HealthContentAdvisors

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.

Good post by Josh Seidman about how the value of health content increases when it is available in the right context and communicated effectively. Sounds like what we used to call vContent at Shore. In essence, content, technology (C+T) , and the context in which C+T will be used all have to be considered when planning effective Health IT or Health Content.

Dr. Lou Diamond named chair of HIMSS Patient Safety, Quality & Outcomes Committee.

Cnet’s 1st in a series on health IT. This first installment covers good ground on state of EHR technology and usage among hospitals. Looking forward to reading more.

See link for 8-page that includes Objectives, Milestones, budget, and metrics for measuring performance improvement for ONC.

Boston Globe publishes brief interview with Dave deBronkart, aka e-patient Dave.

Hope Leman offers an indepth review of DeepDyve’s latest enhanced version. She calls on the big STM publishers to take note of the SEO features and “more like this” features that are of great value to their audiences.

This story highlights a program by Mass General Hospital (MGH) in Boston to offer patient advocates to elderly patients to help with post-discharge follow-up with patients to reduce need for re-admission. Key success factor of the study was having the advocate closely aligned with the patient’s primary care physician. Article incorporate several other themes, including using home monitoring technology to improve chances of quick response to changes in metrics being monitoring. Interesting (tho, not surprising) how comments on the story run toward cost-controlling approach and all the assoc. negatives. To me, key point is that investing in post-discharge monitoring is effective, and that patient education & post-discharge info is most effective when provided by physicians and nurses directly who are part of care team. Overall, the need for patient advocates is critical, but not a central part our of health care system.

WAPO describes the lobbying by HIMSS to push for IT as focus on health reform.

Full article about the experience of an academic’s comparing the use blog reader reviewers and traditional peer reviewers for his book, published by MIT Press. Good points about the micro focus of blog readers vs. macro view of traditional peer reviewers.

Orzag’s 4-pt plan for cheaper, better healthcare: expand Health IT, conduct comparative effectiveness research, emphasize prevention, and change the way providers are paid.

Andrew McAfee, Prof. at HBS, soon to be at MIT Center for Digital Business, writes on class exercise to define utility of Twitter. Conclusion is that Twitter isn’t a substitute for other things, rather it makes it easier to do many things. Less friction, lower barriers to entry, asymmetric info flows, asynchronous communication, and more.

Check out the really cool Microsoft Surface/Amalga videos here.

Amazon launches AmazonEncore, an imprint for publishing previously self-published or out-of-print books. 1st title will be available in audio and Kindle versions, as well as print. Pre-emptive move in response to Google Book Settlement, where Google gets monopoly rights to unclaimed orphan works?