HealthContentAdvisors

FDA charges Guidant (a Boston Scientific company) with failure to report safety problems with some of its implantable defibrillators.

Eclipsys Sunrise Enterprise suite of health IT software applications to integrate with Microsoft’s Amalga UIS platform.

Athenahealth to delay its Q4 SEC filing so that it can audit its revenue recognition practices. Has to do with how Athenahealth amortizes implementation fees that are deferred until implementation is completed; they are considering extending the period of amortization beyond the current 1 year.

Important story about how Harvard Vanguard/Atrius physician group is making Beth Israel/Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) a priority hospital because of coordination of care between the two institutions.

Mayo, GE Healthcare & Intel partner on year-long study of effects of monitoring seniors & people w/ chronic illnesses with home monitoring devices.

“”Blending Eclipsys’ leadership in physician adoption and sophisticated clinical and decision-support workflows with Microsoft’s leadership in interoperability, data extraction, authentication and context management will open up new choices and opportunities for healthcare organizations needing to make the most from their existing IT infrastructure.”- Peter Neupert, Corporate VP, HSG, Microsoft.

Interesting. DyanamicBooks allow professors to customize textbooks with their own modifications. Prices will be lower for e-books, but print on demand versions will cost about the same as traditional print version. What about copyright for new version? It probably remains with Macmillan, which means professors don’t get to copyright their contributions?

Obama’s healthcare proposal 2/22/10

Missed this last week. PatientsLikeMe acquires ReliefInSite, based in Hungary. ReliefInSite helps patients track their pain levels; bus model relies on pharma and clinical researchers.

IMS offers decision support service for regulatory compliance for Pharma and med device companies.

National Center for Quality Assurance (NCQA) paper on evolving standards for Patient-Centered Medical Home metrics.

Grassley questions Pharma sponsorship of content on WenMD

Eclipsys beat expectations in Q4 2009, with earnings of $3.8 Million, up 15% YoY. Rev. up 5% YoY.

Good overview of ResearchGATE, a social networking site for scientists that allows users to set degree of privacy and facilitates collaboration. Bus model: jobs board for scientists.

ONC’s Aneesh Chopra, who chairs the Implementation Workgroup, seeks feedback on how to build a starter-kit for EHR implementation. Specific categories of interest: Vocabularies; content exchange standards; communications exchange standards, and privacy.

AHRQ

Consistent with research by Tomas Philipson, U. Chicago. Healthcare innovation and IT saves lives, but it comes with a high cost. We can keep innovating, but we can’t afford to keep paying for the innovations in the current system.

“Must read” article in NEJM on creating national program for CER.

Description of study in Worcester, MA to implement evidence-based theraputic management guidelines for cardiac patients.

Meta-analysis indicates that use of statins to control cholesterol is correlated with higher risk of type 2 diabetes.

Simple “hockey-puck on a stick” test easier to implement in real-world situations: “There are computer algorithms to measure reaction time, using game-like programs. But they’re not so good for use at the sidelines, and they involve licensing fees.”

Excellent presentation of text/audio content–and the info provided is excellent, too. Good points about data alone not being sufficient; data must be put in context and must be shared to be helpful. Read Susannah Fox’s comment to learn more about the people behind the voices in the video.

Fascinating overview of changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5)currently in draft form. Along with the info about specific disorders, I find the new approach toward categorizing disorders along a spectrum of severity very interesting. The degree to which someone has a disorder is considered, rather than placing each level of severity in a separate category. Aspergers as part of the autism spectrum is the example that is getting a lot of press.

Excellent lead article on need for automated data input (from devices, exchange from other systems, etc), better clinical decision support systems, and process change to make use of EHRs “meaningful” in improving health care.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Nice. CenterWatch now provides feeds by therapeutic area, disease category, FDA approved drugs and more that can be added to a website–for Free!

Patient Safety and workflow solutions company raises $30M led by TPG Biotechnology Partners.

Harvard Med School’s Laboratory for Quantitative Medicine has created personalized risk assessment tools based on “binary biology”. Interesting.

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.

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.

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.

More on the Text4baby partnership btwn HHS, other fed agencies, industry (Pharma, telecom carriers) and insurance plans.

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.

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).

WK Health updates Facts& Comparisons and rebrands it as (drumroll please…) Facts & Comparisons eAnswers. Drug info resource.

