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Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category
Headline Commentary Feb 1 - Feb 13
- Posted February 13th 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
PatientFinder, which estimates # of insured patients in region that have specific diseases but are untreated, to be offered by HealthLeaders Interstudy.
Denise Silber writes about provider ratings sites in Europe (France and UK) and how the survey-based rating sites differ from the “narrative” sites that allow patients to describe their experience in their own words. Combination would be better, wouldn’t it?
KLAS on current state of HIEs–vendors “pass around packets of information without necessarily taking ownership of what is in the packet”.
Xconomy on PatientsLikeMe, the Cambridge-based patient community site that leads in this space in collecting data. Also mentions Keas and its recent deal with Pfizer.
More on MSFT MyLife health project that utilizes Windows mobile phones to capture and transmit health-related data. Talks about accelerometers in phones and how they could be used to monitor movement.
MSFT research at conference in Beijing talks about using XBox as part of a total health care system. Also refers to MSFT MyLife for Windows mobile phones, which uses mobile phones to capture and transmit data relevant to a EHR/PHR.
Melissa Chang comments on projections from AMR Research on increased spending by B2B marketers on social media and questions where the projected 21% growth in social media spend will be focused. Note, lead-gen sites marketing is projected to increase 17% and online directories -2%.
Interesting. Pfizer in alliance with Keas to enable health & wellness experts to produce and distribute online care plans directly to patients. My take: Pfizer and other pharma companies already subsidize the publication of a great deal of health care information. With this deal, they’re extending their reach into new channels.
P&G completes its acq. of MDVIP, a concierge medical practice based in Boca Raton, FL.
Nice. CenterWatch now provides feeds by therapeutic area, disease category, FDA approved drugs and more that can be added to a website–for Free!
David Harlow’s insightful commentary on why medical apologies–accompanied by a commitment to investigate root cause–may reduce malpractice suits. And could lead to performance improvement, too….
Patient Safety and workflow solutions company raises $30M led by TPG Biotechnology Partners.
Why communicating absolute vs. relative probabilities is important in healthcare–and in fin’l planning.
Harvard Med School’s Laboratory for Quantitative Medicine has created personalized risk assessment tools based on “binary biology”. Interesting.
Thomas Goetz on nomograms, or clinical decision tools, that help calculate risk of specific diseases on a personalized basis.
Really good analysis and commentary about ebook pricing and the recent controversy between Macmillan and Amazon about books on Kindle prices. I agree with author that the market should determine the value of the content. Market structure in book publishing industry inhibits market forces to apply. I like 4th paragraph that addresses fact that not all song tracks–or all books–have same value, so why are they priced nearly the same? In book publishing, the bizarre returns policy does provide mechanism to sell less popular books for very low prices, but authors receive no royalties. I also agree that far more ebooks would sell if prices were lower.
Good review of recent Time article, Patients 2.0, and differing attitudes about the effectiveness of patient-reported data in medical research. Article points to concern on part of doctors of reliability of patient-reported outcomes data. My view: methods need to be developed for incorporating patient-reported or patient-recorded outcomes data into medical research methods, but these data are too important to ignore!
Very cool. FDA allows Bayesian analysis for studies of effectiveness in medical device clinical trials. Bayesian analysis allows use of results from previous studies to serve as prior distribution and may allow for results from smaller or shorter new studies to provide sufficient evidence of effectiveness.
Or outcomes-based research. By Gilles Frydman, founder of ACOR.org and co-founder of e-Patients.net, a pioneer in participatory medicine. Good introduction to potential benefits of PDR and the need for guidelines on how to conduct PDR, since no accepted structure and review processes currently exist.
Article describes how CMS is becoming more specific in requiring proof that treatments produce improved outcomes, not just evidence of their safety and short-term efficacy.
Start-up, Truth on Call, offers system for posing questions via Twitter to a group of doctors, for $10 per response. Target audience is fin’l, pharma, research, but will be offered to patients, too.
More on the Text4baby partnership btwn HHS, other fed agencies, industry (Pharma, telecom carriers) and insurance plans.
Text4baby is a program managed by HHS that includes mobile telecom carriers, federal agencies, insurance plans and other healthcare industry reps. 3,400 women have signed up so far.
Important points about need for care providers to understand the effect of healthcare costs on patients who can’t afford expensive treatments. Cost factors must be considered when addressing compliance issues.
Article states that pending lab tests are only included on hospitalist discharge summaries 16% of the time. Incredible. Follow-up visits aren’t very useful when docs don’t even know what to check. Inadequate discharge summaries are core problem. IT systems that don’t communicate are equally critical problem.
Hope Leman hits one out of the park with a fantastic interview with Danny Sands, MD at BIDMC and well-known in participatory medicine circle (also e-Patient Dave’s doctor).
Rewards for posing good questions and providing best answers about Diabetes 1. Program sponsored by Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center and uses the InnoCentive platform to manage the competition/collaboration.
WK Health updates Facts& Comparisons and rebrands it as (drumroll please…) Facts & Comparisons eAnswers. Drug info resource.
Good overview of why social networking sites are flourishing. I like comments about how sites are more welcoming now and how sites serve as tools for users–not just discussion boards. LinkedIn is great example. Same applies to patient communities and PatientsLikeMe and CareTogether are good examples of increased utility of online communities.
Astonishing. I finally read more details of the retraction and the original study. Only 12 children were studied and they were paid 5 pounds each to give blood at a child’s birthday party. Researcher had claimed that they were all referred to physicians, which was not true. Parents who suspected link helped raise funds for the researcher via their lawyers. So, Lancet finally retracts article, but what about the 10-years worth of fallout from the falsified research that has rippled across official and unofficial research sites and commentary on the Web?
Nice counter to Twitter naysayers who address only the downside of Twitter (time sink) — without ever having used it. Writer emphasizes how critical Twitter is to the online news business for generating links and being part of the conversation.
Google Ventures has invested in Adimab, a New Hampshire biopharma company and is providing computing power to handle the heavy lifting of computer search work of matching candidate antibodies and targets to speed up the current process used by most biopharma labs.
Initiate Systems, a master data management company that specializes in healthcare data, is acquired by IBM. Initiate clients include payers, providers, and PBMs. Terms not disclosed; Initiate had raised over $67M in VC funding from Apex Venture Partners, First Analysis Group, Sigma Partners, BC/BS Venture Partners and Paladin Capital.
