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Archive for June, 2009

Headline Commentary June 22-28

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Health Content is Rapidly Losing Its Value

The dismal state of the news publishing business is well known.  The competition in online news has become so intense that users now expect to receive general news for free.  It’s not a stretch to say that news stories that report the latest medical research results fall in the same category (and constitute the majority of health stories in general news outlets). 

This trend isn’t unique to news or health content.  All digital content is becoming commoditized.  Why?  The answer is complex, driven mainly by technology.  Good quality digital publishing systems are available for free (e.g., WordPess, open source CMS systems), thereby eliminating the cost of production and replication,  and distribution costs have been driven down to near zero with Web distribution.  These factors combine to reduce the barriers to entry, and as a result, the volume of digital content has exploded.  Marketers are giving away content to promote their goods and services; citizen journalists are blogging, texting, and Tweeting; and social media tools have made it relatively easy to build an audience for content.  Publishers, whose product is content, have to give away some of it to draw in users, but too often seem confused about what content to give away and what content to retain as premium content.

This commoditization phenomenon isn’t contained to publishers.  As pointed out by Tom H. Lee, MD in a provocative article, “Commodifying Content Through IT: Could Physicians Be Next” in iHealthBeat last month, physicians are experiencing commoditization, too. Dr. Lee (who headed content development for Epocrates in its early days) posits that once the knowledge of doctors is encoded in computerized clinical decision support systems, the value of the physician who once had controlled access to the same information will decline.

Take for example, the use of nurse practitioners and other non-physician clinicians for many relatively routine tasks previously carried out by doctors.  Minute-Clinics and the like are prime examples where order sets are used to diagnose and treat common conditions.  (See Harry Bliss cartoon: The doctor’s nurse’s nurse practitioner will see you now).  Even self-diagnostic systems for patient use will become more commonplace over time as clinical decision support systems improve and gain acceptance as reliable diagnostic tools. 

Okay, so let’s accept that health news content is a commodity.  What about more specialized health content, such as fulltext journal articles, drug information, books, and other reference materials?  The evidence indicates these categories are approaching commodity status, too.  How fast they are de-valued depends on how easy it is to recreate or reproduce the information and other barriers to entry. 

In today’s market we’re often willing to pay to find content, but not for the content itself.  Rewards for creating content are declining relative to the rewards of creating new technology for processing content. 

What should health content publishers — and healthcare professionals — be doing to maintain their value in the face of technology-driven commoditization?  In short, they need to “move up the value chain”.  Sometimes just aggregating related content and making it accessible at the point of need is sufficient added-value to extract a premium.[1]  Other times, investing in creating sophisticated workflow tools or analytic engines that integrate content with IT to guide users to optimal solutions may be necessary to produce sufficient value in today’s market.  So when it comes to technology, publishers need to embrace the opportunities to enhance their content and expertise with appropriate technology and make IT their friend before fear of technology defeats them. 

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[1] Just today, I discovered that TauMed, a health news aggregator has shut down and its founder now works at EveryZing.  Clearly, aggregation services that operate in a crowded space face commoditization as well. 

 

Headline Commentary June 18-21

  • » PayerView — The Best and Worst Payers Revealed

    AthenaHealth publishes analysis of payment records of insurers based on claims data it processes for clients. Great example of “data content” byproduct of primary line of business. In this case, Athenahealth’s analysis helps clients and prospects understand payment practices of various insurers and more important, published results promote Athenahealth.

  • » CAHPS Survey May Expand to I.T.

    AHRQ proposes expanding CAHPS surveys to include patient attitudes about health It. Harvard & Rand will conduct a field test in 2009.

  • » Sales down, as Professional/Trade takes hit at John Wiley | theBookseller.com

    STM sales down 1% (up 9% at cc), profits rose 4% (14% cc).

  • » ContentNext Slows Growth, ‘Adjusts’ Staff :: MinOnline

    ContentNext, the parent company of PaidContent.org, which is now owned by the Guardian, confirms recent layoffs and realignment.

  • » Times Higher Education - Publisher ‘threat’ to open access

    Reports that Elsevier has been in discussions with some institutions to discuss having their institutional repositories replaced by PDF files hosted by ELS.

  • » Medicine and Social Media: Why Do I Tweet ? - Cancerwise | A blog featuring Cancer News and Insights from M. D. Anderson

    Anas Younes, MD on why he Tweets.

  • » Inkwell Publishing Solutions Owes Thousands to Workers - NYTimes.com

    Inkwell Publishing, which hires freelancers to write textbooks for Houghton Mifflin Harcout, has stopped paying the freelance content producers because of non-payment from Houghton. Fits with theme of content commoditization, the subject of this week’s commentary on HCA blog.

