HealthContentAdvisors

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Headline Commentary Sept 21-26

  • Posted September 26th 2009
  • by Janice
  • » Life as a Healthcare CIO: Cool Technology of the Week

    Halamka names Quest’s Care360 e-prescribing solution as the “cool technology of the week”. Quest is offering a free six-month trial of the service.

  • » Employers Get Proactive About Curbing Healthcare Costs

    Good examples of employers (Pitney Bowes) that are saving $$ on health insurance by offering incentives for healthy behavior. Employers may be the key reforming health care–with or without policy reform. But, they are awfully quiet in the policy debate.

  • » United Health Care profits soar 155 percent on Medicare plans

    Focuses on overpayment to Medicare Advantage providers.

  • » International Brotherhood of Teamsters :: Groups Protest Whole Foods, UNFI At Natural Products Expo In Boston

    Teamsters protest Whole Foods at Penton’s Natural Products Expo in Boston.

  • » YouTube - Economist “Did you know?”

    Video to promote upcoming conference on media convergence. Clever and entertaining presentation of info about media trends.

  • » IT Enables Excellence in Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic

    The future of cardiovascular medicine is here. It combines top-notch clinical resources with robust, future-oriented IT infrastructure and digital image management technology.

  • » How Much Money Do Insurance Companies Make? A Primer - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

    Uwe Reinhardt offers a primer on how to read health insurer’s 10-Ks.

  • » Agenda: A Foundation for Evidence-Driven Practice: A Rapid Learning System for Cancer - Institute of Medicine

    2-day event sponsored by IOM about using evidence from medical practice to improve learnings about cancer treatment. Includes sessions related to outcomes data and patient-generated data on social networks.

  • » Newswire Analysis: Google Scholar’s Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems - 9/24/2009 - Library Journal

    Peter Jasco, who has written several previous in-depth reviews of Google Scholar, provides an update and describes why GS won’t serve as a citation analysis tool. Hmm, what does that say for “infodemiology” results mined from Google?

  • » The Physician of the Future - www.healthleadersmedia.com

    How doctors are adapting to growing number of e-patients who research their conditions and are well-read in medical matters.

  • » PharmaLive: FDA: Promotion of Food and Drug Administration-Regulated Medical Products Using the Internet and Social Media Tools; Notice of Public Hearing

    FDA to hold hearings on use of social media by pharma.

  • » ICD-9 / ICD-10 Helper

    New app converts ICD-9 codes to ICD-10 codes and has an iPhone version.

  • » Quest Diagnostics Offers Free E-Rx

    Quest Diagnostics, known primarily for its lab testing business, offers its Care360 e-prescribing s/w for free during a 6-month test. Quest is also beta-testing a Care360 EHR for small to midsize practices.

  • » What’s the return on fighting obesity? - The Boston Globe

    Short-term ROI horizon for health insurers hampers their investment in wellness and education programs with long term results.

  • » Michael Nielsen » There is no single future for scientific journals

    Cogent opinion piece with good comments about future of scholarly publishing. Theme: journals as brand, not necessarily as primary distribution vehicle. Also, journals as just one component of scientific research content assets.

  • » Procedures Consult Internal Medicine Applications Now Available on App Store

    Elsevier’s Procedures Consult Online Training suite is now available for iPhone & iPod touch through partnership with Modality, which distributes mobile learning apps for several medical publishers.

  • » Doctors as the Key to Health Care Reform | Health Care Reform 2009

    NEJM series on health reform; this time why Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model could rein in costs.

  • » Perspective Roundtable: The Cost of Health Care

    Gawande, Gruber, and others on health care costs.

  • » From Social Blogger to DC Adviser on ADVANCE for Health Information Professionals

    Great piece on Dave DeBronkart, aka e-Patient Dave, who is a founder of the new Journal of Participatory Medicine. Journal and its community aspire to change the culture of medicine so that patients have a more active role in all aspects of their healthcare and most of all, so that patients have full access to their medical records.

  • » Humedica Wants to Dose U.S. Healthcare Crisis with Clinical Analytics, Raises $30M from Investors | Xconomy

    Very interesting: Humedica, a Boston area start-up, launches with $30M in 1st round funding from Bain, General Catalyst, NorthBridge and Leerink Swann. Several Leerink folks are on management team. Humedica plans national healthcare analytics business based on data from EMRs.

  • » Pipeline Database from Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions Predicts Approval and Revenue of Drugs in Development

    WK’s Adis R&D Insight adds “intelligent forecasting” from its pharma research service inThought to its drug pipeline info service.

  • » Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice to offer continuing education units for reviewers

    Elsevier to award CEUs to reviewers of its Journal of EB Dental Practice.

  • » Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia Launches Zagat Health Survey Tool

    Zagat tool for rating/recommending doctors incorporated into BCBS of Georgia’s online site for members. Makes sense to offer recommendations within a system.

  • » Springer Science+Business Considering Sale of Entire Company - Bloomberg.com

    Bids for 49% didn’t meet company’s target, so entire company may be for sale. There should be more interest for majority ownership, but expected price is probably still too high.

  • » why hospital awards aren’t effective for marketing | Interval

    Good post on how the proliferation of ratings and awards for hospitals is diluting the effect. Also, high ratings doesn’t always equate with a good match for a specific patient.

  • » Failing to Meet Its Own Stated Expectations, Blue Healthcare Bank Now Is Seeking a Buyer

    Bank set up by Blue Cross/Blue Shield to manage HSA accounts to fold. Started in 2007; only achieved 2% of expected volume. I didn’t even know it existed.

  • » MyClinicalTrial.com Launch Provides Solution to Online Healthcare and Clinical Trial Information

    Clinical Site Services, a service provider to CROs and service companies to help them with their site performance, launches its own site that provides health info with the goal of attracting users who may be prospects for clinical trials. Bus model rests on selling ads/sponsorships to CROs, etc. Interesting; will check it out later today.

  • » Better Health » Why Do We Need Insurance To Cover Primary Care Costs?

    Excellent points about how paying for routine care via insurance distorts market mechanisms (I’m applying my own analysis and terminology). But, having an intermediary that blocks and distorts price and cost information prohibits rational market mechanisms from working. See this article for an alternative model.

  • » WebMedx launches new data-mining soln for medical transcription

    Uses MarkLogic for QualityAnalytics product that facilitates reporting quality measures and adds search features.

  • » “How to read articles about health” – by Dr Alicia White – Bad Science

    Good article that describes UK site that focuses on helping consumers interpret health articles. Mentions Bazian.com.

  • » Thomson Reuters Launches Thomson Pharma Partnering Forecast - Thomson Reuters

    Thomson Scientific launches upgrade to TPharma that includes consensus analyst forecasts for strategic drugs across major pharma therapy areas & combines the forecasts w/ downloadable revenue models for drugs in over 100 indications.

  • » Life as a Healthcare CIO: To Wait or not to Wait?

    John Halamka discusses the question of whether to wait until more details have been worked out about meaningful use of EHRs before moving forward with implementation plans. He suggests getting started early in order to meet requirements when they come due.

  • » Inverness To Buy Health-Services Provider Free & Clear - WSJ.com

    Inverness Medical Innovations to buy Free & Clear, a regional health services provider focusing on wellness and prevention.

  • » AMNews: Sept. 21, 2009. When is conduct reportable? National Practitioner Data Bank takes complaints from hospitals about physicians … American Medical News

    Reports on how NPDB is used and indicates that most hospitals don’t report errors or misconduct by the doctors practicing there.

  • » Florence dot com: Patient Safety & Social Media: This dog can hunt!

    Post about new feed that aggregates tweets from 25 patient safety experts on Twitter.

  • » Dell To Buy Perot Systems In $3.9B Deal That Expands Breadth - WSJ.com

    Dell joins other computer hardware firms in expanding into bus. services with planned acq. of Perot Systems. Will help Dell in healthcare market. Expect more M&A activity with other firms involved (or trying to buy their way into) health IT.

  • » IgniteBLOG: The Perfect Storm: BREAKING NEWS: The FDA calls for a public hearing to discuss promotion of FDA-regulated medical products using the Internet and social media tools

    More on FDA’s social media & pharma developments.

  • » Pharma Marketing Blog: Let’s Respond to FDA’s Questions Regarding Its Regulation of Social Media

    FDA to publish a survey on usage of social media by Pharm. Notice will be published today in Fed. Register. Here is an overview of what to expect by John Mack.

  • » askCH from change:healthcare – Use Twitter to Save Money on your Healthcare

    change:healthcare, a HC08 innovator, launches ability to post questions on Twitter about healthcare price info (e.g., Rx drugs) and other health issues — with focus on helping people save money.

  • » Seeing the picture » Blog Archive » Evidence Based Medicine? or Medicine Without Numbers?

    Good points made about EBM. As I like to say, we have some work to do in improving state of EBM, but it beats the alternative of not basing diagnoses and treatments on available evidence…

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