DeepDyve, the specialty search service with features that simplify finding related information, adds 6 new publishing partners. ACM, AIP, MIT Press, and UC Press among them. All 6 will join the DeepDyve article rental system that was introduced last year, which allows users access to premium subscription content for $0.99 per article (with volume discounts). More details in press release.
Anthony Guerra provides commentary on inadequacies of MU guidelines and reimbursement requirements.
Good article that describes how quickly move toward personalized medicine–based on an individual’s genetic data–is occurring.
Good idea, but it looks as though Nielsen chooses healthy foods based on manufacturer claims.
Cute: a Jeopardy quiz for the rudiments of EBM for medical librarians.
Patient Safety Act of 2005 scheduled to yield database in 2011. 65 Patient Safety Organizations have been set up, but few are collecting data yet. No plans set to collect from other providers beyond hospitals.
ABRY provides funding to HealthTrans to support organic growth and acquisitions.
Wow! Glam raises another $50 M at a rumored valuation of $750M. Glam is an ad network with focus on health & beauty sites. Many of the sites tend toward the trashy end of beauty sites, not reputable healthcare info. See comments. Notwithstanding previous 2 sentences, Glam sure is good at fundraising!
David Weinberger on flaws in the data-information-knowledge-wisdom hierarchy model. Hierarchy is too limited–one way progression, when gaining knowledge is more of a system that requires observation, hypothesis building, and testing.
Comments about online sites that offer ratings of doctors. Points out weaknesses of current info, esp. fact that ratings aren’t based on outcomes. Hints at other problems: most patients choose docs based on info from referring physician. Docs in network are critical. I’d add: trustworthiness of online ratings sites is not clear.
Long article that provides some evidence that breakthrough research is not getting sufficient coverage in top journals. Theory is that peer reviewers are protecting their own group and making it too difficult for innovative researchers to break through. I think there’s some credibility to the theory that innovations are more likely to occur outside of the traditional circles of scholarly publishing, since researchers are increasingly making source data available. New metrics that incorporate real-time online measures are needed.
The main article (see previous entry) about risk calculators to help surgeions communicate risks of surgery to patients.
Addresses issue of why hospitals don’t track and use data to help them reduce risk in surgery. Mentions NSQUIP from ACS.
Healogica, a site that connects potential candidates to clinical trials to shut down. They had about 2,000 registered users but couldn’t get enough CROs and pharma companies to pay for access to the leads they generated.
Social networking for weight loss site, iChange, gets funding from Momentum Venture Managment(MVM) and names MVM principal Stuart MacFarlane CEO. MacFarlane fmly of Insider Pages.
Great display of information on # tweets by disease type/condition.
Good description of how the use of e-prescribing systems (in this case Kryptic) can alert doctors & pharmacists of “doctor shoppers” who go from doctor to doctor to get multiple prescriptions for pain medications and other drugs.
Excellent article that proposes ways to improve how medical research is communicated by consumer media. In lecture I gave last week at Simmons College School of Health Sciences, I emphasized the importance of communicating medical research and other healthcare information clearly, especially risk information.
Reports on programs that provide behavioral counseling to MDs that have depression, substance abuse and stress problems.
Headline Commentary Jan 1 - Jan 22
- Posted January 22nd 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
“Press Ganey Associates, Inc. today announced the addition of Philip Marshall, MD, MPH, as senior vice president, clinical products. Dr. Marshall joins the company at a time of continued growth and will be responsible for expanding the clinical product lines for the company.” Dr. Marshall was most recently VP Product Strategy at WebMD Health.
New Study in NEJM points to benefits of reducing salt intake in american diet. See my article on NY’s planned program to reduce salt and my criticism of AAFP for promoting salty foods in advertisements on their site. Note, a recheck of the AAFP FamilyDoctor.org site indicates that fewer packaged foods are advertised today. My blog appears to have been influential!
Superb analysis of impact of Scott Brown’s win to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Senate on health reform. David Harlow (whom I finally got to meet yesterday) and Joseph Kvedar offer insightful quotes. Kvedar suggests that if health reform legislation doesn’t pass, we still have raised awareness of need for change to control costs and that some changes will occur even w/o legislation. Harlow says that costs and quality will continue to decline w/o legislation and could lead to a stronger bill with some form of a public option down the road.
UMass Medical selects NDoc to automate home health services care. NDoc provides billing and operational s/w for use at pointofcare for home health services.
Good article from former HBS professor on how companies can mine their own propriety data about customers and partners to their advantage. Lays out the 5 keys to doing it right: 1) create a network to collect proprietary data; 2) use best technology; 3)analyze with insight & precision; 4) figure out how to act on info to your advantage; 5) be lucky enough to have good timing.
Trish (about.com) recounts story of pediatrician who molested patients and how comments on doctor rating sites prior to his conviction were positive. She suggests that the current array of ratings sites all share weaknesses. I tend to agree. Comments can be useful, but there need to be a large number and attributes of the people providing the ratings are needed. Plus, multiple criteria from formally reported and collected info need to form the basis. I’d want to know about outcomes, not just opinions.
Nuval, a Boston-area company that provides numeric ratings that reflect nutritional value of foods, gets official endorsement from American College of Preventive Medicine.
Martin Fenner in Nature’s Nature Network on growing options for reading scholarly articles. Covers various devices as well as the concept of using connected information to provide context. No clear-cut perfect solution yet.
Very good commentary about shortcomings of continued medical education (CME) from a Canadian physician’s perspective. In Canada, CME (called CPD in Canada) is more structured and reporting is more detailed. Dr. Rob is very critical of US system that relies primarily on attendance at medical conferences.
Excellent overview of trends in healthcare research being influenced by patient particpation via Internet channels. Specific focus on last October’s ePatient Connections conference. David Ellis and Julian Bond of HFD conclude that healthcare data analytics will become increasingly important in divining patterns from all the data being generated by epatients and even diagnosing for individual patients. They also point to the importance of mobile computing in healthcare.
Highlights IdeaBounty and InnoCentive as examples of companies that facilitate crowdsourced innovations. In these two cases, winning participants are paid for their ideas/solutions. Good article that describes how 1 company replaced their ad agency with IdeaBounty for creative.
Boston company that repurposes discarded specimens and matches basic EHR data to allow for additional medical research studies to be carried out on the specimens. iSpecimen then aggregates and uses datamining techniques to analyze patterns in the data.
Pearson FT is apparently shopping Interactive Data.
Insititute for Safe Medication Practices reports results of recent survey about impact of recession on hospital staffing, capital expenses, patient acuity, and medication safety.
