Free Subscription to Health Content Weekly Perspective
Categories
- Advertising
- Clinical tools
- Clinical Trials
- CMS, HHS
- Conferences
- Consumer Health
- Databases
- DrugInfo
- EBM
- EHRs
- Elsevier
- Eprescribing
- Google Health
- Health Grades
- Health2.0
- Healthcare Publishing
- HealthCentral Network
- HealthIT
- Healthline
- HIE
- Infocommerce
- infodemiology
- Licensing
- long-term care
- medical devices
- Medical Research
- Medical Search
- Medical Tourism
- Microsoft HealthVault
- MU
- newspapers
- open data
- Payers
- PBM
- Personalized Medicine
- Pharma
- Physician directories
- Physicians
- Point-of-care Applications
- publishing
- RCM
- RevolutionHealth
- Sermo
- Social networking
- UpToDate
- WebMD
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Wolters-Kluwer
Archives
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
Blogroll
Archive for the ‘Sermo’ Category
Today’s Health Content Headlines
- Posted March 11th 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Please scroll down if the story you are looking for is not the first headline. New stories are added throughout the day and I may have provided a link to the most current story that is now lower down on the page. Follow me on Twitter @janicemccallum.
Headline Commentary Jan 23-Jan 31
- Posted February 1st 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Good article on Endeca, a widely used search engine on shopping sites. Endeca’s “guided navigation” (also referred to as “faceted search”) works very well on structured information. Could it be adapted for less-formally structured info?
McKesson & HP partner to provide EHR s/w and hardware for physician practices.
Article questions the role of employers in sponsoring wellness programs that tie participation to financial incentives such as reduced premiums.
Interesting. Wolters Kluwer has set up a system whereby doctors will receive CME credit for clinical research done via their mobile phone.
Time covers e-Patient Dave’s story and writes about e-patient movement under the moniker “patient 2.0″. Provides a somewhat jaded view of non-medical specialist patients’ ability to understand medical info and make judgements. Suggests “rapid-learning” program for e-patients.
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.
Els adds SNIP and SJR to Scopus to provide more complete citation metrics.
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.
Prof. Robert Fogel, U. Chicago, contends that healthcare costs are high because consumers demand the high-cost extras and innovation.
Good interview with David Blumenthal, Director, ONC, on meaningful use of EHRs and plans for national health data exchange.
John Halamka’s brief description of the breakout of grant funding plans by ONC.
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 piece on why healthcare sector could be big market for Apple’s forthcoming tablet. The fact that iPhones are popular among MDs is one big reason.
Good short piece on why publishers are distributing content via Kindles even though there are business considerations.
Filing to Office of Science and Technology Policy from Elsevier regarding proposed regulations to offer more open access to scholarly publishing that is funded by US tax dollars.
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.
Thomson Healthcare acquires ProfSoft-Health, a Needham, MA-based healthcare data analytics company. ““ProfSoft’s solutions will enhance the clinical performance measurement capabilities we provide to our healthcare payer customers,” said Jon Newpol, executive vice president of the Healthcare & Science business of Thomson Reuters.”
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.
David Williams interviews Bob Wachter of UCSF. Haven’t listened to it yet, but I have no doubt that it is a worthwhile use of time.
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.
Good analysis of what the implications are of NY Times stated plans to allow inbound links to have access for free, but to charge metered access to direct users after an initial allotment of free pageviews.
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.
Brigham and Women’s and Harvard Med School Professor Lawrence DeBuske decides to keep paid speaking role and gives up practicing & teaching. New limitations on accepting pay for for delivering canned presentations played role. Dr. DeBuske apparently gives several talks on behalf of multiple pharma companies each week.
Home page of Jan 2010 report from RWJF on PHRs.
John Sharp’s overview of Robt Wood Johnson Foundation’s new report 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.
Commentary on why it is a positive sign that an MD is now leading Navigenics, a personalized genomics company.
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.
Andrew Spong’s analysis of Twitter followers/followings of pharma companies.
Brief article describing MedeAnalytics revenue cycle management solution being adopted by St. Joseph’s Hospital in Maryland.
Great news for data geeks and data content enthusiasts! Following up on their promise to add transparency to the federal government, Obama admin posts new data sources from all cabinet departments. I’m going to go download the Medicare data set now.