  • » Hello Health clinics would offer medical care online - The Boston Globe

    Jay Parkinson’s Hello Health healthcare model is highlighted. Hello Health offers a model for providers of health care that utlizes technology to improve efficiency and communication between patients & doctors. For now, Hello Health requires direct payment from patients, although patients can seek reimbursement.

  • » kindles-drm-rears-its-ugly-head-and-it-is-ugly

    Ah, DRM! I haven’t heard much on that topic for a while. Device-specific DRM offers publishers some comfort, but this post and the comments expose the limitations of device-specific policies when upgrades to tech. devices occur so frequently.

  • » Glaxo CEO admits R&D overhaul has been traumatic | Markets | Markets News | Reuters

    Glaxo’s CEO, Andrew Witty, discusses changes in R&D organization, which has moved from “industrial-scale drug discovery processes” of the past 15 years that relied on “an industrial process based on large-scale applications of technologies like genomics, proteomics and combinatorial chemistry” which didn’t deliver on their promise, to more focused research that is “more of an art than a science”.

  • » Physicians Practice Articles : Billing Service or EHR Vendor?

    Review of some EHR vendors that also offer billing services.

  • » Draft Health Reform Bill from House

    Discussion draft of House’s health reform bill “To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.” 852 page pdf doc.

  • » Can intelligent cuts in drug R&D ease the pain? - Science - Thomson Reuters

    Video interview with Phil Gould, Managing Director of Jadara Pharma, discussing the need for R&D divisons of Pharma to improve methods to decide which compounds to invest in, given the economic conditions that Pharma faces.

  • » Elsevier: Health content Apps for iPhone and iPod touch.

    Nice to see that Els has iPhone apps for popular medical info products from Mosby/Saunders, including Mosby’s iTerms Flash Cards, Saunder’s Q&A Review for th NCLEX-RN Exam and many more.

  • » Candover Sells Wood Mackenzie, a global energy research & consulting firm

    Financially troubled Candover sells Wood Mackenzie to PE firm Charterhouse Capital for EV of GBP 553 Million.

  • » Getting in the way of a doctor’s calling - The Boston Globe

    Nice piece by Ellen Goodman on the importance of helping doctors focus on providing healthcare, not reimbursement rates and other business issues.

  • » Patients to get a peek at physicians’ notes - The Boston Globe

    BI/DMC to be focus on RWJF study that will allow patients to view doctors’ notes online.

  • » Librarians vs. Google: Fighting the Web Giant’s Book Deal - TIME

    Good recap of Google Book Settlement, Book Rights Registry, and orphan works rights proferred to Google under the settlement. Interesting that Google, the company that champions free content, is now being feared for possibly planning to charge “exorbitant” rates once they get near-monopoly rights over orphan works.

  • » TRANSCRIPT – HIT Policy Committee « Brian Ahier

    Full transcript from HIT Policy Committee meeting that will make recommendations to ONC.Links to presentation and other materials., too.

  • » The Health Care Blog: What Technology is Needed to Improve Care: EHRs or Registries?#more#more

    Great post by Richard Scoville on how some community health centers are relying on registries of patient records & outcomes to improve overall care. Unfortunately, most EHR systems aren’t set up to interoperate with registries, which nixes the whole idea of meaningful use!

  • » Surgeon who fabricated data in published paper was consultant to Medtronic

    Medtronic says it paid almost $800,000 to surgeon Dr. Kuklo over past 3 years for consulting, product development and speaking. Dr. Kuklo is accused of fabricating study that reported positive results for a Medtronic spine product.

  • » The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Care Consumer Confidence Index - RWJF - Health Reform 2009 - RWJF

    RWJF launches consumer health care confidence index in partnership with Survey Research Center at U. Michigan, which conducts the “Surveys of Consumers” monthly survey of 500 households.

  • » Revolutionizing Health IT to Meet Patient and Physician Needs

    Proposed principles from Children’s Hospital (Boston) workgroup for Health IT infrastructure modeled on iPhone platform with interchangeable applications.

  • » Google Public Policy Blog: Opening access to books means opportunities for everyone — including Amazon

    Dan Clancy responds to Bezos’ comments about Google Books. All publishers–in all platforms & for all audiences–should be following Google Books Settlement and the G Books program!

  • » peHUB » Adgregate Markets Buys Gydget

    Adgregate Markets, an online advtsg services provider acquires Gydget, a social media widget. Adgregate’s offering, ShoAdsTM, creates banner ads that have e-commerce capability directly embedded.

  • » HLTH Corporation and WebMD Health Corp. Announce Agreement to Merge

    Merger, which was called off last fall due to market conditions and lack of buyer for Porex, is back on. HLTH still seeking buyer for Porex. WebMD will be surviving company with Wygod as Chair and Gattinella as Pres/CEO. All stock transaction. WebMD has been a publicly traded sub. of HLTH.

