HealthContentAdvisors

Jeff Jarvis’ ideas for building new revenue streams for online news companies by leveraging the network effect and sharing ad revenes between the original site and the sites that prive traffice through links.

Interesting new program at U. Rhode Island, a pharma science, which goes beyond basic understanding of the existing drugs on the market into study of how drugs work and interact. “Starting this fall, the school will introduce a pharmaceutical sciences major, a four-year degree program that focuses on the science of drug development, manufacturing, and delivery.” Sounds like a good idea & will be helpful for pharma BI function.

Examples of Cleveland Clinic & Bassett Health where coordinated care and salaried doctors contribute to better & more cost-effective care.

Good example of the complexity of calculating out-of-pocket healthcare purchases. In this case, hearing aids are used as the example, and most expensive hearing aids are not covered by insurance. But, the need to understand initial & follow-up treatment, as well as costs for supplementary tests and devices, is valid for all health-care purchases. In short, in the current system, increasing out-of-pocket expenditures for patients primarily causes confusion, leads to higher costs (since consumers don’t know how to fight the charges–or don’t have time), and does nothing to improve care or wellness.

Healthcare.com, a Miami, FL based health directory company, launches new site: InsuranceAgenFinders.com for consumers to find health insurance brokers. Site also provides info for brokers and agents. Healthcare.com also has sites: HealthInsurancePlan.us, LifeInsurance.org.

Good overview of EBM — what it is and what it is not– and some cautions about Obama’s zeal for EBM and Health IT.

PLoS is working toward new measurements of “impact” for scholarly research, based on ind. articles and including measures of web-based linkages.

Twitter prepares materials for business use of its microblogging services. Lots of good tips for business use and examples from big companies.

With slump in pharma sales, sales reps (those who haven’t already lost their jobs) are seeing cuts to incentive pay (without comparable cuts in quotas).

Further info on cell phone with microscope attachment that is targeted for use in areas with limited access to health care. Link to PLoS full article included.

Fun interview with Pat Brown, an innovative researcher who thinks big and is not afraid to question status quo. One quote: “I want to literally overthrow the scientific publishing estabilshment” (thanks to Andrew Spong for link)

New Deloitte study of >100 global life science companies, healthcare providers, and health insurance companies (abt 1/2 in US). Results indicate that thse companies are not sufficiently prepared to face security & regulatory requirements of managing their data. Further, they are not yet in a position to leverage IT efficiencies and the value of digital data due to the inadequate IT systems and know-how.

Very good round-up of various community sites targeted to physicians, including Sermo, Ozmosis, iMedExchange, WebMD, and Within3.

Good slide presentation on how Cochrane Collaboration uses Twitter, delicious, Facebook, etc.

Brian Ahier’s list of top 50 health info “heroes” on Twitter. Great list, even includes @janicemccallum!

2009 Edition of CMR International Pharmaceutical R&D Factbook, which provides stats on new molecular entities (NMEs), is now available. Published by the Centre for Medicines Research International, Ltd (CMR Intl), a Thomson Reuters business.

John Mack summarizes the 2009 annual report from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) which shows that overall CME spending is down, and commercial CME sponsorship (ie., pharma) fell the most. However, pharma continues to sponsor CME indirectly.

Fred Wilson on how “creative destruction” has changed the book publishing business. He quotes acceptance of Amazon’s Kindle, print of demand, and Google Books as key contributors. Print on demand & ebook readers have taken a long time to be accepted; I’d say the scale of Amazon & Google Books were key factors that drove changes that wouldn’t have come about w/o their outside intervention.

Infectious diseases-focused organizations endorse adoption of HR3200, due to the inclusion of provision to create a database of hospital-acquired infections (HAI). HAI’s would be required to be reported to CDC, which would keep a database to track HAIs.

Martindale Hubbell’s community for legal professionals grows to 10K lawyers.

Entertaining grand rounds that provides a serious round-up of weekly healthcare stories. Demonstrates that design & writing ability really matter when it comes to conveying information!

Good overview article on various doctor ratings sites, including Angie’s List & RateMDs. There are many more that are not mentioned. Article focuses on the reliability of ratings, since individual preferences vary & the circumstances of doctor visits vary. Also mentions Medical Justice, the company that provides agreements that doctors use to require their patients to agree to NOT post on any review sites.

WSJ columnists suggests some research studies be published in new journal named Duh!”, since finding seem so obvious, and other studies in “Huh?”, since connections aren’t always so obvious. Although it has catchy title, points made are valid–including need to study the “why” behind conventional wisdom and to put research in context.

Carolyn Clancy writes about experience at Aurora Health Care, where they formed a patient safety advisory council to serve as bridge between hospitals and patients. The patient safety council led to: more accurate medicine lists for older patients, higher level of patient involvement, and increased involvement of health care professionals.

Elsevier’s Cell Press has beta site to explore “next generation journal article” (my words). Very cool.

Good article that describes problems physicians/providers have in collecting from patients.