Info on work Tim Berners-Lee is doing for UK govenment to make sources of gov’t data more available and meaningful.
“Syed Tirmizi, MD, a longtime clinician and medical informatics leader at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, joined Quantros today as Vice President of International Business Development and Government Relations. Tirmizi helped lead the VA into its position as a pioneer in the use of electronic medical records (EMR) for point of care service delivery, enabling meaningful use of data to further patient safety and quality initiatives.”
“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.
TOC and abstract of just published study on significant benefits of reducing sodium intake for improving cardiovascular disease. See my notes in item below (third item) on same subject.
Headline Commentary Nov 1 - 8
- Posted November 8th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
NYTimes on how InterMountain Healthcare is adapting EBM practices to improve outcomes.
Short article on Intermountain health and how it is adapting EBM to improve outcomes.
Initiate Systems (healthcare data mgmt) acquire Accenx, a provider of health info exchange solutions.
Express Scripts partners with Greatwater S/w to provide PBM services to patients on kiosks in doctor’s offices.
Shwen Gwee’s presentation on Social Media usage in pharma. Excellent presentation.
Michael Milken’s FasterCures foundation site.
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.
Sermo, the online community for doctors, launches new community for exchanging info on practice management for small & individual practices. Seems like a better app than their original app.
Data Advantage names to 75 hospitals in their value index.
Tim O’Reilly’s preso from PayPal Innovate 11/3/09. Good focus on “sensor data”, that is data are generated from wireless devices. Esp. important in healthcare.
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.
DeepDyve’s CEO, Bill Park, provides detailed analysis of the market opportunity for their new rental model of articles. Nice to see him sharing so much detail.
HealthCentral partners with 5min, an aggregator of health & wellness videos.
Quintiles continues to build alliances with big pharma for CRO.
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).
Qforma, a predictive analytics company that has an app that rates doctors based on their published writings along with the usual critieria, hires former WK Health (NDC) exec.
For medical coding geeks only; an MD applies ICD-9 codes to daily living….
Librarians are not pleased with redesigned PubMed, which may be fine for simple text searches, but not for complex targeted searches. My reaction: PubMed’s redesign opens the door wider for commercial publishers who can present better alternatives. Problem: they will pay for access.Need to find out what s/w PubMed is using.
Dr. Jerome Groopman (author of How Doctor’s Think) writes on limitations of current diagnostic methods and EBM.
Good commentary on recent TEDMED event. Key issue in “mainframe” mentality of existing medical system. Need to move to “health” system.
eHealth will focus on improving methods for sharing health info between patients and clinicians. Includes security features (patient ID, data privacy).
JNJ has launched project to market corporate wellness admin to other companies.
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
For medical professionals and patients.
Summary of SixUntilMe’s preso at epatient connections.
Detailed explanation of the process used by many pharma companies to find academics to serve as lead author for scholarly journal articles that are “ghostwritten” by professional writers hired by pharma.
MaryDee Ojala on DeepDyve’s new rental model for scholarly articles.
Philips introduces the Directlife device that calculates how many calories burned.
Report on some small steps taken by select providers to post prices of their services.
Susannah Fox’s preso from epatcon
Headline Commentary Sept 8-Sept 13
- Posted September 13th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Richard Boulderstone chairs global committee (with members from 50 countries) to provide access to scientific information through WorldWideScience.org.
Demand for patient advocates is on the rise. Clear indication that our healthcare system is not consumer-focused, since it takes a specialist to sort through the choices.
RWJF rebuts comments about high health care costs being a direct function of poverty. Issue is far more complex and poverty only explains a small portion.
JBat coos over DigitalGlobe, which takes satellite pictures of the entire earth and sells commercially (and esp. to govt.).
Alphabet soup of health IT standards described in this article. Although technical, it includes some very important points about data standards that allow interoperability.
Harvard drops its earlier policy to require med school students to filter media communications through Harvard’s communications office. Students are working with admin. to establish guidelines to protect patient confidentiality.
New study indicates ghostwriting prevalent even in top journals. Systems for requiring transparency in reporting relationships between industry and the research it funds are required if trust in scholarly medical publishing is to remain. Industry funding is needed, but researchers and other readers need to know who funded the research.
Since parting ways with Sermo earlier this year, AMA is forging ahead on its own in social media.