  • » Mayo Clinic Transformation Symposium

    Looks to be a good conference on innovation in health care experience & delivery.

  • » Congress, Obama administration convene at mHealth summit | mobihealthnews

    Sponsored by CTIA (wireless ind assoc), Congress, administration officials, & experts to meet to discuss “mHealth solutions to America’s chronic care crisis”. Good quote from Obama at end of article. “We need to explore a range of ideas about how to put patient safety first, let doctors focus on practicing medicine, and encourage broader use of evidence-based guidelines”.

  • » Medical Transcription as Proven Accelerator of EHR Adoption on ADVANCE for Health Information Professionals

    Excellent points by 2 associations that deal with healthcare documentation and medical transcription (AHDI and MTIA). In short, we need representatives from parties that understand clinical workflow and “how” EHRs will be used not just representatives from the technology side. “Defining ‘meaningful use’ is not the role of HIT but…clinicians and experts in health care documentation who can speak to the document workflow process and the complexities of capturing health stories in a way that informs clinical decision-making and promotes coordination of care..”

  • » IBM To Invest $100 Million In Cell Phone Research - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

    IBM bets on mobile tech to reach parts of pop that don’t use pcs–and of course those who use both.

  • » CareMedic Markets Cleveland Clinic App for identifying Medicaid patients

    CareMedic, based in St. Petersburg, FL, has incorporated Cleveland Clinic’s app that helps identify medicaid, self-pay & charity cases to help manage bad debt & denied claims into its Patient Access Mgmt system.

  • » Revenue Cycle Best Practices Outlined

    The Healthcare Financial Mgmt Assoc will publish a detailed report this fall on how to implement best practices in revenue cycle mgmt (RCM). Preliminary results given at HFMA’s annual meeting in Seattle. Bullet point results listed in article.

  • » Captivate announces content, advertising deal with Thomson Reuters :: BtoB Magazine

    ThomsonReuters to provide business/finance news to Captivate for distribution via their commercial elevator screens.

  • » Pharmaceutical Executive Digest Europe - June 17, 2009 - (4)

    Good article on recent research by TNS Healthcare on shifting relationships between Pharma and doctors. No major revelations, but some good data.

  • » Who’s Investing In Twitter Startups?

    Article provides table of Twitter-related start-ups and the investors in each.

  • » Project HealthDesign: PHR research from RWJF

    Round 1 research reports from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Project HealthDesign available via this link.

  • » Views: How Tweet It Is - Inside Higher Ed

    Good piece on use of Twitter by scholarly publishers. Focuses on using Twitter to promote info about books/journals on blogs or websites. But, also points out that PR folks have a bit more latitude in what they can do/say on Twitter than in a formal blog/web post.

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    Headline Commentary June 8 - 18

  • » Roni Zeiger: Who is the most important stakeholder in healthcare?

    Roni Zeiger, MD, product manager of Google Health offers a thoughtful & sensible response to questions about patient involvement in medical decisions. I agree with his argument that for standard, time-tested, well understood treatments, the “paternalistic” system works well. I’d go further to say that these are the types of treatments that can more easily be captured in computerized clinical decision support systems and don’t require the expertise of an MD in most cases. Minute Clinics and the like are proving this point. Order sets are followed by nurse practitioners or phys. asisstants. Zeiger goes on to say that in other cases, where multiple courses of treatment are potentially helpful, we need to work on educating patients to ask about the risks and potential outcomes of each treatment. This isn’t an easy task. Zeiger recommends organizing data to help explain options to patients. I second that!

  • » McKinsey: What Matters: Personalized medicine: An interview with Esther Dyson

    Esther Dyson on the importance of genetic research, includes transcript and video.

  • » McKinsey: What Matters: Health should be at the heart of health IT

    Carol Diamond & Josh Lemieux write about the over-emphasis on technology and not the desired outcome of better healthcare through the use of technology. Good article.

  • » EARN CASH for Joint Commission Compliance? : Hospital Accreditation

    I think they mean “mnemonic” not pneumonic! Articles lays out mnemonic checklist for effective patient discharge information that is in compliance with JCAHO guidelines.

  • » Life as a Healthcare CIO: Meaningful Use has Arrived

    John Halamka’s post on the Meaningful Use definitions presented at today’s HIT Policy committee meeting. Links to the matrix and complete slides included.

  • » Hirschorn: The Economist Benefited From Being Semi Competent About the Web | paidContent.org

    In fact, The Economist benefited by refusing to give its content away on the Web. Audience for the Economist is smaller than that of Time or Newsweek because of its higher quality global analysis focus (remember that People magazine has the highest circulation). Added analysis in Economist differentiates it from commodity news articles that just summarize week’s news stories.

