HealthContentAdvisors

Headline Commentary June 22-28

• Posted June 28th 2009
• by Janice

Headlines Tagged on Delicious

• » Organizations Stump for Patients’ Access to Electronic Health Data - iHealthBeat

  “The future of health care should encourage expanded use of information tools to help consumers better manage their health” is the first line of the press release announcing the coalition. I really like the emphasis on information not just the technology in this statement. Bravo Markle Foundation!

• » Hang Out with Xconomy at DEMO’s Boston Scouting Party | Xconomy

  Organizers of DEMO, the big event in San Diego where start-ups get 6 minutes to describe their business, will be in Boston on Monday, June 29 to scout for “stealth mode” innovators for the Sept. 21-23 DEMO.

• » Better Health » Information Overload: The New Electronic Administrative Burden

  Great anecdotes of one physician’s experience using EHR system that is clearly poorly designed in designing information flows. There’s a big difference between having ready access to information and having every piece of data pushed out to the user. Health IT really does seem to be at least a decade behind BI systems in Financial Services and other industries. At least, the big EHR vendors, that is.

• » Drug Firms’ Medical Staffs Say What Salespeople Can’t - WSJ.com

  Pharma companies are increasingly using medical science liaisons (MSL) on staff to provide info to doctors, esp. because of increased limitations on detailng practices. Evidence shows that docs prefer receiving info from trained physicians (no suprise there).

• » Why Isn’t Health Care More Like a Washing Machine? - The Cheapskate Blog – TIME.com

  Another article that uses the analogy of consumer purchases of appliances or cars to healthcare purchases. A much better analogy is buying “car repair” services. Decisionmaking for healthcare & car repair is far less straightforward than new vehicle/appliance purchase. Plus lifetime costs (of appliance, car, or person) depend in part on proper maintenance and there are many other variables that affect outcomes!

• » Qforma Appoints Four Executives in Sales and Field Operations

  Qforma, a healthcare data analytics company, expands bus. dev. and sales staff. Qforma recently created the Most Influential Doctors application, which mines data from multiple sources — including research articles — to rate the influence of doctors. Deal with USA Today was widely promoted.

• » Allscripts-Misys shares jump on raised outlook - Forbes.com

  Increased incentives for eprescribing help Allscripts-Misys, but improved economy helped, too. Note, more customers buy on subscription basis, compared to perpetual license than in the past.

• » Patient-centered healthcare - The Boston Globe

  Thomas Ryan, CEO of CVS Caremark, lays out his thoughts on healthcare reform. With an obvious bias toward benefits of eprescribing, which he says can improve patient compliance, adverse effects, and cost improvement. See also today’s item about Allscripts-Misys improved results due to eprescribing.

• » Reed Elsevier slides on sell-off talk | Business | guardian.co.uk

  Citigroup cautions on 2010 estimates for Reed Elsevier, in part due to uncertainty about new CEO and what he’ll do with proceeds of RBI sale.

• » Measuring What Matters: Electronically, Automatically, (Somewhat) Painlessly - RWJF

  Look forward to reading this report from RWJF on EMRs, Health IT and Quality Improvement.

• » ARRA EHRs Health Reform and Meaningful Use Debate 6/25/2009 - @2healthguru on Blog Talk Radio

  Podcast of recent discussion among several health IT experts on meaningful use of EHRs–and more.

• » Nextgov - Administration urged to engage public on e-health records

  Input from advocates of consumer involvement in determining “meaningful use” of EHRs. Some suggest consumer advocate groups act as proxy for public.

• » Hedge fund managers betting Twitter will give them an edge in rapid trading - Telegraph

  Hedge fund managers to mine Twitter feeds to assess “event-based” info published on Twitter.

• » Home Health CEO: Expand ‘Meaningful Use’

  Perspective from CEO of Comfort Care & Resources, a home health agency in Erie, PA on meaningful use. To him, MU requires connections between all stakeholders in the care ecosystem.