Dr. Kent Bottles, who heads the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (CSI), writes on how fear motivates and why fear tactics have become so prevalent in our current political environment. All in relation to health care reform.
Study compares official gov’t data on hospital quality against US News & World Report hospital rankings and finds that hospitals w/ best outcomes don’t correspond to US New’s rankings.
EBSCO opens up a sliver of its health info to the world for H1N1 info.
Joint Commission (JCAHO) is changing procedures for surveying hospitals that comprise a hospital system. In short, hospitals systems will be surveyed concurrently.
Harold Miller outlines critical payment reforms needed to put US healthcare system on track.
Logical Images renames its consumer website for skin health and wellness to Skinsight.com (fmly visualdxhealth.com)
More evidence of trend toward increased mergers among hospitals and physician groups.
Health Matrix, a health info company that provides drug info, licenses the GetFugu mobile platform to enhance access to its health info for professionals and consumers.
Retail clinics like CVS MinuteClinics expand their services to include treating chronic diseases such as asthma. Driver of expansion=need for more consistent revenue.
Burst Media, an ad network located in Burlington, MA, announces new Health & Wellness vertical that includes Healthguru.com. Burst previously had Wellness vertical; not sure if this replaces it.
Indepth article on “infodemiology”, a term to describe analyzing online data to extract intelligence on public health trends. I like the term & used it at last year’s Health Content event.
Details on Brill’s Journalism Online’s business model for paid access to online news.
Great list of data content built on open government data. I’ll check out Govpulse, which article says turns Federal Register into something more useful (sorted and searchable by dept and geography).
Interesting repositioning of the Economist & new ad campaign in UK.
Nice opinion piece that focuses on issue of improved evidence base for medical care. To those that oppose evidence-based medicine, my comment is: “do you prefer the opposite?” As this article points out, patients don’t know that half of treatment is not based on objective scientific research.
Nice thorough review of reference content currently available via Google Health. Google’s strategy toward content in GHealth still remains murky.
New site from FDA/USDA provides a central place to find info on food safety, recalls, etc.
Dr. Susan Love is building “an army of women” one million strong to serve as universe to be tapped for medical research/clinical trials. To date, site has 300,000. Dr. Love’s model also represents the new model for publishing: bringing parties together to faciliate transactions as well as exchange information.
List of lists for twitter feeds that cover women’s health. 10 lists in total. mostly good.
Ohio State School of Medicine has developed iPod Touch & iPhone apps for medical students.
This brings back old memories. Superior Capital, a MI PE company, buys National Archive Publishing, which was spun off from UMI/ProQuest (x years ago). National Archive includes XanEdu, the coursepack group, and microfilm, the original UMI product line.
Excellent brief article with link to slide presentation on ebooks. Note the comment about mobile being the fastest growing platform for non-US sales. Good comments on pricing and revenue models, too.
pMDsoft, “an elegant EMR front-end” announces interfaces with additional EMR, EHR and other health IT systems.
Psychiatrist Daniel Carlat skewers Schering-Plough for its marketing practices for its new Saphris antipsychotic drug. Dr. Carlat lists the compensation offered to him for promoting Saphris.
Information Week brief article on premilinary certification for health IT by CCHIT, in advance of full requirements for meaningful use (MU) from ONC by year-end.
Some good examples of value pricing (or at least new types of pricing) for healthcare.
Written by a designer, but article homes in on the business models for ebooks.
HITECH Act waters down the requirements for CPOE in its meaningful use (MU) definition.
CMS’ guidance pertains to states and HIEs.
Describes Epothecary system that uses bar codes & cell phones to authenticate Rx medications. Proposed usage in developing countries.
FDA launches real-time reporting of food safety issues by manufacturers & other industry players.
Insufficient labeling and regulation of vitamins and supplements contribute to serious side-effects of OTC supplements. Article incluees excellent list of resources for researching supplements.
Pharmavite, mfr of Nature Made vitamins & supplements, to offer vitaminID program to consumers. VitaminID provides individualized vitamin/supplement programs for consumers via a website enabled for ecommerce (of course). Newsletters & online chat with a dietician are included.
Three HIEs in Ohio and Indiana collaborate to increase interconnectivity.
Guardian lists top 100 tech media companies in UK.