  • » Another Sign That Pharma Companies Will Rely Less on Internal R&D Programs : Bio Job Blog

    Eli Lilly solicits submissions from external institutiions to submit proprietary compounds for potential screening (thus alleviating the need to discover new compounds themselves).

  • » Should Health Care Come With A Warranty? — de Brantes et al., 10.1377/hlthaff.28.4.w678 — Health Affairs

    Full text of article referenced earlier. Provided doctors follow accepted clinical guidelines and fall below average error rates, this model (PROMETHEUS) proposes a risk-adjusted payment model.

  • » Meaningful Use Matrix from HHS

    Detailed matrix of Meaningful Use (MU) priorities, objectives,and measures. Contrary to my first reaction, based on less detail, evidence-based content and patient education information do figure into some of the priorities. Thank goodness!

  • » First Look at ‘Meaningful Use’

    Initial recommendations includes 22 objectives, but no official definition of meaningful use. Note, incorporating access to medical research info or existing clinical decision support systems is not among the objectives. Too much focus on technology, barely any focus on research content!

  • » Experts Urge Immediate ICD-10 Prep Work

    Even with deadline >4 years away, experts at recent Healthcare Financial Mgmt Association meeting recommend that hospitals begin planning immediately.

  • » Drug Firms Jockey for Space Online

    WaPo covers some recent social media ad campaigns by Pharma.

  • » Should Health Care Come With A Warranty? — de Brantes et al., 10.1377/hlthaff.28.4.w678 — Health Affairs

    Abstract of article in Health Affairs that proposes an evidence-based model for physician reimbursement.

  • » Thomson Reuters Partners With Research4life To Bring Scientific Research Information Resources To Developing Countries

    Thomson Reuters offers special edition of ISI WoK to developing countries in partnership with Reseach4Life.

  • » ACS Journals In Transition | Latest News | Chemical & Engineering News

    ACS Journals to publish in new format with 2 pages of content on each printed page–to save money & space. Results from move to online usage for most readers.

  • » Yahoo Newspaper Consortium Adds Five Members | paidContent.org

    Yahoo adds 5 new papers, even in face of possible shutdown of HotJobs, which is a major source of job classified rev. for consortium papers.

  • » GE buying health IT market share | ZDNet Healthcare | ZDNet.com

    GE and IBM are using financing to their advantage to reel in new prospects for their EHR systems. In this case, GE’s Centricity.

  • » Rx BALANCE: Fight To the Finish – Why it Pays to Put on the Gloves

    Interesting post that provides insight into pharma marketing practices and suggests that physician & patient education advocates learn from some of the practices of pharma in getting out their message.

  • » Why 1.5 Is Greater Than 2.0 - Tom Davenport - HarvardBusiness.org

    Tom Davenport on why user-generated content must be considered a supplement, not a replacement, for authoritative content in healthcare. An important addition, IX therapy as it now is practiced by Healthwise & Center for IX Therapy represents a very small slice of authoritative medical and healthcare content. There is more than one source beside Healthwise.

  • » Hospital Employee Gets Jail Time for Stealing Patient Records - Health Blog - WSJ

    Person who stole patient record information at Cedars Sinai Medical in LA & used info to defraud insurance companies sentenced to 4yrs 8 mos. in prison.

  • » What Medical Education Has to Do With Health Reform - Health Blog - WSJ

    WSJ writes about how medical education might be affected by health reform. Important topic, especially continuing medical education (CME).

  • » Editor will quit over hoax paper : Nature News

    Experiment shows that author pays model could lead to inappropriate acceptances of papers. In this case, a computer generated article was accepted for publication by an open access/author pays publisher.

  • » About.com Bets On Celebrity ‘Experts’ To Boost Profile; Reviving Wolfgang Puck | paidContent.org

    NYTimes’ About.com increasingly uses celebrity “expert authors’ to drive usage. Celebrities receive free exposure, not payments.

  • » Will Doctors Buy ObamaCare? - Forbes.com

    Forbes on Obama’s speech to AMA & the reaction.

  • » TechWeb cuts jobs, shifts executives :: BtoB Magazine

    TechWeb, publisher of InformationWeek and related pubs, reorganizes around verticals and shifts execs. I am a loyal reader of InformationWeek, but I marvel at how often the names on the masthead change.

  • » Ascend Media on the block :: BtoB Magazine

    Ascend Media, fmly owned by PE companies CCMP and VSS & mgmt, now owned by lenders, is for sale. Assets include B2B magazines for medical imagin, hearing, respiratory care, PT, plastic surgery & other professionals, as well as event media and medical education products. Drop in pharma advertising likely a major driver for declines in sales for all properties.

  • » E-Script Vendor Zix Seeks Offers

    Zix Corp is seeking buyer for its PocketScript payer-sponsored eprescribing business, which had sales of $1million in Q1 2009.