• » GE, Big Vendors Corner EMR Market; Smaller Vendors Explore Health 2.0 - Kaiser Health News

  Couple of stories in Kaiser Health News: re- reports Pharmawire/FT story on how big EHR vendors crowd out smaller vendors, esp. GE with its new financing arm for its EHRs. Also reports that Atlas Ventures is looking for investments that will “improve health care by empowering patients”. Atlas invested in Keas, Adam Bosworth’s startup (he was at Google previously).

• » Pharma ad spend falls; TV takes bigger share - FiercePharma

  Ad Age releases its top 100 advertisers, with 14 Big Pharma companies on the list.

• » Medidata IPO Prices, No. 3 For Venture-Backed Companies - Venture Capital Dispatch - WSJ

  Medidata, a s/w provider to pharma and device companies that helps manage clinical trials, prices IPO at $14, for market cap of $313. Only the 3rd IPO of the year and the smallest of the 3.

• » New Drug Kills Cancer with Few Side Effects

  Early stage clinical trial results published 6/24/09 in NEJM report new drug, olaparib, shrinks or stablizes tumors in patients with certain treatment-resistant hereditary cancers.

• » Healthy Advice Networks Announces Improved Patient Outcomes in Physicians’ Offices with Healthy Advice Programs

  Reports improved outcomes from using patient education info from Healthy Advice Networks. Company PR, but wanted to tag this company.

• » Medifacts Acquires Spacelabs Healthcare Clinical Trials Services Division - Drugs.com MedNews

  Medifacts, a cardiovascular core lab, aquires Clinical Trials Services of Spacelabs Healthcare.

• » Study says flawed Ingenix databases are used widely - Modern Healthcare

  Ingenix’s database for determining out-of-network costs, which has been exposed by NY Atty General Cuomo has having serious flaws, is still used and even required to be used widely. Individual and small business plans suffer the most.

• » Health publisher MediZine expands database marketing opps with acquisition - DMNews

  MediZine acquires HealthCommunities.com, a collection of physician Web sites and patient/consumer health information.

• » Leading Healthcare IT Vendors Form Coalition to Promote e-Ordering in Radiology

  An new alliance of industry & American College of Radiology formed to promote HIT-enabled decision support for diagnostic imaging decisions. Similar to ePrescribing, the Imaging e-Ordering Coalition supports building incentives to move to diagnostic imaging e-ordering.

• » Imc2 opens health and wellness agency :: BtoB Magazine

  Imc2, a Dallas ad agency that already had strong pharma market presence, announced opening of imc2 health & wellness.

• » Consumers, Scientists Tell FDA To Explain Agency Decisions

  FDA holds meeting to get input from scientists and consumers on how to improve transparency of their decisions. CU wants more disclosure about mtgs with industry reps. Union of Concerned Scientists said they should allow FDA scientists to air opinions that differ from final agency decision. FDA disagreed with UCS view.

• » Economist Group reports record profit :: BtoB Magazine

  Nice to see a publisher with positive growth & earnings. Economist publications differ from general newsweeklies with their deeper analysis of global events and economics.

• » Ezra Klein - An Interview With Atul Gawande

  WaPo interview Atul Gawande, whose star has risen since the McAllen Texas article in the New Yorker. Gawande raises an important point about inequality of incomes’ relating to poor health for the segments at the low end of the scale, not just poverty. Robert Fogel from U. Chicago has written on this topic and it needs more attention. My hypothesis: high income segments increase demand for expensive healthcare treatment. As a result, all patients are pushed toward high-cost care (to amortize investment in equip, etc.) that they can’t afford.

• » In Defense of Google Books | Green Business | Reuters

  Some good points on the benefits of Google Books. My word of caution to publishers: be informed of the terms and plan accordingly. One pt that needs clarification: authors & publishers may get 63% of the revenue, but it is “net revenue” after costs, so is more likely to be closer to 30% of gross revenue or less.

• » Jen’s Posterous - Why I Didn’t Sign the Declaration of Health Data Rights - Yet…

  Jen McCabe Gorman’s very thoughtful post on the recent HealthDataRights.org manifesto and why it needs to be more direct, actionable, and more inclusive. Inclusiveness, that is building on other existing efforts and drawing on the support of groups with the same or adjacent interests, is a recurring problem in many of the well-meaning consumer-focused health sites. Jen has some excellent points in her post.