Growing brouhaha in medical journal policies with JAMA arguing that writers have no right to comment on articles in any forum except through JAMA letters to the editor. Demonstrates how isolated medical journal publishers are from realities of social media and the influence of online communication.
A nice post that provides list of online anatomy resources. Good to find another medical librarian on Twitter.
Requirement that clinical trials be registered upon inception to ensure that all results are reported (not just positive results) has been largely ingnored according to this article.
David Rothman reviews new Gilbane Group report on ebooks.
Or, why publishers (content companies) should subsidize the costs of the reader! Razor/razor blades analogy anyone? Problem is that publishers are still resistant to e-books.
AHRQ is in process of releasing version 1.0 (from beta) of Common Formats for submitting patient safety information.
Google does analytics. Need to check it out in more detail, but this furthers Google’s expansion into publishing.
LEO Pharma, a privately-held pharma company specializing in dermatology & critical care will acquire Peplin, a public Australian company fo US$287.5 million in cash.
John Halamka’s recommended cool community hospital info sites: good examples of aggregating and displaying information.
Response to Ignagni’s editorial in NEJM, which expresses why health insurers are against a public plan.
Article dissects US News & World Report’s hospital rankings to performance reported in govt statistics and finds that US News’ rankings are based on handling of complex or unusual care. Comment: current state of ratings and rankings for hospitals and doctors are not very helpful in guiding consumer decisions in choosing providers.
Headline Commentary July 7-13
- Posted July 13th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Modern Healthcare’s analysis of recent IOM and Federal Coordinating Council reports on comparative effectiveness research (CER). Key finding: data infrastructure is need and investment in creasting databases is critical (and probably > total funds allocated for CER –$400 M–in ARRA).
Perhaps the UK will promote & accelerate adoption of Google & MSFT’s PHR platforms before they gain traction in US.
Pretty good list of useful purposes of Twitter–mostly business related.
Interesting new aggregator of top journal content (based on impact factor & google scholar rankings) in clear, attractive interface. Access to premium fulltext journals is limited to existing subscribers via Athens. [edited 7/15] Note, Clinical Reader has been called out by medical librarians because of sloppy copyright practices and use of false implied endorsements by NLM & others. To gain credibility as source of authoritative content, CR team needs to tread carefully!]
Decent article in Telegraph about Reed Elsevier’s need to focus on IT infrastructure to enhance value of content assets. Title a bit misleading, but it does mention specific title/markets where Reed might reconsider selling RBI assets: Construction, chemical, energy, XpertHR & Totaljobs.com.
I wouldn’t call it WebMD, but it includes health and wellness information and lots of information on the institution.
PhRMA site offers limited access to Adis’s R&D Insight drug pipeline db for no charge. Limited info on each drug is output, but list of drugs by phase is available. US only.
Beta version released; official release sched. for Q4 2009. Breakthrough sounds like an exaggeration, but it is a step forward for a traditional directory publisher who sells to libraries.
Tim Berners-Lee talks about data that do stuff (an ICG mantra): “And now there are lots of different ways that people need to be able to look at data. You need to be able to browse through it piece by piece, exploring the world of data. You need to be able to look for patterns of particular things that have happened. Because this is data, we need to be able to use all of the power that traditionally we’ve used for data. When I’ve pulled in my chosen data set, using a query, I want to be able to do [things like] maps, graphs, analysis, and statistical stuff.
SpringerImages, which includes over 1.5 million scientific images, tables, charts & graphs, to be officially launches at ALA in Chicago this week. Was originally planned for Q1 release.
Can’t resist tagging this article, since it intersects the key topics I follow & my interests (tennis). Serena Williams launches skincare line developed by chairman for American Academy of Dermatology Chair, Dr. Bryan Adams. Skincare line is targeted for those with “demanding and active lifestyles” like Serena.
Serials Solutions, a ProQuest company, expands the content indexed by its Summon Service. Summon aims to offer “Google-like” search interface across library’s holdings. For now, content from ProQuest, Gale, Springer, IEEE, Taylor& Francis and some other scholarly publishers and university presses participate. Summon is in beta at Dartmouth, Claremont Colleges, and 5 other universities in US, Canada, UK, and Australia.
Some good analysis of Amazon’s Kindle pricing strategy and why share to publishers may shrink. Quotes couple of analysts.