  • » Obama’s Reform Plan Cuts Too Deep, Says AHA - www.healthleadersmedia.com

    Not surprisingly, AHA is against cutting payments to hospitals, esp. before coverage is expanded to more uninsured.

  • » Medical News: White House 'Finds' Another $313 Billion for Healthcare Reform - in Washington-Watch, Washington Watch from MedPage Today

    From Obama’s speech to AMA: talk of the additional $313 in healthcare savings to help pay for costs of reform. MedPage Today offers good coverage of the entire speech.

  • » HITSP Begins Harmonization Process for Use of Electronic Health Records in Clinical Research

    HITSP, a public/private partnership that works on interoperability of EHRs in US, has begun work to identify standards to support “core research data element exchange”.

  • » Jim Hanekamp of Glenview creates health-based gaming site

    Hanekamp’s site,myfitbrain.com, provides resources that exercise & help retain cognitive abilities in older adults.

  • » Transcript: Health Info Tech Coordinator David Blumenthal - WSJ.com

    WSJ speaks with David Blumentional, head of ONC. “There’s no way to transform the healthcare system without information technology.”

  • » Social media for STM societies: STweM’s inaugural consultancy product «

    Andrew Spong, fmly with Wiley, launches his first workshop for STM publishers on social media.

  • » Hospital Inflation and Expense Trends

    HealthLeaders publishes data from Thomson Reuters on hospital expenses per adjusted discharge for 2008 and 2005.

  • » Top 5 Twitter Related Trends to Watch

    Good piece on uses of Twitter and some companies to watch that are adding value to Twitter.

  • » Pharma Marketing Blog: Missing FDA Letters Found. More Questions.

    John Mack offers addt’l insight into FDA warning letters to pharma about paid search ads.

  • » MarketingProfs B2B Forum Re-cap: The Book « StickyFigure

    Excellent recap with lots of links of MarketingProfs B2B Forum held last week (June 8-9) in Boston.

  • » Games: The Next Frontier for Pharma Marketers

    Write-up of last week’s (June 11-12,2009) Games for Health conference in Boston.

  • » Hot Topics In Healthcare Reform: A Primer

    Summary of Lois Capps’ remarks at Avalere Health’s recent “Raising the Bar: Payment Reform and CardioVascular Disease” conference.

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    Headline Commentary June 8-14

  • » Obama looks for ways to pay for healthcare | csmonitor.com

    Obama administration says it can find $313 B in healthcare savings to help pay for reforms.

  • » bfm: Berners-Lee to advise on public data use in UK. How about here in good old U S of A?

    UK “Power of Information” taskforce invited Tim Berners-Lee to advise on opening access to UK govt data.

  • » The Borg Lives in Healthcare « Chilmark Research

    John Moore summarizes his thoughts on the recent Microsoft Connected Health conf. Key point: MSFT has shifted some focus from consumer apps to enterprise apps, in large part because of the faster uptake & more clear business models.

  • » Health Business Blog » Blog Archive » Information or information technology?

    David E. Williams comments on the need to focus on the “content” or “information” side of the IT equation, not just the technology. In particular, he points to how clinical decision support systems (CDS) benefit from application of technology to info. This is the mantra of Health Content Advisors. We’re glad to see more industry analysts poiont out the need to put attention on the “I” in “IT” .

  • » Dice Buys Out Vertical Jobs Site AllHealthcareJobs.com For $2.8 Million | paidContent.org

    Allhealthcarejobs.com, which was launched in 2006 and is reported to have sales <$1M, is acquired by jobs site Dice Holdings for $2.8 million.

  • » Healthcare Technology News: The First Meeting of the Clinical Quality Workgroup

    John Halamka’s post on first meeting of HIT Standards Committee on quality measures.

  • » Health Care IT’s Diagnosis: Excellent - Forbes.com

    Sramana Mitra on some well-positioned health IT and health content companies. Mostly focused on IT companies that help to save costs.

  • » N.Y. Times mines its data to identify words that readers find abstruse » Nieman Journalism Lab

    Here’s an example of a publishing company’s looking at data it can extract from patterns of use of its content. Analysis doesn’t appear to have been done for purpose of creating a by-product, but online news sites should consider more offshoots from mining usage patterns on its sites.

  • » AMA to link between physician portal, PHR platform - Modern Healthcare

    AMA & Covisint are working together to build a portfolio of Web-bases services to physicians and on June 11, announced that the portal will be launched nationally in early 2010 and will provide a link to Microsoft’s HealthVault PHR platform.

  • » Elsevier Partners with NextBio to Enrich ScienceDirect Content

    Elsevier selects NextBio’s platform to enhance ScienceDirect, by allowing it to integrate search results from other online scientific data along with ScienceDirect results. NextBio is used by many top Pharma companies & research institutions.