DeepDyve makes another move toward making scholarly journal articles more accessible. The partnership with CiteULike expands the utility of DeepDyve to knowledge workers who don’t have high-priced subscriptions through their corporate or academic library. CiteULike is a “delicious”-type bookmarking service popular in the scholarly community. DeepDyve also announced partnership with publisher De Gruyter. I am impressed with the pace of innovation and content deals carried out at DeepDyve. Their $0.99 rental price for journal articles is an important step toward opening up access to scholarly research on a much wider scale.
MedScape article that explores the value of online searching for patients. Shallow article with no conclusions, but it does offer some good criticism of existing options.
Good article and comments about expectations of enhanced ebooks. Key themes IMO: 1) publishers have to understand the technology platform/distribution platform that is appropriate for their audience; 2) pricing plays a role in selecting the right platform (CD-ROM allowed fixed pricing at a time when online access charged per second); trying to use new technology as a guise for increasing prices is a risky move.
HubSpot marketing director explains why they have chosen to drop trade show exhibiting from their marketing mix. They still will attend events and seek speaking slots and will sponsor some events, but they don’t find the process of shipping booth & collateral and several sales people to be as worthwhile as other marketing options. Very good comments and responses.
Poll of 800 physicians on Sermo indicate that large percentage feel current Medicare policies are out of sync with market needs. “[O]ver 40% of the physicians polled feel the US government “never will” understand how declining reimbursement rates from Medicare negatively affect the care patients receive from their physicians. They fear reimbursements will continue to decline in the coming years, reducing patient access to physicians.”
MSNBC story that picks up on recent article in NEJM about pros and cons of sites that provide patient comments and ratings of doctors. Hook in this article is how some of the ratings sites, including Angie’s List, now flag doctors who are part of the Medical Justice Services group that require patients to sign contract that prohibits them from posting comments online. I agree that anonymous comments are a problem, and I’ve written before that a single numeric rating is insufficient, but it’s short-sighted of doctors to try to prohibit patients from expressing their opinions online.
Nice article that describes some reliable sources of health info for consumers from a Minnesota pub. Note, they still have PDR listed as owned by Thomson Healthcare, even though it’s a winter 2010 article.
Quidel, a San-Diego point-of-care diagnostic testing company, buys Diagnostic Hybrids, an Athens, Ohio company for $130 Million in cash. Acquisition expands the range of tests provided by the combined company, and should provide some economies in R&D.
Good overview of the two companies and the impact of the acquisition. John Moore of Chilmark views the acquisition as a long-term investment since he doesn’t see much life in the PHR segment at this time.
Quest offers new test for early detection of colorectal cancer.
Adams replaces Carl Byers, athena’s initial CFO, who last June said he wanted to live abroad.
Cegedim Dendrite, the life sciences group of Cegedim, Paris-based CRM solutions provider, acquires SK&A, the leading US healthcare professionals directory. According to press release, revenues of SK&A are about $15 M.
Credit rating firm TransUnion has acquired MedData LLC, a Charlotte, N.C.-based health care transactions processing firm, for an undisclosed sum.
Pfizer provides $3m in funding to Stanford to develop CME framework that incorporates a more participatory learning environment. Can it be donew/o industry influence given the source of the funding? Stanford says “yes”….
Healthcare IT News reviews Allscripts/Misys Q2 results. Rev. up 30% yoy. Allscripts CEO, Glen Tullman, calls 2010 “year of the EHR” due to stimulus funds.
Another content + IT deal that will help hospitals/providers achieve meangingful use of EHRs. Zynx Health provides order sets; Meditech will integrate order sets from Zynx into EHR–press release doesn’t provide much detail on how they will integrate the info.
Origin, a CT-based provider of RCM and clinical and BI analytics, gets growth equity funding from TCV. Previous investors include Beecken, Petty & O’Keefe & Company (“BPOC”), an investor since 2006, and management as investors in Origin.
Quantros, a health IT company that helps hospitals with patient safety and risk assessment, names Gerard Livaudais, MD, MPH, as EVP Product Management.
Not enough info is provided in blog entry to make much sense of the results. Asking people what general categories of content they would pay for isn’t very telling; better research methods are needed. Plus, there’s such a range of content in each type that results aren’t very valuable.
athenahealth’s athenaClinicals was rated highly in recent KLAS ambulatory EMR report on confidence that athenaClinicals will meet meaningful use criteria.
Good article on outlook for Informa. Author indicates that asset sales are likely in 2010 and points to Performance Improvement as a top candidate, since it doesn’t fit with other Informa assets. However, Informa’s CEO, Peter Rigby, is against divestments and would prefer to grow through more acquisitions, according to article. Also, academic/scholary publishing division is called out as their best performer (due to high margins). Given pressures on this segment and lack of innovation from Informa, I would be worried if I were a shareholder.
SF-based Practice Fusion raises $5m of anticipated $7.1 round for it’s EHR software. Practice Fusion offers s/w for no charge and makes money with advertising–and has plans to sell data mined from customers.
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Inc. has won a $72 Million grant from the FDA to build a system to monitor the safety of drugs and medical devices after they have gone on the market.
Adidas introduce miCoach at CES. Similar to Nike’s popular Nike+.
Good commonsense views on what will and will not change in 2010.
David Walt, professor of chemistry at Tufts and chairman of Illumina, provides his top 5 trends to watch in biotech. Optimistic outlook for advances in curing cancer, but thinks that the data management and analysis issues will be a challenge due to the magnitude of data (”Moore’s Law just can’t keep up”).
Short but insightful article that reports some interaction between Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and Atul Gawande, MD, author of new book The Checklist Manifesto. Key point, workflow or “clinical encounter” is not understood by the computer scientists who create EMR systems. Also, systems analysis and performance improvement (my terms) are not respected uses of time for MDs.
Interesting example of how incentives from CMS can trickle down to specific programs within hospitals. In this case, residents can earn up to $1200 per year in incentive pay for reaching 3 goals related to patient satisfication–two from Press Ganey survey results and 1 from UCSF Medical Center compliance audits. Results are measured for a team and each teammember receives payment.
Dr. Fabius, among other things, served as president and chief medical officer for i-TRAX, which was acquired by Walgreens in 2008. “I-TRAX was the parent company of CHD Meridian Healthcare, a leading provider of worksite healthcare centers for large employers.”
AHA endorses Surgical Info Systems for its scheduling, reporting and analytics modules.
Inside Out provides interactive training on the human body for K-12 market.
Nice overview of Cell Press’s (Elsevier) new beta of their planned “article of the future”. Good features for zooming in on charts and link to more data and references. I need to do a more thorough review and hope to see it in action at Cell Press in Cambridge soon.