Kent Anderson of NEJM writes about Amazon’s growing role in book publishing, not just redistribution of books. How should publishers react? Comments as of 7/9 suggest scholarly publishers stick to their knitting of creating content and build their own open repositories– and be more aggressive with digital distributors. Granted, scholarly publishers should take more control of digital distribution, but in order to do that, they have to invest in digital infrastructure & know-how.
Monster cuts 160 jobs; will add 80 in new technology innovation center. New focus on long-term strategic planning and customer engagement. Evidence of need to add layers of analytic and other value to core content.
Good dialogue about social media’s relevance to clinical practice.
Healthcare reform may include tax credits for employer-sponsored wellness programs.
Good write-up of interview with Berners-Lee by ReadWriteWeb’s founder, Richard MacManus. W3C’s focus on data content is exciting development for us at InfoCommerce Group, where the role data in publishing businesses has been a central focus on ours from day 1. s
Survey conducted by Rodale on behalf of FDA DTC division provides data that show that almost 50% of consumers rate online health videos information websites as top resource when searching for medical conditions and prescription drug info online. Next in line were pharma websites, video sharing sites, and social networking sites.
Good article on the under-tapped value of customer lists held by publishers. As author points out, many print publishers seem to miss the connection between their ability to build communities of interest for publications and adapting that ability to web-based communities. Instead, too many publishers are letting upstarts replace them online.
Candover & Cinven (current PE owners) ask bidders to resubmit bids for up to 49% of Springer. Initial bids from TPG, EQT and consortium of Carlyle & Providence did not meet current owners’ expectation. Owners asked for 500M Euros for up to 49% of Springer; 2 sources said 350-380 Euros was a more reasonable valuation.
The concepts of EBM and Comparative Effectiveness Research are reaching consumer-focused publications. IMO, considerable education via general press and other venues will be necessary to help consumers/patients understand EBM and CER.
Interesting partnership between Mayo Clinic and Winn-Dixie grocery chain, whereby Mayo provides info related to nutrition and conditions including cold & flu, heart disease, digestion, asthma and allergy (most of which have OTC products sold in grocery stores to help manage these conditions).
SDI, which acquired Verispan last year, releases results of most respected pharma companies by pediatricians.
CDC launched a web-based public health tracking interface that includes state-by-state data through 2006 on air & water quality, lead paint, and other public health measures. My first attempt to extract data for air quality in MA led to an error message. It’s likely that no data were available for the query I entered through the menu-based system, but a better-designed faceted search would have alerted me to this fact. In sum, it’s great that CDC is providing more data in easy-to-use formats, but there’s lots of room for improvement by commercial information services that can add value by aggregating data and improving the search experience.
Thomson Reuters, already one of the biggest webcast providers, acquires Toronto-based webcasting s/w firm Streamlogics.
Emdeon, a RCM vendor, buys eRX Network, a vendor of epharmacy solutions. eRx has established base in government, providing claims-processing services for CMS.
A medical librarian’s comparison of DynaMed and UptoDate
Headline Commentary June 29- July 6
- Posted July 6th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Review of week’s top stories, including reactions to Chris Anderson’s new book, Free, video interview with Michael Hansen, new CEO of Elsevier Health Sciences, several articles about disruption in scholarly publishing, and other notable developments in health content publishing and health IT.
More on the “Free” as business model debate. See my comments on the post.
Walgreens may open several thousand work-site health clinics in coming years.
Using tag cloud to help understand key terms and contents of a book, Google Books now makes it easy to glean substance of books in seconds. Pretty cool.
List of open source resources that have gained traction in medicine in multiple categories, from EHRs to collaboration to publishing.
Connectyx’ MedFlash portable PHR enters sales agreement with Healthy Directions, a vendor of “science-based vitamin & nutritional supplement formulas” and other wellness products. By end of August 2009, Health Directions will offer the flash-drive MedFlash EPHR through its distibution channels. Comment: press release alludes to fact that the Healthy Directions’ audience, on average, is more interested in health & health-related products, than the general population and therefore is more likely to be interested in tracking their health-related behavior. Given the behavior of Healthy Directions’ audience, it makes sense for vendors of PHR technology to focus sales efforts on this group.
Apparently, a hospital is the worst place to be if one suffers cardiac arrest!
Massachusetts and Vermont ban on pharma and medical device companies’ giving gifts to doctors (anything from coffee mugs to trips) goes into effect today.