• » My 140conf Talk: Twitter as Publishing - O’Reilly Radar

  Tim O’Reilly on how he uses Twitter as a publishing and community-building platform.

• » Scientific American Becomes Consumer Div. of Nature Publishing Group

  Both owned by MacMillan, new organization will consolidate advertising. Could be smart move; NPG has been more innovative in testing and adopting technology than most other STM publishers.

• » Health Populi: Getting people to use health-y tools

  Good post on how to present info to consumers to “nudge” them toward healthy behavior. Links to several studies on the topic.

• » Kibbe: Successful EMRs will be like the iPhone platform | mobihealthnews

  Another voice that says UI matters when it comes to IT adoption. Sounds obvious, but good UI requires an understanding of customers’ workflow. iPhone has both great UI and form factor that is available at point-of-need.

• » Meaningful Use Sent Back by ONC Head David Blumenthal | EMR and EHR

  Blumenthal, National Coordinator hor Health IT, sends initial recommendations on definition of “meaningful use” back to the committee to work on new set of recommendations.

• » Is Qforma/USA Today Web Site on ‘Most Influential Doctors’ Just Another Beauty Contest?

  Good analysis of differing sites and methodologies for rating doctors. In particular, compares Qforma approach of using patient ratings vs. Bridges to Excellence approach of analyzing clinical care records. With >40 different sites that offer ratings of doctors, we’ll soon need a site to rate the raters! Seriously, the methodologies are too opaque in most cases, which detracts from the central purpose of ratings agents — to guide decisionmaking.

• » Telemedicine Helps Monitor Parkinson’s Symptoms in Patients - Medgadget - www.medgadget.com

  Interesting case study from nursing home in Rochester, NY where patients with Parkinsons were able to get periodic evaluations via video conferencing with physician & nurse present on-site.

• » Curing Healthcare: Meaningful Healthcare Reform: Challenges and Solutions

  Steve Beller responds to paper on whether health reform will yield real savings. One issue is whether wellness programs, increasingly popular among employers, will pay off in the short and long-run. I’m seeing evidence that weight management and exercise can yield very quick results, but agree that long term healthy citizens will live longer and still require care at end-of-life. Assuming MDs will be the only ones providing care — at the same salary levels as today — probably overstates costs. Technology will allow more care to be handled by less-expense care providers (see this week’s feature blog).

• » What is the cause of excess costs in US healthcare? : denialism blog

  Looks like good article with review of McKinsey study on healthcare costs in US v. ROW. Haven’t read in detail yet.

• » CelebrityDiagnosis.com Presents Famous Patients As Medical Lessons

  Not sure what I think of this! Founders have credible backgrounds, but it seems odd to me. But, then again, I don’t read People or watch E!

• » The Economy and the Economics of Everyday Life - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

  Several economists chime in on priorities for healthcare reform.

• » 30 Twitter Tools For Managing Followers | Tools | PelFusion.com

  Wow, tools for managing Twitter are really proliferating.

• » Technology Review: A Pound of Cure

  Writer Andy Kessler points finger at doctors and hospitals for not wanting to adopt EHRs because they will expose current wasteful and inefficient practices that benefit providers. I think issue is more complex, but I agree with conclusions of the author.

• » News: Change or Die? - Inside Higher Ed

  From Assoc. Amer. Univ. Presses (AAUP) conference last week, good debate about future of university presses. Many common themes with this week’s Health Content article on declining value of basic articles and books. Publishing, even university presses, need to consider where they can most add value and change their organizations & revenue model to align with core value in today’s market.

• » News: Elsevier Won’t Pay for Praise - Inside Higher Ed

  Elsevier gets into more hot water; this time over $25 gift certificates offered for reviews of textbooks on Amazon. Wouldn’t be a big deal, if the offer hadn’t come with a suggestion that reviews give books a 5***** rating.

• » 10 tips for physicians interested in a health IT career

  Since I wrote that doctors are being commoditized along with health care publishers, I feel compelled to provide a link to this post that provides tips on how to keep up with health IT or even shift careers.

• » Secretary Sebelius Releases New Report: Hidden Costs of Health Care

  Report from HHS addresses increasing out-of-pocket & premium costs for those who are insured.

