HealthContentAdvisors

GE’s press release for HIMSS. Includes debut of clinical knowledge platform that helps providers with quality improvement initiatives, expanded HIE services, a clinical portal and a patient health management system.

BU School of Medicine creates RED (Re-Engineered Discharge), a checklist that helps reduce readmissions. Other examples of application of health IT in this article.

Earnings in health and pharma division down sharply–from 29M Euros in 2008 to a loss of 79M Euros in 2009. WK says pharma communications, advertising and book sales biggest factors. McKinstry says they are changing portfolio of WKHealth to focus on “clinical decision support areas”.

MIT Technology Review feature series on personalized medicine. Haven’t taken good look at the articles yet, but will return to explore.

Sponsorship and payments from device and pharma companies to fund research and for board representation introduce conflicts of interest for academic health centers. No news there, but some good insight into recent developments in this article.

John Moore at Chilmark provides insightful analysis of today’s announced alliance between Microsoft Amalga and Eclipsys.

Google and Microsoft Health execs address benefits of health IT on healthcare in short article published in The Hill. Two key points: 1) focus on the patient and 2) focus on the performance improvement (”improved outcomes we want to achieve”) with health IT, not just IT for IT’s sake.

Primarily via financing initiatives from Treasury, HHS, and Dept. of Agriculture will fund programs that improve the availability of fresh foods and more healthy alternative foods in communities that currently lack access to large grocery stores. These initiatives are closely tied to first lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative that aims to decrease childhood obesity.

CalTech is partnering with DeepDyve to provide discounted access to DeepDyve’s article rental service to alumni. DeepDyve’s Gold plan, which allows rental access to an unlimited number of articles included in DeepDyve’s collection of scholarly journals and other literature that sits behind paywalls. I continue to be impressed with DeepDyve’s initiatives to increase access to scholarly research that has been walled off to non-academics or those who don’t have a corporate subscription to commercial collections.

Transcript of Q4 2009 earnings call with Kerry Hicks and CFO Allen Dodge. Few tidbits: efforts to build risk management business line (Health Credit Solutions) have failed and Health Grades is winding down that business and focusing instead on ratings products. Advertising sales have grown nicely, esp. from AdSense and other networks. However, I still question how well the WrongDiagnosis.com product fits with HealthGrades.

Some good points about quality of patient-reported data and implications for using data from patient community sites in research. I like the points about how some users enter dummy data just to test out a site and the importance of recognizing what data are missing. Both issues related to good data management.

Summary of project funded by RWJF and carried out by IHI to study performance improvement initiatives in hospitals in the period 2001-2008. Link to report included.

E-patients consult Web to find ratings on doctors and providers, but fewer post ratings themselves. Link to full report from Pew.

John Mack on the role Pharma can plan in providing information directly to consumers via social media.

Pathway Genomics, which provides genetic tests to consumers, licenses Staywell’s Harvard Health Content so that customers can access additional information about the conditions reported in the test results.

Story of how Louisiana has seen improvements in rural health care through implementation of health info exchange.

Recent survey commissioned by Cleveland Clinic, GE Healthcare & Ochsner Health System indicates that 50% of Americans believe other people’s health “was going in the wrong direction” but only 17% said their own health was “going in the wrong direction”. 2000 people surveyed. Results are in line with my observations. Many people are in denial that their habits are unhealthy. Even when they get sick, they don’t believe their own health management was a factor.

TOC and links to full report from CDC on trends in health statistics.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius releases report that includes info on requested premium increases by health insurers across the country. Link to full report included.

Shared Health Clinical Xchange, the largest HIE in Tennessee, has partnered with Elsevier’s MEDai to provide clinically-relevant HIE.

Veteran’s Admin to monitor how doctors respond to e-alerts sent via the agency’s computerized patient record system (CPRS). Currently, they only tract if doc acknowledges receipt of an alert, not whether the doc takes follow-up action.

NaviNet chosen as communications network in pilot intended to document benefits of provider-payer health info exchange in NJ.

GE producing TV ads for Healthymagination campaign during Olympics. Also sponsoring content online. Good to see someone beside Pharma sponsoring content!

Hope Leman’s long, but very entertaining, comments about DeepDyve’s specialty search and article rental model for scholarly journals articles. Access to much of the scholarly journal content isn’t available to non-subscribers and even discovering the existence of this body of content is difficult, which means the publishers are not reaching growth markets. DeepDyve offers a solution with minimal risk to publishers, yet the buzz for DD hasn’t grown as much as Hope (or I) would have expected. Worth reading — and it’s worth checking out DeepDyve.

KLAS on current state of HIEs–vendors “pass around packets of information without necessarily taking ownership of what is in the packet”.

