HealthContentAdvisors

Informa healthcare chooses Atypon for unified platform. Good move for Informa, which favored home-grown platforms in the past.

Good post by Jeff Jarvis on newspapers and business models. In particular, Jarvis critiques recent comments by Financial Times that readers will pay for quality. Jarvis’ pt: ad-support is key part of business model for papers, not just subscription fees. Yet, I’d add that increasingly readers are willing to pay –directly or indirectly– for convenience & features of online news and less willing to pay for home delivery of print. Quality content matters, but so does use of technology to improve relevance and convenience of content to readers (and advertisers).

DeepDyve (formerly Infovell) releases free tools & widgets that enhance search on websites and blogs. Users can find “more like this” content from DeepDyve’s broad collection of authoritative sites that are included in their search index. Users can also select blocks of text to use to run a “more like this” search. Finally, a WordPress plug-in is available that allows bloggers to automatically include links to related articles from DeepDyve’s search index. These tools are especially useful to medical and scientifically-oriented sites and blogs. Great for e-patient sites!

a little scary that these folks opine about Google Health without knowing any details of how it works or doesn’t work. I’ll point them to the e-patients.net site!

More focus on use of analytics to control healthcare costs by reducing fraud. Good news for healthcare analytics companies.

Review of a session at the BIO 09 conference on social media usage in biotech/life science companies. Jen McCabe, Schwen Gwee of Vertex, Ed Silverman, Elsevier, Jerry Johnson of Brodeur and Brian Reid of Weisscom, participated. Links to presentations included.

AHRQ – has created plain language guides that compare the effectiveness and side effects for treatments of many common conditions.

HealthLibrarian.net enriches the NPI database and allows users to search by specialty field.

Blog posts from MLA’s annual conference. I’ll also follow twitter posts on MLA09.

More coverage in popular press about the increasing use of smartphones by MDs and medical students.

Microsoft announces Research Output Repository Platform, which serves as repository for research content. Includes taxonomy appropriate for research content.

Brief review of 2 doctor rating sites.

Gilles Frydman, founder of ACOR and contributor to e-Patients.net, highlights the importance of the Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) element in the stimulus bill (ARRA). Although a small piece of the funding in $$ terms, the application of CER has far-reaching implications for treatment and cost-control. It’s good to see discussions of health content being elevated in the e-patient community. An excellent post!

Informa Group has put Robbins-Gioia, it’s computer program managemnt group up for sale for 70M GBP to try to pare its 1.3B GBP in debt. Robbins-Gioia was acquired by Informa when it bought IIR in a highly leveraged deal.

Abstract of recent study that shows that patients don’t fully understand post-visit instructions from physicians at least 3/4 of the time. Several explanations offered; most prominent imho: lack of written instructions and explanation.

Comparison matrix of some of the EMR and EHR vendors.

Academic tests traditional peer review by MIT Press vs. review by blog readers. Article is brief, but points to more detailed comments by blog readers compared to more big-picture, contextual comments by peer reviewers. Sounds to me as though a combination would be best.

Good points about comparative effectiveness research. There’s no rational argument for being against such research, unless it’s use is connected to payment policies. That’s the opinion of the poster, not mine.

Quest, the large lab testing company, now links results to MSFT’s HealthVault PHR platform with patients’ permission. Surprised it has taken this long!

The Lewin Group receives $599,458 grant to develop analytical framework for comparative effectiveness research (CER) from HHS.

From Pharma Marketing News, good post on how pharma’s use of social media is akin to developing Key Opinion Leaders among consumers, what Jack Barrette of WEGO Health calls, Consumer Opinion Leaders. Post covers some of the pros & cons.

Kevin MD on whether doctors who follow EBM should be protected against malpractice. Short answer, yes.

Mark Leavitt, MD, CEO of CCHIT, says “meaningful use” of EHRs = “a certified EHR, it has to include e-prescribing, it has to be able to exchange information and it has to be able to report quality data.” I’ll add: to exchange information and report quality data, common standards for coding information are needed between the senders & recipients of info, and quality info must be input into the system before quality data can be reported. GIGO.

Philip Pead, former CEO of Per-Se Technology, is named successor to Andrew Eckert as CEO of Eclipsys.

John Goodman raises issue of poorly-designed healthIT systems that in some circumstances increase the likelihood of error & cites a 2005 study.

Qforma, a healthcare-analytics company launches new directory for Most Influential Doctors in conjunction with USA Today. At launch, coverage will be national with doctors in these specialties: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and asthma. QForma partnered with Wolters Kluwer Health for info on “millions of data points that reflect important collaborative indicators such as referral networks, practice patterns, publication history and leadership positions in professional associations.”