Brian Ahier summarizes Sec’y HHS Sebelius’ Health Security program.
I’ve mentioned NuVal before. Intriguing company that provides single numeric rating of the nutritional value of foods and works with grocery stores to put labels on shelves. Concept is good, but like the writer, I think the single digit is insufficient. Good for shelf; but maybe more detail could be available via mobile device?
Kaiser and VA (Veteran’s Affairs) will use NHIN to exchange patient data (with permission) in pilot program in San Diego area.
A physician reviews online doctor rating sites. Slams Vitals, in large part because only single numeric rating is available w/o paying. I’ve commented before that single number is ineffective for rating doctors–or most any other item. The reviewing physician likes the comments, however. Note, as list of comments gets larger, some kind of summary indicators become more necessary to annotate and summarize the long comments.
Some good insight here. E.g., 6)PMS vendors will acquire RCM companies (didn’t I just write that yesterday?),8) Payers, PBMs and Pharmacies will use EHRs to deliver information (add publishers to that list).
Nice article from Ingenix analytics on employer wellness programs.
Kevin Noland resigns to make way for former CFO Mark Adams to take helm. Could this be result of change in strategy to focus more on benefits management services than content?
Commonwealth Club program on medicine. Video.
TabSafe, an Indiannapolis company, showcases its medication management system at CES.
AdvancedMD, which provides practice management and RCM solutions to medical practices, acquires PracticeOne, an EHR vendor. Interesting that the vertical integration is occurring in this direction–the vendors of admin/financial systems acquiring the EHR vendors. There’s lots of room for more consolidation in both markets.
“23andMe has completed a $27.8 million second round of funding. In addition to funding from Google and Google founder Sergey Brin (husband of 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki), 23andMe has been funded by Genentech and New Enterprise Associates.”
“Krames has partnered with eClinicalWorks to provide consumer-friendly patient education to physicians using the electronic medical records system, eClinicalWorks 8.0.” Makes good sense.
As my colleague Russell Perkins said, “betcha thought there already was one”.
Sramana Mitra interviews co-founders of NaviNet, a real-time health info exchange based in Boston area. 5-part interview with lots of good stats and info.
Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of AHRQ, describes new report for consumers on anti-depressants. Includes link to full report.
Gawande speaks about his new book, Checklist Manifesto, and the benefits of checklists in medical settings. Specifically mentions how checklists improve teamwork to the benefit of patients, and addresses the issue of physician resistance (20% of those surveyed after trying out checklists said they didn’t think they were useful; however >90% of that 20% group would want checklists to be used if they were the patient!).
“Atenda is one of the largest home health benefit management companies, providing care and exclusively managing more than 1.3 million lives. Atenda is used by major health plans as a single point of contact for managing all home care services, resulting in improved care and cost savings to plans and their members.” Univita was established by Genstar Capital last year with its acquisition of Long Term Care Group, and subsequently acquired ENURGI.
Infotrends broad multi-client study on changing communications needs of small-to-medium sized businesses. TOC and list of tables only. Complete study >$10K
HIMSS writes up new CDSC created by Blackford Middleton at Partners Healthcare.
Caritas hospital group in Boston expands their relationship with athenahealth to include athenaClinicals. They already used athena’s revenue cycle management (RCM) s/w.
“The National Association for Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the operations and quality of care in its almost 200 member hospitals, is using a web-based research database and reporting system developed by IT Consulting Services of Quantros to report on quality improvement initiatives. Quantros is a leading software and services provider for the healthcare industry.”
Lots of reaction to ONC’s release of MU requirements. This article highlights a few key concerns, including lack of focus on patient’s rights and support for outdated technology that will not provide advancements that are needed.
Nice article on Google’s view of future of advertising. I agree with Arora from Google that online ads shouldn’t be an afterthought, but a critical part of overall advertising strategy.
Article in NEJM questions equity of wellness program incentives in health reform package.
Nice summary of major milestones in medical research in the last 10 years. Emphasizes the impact of the mapping of human genome a decade ago. Also points to advances in preventing disease. Note, although preventive medicine is a much better long-term goal than treating illness, based on my experience, funds tend to be focused on the crisis of the moment and savings of prevention often get forgotten over time (e.g., vaccinations). However, for the present time, there is likely to be renewed focus on prevention in medicine.
One of the questions posed by David Carr in this column about the reports of a new tablet device from Apple (rumored to be announced later this month (jan 2010)). If Apple can produce an e-reader/tablet that considerably improves the user experience over the Kindle, it could take off even at $800-$1000 per device. Publishers of all types–B2C and B2B–should be planning bus models (mostly advertising) around tablet devices.
Good thought-provoking piece by Joe Esposito. He uses example of early enthusiasm from entrepreneurs and Wall St. to build broadband pipes to households, which puzzled the established RBOCs who couldn’t imagine why HHs would need such high bandwidth. Contrasts that situation with today’s need to radical change in scholarly publishing model to provide more direct interactive between researchers and scientists. Implication is that the needed change won’t come from traditional players. I agree.
Like this list, esp. the top 3.
Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe, on trio of young companies that provide outsourced R&D, using crowdsourcing. Innovcentive, Hypios and Yet2.com are highlighted. Innocentive & Yet2.com are Boston area companies; Hypios is in Paris.
Interesting comments from former insiders and analysts on what made Dow Jones vulnerable and changes under Murdoch. Note, I didn’t see any mention of the enterprise division of Dow Jones (there may be some comments, but most focus in on WSJ and the Telerate mess).
Editor of Journal of Spinal Disorders & Techniques for past seven years receives royalty payments from certain Medtronic devices. “Studies involving Medtronic spinal products or that were funded by Medtronic appeared in the journal at least once per issue, on average.” And, are uniformly reviewed in a positive light. More trouble for scholarly publishing sector–fueled in part by Richard Smith, former editor of BMJ.
Mitch Wagner’s last article for InformationWeek w/ 2 examples of hospitals with successful implementation of business intelligence (document management, integration, analytics, dashboards) software.
Nice post that focuses on improving access to healthcare data–by all stakeholders.
“URAC, the nation’s leading health care accreditation and education organization, today announced its new Consumer Education Initiative, which teaches consumers about health insurance and identifies ways they can make more informed decisions about their health care.”
Interesting news about licensing deal between AllTheContent, a Geneva, Switz based content syndicator, and Pharma Channel, which provides info to pharmacies in Europe.
Nice video explanation of HL7 and how the standard facilitates sharing info between various IT systems in hospitals.
