google enhances search with longer snippets for longer searches and increases semantic analysis in presenting results.

  • » Venting About a Vendor

    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.

  • » Paging Dr. iPhone: Tapping a Physician’s Digital Reference - BusinessWeek

    BusinessWeek story on mobile clinical tools.

  • » Trusera’s Health 2.0 Portal Nearly Out Of Money

    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.

  • » On the Media’s First, Do No Harm

    NPR’s interview with Dr. Jeffrey Siegel, founder of Medical Justice, which asks patients to sign waiver that they will not post comments on medical ratings sites. “There are dozens of such sites, but now doctors are fighting back. Dr. Jeffrey Segal, founder of Medic…”

  • » Questions surround health IT money - Boston.com

    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.

  • » Stimulus Funds for E-Records Augur Big Windfall for Small Health Firms - WSJ.com

    WSJ names some of the vendors that stand to benefit from HealthIT spending in stimulus bill (ARRA). Calls out eClinicalWorks, the company that has partnered with WalMart & Dell to sell EMR s/w in Sam’s Clubs.

  • » Greenhill SAVP Completes Investment in Flat World Knowledge, Inc.

    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.

  • » InnoCentive and Nature Publishing Group announce partnership to facilitate open innovation

    InnoCentive, a Boston-area company that offers a marketplace for buying & selling innovative solutions, partners with Nature Publishing Group to promote its marketplace to NPG’s readership.

  • » Steve Wozniak added to DeepDyve’s Advisory Board

    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.

  • » Oracle Acquires Relsys, a leading provider of drug safety and risk management solutions.

    From press release: “The combination of Oracle and Relsys is expected to deliver the only suite of software applications that supports end-to-end drug safety processes across clinical development, post-market surveillance and patient care, and is expected to extend Oracle’s leadership in providing drug safety applications to the health sciences industry.” More on Oracle’s Health Sciences Global Business Unit, which was created last June, in the release. Berkery Noyes represented Relsys in the transaction.

  • » ProVation: a sort of “TurboTax” for doctors

    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).

  • » Going Abroad to Find Affordable Health Care - NYTimes.com

    Describes benefits/costs of medical tourism, ie, traveling abroad for medical care.

  • » A Healthcare IT Primer

    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.

  • » Pharmacy Groups Band Together to Promote Role of Pharmacists in Health Reform

    Collection of pharmacists-related associations collaborate to make sure that pharmacists’ voices are heard in the health care reform debate.

  • » Meet Nurse iPhone - Columns by PC Magazine

    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.

  • » WebMD partners with Boots to Launch Consumer Health Portal in UK

    From Press Release: “The new web site will leverage WebMD’s proven technology and expertise in consumer health information services and will include original health news and features, wellness and condition centers and guides, interactive tools and applications, including WebMD’s proprietary symptom checker, health trackers, calculators and health and wellness videos. Boots UK plans to market the new health portal through in-store promotion, links on their current e-commerce site, outreach to their loyal group of affinity customers and promotion in their health and beauty magazine. The new service is planned to launch in the second half of 2009. WebMD and Boots UK will jointly share in the development costs and benefits of this new site. WebMD will directly manage the sales and revenue operation for the new site.”

  • » The Doctor Will B.R.M.S. You Now - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

    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.

  • » MedAptus - MedAptus Secures $6 Million Investment - Electronic Charge Capture and Point-of-Care Clinical Solutions, Professional and Facility Charge Capture, Mobile Health, Medical Records

    MedAptus, a provider of “charge capture” technologies for medical billing receives new funding from existing investors.

  • » HHS Makes $268 Million in Recovery Act Funding Available to Support Hospitals

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

  • » Prevention and Wellness Provisions in Stimulus Law Are Hailed, but Gathering Data Could Be a Major Issue

    Articles discusses need for data collection and analysis in determining effectiveness of wellness programs.

  • Leave a Reply