  • » Commodifying Content Through IT: Could Physicians Be Next? - iHealthBeat

    Thomas H. Lee, MD writes about effect of IT on role of physician. Comparing what IT has done to publishing (and journalists), Dr. Lee posits that some basic functions of doctors can indeed be automated. This is an important theme and I will write more on this topic soon.

  • » Doctor and Patient - Medicine in the Age of Twitter - NYTimes.com

    Dr. Chen writes about uses of social media (including Twitter) to motivate patients to comply with treatment and wellness plans.

  • » LifeShirt Vendor VivoMetrics Readies Upgrades

    LifeShirt,a wearable remote patient monitoring system, completes prototype of next-gen shirt. Current version embeds sensors to collect respiratory, cardiopulmonary, & other data from patient. Can also connect to peripheral devices and transmit data to vendor’s db for analysis. New version will integrate all sensors, extend battery life, & make upgrades easier. Sounds cool, but what about washability?

  • » Hal Varian on how the Web challenges managers - The McKinsey Quarterly - Hal Varian web challenge managers - Strategy - Innovation

    Varian says ’statisticians are sexy’ and ability to interpret and communicate trends from databases is critical skill in today’s business world.

  • » Government Data and the Invisible Hand | Freedom to Tinker

    Ed Felten’s suggestions for data.gov & general role of feds in serving as info provider. Great points: “Private actors….are better suited to deliver govt info to citizens and can constatnly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data.”

  • » Association of Health Care Journalists | Resource Center - Tips

    Lots of tips & references on using Twitter for HC journalists.

  • » Health Secrets of Red Wine Uncovered - healthfinder.gov

    The government says sipping red wine improves the benefits. Glad to know I’m doing it right!

  • » Life expectancy could be topic in health care debate - CNN.com

    Single payer system = longer life expectancy?

  • » No solution to newspaper problems? Hah!: SteveOuting.com

    Steve Outing provides a list of suggestions for newspaper company executives. Food for thought for publishers in other segments, too!

  • » AHRQ Eprescribing webinar June 23

    2nd in 3-part series on eprescribing.

  • » Patient Upside Murky in Drug-Price Cases - WSJ.com

    Class action settlement against First DataBank (Hearst) that publishes benchmark drug prices and McKesson, a drug wholesaler, will result in some payments to consumers who bought these drugs, along with some price rollbacks, but not a significant change.

  • » Information Therapy (Ix) Blog » What’s New in the New Pew Data?

    Good summary of new Pew reports with follow-up by Susanna Fox, Gilles Frydman, and more. I’ll dig into the report tomorrow.

  • » The HCI 100 | Healthcare Informatics

    Healthcare Informatics’ June issue with HCI 100 list of top health IT vendors.

  • » MEDSEEK Climbs the Ranks of the HCI 100 with Increased Adoption of Its eHealth Portals and eHealth ecoSystem(TM)

    Medseek, a provider of healthcare enterprise portals for hospitals, listed #72 in HCI 100 rankings.

  • » PharmaSURVEYOR’s Advanced Drug Safety Service Connects to Microsoft HealthVault

    Drug interaction/adverse effects info tool added to MSFT’s HealthVault.

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    Headline Commentary May 31-June 7

  • » More websites are rating physicians, but can you trust them? - The Boston Globe

    A rundown of a handful of online physician ratings sites. Also mentions pushback by physicians who can’t respond to reviews. Mentions RateMDs.com, DrScore.com, AngiesList, Heatlhgrades and some state-specific sites.

  • » Google and the Evolution of Search I: Human Evaluators | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

    Good series on how the Google algorithm has evolved and how human reviewers have been added to the formula.

  • » Online Ad Spend Down 5% :: MinOnline

    IAB PWC research shows that online ad spend declined in Q1 2009 YoY for the 1st time in years.

  • » 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing (COASP) 14-16 September — Open Access Week - October 19-23, 2009

    The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Assos. and DOAJ/Lund University LIbraries will hole 1st conf. on Open Access in Sweden Sept. 14-16.

  • » “Give us our data”: my talk at the NeHC board meeting | e-Patients.net

    E-patient Dave’s slides from presentation at National eHealth Collaborative last week.

  • » Data.gov: Opening the Doors to Government Data

    Good overview of Data.gov by Info Today.

  • » Health Business Blog: Michael Porter gets it right

    David E. Williams provides a very nice summary of Michael Porter’s excellent article in NEJM (available for free): A Strategy for Health Care Reform — Toward a Value-Based System.

  • » Better Health » Participatory Medicine will Change the Health Care World as we Know it!

    The participatory medicine/epatient pioneers have formed a society, the Society of Participatory Medicine, and will publish a journal called Jounral of Participatory Medicine. Dr. Alan Green, MD is the first president. Journal will be open access, of course!