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.

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%.

P&G completes its acq. of MDVIP, a concierge medical practice based in Boca Raton, FL.

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….

Why communicating absolute vs. relative probabilities is important in healthcare–and in fin’l planning.

Thomas Goetz on nomograms, or clinical decision tools, that help calculate risk of specific diseases on a personalized basis.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Anthony Guerra provides commentary on inadequacies of MU guidelines and reimbursement requirements.

Good idea, but it looks as though Nielsen chooses healthy foods based on manufacturer claims.

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.

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!

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.

The main article (see previous entry) about risk calculators to help surgeions communicate risks of surgery to patients.

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.

Great display of information on # tweets by disease type/condition.

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.

Good series on how the Google algorithm has evolved and how human reviewers have been added to the formula.

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Assos. and DOAJ/Lund University LIbraries will hole 1st conf. on Open Access in Sweden Sept. 14-16.

Good overview of Data.gov by Info Today.

The participatory medicine/epatient pioneers have formed a society, the Society of Participatory Medicine, and will publish a journal called Jounral of Participatory Medicine. Dr. Alan Green, MD is the first president. Journal will be open access, of course!

This story supports theme of the June 4 blog on Health Data Analytics and the bounty of new data streams that will be available from digitized records of all sorts. Cerner’s data warehouse includes 1.2 billion lab results, as well as medication orders and other data.

Commonwealth Fund study on Comparative Effectiveness Research from 4 other countries. In my reading pile.

Dr. Val discusses the “workflow interruption” aspect of most EHR systems. The “workflow interruption” is my term. She describes more elegantly, but I am putting it in context of good marketing practices in IT and publishing, where product developers spend time shadowing prospective customers and get a deep understanding of their workflow in order to design information tools that increase efficiency and try to improve outcomes, not just add a layer of technology in order to record data.

Good post that includes links to top ideas for Pharma in social media, as well as John Mack’s thoughts on the need for Pharma companies to create “corporate” blogs or websites that serve as central resources on diseases, conditions, or other topics that are more broad than a marketing site for a drug. Points to importance of providing links and information from other sources. This is a theme I think is important and publishers should take note. Pharma websites are now prospective buyers of authoritative content for their websites.

Elsevier to publish guidelines for sponsored reprints.

Stunning numbers from new study that says 62% of all bankruptices filed in 2007 were in part due to medical expenses–and 78% of those individuals had health insurance.

Anthem Blue Cross, the BC provider in California, announces wide availability of its cost comparison data to members in CA. The transparency tool provides access to costs associatied with all aspects of a medical procedure, from lat tests to recovery room charges & physician costs for specific facilites. Eventually, BC/BS plans to make similar info available countrywide. A big move in the right direction to support consumer driven health plans with high deductibles & copays.

Modern Healthcare reports that GetWellNetwork, which provides bedside computer apps for “patient engagement” is “promoting the use of its own and similar products by creating and helping fund a not-for-profit institute devoted to researching patient-engagement effectiveness”. GetWellNetwork calls their applications “interactive patient care”. My comment: it gets confusing when there are so many fragmented terms for improving patient care & safety, some that involve patient participation, some that don’t. Rationalizing the health IT market, esp for vendors to hospitals, and incorporating patient education providers would add efficiency and perhaps even make sense to the patients. Relationship of GetWell and the insitutute also raises doubts on transparency. Parallels relationship between Healthwise & Center for Ix Therapy, although at least both are non-profits in this case.

Medsphere, a San Diego company, has raised $1.0M of a $15M funding round. Medsphere is commercializing an open source version of the EHR system developed for Veterans Affairs. Backers include Thomas Weisel, Azure Capital Partners, & Epic Ventures.

Posts by pharma sales reps on site: CafePharma allowed in lawsuit that claims Schering hid study results on Vytorin.

Previously announced collaboration between Nature Publishing and InnoCentive launches. Innocentives provides platform for problem “Seekers” to solicit solutions from problem “Solvers”–all with a life sciences focus.

MedAdvant, a revenue cycle management (RCM) services provider that was acquired by Marlin Equity Partners in January, rebrands itself Capario.

Health IT implementation services company, Vitalize (Reading, MA) acquires r3 Health Partners (Santa Ana, CA), a competitor.

Through partnerships with HealthGrades and Joint Commission, Med-Avantage (which creates provider directories for health plans) enhances its directories with hospital quality measures.

Hospital Value Index (www.hospitalvalue.com), a comprehensive index of hospital quality, affordability, efficiency, and patient satisfaction, releases latest study results. Produced by Data Advantage, a private healthcare info company based in Nashville, Hospital Value Index integrates measures on over 3000 hospitals, using multiple data sources from CMS (e.g., Medicare spending, HCAHPS scores) and some additional sources.