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?

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.

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.

Good article that describes how quickly move toward personalized medicine–based on an individual’s genetic data–is occurring.

Cute: a Jeopardy quiz for the rudiments of EBM for medical librarians.

ABRY provides funding to HealthTrans to support organic growth and acquisitions.

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.

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.

Addresses issue of why hospitals don’t track and use data to help them reduce risk in surgery. Mentions NSQUIP from ACS.

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.

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.

Reports on programs that provide behavioral counseling to MDs that have depression, substance abuse and stress problems.

McKesson & HP partner to provide EHR s/w and hardware for physician practices.

Interesting. Wolters Kluwer has set up a system whereby doctors will receive CME credit for clinical research done via their mobile phone.

Very thorough review of MSFT-Siemens deal to introduce MS HealthVault to German market and make it the system through which patients are provided medical info. HL7 is more widely used in Europe and Infobutton apps will likely catch on more quickly.

Julie Deardorff of Chicago Tribune writes about my recent blog on the AAFP’s FamilyDoctor.org site’s advertising high salt foods. Quotes me, AAFP VP Publishing, and Dr. John Spangler.

Good interview with David Blumenthal, Director, ONC, on meaningful use of EHRs and plans for national health data exchange.

Whole Foods to offer up to an additional 10% discount for employees who meet wellness measures that include nicotine use, cholesteral, and BMI targets.

Good short piece on why publishers are distributing content via Kindles even though there are business considerations.

Kent Bottles brings together topics from current books by Atul Gawande, Timothy Goetz, and an article by Jerome Groopman to consider the merits of checklists and use of decision trees in medicine. He also covers behavioral economics and choice and mentions the Thaler-Sunstein approach to offering nudges (libertarian paternalism) to guide healthful behavior. Conclusion: medicine and health are complicated. Seems to me that since computers are useful for dealing with complex calculations (even under stress) that it makes sense to use automated checklists and decision support systems to guide complex processes. Provided we can avoid GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) situations.

Interesting article on how Conde Nast is seeking to leverage brand value of Gourmet, Domino, and Cookie (defunct magazines) as well as current titles Wired and Lucky. Compares CN to Meredith, whose Better Homes & Gardens has used its brand to provide quality seals to products. CN-selected content (tested by Gourmet kitchens?) is one idea they should consider, IMO.

IUD manufacturer, Mirena (part of Bayer Pharmaceutical) has been using home parties, a la Tupperware, to spread word about benefits of Mirena IUD. FDC has sent warning letter to Bayer.

Everyday Health, the consumer health portal owned by Waterfront Media, files for $100M IPO. Positive sign for consumer health publishers. Everyday is one of the largest consumer health portals that relies on online advertising for most of its revenue.

Home page of Jan 2010 report from RWJF on PHRs.

ZocDoc, a online directory of doctors that has focused on NY and DC, is expanding to cover SF. Note, a key differentiator of ZocDoc (from the slew of other doctor ratings sites) is its integration with practice management systems for scheduling appointments so that users can find doctors with available appts. ZocDoc says they have integrated with close to 1400 PMS companies. Note, ZocDoc also encourages patient reviews of doctors, but only from ZocDoc users. Reviews of doctors remains a sticky wicket for all of the doc review sites.

Susannah Fox from Pew Internet started the conversation with her post about Google Health OneBox that lists results from Mayo Clinic, WebMD, ADAM, and MedlinePlus in a special position at top of search results. Great discussion in the comments ensued, including a couple from me.

Brief article describing MedeAnalytics revenue cycle management solution being adopted by St. Joseph’s Hospital in Maryland.

Info on work Tim Berners-Lee is doing for UK govenment to make sources of gov’t data more available and meaningful.

“Pfizer increased its spending on online professional promotion by more than 90% last year, according to a study, a sign the drugmaker is emphasizing alternatives to live sales reps for detailing certain products.” Study by SDI.

Thomas Goetz, exec editor of Wired, on why personalized medicine is really about personal data.

Really good interview, where Gomez talks frankly about outdated tech in hospitals/health IT (e.g., MUMPS) and talks about making CPOE easier to reap benefits of healthcare data-analytics.

HealthGrades announces new org structure and provides improved guidance for 2010. I just have to add that this may be the most poorly written press release I have ever seen.