NYC Aims to Limit Salt While the AAFP Website Promotes Salty Foods
- Posted January 12th 2010
- Comments (4)
- by Janice
The Bloomberg administration has launched an initiative to reduce salt in restaurant food by 25% and overall salt consumption by 20% over the next five years. The National Salt Reduction Initiative is a nation-wide program supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and other donors. Funding for the evaluation of salt intake guidelines was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the New York State Health Foundation, the National Association of County & City Health Officials and the Centers for Disease Control.
According to the January 11, 2010 press release:
The goal of the initiative is to cut the salt in packaged and restaurant foods by 25% over five years – an achievement that would reduce the nation’s salt intake by 20% and prevent many thousands of premature deaths. The sodium in salt is a major contributor to high blood pressure, which in turn causes heart attack and stroke, the nation’s leading causes of preventable death. These conditions cause 23,000 deaths in New York City alone each year – more than 800,000 nationwide – and cost Americans billions in healthcare expenses.
Given the known health risks of excessive salt intake, why would FamilyDoctor.org, the consumer health portal published by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) promote deli meats on their Healthy Living page? Granted, they may not be endorsing deli meats in their editorial content, but they have a large banner ad for Boar’s Head deli meats on the site and a full-page ad from Boar’s Head in their digital newsletter. I don’t want to specifically single out Boar’s Head (ads for Buddig meats also appear on the site, along with ads for Hellmann’s Mayonnaise), but check out the sodium content in Boar’s Head Pastrami. Just so you don’t think I chose the worst offender, you can look up the smoked liverwurst or any of the hams. (Note, you can check nutrition fact labels of a long list of food items and restaurant items on this About.com site: http://caloriecount.about.com/. Warning, the fast food listings are frightening!)
Back to my question. Why would ads for foods so high in sodium be prominently placed on the AAFP Health Living site? I don’t know with certainty, but it looks to me like a failure in choice of online ad network and ad sales agency. One could go further and say it’s a failure in revenue model choice for an online consumer health site published by a medical association, a group that should be providing trustworthy content. Note, I wrote earlier about the recent partnership between AAFP and Coca-Cola to: “provide Americans with credible information on beverages and enable consumers to make informed decisions about what they drink based on individual need“. Certainly there are better options than to have soft drink and deli meat companies sponsoring sites that are supposed to promote healthy food choices.
The parallels to sponsorship models in scholarly medical publishing are obvious. When pharmaceutical and device manufacturers sponsor publications, it is difficult to accept that there is no bias in the editorial content–even if there is none. On consumer sites, where there is such a strong need for reliable unbiased health, nutrition and exercise information, just the appearance of ads on the site may be harmful because of the implicit endorsement of the advertisers’ products.
It may take some work to find a more acceptable roster of advertisers, but better options exist than those currently being pursued by AAFP. Why not work with other stakeholders in the healthcare industry that share the objective of improving consumer health and wellness? For instance, health insurers, employers, hospitals, and even other health content publishers are building and promoting wellness programs at a fast clip. They need to promote their programs and offer authoritative content to engage consumers. That sounds like an opportunity for a partnership. As a parting thought, perhaps AAFP should speak to Mayor Bloomberg and his staff to get some ideas on where to find sponsors that will support research and publication of trustworthy health and wellness information.
Reinventing Business Publishing: HBR Relaunches
- Posted December 18th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Last night I attended a TweetUp to celebrate the launch of the redesigned Harvard Business Review (HBR) and came away with renewed hope for the future of established publishers. The first decade of the 21st century has not delivered many positive stories about publishers who have dominated in the past, even those with iconic brands, but from what I’ve seen of the changes at the Harvard Business Review Group, there is hope that the next decade will include more stories with positive endings.
On the surface, the redesigned HBR is glossier than the former publication. It resembles other business magazines such as Forbes in other ways, too, including the advertisements (should I mention the unfortunate Accenture ad with Tiger Woods in the Jan-Feb 2010 issue of HBR?).
However, the changes that matter most run deeper and can be found online. The new Harvard Business Review site aggregates content from what used to be two separate sites, which among other things allows for the creation of “Author Pages” that “give … a deeper view of the [authors’] contributions across the magazine, the site and our books”.(1)
One could say that a “digital first” attitude is at the core of the change in direction at HBR. On a fundamental level, HBR has shifted from being organized around the type of publication (book, magazine, case study, etc.) to organizing around the needs of its audience. As obvious as it sounds, most traditional publishers have not yet made this change.
On a lighter note, my spirits were lifted when Eric Hellweg, the editor of HBR.org, greeted me by name at last night’s event. We had never met, but he explained that I was showcased in an internal meeting because of my retweet of their post on Twitter to promote the TweetUp. Apparently, the marketing folks wanted to emphasize that Twitter can be an effective tool in reaching their target audience. It was fun to know that I played a role in proving the power of Twitter and social media to Eric and the team at HBR!
Follow Harvard Business Review on Twitter @HarvardBiz
Finally, thanks to Siobban Ford of HBR.org for organizing last evening’s event at the Asgard Pub in Cambridge.
(1) See: The New Harvard Business Review Site.
Headline Commentary Dec 6-13
- Posted December 13th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Press Ganey acquires Patient Impact, announced 12/6/09. Patient Impact to become the unit specializing in physician practice & outpatient surveys. More details to come. Note, Patient Impact was a Health Content Innovator and presented at our Health Content08 conference: http://www.infocommercegroup.com/healthcontent/index.html
Headline says it all. Gary dissects an actual memo used with TV journalists that promotes tying recent medical research to exaggerated claims of short-term benefits–and the specifically recommends against mentioning research labs or clinical work.
No doubt CME needs a redesign to change the current heavy subsidies by Pharma.
Article on the new building extension of MIT’s media lab designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. Contrasts Maki’s style of open space with lots of glass to original IM Pei buildling with limited windows. Interesting metaphor for move of technology from “black box” to enabling and thriving on “transparency”.
Article questions the affordability of new cancer drug, Folotyn, produced by Allos Therapeutics. Allos says price is in line with other specialty treatments and so far health insurers have agreed to cover it to treat aggressive tumors. Shines light on problem of high cost of developing drugs, but doesn’t offer any solutions.
An indictment of doctors and drug companies that promote drug interventions for preventive care. Uses example of hormone drug replacement for women.
Ad Age lists top magazines that have ceased publishing in 2009.
References CBO study (with link) that describes the allocation of marketing $$ to detailing, CME support, DTC and a measly $400 M in professional journals. Journals publishers need to reinvent themselves as a vehicle for reaching doctors/clinicians.