Xconomy interviews David Cerino, general manager of health care solutions at Microsoft. Cerino describes evolution of Microsoft’s HealthVault, its health care platform.

Margaret Hamburg, former health commissioner in NYC, is leading candidate for FDA commissioner.

NIH announces the availability of $1.5B in research grants from ARRA to be distributed for: medical research (at least $200M); construction grants for research facilities ($1B); and grants for purchasing research equipment ($300M).

Practice Fusion, which promotes its free ad-supported electronic medical records s/w has partnered with LDM Group, St. Louis, to offer its ScriptGuide that provides physicians with custom patient education info for certain chronic diseases.

Allscripts sells its medication unit to A-S Medication Solutions for $26M. Allscripts had announced that they would sell the unit last month.

CVS Caremark plans to close about 16% of its existing MinuteClinics until fall. CVS now has about 460 clinics (not including the 16% to be closed).

Minneapolis-based Muve licensed technology from Mayo Clinic and developed the Gruve. “The Gruve tracks every movement and calculates the number of calories each burns. Then after being synched up with Muve’s accompanying Web site, the device matches that information against the wearer’s weight goal.”

Interview with Jonathan Bush, CEO of Athenahealth, a web-based s/w (SaaS) company that provides billing, EMR and other services to physician practices. Based in Watertown, MA. Bush comments on $19B of stimulus money targeted to EMR expansion. Also comments that Athenahealth plans to expand its sales & marketing in 2009.

Late in posting this story that has circulated widely over the last week about Medical Justice, which is trying to encourage physicians to have patients sign waivers saying that they won’t post comments on web physician review sites like Angie’s list or others. We reported on this in earlier blogs, too.

Using technology from Baltimore-based VISICU, a telehealth company that allows hospitals to remotely monitor ICU patients, Anchorage’s Providence Alaska Medical Center launches an eICU.

U. Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health published study that offers conservative view of the short-term benefits of genetic screening tests.

Thank you to David Rothman for writing the post that I started to write a couple of days ago to point out some Web 2.0 tools being used by HHS/CDC, including widgets to help spread info on the peanut recall. CDC even has a Twitter feed for health professionals.

Not health related, but a topic I monitor: business models for online news. I’m afraid NY Times is taking the wrong approach again. The archive is so suitable for monetizing by contextual advertising: a broad collection of content with a broad audience. But, API access should incur a fee or rev share.

Article tosses around the possibility that DTC ads will be prohibited by Obama admin. More likely scenario is that there will be restrictions and that more info will need to be made available along with ads.

Rib-X Pharmaceuticals, which focuses on the discovery & development of antibiotics for antibiotic-resistant infections, receives $25M in additional funding after strong phase 2 results.

Presentations, transcripts and podcast of recent ARHQ webinar on evaluating Clinical Decision Support methods.

PharmaNet, a large provider of outsourced drug development services, is acquired by JLL Partners for $250M.

A patient education program developed at BU Medical Center in Boston called RED (for Re-Engineered Hospital Discharge Program) uses specially trained nurses to educate patients about post-hospital care plans. RED led to 30% fewer readmissions and subsequent emergency visits.

More info on ENURGI acquisition by Univita. Techcrunch provides concise descriptions of Univita and ENURGI (a service that helps patients and their advocates find caregivers). Also reports that Univita is backed by Genstar Capital, a SF-based PE company.

Research firm, User Centric, posts results of recent study of consumers’ ease of use and utility of GoogleHealth and Microsoft’s HealthVault personal health records platforms.

Healthgrades publishes list of hospitals scoring in top 15% of HCAHPS survey.

Charlie Baker on Milliman, Inc’s study of public and private payment rates. Milliman carried out the study for AHA, BS/BS, Premara Blue Cross and AHIP. Links to study included.

Overview of Massachusetts’ new hospital database site that includes info on reimbursement rates paid to hospitals by insurers, as well as quality data.

Long investigative piece in B. Globe on lack of price transparency in hospitals, with focus on varying prices paid by insurers for same procedure in different hospitals. Article elicited large # comments from readers, pointing out some shortcomings, but data that are reported clearly hit a nerve.

Press release from HealthCentral about their new ad network.

David E. Williams on pros and cons of home monitoring devices, as relates to Intel’s new initiatives in this space.

“QualityHealth.com is the leading provider of performance based targeted healthcare advertising and information on the Web.” Press release goes on to explain that QualityHealth.com ” QualityHealth.com offers consumers health savings opportunities along with insightful content such as our new ‘Expert Q&A’ section that can help people make the right choices when it comes to their health.”