CVS’ underperforming PBM unit names Lofberg new CEO. Lofberg is currently CEO of Generation Health, a genetic PBM.

Choronicle of Higher Ed describes some alternatives to impact factors. I agree that empirical data should be used in measuring importance, but a single # is not likely to be sufficient. Wouldn’t that strengthen the “Britney effect”?

At least one doctor thinks they are. Dr. Wes Fisher writes that the rise of social media and the cost of travel (and reduction of sponsorship by pharma and device companies) spells the end of the medical conference business. I think he’s right that there will be a reduction in live events, but I don’t expect them to disappear.

HHS has an RFP for study on how to build claims db that will include payer records beyond CMS data. DB will be used for comparative effectiveness research (CER).

Health Data Management reports that Thomson Reuters Healthcare (Ann Arbor) is entering the HIE market with a data analytics platform.

Healthcare IT News briefly reviews the top 20 list from KLAS.

A must-read for every publisher to gain an understanding of the convergence of publishing, marketing/advertising and the blurring of the roles between publishers and vendors. Nike’s online campaign was much more than advertising, it included tools for fitness programs and for exchanging data. Or as AdWeek says, “a product experience”. Traditional publications and ads can’t deliver a “product experience” in print of online.

Health Content Advisors ranks #136 out of 400 top blogs on IT. Interesting that my writings about health content, which is inextricably connected to health IT, rates so highly. It’s an honor to be placed in the immediate neighborhood of top analysts from top IT research firms, considering that my blog is secondary to the consulting work I do. Must be my analytical nature!

Nice tribute to Paul Samuelson in the Boston Globe. Samuelson taught at MIT since 1940 and every student of economics has been touched by Dr. Samuelson. I honor him as a fellow U. Chicago alum, but also for negotiating one of the best textbook contracts ever.

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.

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”.

An indictment of doctors and drug companies that promote drug interventions for preventive care. Uses example of hormone drug replacement for women.

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.

Conversation between Milken and Pfizer CEO Kindler

John Moore writes a brief post about MSFT’s announcement of long-term care provider Golden Living’s adoption of Amalga & HealthVault.

McClellan, former CMS adminstrator, MD, and PhD economist, will keynote Advanstar’s Center for Business Intelligence (CBI)’s Annual Strategic Medicare Policy Summit.

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.

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.

WebMD, HealthVault (MSFT) and GoogleHealth comprise the panel moderated by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn. About 50 minutes long. Worth a look.

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.

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.

Comprehensive article on HSAs and high-deductible health plans.

Schein will merge its animal health business with Butler; Schein to own 50.1%.

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.

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.

Excellent post and comments. I just added my own comment (7th in list).

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.

IDC Health Insights report on EHR vendors ($4,500)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Article describes how students are sharing for-fee medical articles in a Napster-type environment.

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.

MD who wrote this post suggests that Kolata’s article is biased toward the big pharma position, since her only sources were from pharma.

InformationWeek profiles Transparent health Network, which is compiling prices for direct purchases of healthcare services by patients.

Flybridge invests in woman-owned pilates equipment seller, which has sold over $500M in equip on QVC over the past 12 years.

Workflow study that follows patient through hospital identifies areas for improvement.

Brian Ahier writes about recent developments in electronic healthcare records with a focus on Practice Fusion and GoogleHealth’s attempts to offer patient info that is consistent with physician info.

John Moore of Chilmark Research, who moderated closing panel, recaps the day’s highlights. I’ll add that John did a very good job on the last panel, which included Esther Dyson, Steve Munini COO Dossia, Fred Smith of CDC, and George Willock, CEO of HealthString. Audience appreciated the focus on the patient (Adam Bosworth did focus on patient, too). I believe it was Esther who said: “the patient is the most important input into health decisions”. She mentioned the “quantified self” movement and Society for Participatory Medicine also got a plug. This was the most forward-looking session that addressed social media and the exploding amount of new data that will be available for analysis.

DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth) is one of two $20 million awards made this year as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) DataNet program. The collaboration of universities and government agencies coalesced to address the mounting need for organizing and serving up vast amounts of highly diverse and inter-related but often incompatible scientific data. Resulting studies will range from research that illuminates fundamental environmental processes to identifying environmental problems and potential solutions.