Pharma lobbying up 36% in Q1 2008, whereas most industries are down significantly. Pharma clearly wants active role in health reform.

Intel-sponsored site on mobile healthcare

Wal-Mart ready to expand onsite health clinics in partnership with hospitals. Initial partnership with Revolution’s RediClinics didn’t work out.

Brief summary of recent Forrester Research study on usage of social media in pharma marketing. Includes link to slides Josh Bernoff (author of the study) used at Social Pharmer, which I attended,. Note, many pharma marketers & agencies in the room didn’t agree with Forrester’s conclusions about target markets.

New study on EMR adoption that surveyed Mass. doctors in 2005 and 2007 to be published in J. American Medical Informatics Assoc. cautions that inadequacies in most EMR systems lead doctors to only use pieces that work efficiently, e.g., e-prescribing. This confirms our view that lack of standards for data transfer and inadequate research in product design has resulted in EMR systems that do not improve efficiency of practitioners. Design that incorporates analysis of practitioner workflow and improved data standards are required before EMRs can be expected to improve productivity and lead to better patient outcomes. That’s what I think “meaningful use” should imply.

An essay from Times of London on future of printed books.

HHS’s Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) is conducting “Listenning Sessions” for public to comment on CER. Upcoming sessions 5/13 in Chicago; 6/10 in DC.

more on GE’s “Healthymagination” campaign to shift resources from big systems for hospitals to more lower-cost products, and invest $3B in developing at least 100 product and services innovations by 2015.

Good discussion of open access from e-patients’ perspective. 25 comments & counting, including a couple from me.

Some dialogue about CCR codes, SNOMED, Google Health, and the fact that there is a lot of work to do before we have a coding ontology that serves as basis for exchanging data between medical records.

As part of budget announcement today, Obama says gov’t will cut payments to Medicare Advantage by 4-4.5% in 2010 to save $22 B. Other healthcare announcements include increases to cancer research, autism research, funding for SCHIP, and other incentives.

Hacker reportedly steals 8.3 million patient prescsription records and demands $10M in ransom. Puts attention on security of digital healthcare records.

ThomsonReuters reports Q109 earnings. Tax&Acct’g group and Healthcare&Science were bright spots in rev. growth; most other areas flat or declining. Total -3% rev. change over Q108; +3% in constant currency. Media group worst performer. PDR listed in discontinued ops. Not included in reported numbers.

A good round-up of tools for using Twitter. I’m still a beginner, but with news of Twitter Search expanding (something that delicious should have done years ago), I can see real value in Twitter. Follow me @janicemccallum

Santosh Jayaram, Twitter’s new VP Ops, says that Twitter Search will soon begin crawling the links that people tweet and index them for Twitter Search.

Very good analysis of Microsoft’s latest deal in healthcare to license HealthVault to Telus, the large telecom company in Canada. Telus will brand the service, Telus Health Space, and will sell the services to provinces and territories who provide their own eHealth services.

Includes links to 2 reports on health care quality. Among findings: patient safety measures have worsened by nearly 1% each year for past 6 years.

Cost-cutting is helping balance weak new subscription sales to keep on track for margin outlook for 2009 of about 20%.

MedPage Today wins gold award for “Best Overall Web Publication” from American Society of Healthcare Publication Editors. Congrats to CEO Bob Stern and his team.

Amazon will hold big press conference on Wed 5/6 to announce larger-screen Kindle appropriate for textbooks and newspapers.

John Mack points to 2 studies that paint an unsatisfactory picture of the quality & usefulness of much of the current healthcare journalists. Basic claim is that press releases about recent research serve as promotional pieces and don’t put research in context and that too many healthcare journalists just recap those press releases in their stories without additional reporting. John suggest bloggers help add context.

KevinMD posts about why doctors should use SEO to promote their practices. Includes references to some resources and articles for primers on SEO.

23andMe, a personalized genomics company, raises $11 million of a $24.26 million second round.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides $100K grants to study uncoventional approaches to healthcare in developing countries.

Traxtal’s PercuNav systems helps physicians track the tip of a needle when performing minally invasive procedures, avoiding the need to constantly image the patient.

Dr. David Goldmann named EIC of Elsevier’s First Consult product line. “First Consult is an authoritative evidence-based and regularly updated clinical information resource for healthcare professionals. Designed for use at the point of care, it provides instant, user-friendly access to the latest information on evaluation, diagnosis, clinical management, prognosis and prevention.”