EBSCO’s DynaMed write-up on breast cancer screening. I don’t find their analysis and coverage very helpful.
Conversation between Milken and Pfizer CEO Kindler
Reports of small survey of device manufacturers; results show that social media isn’t yet part of the marketing mix for device companies.
John Moore writes a brief post about MSFT’s announcement of long-term care provider Golden Living’s adoption of Amalga & HealthVault.
Some commentary on benefits of move to ICD10 codes.
McClellan, former CMS adminstrator, MD, and PhD economist, will keynote Advanstar’s Center for Business Intelligence (CBI)’s Annual Strategic Medicare Policy Summit.
Good overview with links to other stories about Pharma’s slowness in developing mobile apps.
Nancy McKinstry interview: journals renewals are strong even with price increases; hospitals are spending more capital in 2009 than 2008 in anticipation of ARRA funds to come in 2010.
Note, this is the first I’ve heard of ebizMBA, who writes on their site that ebizMBA is “an eBusiness knowledgebase that helps you find the webs best ansers to your online business questions on topics ranging from online marketing and analytics to website development and venture capital”. To their credit, they offer some indication of the parameters they use to measure popularity.
Humana will establish MinuteClinic for its own employees and will encourage all members to use MinuteClinic for basic screening tests for cholesterol, blood pressure, bmi–and will couple basic screenings with its own LifeSynch health coaching.
Ovid to announce Universal Search, which allows clients to search across Ovid and client’s other internal databases in single search. Nice development.
WebMD, HealthVault (MSFT) and GoogleHealth comprise the panel moderated by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn. About 50 minutes long. Worth a look.
Not surprising to hear that Informa has decided against going forward with bid for Springer. Debt levels of Springer make the deal hard to digest and current Springer owners PE firms Candover and Cinven want a sale to conclude quickly. If PE company acquires Springer, perhaps they would sell off pieces.
Very good analysis of trends in IT research. Essentially says that high priced IT research reports are becoming commoditized and used for lead gen that is paid for by vendors. Analysts can still make money consulting, firms can put on events, and carry out customized research. Totally in line with my writings and demonstrated in the content value pyramid in my Publishing for e-Patients preso (on Slideshare/janicemc). Like comment about individual analysts becoming branded more so than firms. Agree there, too.
Dow Jones Venturesource reports Q2 2009 VC investments by industry. Healthcare the best performer and it outpaces IT for first time on record.
Kent Bottles provides excellent summary of recent lecture by David Eddy, MD (the “founder” of EBM) who has consistently challenged the robustness of existing methods of clinical decision guidelines. Dr. Eddy believes the future requires more complex models that consider a larger number of factors and interactions that in effect provide more personalized medical treatment. Eddy’s own company, Archimedes, builds “virtual patients” that can be used for complex modeling of probable outcomes. I don’t know enough about Archimedes to judge its efficacy, but I think Eddy has the right approach. We know that more data are available about patients and outcomes and will accelerating adoption of EHRs, the amount of data will expand rapidly. Along with the improved data sources, there is clearly a need for more complex models to analyze the data and test the benefits of medical treatments.
Good article with data and charts on changes in pharma sales & marketing over time and expected effects of health reform on pharma sales techniques.
Comprehensive article on HSAs and high-deductible health plans.
Perspective on whether use of EMRs reduce liability for physicians. Focuses on discounts offered by insurance cos to doctors and practices that use EMRs.
Schein will merge its animal health business with Butler; Schein to own 50.1%.
Press releases doesn’t provide many details; I will look at Elsevier site soon. Embase is an index to biomedical research; relaunching as standalone product seems old-world.
Good article that mentiones pricedoc.com, healthcarebluebook.com, and outofpocket.com, sites that provide info on prices for various procedures or office visits by doctor.
Story about Full Yield, a wellness program for employers that provides its own food & nutrition programs. Story describes how Safeway, IBM, Pitney Bowes and others have saved money on health care costs via wellness programs. Major issue, however, is that these are companies that self-insure.
Another story that critiques overly simple health care rating schemes. IMO, ratings needs to be based on analysis of outcomes, using real data, not observations from a third-party, which are subject to error.
A one-sided critique of the shortcomings of EHR/EMR systems from Huffington Post. Whereas I agree that there are shortcomings, a more balanced report would have more credibility. Still, it offers some good basic info on what the feds are trying to do with ARRA funding.
Excellent post and comments. I just added my own comment (7th in list).
Article mentions strong interest in healthcare sector by PE. Do PE professionals smell, taste and feel an opportunity in healthcare, too?
Good commentary on public reaction to public health announcements and EBM. More “infodemiology”, that is, providing trustworthy information and monitoring public response to epidemics, is needed.
Excellent video presentation by Peter Norvig of Google. Data, semantics, search and much more.
IDC Health Insights report on EHR vendors ($4,500)
Interesting article and site (which I just discovered) about opportunities in scientific/medical writing and journalism. Site focuses on female scientists.
Sponsored by Google, survey lists most popular resources used to find medical info. Surprise! Search engine/Google is at the top, followed by peer-reviewed journals. No category for online clinical information resources, such as UpToDate, MDConsult, DynaMed, as far as I can see. If no breakout were given on survey, Search Engine category may incorporate these resources too.
Money-Driven Medicine site with free streaming version of the movie. Nice example of offering free streaming with promo for the paid DVD.
FDA would need legislative action to approve new db, but given the ability to track more data from electronic records and online user-input, federal db makes sense.
More on Informa bid for Springer from FT, which quotes analyts.
Study of search behavior indicates that online search is often used to confirm or refute one’s internal knowledge. Hm, sounds rather Bayesian to me.
With over 2.1B Euros in debt (8X EBITA), Springer is a loaded target. Bids are expected to be under 400M Euros. But bigger question is: is there sustained value in publishers of scholarly research, an sector that is being disrupted by new models of scholarly communication and research?
Good review of press related to new mammogram guidelines. Interesting that so many who say they want EBM, object when they don’t like the data. “Don’t like” often means they stand to lose business or stature.
Zynx Health’s order sets will be integrated with Keane’s Optimum EHR system thru this partership. Another example of embedding EBM info into EHRs.
Article describes how students are sharing for-fee medical articles in a Napster-type environment.
“It” in this case, is the information in medical journal articles. Really good article about what could be done to help add context to each medical journal article that reports on new research so that journalists, patients, and even doctors can better understand the implications.