• » Obama’s Political Operation To Launch Big Database Of Health Care Stories | The Plum Line

  Very interesting. This base of collected stories could be the foundation for a much larger collection. Also, mining anecdotal stories to find patterns should be the goal of some publishers.

• » TriZetto to Offer Clients Free PHRs

  TriZetto, a health IT vendor that provides payer s/w will launch free PHR s/w for insurers to offer to their clients.

• » Why A New (And Unusual) Pricing Strategy By A Rhode Island Paper Will Fail | paidContent

  Forestalling the inevitable? Newport, RI paper, Newport Daily News, charges premium for web-only access: more than print = web! Although it may have been conceived as encouraging print subscribers to retain subscriptions (i.e., by charging penalty for cancelling print), price for online access is prohibitive. Somewhat akin to B. Globe’s policy of providing Kindle discount only outside of print delivery regions. How about giving customers what they want?

• » Health Content Publishers Voice Your Opinions on Meaningful Use

  We at Health Content Advisors have been trying to be a proxy for the voice of experienced medical publishers and other health content/data providers in the discussions about Health IT and the Billions of dollars being spent on EHRs and other IT as part of the Stimulus Bill. I’ve seen little or no evidence that the big STM publishers are speaking up to say that IT without consideration of the content that flows through the iT systems is “meaningless”. The ONC is requesting comments; only 150 have responded. Act now!

• » Journalism organizations too cozy with drug industry - Schwitzer health news blog

  Gary Schwitzer raises important concerns about health journalists’ potential conflicts of interests when they accept free events and fellowships funded by Pharma. With more healthinfo available to consumers on Web and other channels, it’s more critical than ever to improve health literacy among our population. If too many journalists become too biased, who will serve as watchdog? Sounds like an oppty to health content publishers to me.

• » Socialtext Goes Freemium With Socialtext Free 50

  It’s not only content that loses value due to IT developments; IT loses value over time, too. Constant innovation is necessary to stay in premium territory. Good example here with SocialText, which has lowered its premium prices and offered a free version with limited access.

• » Why Social Media are Essential to Future of Health & Science Communication

  Excellent presentation from Mayo Clinic on using social media in marketing communications for hospitals. Much more than a how-to, preso provides superb overview of how media landscape is changing, with marketers (in this case Mayo) having access to inexpensive publishing and distirbution tools. Fits right in with this week’s article on Value of Health Content.

• » Thomson Reuters Proposes to Unify Share Listing in Toronto/NY

  With fewer than 5% of shareholder now in UK, Thomson Reuters proposes to unify stock listing to Toronto and NYSE.

• » A Doctor’s View of Obama’s Healthcare Plans - WSJ.com

  Abraham Verghese, Professor & Senior Assoc. Chair for Theory & Practice of Medicine at Stanford addresses the need for cost-cutting in health reform plans. He holds firm to the view that physicians are irreplacable, contrary to the article I just posted that suggests that common tasks can be taken over by other trained medical professionals at a lower cost.

• » Atul Gawande on Health Reform

  Following up his very popular article in the New Yorker about health care cost differentials, Atul Gawande writes a balanced article on health care reform. Article includes historical context and models for analyzing healthcare reform.

• » “Facebook for pharmacists” to offer news, CE and community - Medical Marketing and Media

  JMI Health launching a social networking site for pharmacists.

• » Walgreens, Express Scripts Fight Over ‘Blitzkrieg’ Audits - Health Blog - WSJ

  Contract negotiations between Walgreens & Express Scripts get nasty.

• » FitOrbit Launches With Heavy Backers, Connects You To Real Personal Fitness Trainers Online

  FitOrbit, on online personal trainer service, backed by some well-known investors and personal trainers (e.g., Body by Jake (Steinfeld)). Concept seems okay, but there are competitors (e.g., CorePerformance among others) and biggest challenge will be to engage users online and convince them to pay.

• » Thomson Reuters Study Finds Baby Boomers and Generation X Face HC Cost Hurdles

  Analysis of 3007 HHs in Thomson Reuters PULSE Healthcare survey show that boomers and GenX segments most likely to be postponing health care due to cost.