John Mack posts on how issues faced by publishers of social media sites for pharma mirror those of publishers of all kinds of pharma content. Yes, the latest media publishing tools make it easy to enable the creation of user-generated content. But what guidelines should pharma companies & their media agencies follow? For starters, they should understand that they are serving as publishers and should learn from experience of publishing companies in pharma industry. As John says, “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”, although he said it in English!

Good post by Missy Krasner, product marketing manager Google Health, and engineering VP, Alfred Spector of Google that endorses Markle Foundation’s framework on “meaningful use” related to ARRA.

Scranton Gillette, a PE firm, acquires Imaging Technology News and Diagnostic & Invasive Cardiology from Reilly Communictions.

Phreesia, which provides patient check-in via wireless touchscreen devices, includes new content from National Osteoporosis Foundation to screen patients for risk of osteoporosis.

Abstract & link to full article by Deloitte on how Pharma can exploit the increasing amounts of digital outcomes data to improve R&D and clinical trial procedures.

Good preso from Digital Pharma Europe on social media in pharma. Part 2 of 4.

Interesting post about tools for personal datamining: Daytum and YourFlowingData (YFD). Gives example of entering code words “gnight” and “gmorning” on Twitter before going to bed and upon waking to track hours slept each night. There’s some question about user motivation to enter data, but in health care arena, the combo of ease-of-use and fee incentives might be sufficient.

Steve Woodruff’s top stories in Pharma for 4/29/09. Includes link to IOM’s recommendations on detailing/gifts/etc. to physicians & medical institutions, and updates on Sanofi & Novartis’ pipelines.

Missed this last week. Zynx Health, a Hearst Business company, and EBSCO Publishing announce new partnership to embed EBSCO’s Dynamed EBM content into ZynxOrder for mutual customers. DynaMed produces evidence-based medicine (EBM) reference content that is used in thousands of hospitals. Zynx produces clinical decision support order sets. Note, senior executives from EBSCO Publishing and Hearst/Zynx have presented at our Health Content conferences.

Excellent PPT by John Moore at Chilmark on current state of PHRs.

Scrubs Magazine, which debuted in beta in Jan. 2009, positions itself as the only site focused on broad interests of nurses: including”career advice and inspiring stories, beauty and fashion tips as well as lots of ideas on making your downtime as relaxing as your work life is demanding”.

Describes how some employers and healthplans are using incentives to “nudge” employees to practice healthy behaviors. Also mentions how MED300, a billing & EMR company, uses multi-level incentives (incl. chance to win a bigger prize) to get workers to fill out health-risk assessments.

Study by Harvard School of Public Health reports that 90% of cases of diabetes in study of 4,883 men & women aged 65 & older could be attributed to lifestyle factors.

TicTOCs aggregates tables of contents from group of scholarly publishers, including Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Informa, WK, BMC, Nature & others, in an RSS feed. Developed by U. Liverpool library, Heriot-Watt Univ., CrossRef, Proquest, Emerald, RefWorks, Mimas, Cranfield U., IoP, Sage Pub., inderscience, DOAJ, Open J-Gate and Intute.

John Moore from Chilmark Research provides a sanguine review of last week’s Health 2.0 conference in Boston. He’d appreciate less hype, more data.

Computer Sciences Corp (CSC) releases a report, “Core Measures: All About the Data”, which recommends that hospitals change priorities to focus on automating documentation of physicians’ notes early in the process to create “core measures” for payers.

Monica Healthcare, a developer of miniature wireless technology for monitoring pregnant women, has raised 1.2 M pounds in VC funding, led by PUK Ventures. Monica is based in UK and is a spinout of U. Nottingham. Will be marketed in UK, Europe, Gulf States & Australia.

J&J’s Simponi, a monoclonal antibody that is injected once a month, is approved by FDA for 3 rheumatic indications. Analysts have est.sales of $3B in next 3 years and this biologic is thought to be a key reason that Merck is acq. Schering Plough for $44.5 M.

Healthcare IT News provides a concise summary of the key differences in viewpoints represented at last week’s Health 2.0 conference in Boston. Further comment from HCA: both expert and user-generated content can be useful. But, it’s important to have transparency in health content, so that user understands who produced the content and their motivation/bias.

Challenge to Vermont’s law that bars healthcare datamining companies from using prescriber-identifiable data rejected by US District Judge Murtha. VT’s law was challenged by IMS Health, Wolters kluwer, and Verispan/ SDI. PhRMA has a separate challenge which was included in the ruling.

John Battelle posts a couple of graphs showing Twitter’s “hockey stick” growth in March 2009. I think that’s the month I started tweeting. @janicemccallum