Headline Commentary June 8-14

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Posted June 14th 2009
by Janice

» 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.