Center for Ix Therapy, which was represented at our first Health Content07 conference, to shut down Nov 30, 2009. The Center was small organization with limited resources, and suffered from trying to define a space that already existed and was far more widespread and diverse than their definition of Ix Therapy.

Wonder what Lexis and Westlaw will say about this?

Makes sense. FDA and other govt sources are not best at marketing and distribution. Everyday Health (Waterfront Media) can take on that role to extend reach of FDA info.

Grove, former CEO of Intel, promotes concept of new degree to help accelerate the cycle from medical research discoveries to mass production of new treatments. Essentially, Grove wants to combine skills of researchers and engineers to disrupt current cycle that can take many years from bench research to broad availability.

Physician posits that dependence on checklists may not be to the benefit of good patient care if insufficient attention to individual patients is paid.

Gary slams the morning TV shows for their promotion of junk information about weight-loss and other health issues. I agree that for the most part, TV news health info is superficial and very seldom put in context. Wouldn’t it be great if the money were spent on disseminating helpful information and pointing people to more trustsworthy sources?

How much information is optimal to share between patients & doctors? Great comments here.

Article makes the point that it’s great that gov’t agencies are providing more open data, but that data needs to be put in context and displayed in an engaging manner to really have full impact. And that, dear publishers, is what you should be doing…

Excellent round-up of Day 1 of FDA hearings on social media use by Pharma.

CVS sees value in studying interaction between genes and medication for its PBM business and for its end-customers.

Dr. Pauline Chen’s column about the decline in # docs who want to go into primary care. In large part, it’s due to large number of routine cases they deal with and the amount of paperwork and coordination required. Of course, pay is an issue too. This ties with articles I’ve published about the commodization of routine health care enabled by health IT. Programming routine tasks and allowing nurses and other clinicians to take over these tasks should relieve primary care physicians of the “burden” of routine tasks.

Nice rundown of vetted sources of online health information from medical librarians.

David Blumenthal’s latest statement on goals of the ONC for interoperability of electronic health records.

linking patient data and related information

Live webcast of FDA’s hearing on use of Internet and Social Media Tools by FDA-regulated Medical Products, Nov. 12-13. Much anticipated meeting on topic of use of online media by Pharma and other FDA-regulated companies.

More outlets for distributing health and fitness gear as focus on wellness and prevention increases.

No matter the outcome on ONC pronouncements about meaningful use, CCHIT, the certifying board for EMR/EHR systems, is continuing to play its previous role. CCHIT describes itself as a “community” and believes they offer meaningful services to small hospitals and group practices.

Comments on Erik Engstrom’s new position as CEO of parent company Reed Elsevier. Engstrom has been CEO of Elsevier, the STM group of RE, for some time. Smart and analytical, I think he’s a good choice.

CareMedic, a Florida revenue cycle management (RCM) company, to be acquired by UnitedHealth’s Ingenix group. Ingenix now has near end-to-end platform for managing every step of the revenue cycle, from patient registration to reimbursement.

WaPo on how some people may overreact to info they find on online health sites. Writer overreacts a bit herself in implying that online resources shouldn’t be used to help diagnose one’s condition. Agree that health literacy is needed; that is, consumers need better training to vet health resources. But, we’ll have hypochondriacs in the real and virtual worlds. Not everyone will gain the same benefits from online health resources.

SDI Health, a PA company that provides healthcare data analytics services, receives funding from Tailwind Capital.

Article on lack of transparency in reporting health research and health statistics.

Narrated slide slow illustrating new features of reports on Patients Like Me. Impressive.

PhRMA proposes methods for verifying FDA-approved data in health info provided to consumers. FDA logo on sites?

Excellent slide deck that describes influence of social media in healthcare: pharma, med school, epatients, doctors, nurses.

Focus on shortage of primary care doc and how nurses will take on more resposibility. Agree, but shortage isn’t the source of problem. Rather, commoditization of basic medical care & procedures due to digitization of health care info is source of change. See piece on “heatlh content is rapidly becoming a commoditiy” in my blog at Health Content Advisors.

Sermo creates community on practice management topics for docs to share info about healthIT and the business issues of running a practice. There are even CME activities with 8 module curriculum titled: The New Business of Medicine.

Microsoft will launch a video web series on health IT beginning Nov 11, 2009.