  • » Why don’t drug companies use Twitter? | Big Pharma | social media

    Some background on why drug companies aren’t flocking to Twitter.

  • » Cerner Markets Patient Data to Drug Companies, Researchers - iHealthBeat

    This story supports theme of the June 4 blog on Health Data Analytics and the bounty of new data streams that will be available from digitized records of all sorts. Cerner’s data warehouse includes 1.2 billion lab results, as well as medication orders and other data.

  • » Electronic Medical Records: the “drunk man’s keys” of the healthcare reform debate | DailyKaizen

    Good post that expands on theme that EHRs (EMRs) should be designed with patient needs in mind and that simply automated current procedures in hospitals won’t likely lead to an improved experience for patients who want to participate in their health care decisions.

  • » Comparative Effectiveness Research and Evidence-Based Health Policy: Experience from Four Countries - The Commonwealth Fund

    Commonwealth Fund study on Comparative Effectiveness Research from 4 other countries. In my reading pile.

  • » Health-Care Jobs Update: Still Growing - Health Blog - WSJ

    Healthcare a bright spot in employement trends: health care jobs grew >23,000 in May, while overall nonfarm payrolls shrank by 345,000.

  • » Better Health » The Real Reason Why Doctors Don’t Want To Adopt EMRs, And What To Do About It

    Dr. Val discusses the “workflow interruption” aspect of most EHR systems. The “workflow interruption” is my term. She describes more elegantly, but I am putting it in context of good marketing practices in IT and publishing, where product developers spend time shadowing prospective customers and get a deep understanding of their workflow in order to design information tools that increase efficiency and try to improve outcomes, not just add a layer of technology in order to record data.

  • » e-Patients Do Not Suffer From Database-Hugging Disorder | e-Patients.net

    A new condition of interest to data publishers: Database Hugging Disorder (DBHD). Humor aside, this post addresses trend toward allowing access to the databases that were used in medical and other studies. In line with the Open Access movement in scholarly publishing that campaigns for free access to research articles where the research was funded with public funds, the open database movement seems to be growing very quickly. Oddly enough, even though the databases hold more value than individual articles (especially when data can be combined from multiple databases), the fact that they haven’t been monetized in most cases may lead research organizations to be more willing to make them freely available while still charging for published articles based on the data.

  • » Pharma Marketing Blog: Let’s Make it a Threesome: One Other Social Media Activity Pharma Can Do Now!

    Good post that includes links to top ideas for Pharma in social media, as well as John Mack’s thoughts on the need for Pharma companies to create “corporate” blogs or websites that serve as central resources on diseases, conditions, or other topics that are more broad than a marketing site for a drug. Points to importance of providing links and information from other sources. This is a theme I think is important and publishers should take note. Pharma websites are now prospective buyers of authoritative content for their websites.

  • » Johnson & Johnson discusses pipeline, growth strategies - FirstWord

    J&J said “pipeline productivity is on track” and outlined growth strategies: -greater marekt penetration, new commercial models, exapnded geographic presence.

  • » Elsevier tweaks custom pub rules :The Scientist [4th June 2009]

    Elsevier to publish guidelines for sponsored reprints.

  • » NEJM — A Strategy for Health Care Reform — Toward a Value-Based System

    Good piece from Michael Porter on key changes required to reform our healthcare system. Porter emphasizes the need to align incentives for insurers, providers, employers, and patients with health of the patients/consumers as the objective. I’ve only skimmed the article, but it looks spot on.

  • » Medical Bills Are Found Linked to Most Bankruptcies - Health Blog - WSJ

    Stunning numbers from new study that says 62% of all bankruptices filed in 2007 were in part due to medical expenses–and 78% of those individuals had health insurance.

  • » Bertelsmann drops out of Springer race: sources | Deals | Reuters

    Only PE companies left in bidding. Interesting twist: Springer’s current owners, Candover & Cinven are looking to raise a specific amount (500M Euros) and are asking interested parties to bid on share they are willing to accept for that amount. Springer has large number of scholarly journals & books, and has done well selling ebook versions in the past couple of years, but has lagged behind in creating decision tool applications based on their content. Heavily focused on academic market.

  • » Anthem Blue Cross in California Provides More Members With Access to Comprehensive Transparency Tool

    Anthem Blue Cross, the BC provider in California, announces wide availability of its cost comparison data to members in CA. The transparency tool provides access to costs associatied with all aspects of a medical procedure, from lat tests to recovery room charges & physician costs for specific facilites. Eventually, BC/BS plans to make similar info available countrywide. A big move in the right direction to support consumer driven health plans with high deductibles & copays.

  • » Dr. Len’s Cancer Blog–on value of mega databases

    Great post on the potential value of the huge amount of data that are being collected as more info on individual patients is recorded in digital form. Effects of drug interactions across a broad population is key example given here.