With pressure from patient groups and regulators, hospitals have make significant progress in reducing hospital-acquired patient infections. Checklists and focus on solving the problem (using best practices from other institutions as one means) are noted as key to changing the procedures and culture at hospitals.
Study performed by Prof. Ashish Jha at HSPH and Catherine DesRoches at MGH indicates that using EHRs makes little difference in outcomes. This article goes on to point out that researchers also focus on the importance of changing processes & culture in hospitals to benefit from positive effects of using EMRs/EHRs. I’d add that hospitals and hospital systems that incorporate clinical information systems (order sets, point-of-care CDS) are more likely tho demonstrate improved outcomes. At this stage, not enough evidence-based content has been incorporated into EMR/EHRs.
MD who wrote this post suggests that Kolata’s article is biased toward the big pharma position, since her only sources were from pharma.
Headline Commentary July 20-26
- Posted July 26th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
HHS considering notification requirements for cases when the security of de-identified patient data used in research is breached.
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.
Advertising may help increase book publishers’ profits, but it is unlikely that books will become less expensive: they are already inexpensive. Readers are unlikely to invite advertising, unless books become totally free.
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.
Good review of why there is skepticism among doctors & others (including me) about how investment in EHRs will provide “magic bullet”. Key issue is the quality of the EHR systems being sold by many of the big health IT vendors. Key quality factors include: ease of use, interoperability, low downtime.
Examples of Cleveland Clinic & Bassett Health where coordinated care and salaried doctors contribute to better & more cost-effective care.
Dr. Denis Cortese, CEO Mayo Clinic, interviewed on Charlie Rose week of July 20 2009.
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.
Obama visits Cleveland Clinic on July 23, 2009. This is the press release from CC.
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.
Dr. Sidney Wolfe describes why the current system for reporting doctors in the NPDB isn’t working.
Good overview of EBM — what it is and what it is not– and some cautions about Obama’s zeal for EBM and Health IT.
Jbat puts Twitter’s emergence in the context of Google in 2004 and suggests that small-to-medium sized businesses will be the lifeblood of Twitter. These SMBs need to continously find better/faster/cheaper ways of marketing their goods & services and Twitter can help. I like the comment from a reader that describes Twitter as a new “marketplace” for buyers & sellers. That’s what I said of online directories 5-6 years ago.
PLoS is working toward new measurements of “impact” for scholarly research, based on ind. articles and including measures of web-based linkages.
AP creates new technology for tracking usage of articles and wrapping reuse rights into code in each article. In principle, the concept could work; in practice it may flop due to too many restrictions on links.
Twitter prepares materials for business use of its microblogging services. Lots of good tips for business use and examples from big companies.
Rand study analyzes effect of rising health care costs on employment, output, and value-add to GDP across 38 industries over the period 1987-2005. Concludes that HC costs had adverse effects on all 3 measures, esp. in industries w/ high % of employer-sponsored insurance.
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).
Scribd succeeding where others have not by keeping it simple. Straightforward rev share (20% to Scribd; 80% to publisher/author) and easy to use platform. Let seller set terms.
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.
Physicians Interactive, owned by PE company Perseus, buys Skycape, the leading mobile platform for medical info delivered to physicians.
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)
Assessment of the effectiveness of Pharma ads in medical journals. Haven’t read the article through yet, but looks to have good data.
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.
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn’s commentary on recent PWC report. She points to stats abt patient involvement that break down survey results by type of insured. Most notable stat: 61% of those covered by employer report their reason for lack of involvement: “I do not know where to go to find good information”.
Very good round-up of various community sites targeted to physicians, including Sermo, Ozmosis, iMedExchange, WebMD, and Within3.
WSJ points out key issue in using Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, or KP as models for health reform: these are integrated systems that facilitate sharing info, coordinating care, and can impose standards.
Good slide presentation on how Cochrane Collaboration uses Twitter, delicious, Facebook, etc.
Key median ratios for the 134 health systems rated by S&P declining in all categories in 2008.
Brian Ahier’s list of top 50 health info “heroes” on Twitter. Great list, even includes @janicemccallum!
WebMD launches Medscape Mobile for iPhone & iPod Touch. Free content includes: Drug db, drug interaction checker, Medscape medical news, CME from Medscape, & WebMD Health Dictionary.
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.
Boston area advertising firm, Pangea, uses QuizEngine, its content-focused advertising platform to engage readers.
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.
DoD has successful pilot PHR program, MiCare, that uses GoogleHealth & MSFT HealthVault.
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.
NPR story on Comparative Effectiveness (CER) of treatment for irregular heart beat. Quotes Carolyn Clancy of AHRQ, but doesn’t draw any conclusions.
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.
Good insight from John Moore at Chilmark on acquisition of Medem by Medfusion.
Martindale Hubbell’s community for legal professionals grows to 10K lawyers.
Zynx to provide order sets directly through eClinicalWorks EMR.
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!
Paul Levy shares some learnings from BIDMC’s performance improvement efforts.
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.
According to study conducted by AON, employers want enhancements to existing health insurance system rather than a complete overhaul. Key changes requested: more info on comparative effectiveness, more focus on wellness and preventive care, and changes to reimbursement policies.
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.
Chronicle of Higher Ed on Elsevier’s Cell Press’ beta site for “next gen” journal article. At first glance, I’m impressed by the added-value that Cell Press is providing to their users. I’m also a little (just a little) annoyed at the commenters who dismiss the efforts because of Elsevier’s high profits (estimates are inflated in one comment) in their journals business. STM publishing segment needs innovation to respond to needs of the scientist and researchers who use the info and data.
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.
CHH Medical Supply convicted of Medicare Fraud for unneccessary power wheelchair prescriptions.
Elsevier’s Cell Press has beta site to explore “next generation journal article” (my words). Very cool.
GAO report (links to full report included) analyzing resource needs for FDA to manage growing responsibilities in medical device/product segment.
Good article that describes problems physicians/providers have in collecting from patients.
Free Is Not a Business Model
- Posted July 17th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
“Free” is an attention grabber, not a business model. Chris Anderson, author of the recently introduced book, Free! The Future of a Radical Price , understands the power of the word “free” on many levels (including using it as a catchy title). But even he can’t justify giving away intellectual property as a complete business model. Rather, he frequently recommends a “freemium” model, where some content is widely available for free with revenue coming from upselling leads.