Long interview with David Brailer, now a PE exec, fmly Director ONC.

Anne Woods promoted to CNO (Chief Nursing Officer) at WK Health. She’s responsible for nursing strategy across Medical Research & journals publishing businesses.

NYTimes on how InterMountain Healthcare is adapting EBM practices to improve outcomes.

Initiate Systems (healthcare data mgmt) acquire Accenx, a provider of health info exchange solutions.

Shwen Gwee’s presentation on Social Media usage in pharma. Excellent presentation.

Jeff Arnold, fmly of WebMD and more recently HowStuffWorks, to lauchn Sharecare, a consumer health info site supported by medical device from a group of physicians.

Data Advantage names to 75 hospitals in their value index.

Interesting review of recent report from Quintiles with thesis that pharma should take lead in establishing valuation system for their products in line with the comparative effectiveness (CER) concept.

HealthCentral partners with 5min, an aggregator of health & wellness videos.

Mara Aspinall joins On-Q-ity as CEO. On-Q-ity (could they have created a more difficult company name to type?) was created by combining two investments of Mohr Davidow (Cellective Diagnostics and the DNA Repair company). On-Q-ity will focus on “developing new, cheaper and more effective treatments for cancer by tracking suspicious cells in a patient’s blood stream that indicate resistance to treatment, Aspinall said. On-Q-ity will focus on breast and thoracic cancers first, then prostate and other solid tumor cancers. developing new, cheaper and more effective treatments for cancer by tracking suspicious cells in a patient’s blood stream that indicate resistance to treatment, Aspinall said. On-Q-ity will focus on breast and thoracic cancers first, then prostate and other solid tumor cancers” (from PE Hub).

For medical coding geeks only; an MD applies ICD-9 codes to daily living….

Dr. Jerome Groopman (author of How Doctor’s Think) writes on limitations of current diagnostic methods and EBM.

eHealth will focus on improving methods for sharing health info between patients and clinicians. Includes security features (patient ID, data privacy).

Live (and archived) coverage of BilPil healthcare “unconference” in San Diego from MedPage Today.

Some details on Nov 12-13 FDA public hearing on use of social media by pharma. list of speakers included

Summary of SixUntilMe’s preso at epatient connections.

MaryDee Ojala on DeepDyve’s new rental model for scholarly articles.

Report on some small steps taken by select providers to post prices of their services.

Does technology interrupt the communication between doctors & patients? That’s the question posed by this book. Sounds interesting.

New site that compiles info about neuroscience research.

Great example of the how new sources of data will transform medical research.

Jay Parkinson on specialized providers v. general hospitals.

Review of Adam Bosworth’s company, Keas, which uses custom “care plans” that collect personal data - directly or indirectly.

Consumer Watchdog wants change to HHS ruling that gives providers the authority to decide if/when a patient’s healthcare information security has been breached.

Karen Overstreet, named executive director of Lippincott CME unit. Interesting that she’ll report to the Medical Research division, not education. Has there been a re-org?

FDA will use data from Wolters Kluwer’s Pharma Solutions Source Lx Patient Studies Suite that captures patient-level Rx data and Pharmaceutical Audit Suite (PHAST) that captures Rx transactions to follow trends in flu medication prescribing activity by region and other patient demographics.

American Academy of Professional Coders offers free app to help convert ICD-9 to ICD-10 codes. See aapc.com.

New edition will include feeds from Factiva and use Factiva Smart Search. Need to check on pricing.

HealthPort Inc., an Alpharetta, Ga.-based provider of healthcare IT solutions to hospitals and health systems, has set its IPO terms to six million common shares being offered at between $14 and $16 per share. It would have an initial market cap of approximately $360 million, were it to price at the high end of its range. HealthPort is owned by ABRY Partners. www.healthport.com

New study in The Journal of the American Medical Association, estimates that there are 67,000 fewer active physicians than calculations have suggested. The physician work force is also younger than previously estimated, with a greater proportion of doctors in their 20s and 30s and fewer who are 65 and older. By 2020, there will be 957,000 physicians, according to the new estimates, rather than the 1.05 million previously projected. Only 9 percent will be 65 or older, or half as many as had been predicted.