  • » Patient Engagement Vendor, GetWellNetwork, funds research institute

    Modern Healthcare reports that GetWellNetwork, which provides bedside computer apps for “patient engagement” is “promoting the use of its own and similar products by creating and helping fund a not-for-profit institute devoted to researching patient-engagement effectiveness”. GetWellNetwork calls their applications “interactive patient care”. My comment: it gets confusing when there are so many fragmented terms for improving patient care & safety, some that involve patient participation, some that don’t. Rationalizing the health IT market, esp for vendors to hospitals, and incorporating patient education providers would add efficiency and perhaps even make sense to the patients. Relationship of GetWell and the insitutute also raises doubts on transparency. Parallels relationship between Healthwise & Center for Ix Therapy, although at least both are non-profits in this case.

  • » Medidata, a provider of software for clinical research data capture, sets terms for IPO

    Medidata, which provides s/w for managing clinical trials and for managing clinical research data (Rave), sets terms for IPO. S1 was filed in January 09. Insight Ventures key investor. Market cap at expected $11-13 range to be up to $290. See: http://www.mdsol.com/products/rave_overview.htm

  • » Medsphere Raising $15M | Xconomy

    Medsphere, a San Diego company, has raised $1.0M of a $15M funding round. Medsphere is commercializing an open source version of the EHR system developed for Veterans Affairs. Backers include Thomas Weisel, Azure Capital Partners, & Epic Ventures.

  • » Google Wave: Our First Hands-On Impressions

    Good overview of Google Wave by folks at ReadWriteWeb.

  • » Judge Allows Online Posts In Schering Vytorin Lawsuit

    Posts by pharma sales reps on site: CafePharma allowed in lawsuit that claims Schering hid study results on Vytorin.

  • » Google Sets Plans to Sell E-Books - WSJ.com

    More on Google’s plans to sell ebooks. Even though publishers get to set price, Google retains right to discount at its own expense.

  • » InnoCentive and Nature Publishing Group Launch nature.com Open Innovation Pavilion

    Previously announced collaboration between Nature Publishing and InnoCentive launches. Innocentives provides platform for problem “Seekers” to solicit solutions from problem “Solvers”–all with a life sciences focus.

  • » CMPMedica Announces the Health Empowerment Initiative

    CMPMedica announces new online healthcare education program for patients & their caregivers. Health Empowerment Initiative targets “knowledge gaps” in patient understanding to improve compliance with prescriptions and healthful behavior. Sounds interesting & I’ll check it out, but they should have come up with a better name for the program!

    •  

    Health Content/Data Analytics Stimulates Deal Activity

    At our Health Content08 conference last fall, much of the excitement focused on the wealth of data that will be able to be mined from digital health records, and recent deal activity illustrates some of the real-world opportunities.

    Dr. Len Lichtenfeld has pointed out on the American Cancer Society site that “megadatabases” compiled from electronic records that are often designed for other purposes can yield valuable source data for research studies. In most cases, the information is “de-identified” so that individual patient information cannot be traced. With increasing emphasis on comparative effectiveness research (CER) in the Stimulus Bill (ARRA), there will be a strong demand for tools that help capture data and analyze large databases that contain real-world outcomes.

    Two notable related developments include: today’s news that Medidata has set the terms for its previously announced IPO, with an expected market cap to be up to $290M. Medidata’s products include Rave, software that helps pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies with electronic data capture (EDC) for post-approval outcomes studies. And, 2) last month’s news that Phase Forward, a competitor to Medidata, has acquired Waban Software to extend its EDC capabilities.

    Medidata and Phase Forward, both known for clinical trials software, recognize the need to extend their offerings to include software that helps research scientists & clinicians design and conduct post-approval studies. EHR data sources will encompass more comprehensive reporting from more diverse populations and will require different set of data capture and analysis tools, such as extracting and rationalizing data across subjects.

    Along with these deals related to clinical trials software vendors, other recent health content/health data deals include:
         Microsoft’s acquisition of Rosetta Biosoftware’s genetic/genomic data management software, which will be added to MSFT’s Amalga Life Sciences group.
         Merge Healthcare’s acquisition of Etrials, a vendor of clinical trials software.
         Ingenix’s acquisition of AIM, a healthcare analytics company that works with payers and providers to reduce overpayment and billing errors.

    This recent spurt in deal activity is driven by the long-term trend towards digital record-keeping, but the pace of activity is accelerated by the current focus on CER and the >$1B in funding for CER including in the Stimulus Bill. At Health Content Advisors, we’re exciting about the level of activity in health data content and analytic tools. Our roots are in data content, so much so that the flagship annual conference of our parent, InfoCommerce Group, has renamed itself Data Content to make this point very clear.

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