I wrote my last article on the commoditization of health content, before the release of Anderson’s book. While I agree with most of his points—especially the fact that digitized content is subject to commoditization because of low marginal costs and ease of replication – it’s important to keep in mind that Anderson and others are only talking about a part of the picture. Digital content and digital distribution may drive down prices over time, but they also increase the options available for packaging content for different audiences and applications. So, while the basic bits may be commoditized, helping customers apply those bits to solve problems, close sales, or become more efficient remains a very valuable service.
There is a range of options available to publishers to differentiate their content in the marketplace to retain value. The best mix of free content, premium content, tools, subsidies, and value-added services will differ depending on the nature of the content and the size of the potential audience. Very specialized content with a limited audience may do better with a premium subscription model; news content with mass appeal may be better suited to an ad-supported free-to-the-reader model. In both cases, some content may be used for marketing purposes to attract and retain users.
To thrive in the digital economy, publishers need to rethink how their users value the information they provide. What do these users do with the content? What can you do to help these users become more productive or work more efficiently? This is the essence of infocommerce, and many publishers still have not harnessed its full potential. Some are still stuck in the old mindset that they produce “textbooks” or “newspapers” or “journals”. Instead, they should be thinking about how their content can be integrated with software to offer decision-support systems, or how their content could be used by an online marketer to shorten the sales cycle.
In the past week or two, infocommerce has been the subject on Andrew Savikas’s blog at TOC at O’Reilly Publishing in his post Content as a Service, and Matt Dickman, a digital marketer at Fleishman-Hillard, writes about Content as Commerce on his blog. Both stretch their ideas a bit too far in order to make their point, but they represent creative thinking about how to readjust the way we view the value of content.
Another phrase should be added to the discussion: “Content as Advertising”. Publishers need to gain a renewed understanding of their advertisers’ needs and consider how content can be used as a vehicle to engage prospects. Using free content to attract leads and build brand equity isn’t all that radical if one looks at how this “content as advertising” is supporting (and in some cases supplanting) traditional branding and lead-generation methods. We predict that as infocommerce in the forms of “content as advertising” and “content as commerce” continues to evolve, the lines between publishers and marketers will blur as marketers learn new methods for using content online to attract new customers.
[Note, although not specifically focused on health content, this article is certainly relevant to pharmaceutical marketers and health content publishers.]
Click on the link to read Chris Anderson’s book http://www.scribd.com/doc/17135767/FREE-full-book-by-Chris-Anderson.
Follow me on Twitter: @janicemccallum.
Headline Commentary June 22-28
- Posted June 28th 2009
- Comments (0)
- 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.
DeepDyve’s Free Search Tools Enhance Patient Community Sites
- Posted May 27th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
DeepDyve, a relatively new search engine (formerly known as Infovell), uses an approach to search that helps both novices and search experts find relevant information. DeepDyve is particularly useful in finding related information once one has found an article that includes information that is on-point. The user can simply copy the desired sections or full article into the search box and DeepDyve will find related information within the body of information searched by the DeepDyve engine.
Today (May 27) DeepDyve announced the availability of several tools for website and blog publishers that allow them to incorporate DeepDyve search functionality on their own sites. The first, DeepDyve’s “More Like This Content” widget allows websites to offer its users a richer search experience by including results from content indexed by DeepDyve. DeepDyve searches a large (and growing) body of scholarly content that includes many medical journals not fully searchable on the open Web. Clicking on the More Like This icon retrieves and displays links to related information from DeepDyve. Advanced search provides an option to limit searches to particular types of content, such as patents or clinical trials.
Today’s announcement also includes a “Content Highlight” widget that can be used to search content within a website. Users highlight a block of text/data (up to 5,000 characters) and run the highlighted text as a search query. Obviously, the site must be indexed by DeepDyve; there is an option to have the “Content Highlight” widget search other content in the DeepDyve index. Both of these tools are available for free and are ad-supported. See here for details.
Finally, there is a plug-in for WordPress bloggers (also free) that uses the text of the blog to automatically retrieve and display links to related content from DeepDyve’s index. This feature should be especially useful on patient community sites. I plan to implement this plug-in on the Health Content Advisors blog, but I also encourage bloggers and website publishers with more medically-focused content to explore using these widgets. It takes a little time to adjust to the DeepDyve search method, but for research applications the benefits quickly become apparent.
Social Media Blurs Lines Between Advertiser and Publisher
- Posted May 5th 2009
- Comments (2)
- by Janice
I recently attended Social Pharmer, an “unconference” in Cambridge, MA as part of Health Camp Boston.[1] Most of the participants consisted of pharma marketers or ad/media agencies that work with pharmaceutical and life science clients. With my background in digital publishing, I had a different perspective than most.
Social media to me represents the elusive “interactive” component that publishers have been seeking since the early days of two-way communication that the Internet enabled. For media agencies, social media represents a way to further engage prospects and customers. Whereas agencies used to have to rely on publishers to build communities of interest to the marketer, the marketers are now building communities directly with social media tools. It’s not yet time to declare that marketers no longer need publishers to help them spread their messages, but publishers should take note of how their advertising clients are moving more directly into the content creation and community-building arenas. Publishers no longer have a lock on content creation and community building (aka audience development).
At Social Pharmer, it was interesting to observe that these agency folks who are accustomed to creating engaging content in short bursts lacked experience in organizing and managing content on a continued basis, tasks that publishers have honed over the years in print and digital environments. I couldn’t help note the complementary skillsets of the agencies and the publishers. The area where publishers are struggling -engaging readers in on online environment-is where the agencies are having success (the myAlli campaign was repeatedly called out for its success); the area where agencies need guidance - how to manage content that is produced by others, especially in a regulated environment-is where the publishers have the experience edge.
[See related post by John Mack’s about creating guidelines for social media publishing in pharma on his Pharma Marketing blog.]
My colleague, Russell Perkins, is currently at the ABM Annual Conference and reported that a key theme there is how publishers are acting more and more like agencies in offering a variety of programs to help marketers reach their target audiences, and conversely how agencies are acting more like publishers as they create and publish more and more content online. John Battelle included the same theme in his 2009 predictions , where he wrote: …” media companies have realized (or will soon) that their job is to create platforms for communities to make media. Publishers are agents for communities, agencies are agents for brands. They need each other. It takes both agents to get good media made“. This isn’t a new theme. I wrote in 2003 about how agencies were increasingly using the Web to extend the type of content they were creating beyond advertisements. The roles of agencies and publishers will continue to evolve as digital publishing becomes more mainstream for consumers, publishers, marketers and agencies.
[1] See Report from the Social Pharmer “Unconference” by Amber Benson, Pharma Marketing News, VirSci Corp, April 2009.
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