Team that developed InnovationRx at the Innovation Company bought the rights to the company and relaunched it as Aprexis Health Solutions. Aprexis focuses on patient adherence, with adherence to prescription drugs the focus.

WK Health announces new customer who will use Provation, now branded as Provation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support.

UnitedHealth exceed analyst estimates despite declines in #insured, due to increases at drug unit.

Argentina the latest country to launch medical tourism program to encourage visitors to plan vacations centered around medical procedures (cosmetic and fertility are top treatments for medical tourists in Arg).

MVP Health, a regional health insurer in upstate NY, VT, and NH, will reimburse physicians for using RelayHealth’s WebVisit (TM) for patient consultations. MVP is partnering with Mohawk Valley Medical Associate (MVMA) to offer physician’s immediate reimbursement for implementing Relay’s webVisit.

presentation materials from Sept 24, 2009 webcasts on CAHPS Clinician and Group Survey

Concerns about patient privacy loom over electronic health records segment. George Hill of Leerink Swann estimates that by 2020, data mining could represent a $5 Billion industry.

Preview of next week’s Connected Health 09 conference in Boston. Focus: new devices and communications tools will help patients take more control of their health and leave hospital visits for severe events.

New device from Fitbit that tracks exercise & sleep & can be used to monitor calorie intake, too. Fitbit is joining a fast-growing segment of devices that help monitor healthy behavior & can be used by payer segment to evaluate lifestyle of insured populations.

Dr. Rob on medical costs and medical codes–and plug for his interview with Ira Glass for This American Life’s series on medical costs to be aired weekend of 10/17-18, 2009.

Quest Diagnostics’ MedPlus group, launches its Care360 ambulatory EHR on Oct.24. MedPlus will market the EHR to teh 150,000 physicians that already use its other Care360 apps and will offer hosted solutions for smaller practices. Quest’s MedPlus has the advantage of having existing relationships with these practices who use their other Care360 apps.

Developed in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Elsevier’s Brain Navigator tool, a “GPS system” that provides 3-D software to navigate the brain, adds new features for visualizing injection pathways and printing and exporting images. Interesting to note that this collaboration is with Elsevier’s Science and Technology Books division. Great example of how STM publishers can leverage their content through IT/R&D partnerships.

According to 2006 Kaiser Foundation study, nearly 1/3 of US companies that offer health insurance also offer some sort of wellness program. And, the focus on wellness has increased since then. This article describes some of the programs and $$ incentives for reaching wellness goals.

Very interesting. Healthy Advice Networks, which markets health info to physician practices with content sponsored by pharma and health and wellness brands, partners with HealthScape Consumer, a joint WK Health and Nielsen longitudinal panel to provide data on the effectiveness of sponsoring/promoting in Healthy Advice Network.

RightHealth is dba name of Kosmix, a Mt. View California search technology company that initially focused on the health space.

Digitas Health lists 140 possible uses of Twitter in healthcare. Nice.

Florida-based video sharing site that posts videos for docs to use for patient education.

CEO of OptumHealth’s Care Solutions group describes their programs to encourage healthy behavior before and after health care is needed.

Webmedx, which transcribes doctors’ voice recordings, implements new system powered by MarkLogic to create indexed data that can be fed into other apps.

Phase Forward signs Hungarian pharma company, Gedeon Richter, to multi-year deal for PF’s clinical trial management s/w.

Incentives for employees to participate in wellness programs are growing. Safeway is an example of a company that offers financial rewards to employees who achieve certain wellness goals. To encourage similar programs, health reform legislation will increase existing limits for rewards. This amendment is becoming known as the “Safeway Amendment”.

John Sharp’s presentation at Cleveland Clinic seminar on how IT is transforming medical practice and research. Good preso with good examples.

Article on MD who won HHS contest to prepare a PSA on H1N1. Dr. Clarke wrote a rap music PSA. Links to Youtube video of him performing the short video included.

Among issues mentioned in article, complexity of medical knowledge and explosion of # of journal articles.

Another review of Health 2.0 conference with good overview of startups (and some older companies) that presented.

