HealthContentAdvisors

Dan Clancy of Google to discuss GB at Computer Museum in Mt. View on 7/30/09. IWeek offers some addt’l background on Google Books and the GB Settlement terms. Note, the rev. share % of 63% to publishers/copyright holders for Google Books is a net figure, not comparable to Amazon’s gross figure.

HIMSS-sponsored e-seminar on how DoD’s MiCare and VA’s My HealtheVet are forming foundation for public sector health care interoperability.

Urban Institute analysts provides recommendations on how to gain sufficient savings from health reform to pay for an increase in costs. Shout out to John Holihan and Randy Bovbjerg; I know them from time I worked at UI in early 1980’s!

FBI raids net 30 Medicare fraud suspects. Schemes included selling $3-4K “arthritis kits” that inlcudes simple braces and heating pads and many were never delivered. Approx. $371 million in flase Medicare claims have been recovered.

Link to JCAHO’s pdf newsletter.

IDEO’s domain director for connected health posts about recent discussion on how to engage consumers in health education activities (IxTherapy). No conclusions, but some interesting ideas borrowed from IDEOs best practices.

Not a big surprise. U. Oklahoma researchers measured activity level of kids ages 10-13 and found that newer active video games burn 2-3 times calories that than TV watching.

Good summary of likely effects of Google Book Settlement on libraries.

In opinion piece in WSJ, Clayton Christensen & Jason Hwang, authors of Innovators Prescription, suggest employers circumvent traditional health plans as much as possible by: 1) encouraging employees to use “minute clinic”-type facilites staffed by NPs; 2) partner with integrated health systems like KP; and 3) set up company-run clinics on-site. Christensen & Hwang also suggest employers fight against the fee-for-service system. Pretty drastic changes, considering that not too many Kaiser-type integrated care systems exist right now and establishing on-site/employer managed clinics is a major undertaking. But, pressure certainly needs to be exerted on the existing health insurers to change the way they do business.

LibreDigital, an Austin, TX company, raises extra $15M. LibreDigital converts content for multliple platforms, including ebooks and recently did a deal with PlasticLogic.

Daniel Carlat, MD, points to a hearing/webcast by Senator Herb Kohl on 7/29/09 to target the practice of industry sponsorship of continuing medical education (CME). Carlat describes current state of CME as corrupt.

Dean has new book on health reform; Palestrant goes on the attack.

Good points raised in this article about how scientific research published in scholarly journals is often misprepresented –or at least not presented well — in popular press. Author points to lack of scientific training for journalists and PR folks who write many of the stories. Lack of context, esp. with respect to statistical significance of findings, is key problem.

Author raises concern that ARRA spending on Health IT, mainly earmarked for EHR software, will be spent on overly expensive inadequate IT systems. Worth a read.

Site created by NY Law School to aggregate materials about Google Book Settlement, invite comments, and provide a easy interface to the settlement documents.

Nice illustrated comparison of features of variety of search & reference tools for scientific research. Proves why it is difficult to select tools/vendors: features overlap, but no one does it all.

Companies exhibiting include: AirStrip Tech, CardioNet, Corventis, GenerationOne, iMetrikus, MedApps, Medcel, Montage, Proteus, Triage Wireless, and Wound Technologies. Qualcomm has Health & Life Sciences div, too.

Wow, individual physicians are finding Twitter a good vehicle for pointing patients to reliable health information sources. Isn’t it surprising that other vehicles don’t do the job? A website could be effective, but it’s much more work to post links and distribute content that way.