Excellent review of last week’s Health 2.0 conference. John Moore from Chilmark Research understands the Health IT issues as well as anyone and articulates problems of interoperability better than anyone. Only comment from Health CONTENT Advisors: content producers/owners are left out of the discussion. IT companies don’t own the data, in fact at the current time they don’t bundle in much data with their services. But, we see lots of activity in deals between healthcare publishers and health IT vendors occurring and think that health content will receive more attention from the folks who are focused on IT aspect in the near future. Note, John’s comment abt Quicken Health & fact that one can hover over a test and see info about it is a great example of how content adds “meaning” to the use of IT tools.

Kevin Kruse of Kru Research details his reasons for launching e-Patient Connections 2009. I am speaking at the conference on the market for health content for e-patients. Important point: e-Patients both produce and consume health info.

Balanced review of the recent Health 2.0 conference in SF.

Safeway, which has stood out for its programs to encourage healthy behavior (mainly weight loss) of its employees, supports amendment that will allow larger incentives to employees who achieve health goals –as discounts to their health insurance premiums.

Atlantic writer describes Adam Bosworth’s new company, Keas. Keas helps individuals make healthy choices and uses an individual’s personal health data to customize alerts and plans for health. Writer is dubious that consumers will flock to this type of “big brother” service that tells them how to eat, exercise, etc. But, I think she misses the point. Individuals will be pressured to use services like this by the companies that pay for their health insurance and healthcare. Rewards, incentives, nudges–however you want to characterize them–will be need in the form of cash or other incentives to encourage individuals to participate. Eventually, concern for one’s health may be sufficient to encourage usage, but not yet…

List by topic of recommended external resources by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Review of the “tools” panel at Health 2.0, which highlighted integration of FirstDataBank’s drug codes for use by new consumer-focused health resources. Good move by Hearst’s FirstDataBank.

Verizon teams with Xora to provide app to track activity of home health workers and provide navigational tools.

Very good post on the benefits of having audience members using Twitter during a conference presentation. Worthwhile reading for conference producers and presenters.

Article reports on possibility that UK could overhaul CME and require docs to pay 1/2 of CME costs.

Ed Silverman, who used to write the Pharmalot blog, which was discontinued when the newspaper that hosted it gave him a buyout offer and he went to Elsevier to edit the Pink Sheet, will restart blogging.

Notes from Data Drives Decisions panel at Health2.0.

Everyday Health partners with DSHI Systems to offer video symptom checker tool for consumers.

Josh Seidman emphasizes the importance of sufficient customer research prior to developing health IT tools. Josh asked panelists from start-ups that have created health info tools for patients how they did their research and the lack of responses is telling. In-depth research of usage behavior and user-needs seems to be lacking in health IT for professionals as well as patients.

Story on Adam Bosworth’s new company, Keas. May have already bookmarked this story.

Royalty-based venture financing–where investors receive a % of monthly revenue– is gaining attention as new financing model.

IOM held 2-day workshop on Evidence-Driven Practice. More info here.

HealthCentral’s CEO, Chris Schroeder, will speak at Health 2.0 on 10/6 & will highlight growth in number of bloggers on their network, primarily from their acq. of Wellsphere.com.

Announcement of new partnerships with Harvard Pilgrim & the postal service union’s health plan. Also lists some recent features, including ability to graph test results over time.

OptumHealth and American Well are partnering to provide online medical services to Optum’s insured population.

CVS’s Medicare Drug plan(SilverScript and Accendo) will qualify to cover fewer subsidized members in 2010. They forecast losing about 1/3 of their subsidized customers in 2010.

XML version of Fed Reg now available. Big news for value-added publishers of gov’t data. I once produced a CD-ROM version of Fed Register: formatting to make a useful reference tool was not easy at that time.

Author published by S&S describes online storage companies RapidShare, Megaupload, and Hotfile and how they play a role in illegal sharing of ebook files.

Schmidt says Google not a content company, but is in business to help content companies thrive. Disingenuous statement. They are a content producer and will be a content seller if/when Google Books Settlement is concluded.

Description of retail clinics, like CVS MinuteClinic.

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn writes about the newly released study from PWC titled, “Transforming healthcare through secondary use of health data”. Jane focused on barriers to data liquidity (data flows between apps/stakeholders0. I’ll write up post that focuses on near-term opportunities for data publishers to offer data collections and analytic tools to mine newly available “secondary data” that is a byproduct of digitizing health records and health events.

Review of Health IT meeting 9/30/09 at Harvard Medical School to discuss “substitutability” aka interoperability/data exchange via APIs.