Wired lists new new entrants in search, including some vertical search engine–a couple focused on recipes!
Concerro, a vendor of SaaS workforce management s/w to hospitals acquires CommandAware, which provides hospitals a turn-key solution for emergency response.
Andrew Spong responds to Wiley-Blackwell’s recent press release that reports some results from recent survey of society publishers.
Very good article (although long) that lays out reasons why incumbents have difficulty adopting new technologies. I’d add that many large incumbent scientifc publishers have to innovate through acquistions because of the problems described in Nielsen’s article and because of constraints put on them by the financial markets (if they are public). Accounting for acquisitions allows them more freedom to “buy” vs. “make”. I totally agree about the need for scientific publishers (in fact, all publishers) to become proficient in IT. Technology is a key input to all content products & services; without constant innovation, publishers will get disrupted by new entrants. This relates to last week’s article, “Health Content is Rapidly Losing Its Value”.
Wolters Kluwer’s LWW partners with HealthStream, a leading e-learning and performance improvement provider to hospitals, to integrate Lippincott’s Nursing Procedures and Skills, into HealthStream’s Learning Center (HLC).
Using IVR technology, Doctors on Demand allows patients to call in and leave info, then get contacted by MD. Physical visits are required at least 1/year.
One doctor’s view of why tablet PCs work well in his environment.
UBM’s CMPMedica discontinues 2 print pubs and cuts unspecified # positions; some digital presence of pubs: Infections in Medicine and AIDS Reader will continue.
US Supreme Court declined to hear appeal from IMS and Verispan/SDI Health to overturn data privacy law in NH that prevents them from selling doctors’ prescribing behavior to drug marketers who use info to sell directly to doctors. VT & Maine have since enacted similar laws.
WK Health announces new research reports that incorporate data and analysis gleaned from their Adis R&D Insight, WK Healthcare Analytics (NDA), and other resources to suppy focused analysis on specific markets. inThought is targeted to financial analysts, health care suppliers and drug manufacturers. Seems like a logical extension to their data services.
Discussion about Chris Anderson’s new book, Free, and Gladwell’s critique of it in NewYorker. See my comments in the comment section.
Interview with new CEO of Elsevier Health Sciences, Michael Hansen. Describes EHS businesses and where they are focusing for growth (clinical decision support systems; outcomes analysis)
Outstanding presentation targeted to brand marketers/advertisers that presents variation on my thesis on convergence of publishing and advertising from the advertising agency perspective. As I wrote in 2003, “advertisers need to create more informational Web ads that will meet the standard of ‘related content’ rather than ‘vendor ad’”. In same paper, I wrote about how ad content is moving toward becoming ‘meaningful content’ and in some cases ‘entertaining’ content. See slides 5-60 in particular. Relevant to both publishers and marketers/advertisers.
Headlines for Dec 27-Jan 4
- Posted January 6th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
“Drugstore.com Inc. is working with Medco Health Solutions Inc., a pharmacy benefits manager, to launch a Medco-branded online store by mid-year. Drugstore.com will provide Medco with technical development and operations services, consumer health products and over-the-counter medicines, fulfillment, and customer care for non-prescription drug products.”
NY subsidizing implementation of Mass-based eClinicalWorks for small practices.
Review of financial condition of hospitals, many that have expanded or planned expansion financed with debt.
Focuses mostly on electronic health records, but ties in how data from EMRs and PHRs can be used in improving the practice of evidence-based medicine.
Overview of personalized medicine with viewpoints from former pres. of Affymetrix who is now partner at Mohr Davidow, and Elissa Levin of Navigenics.
Sermo joins the fray — along with Google — in using online tools to track spread of flu. Sermo has advantage of compiling clinical observations rather than inferring data from search queries as does Google.
From Toronto Public Library Consumer Health Information Service, a list of top 10 health-related websites from 1999 and update on where they stand today, as well as some notable new sources.
Google’s Research Datasets project is shutdown. Announced about a year ago, Research Datasets was seeking to aggregate large datasets that backed research projects. One 30 datasets were uploaded, but some were huge (Hubble project with 120TBs). Media focus has pointed to storage costs as problem, but the need to reduce # of early-stage projects at Google also contributed to the decision. Google says it will focus on G Scholar instead.
Headlines for Dec 15-26
- Posted December 26th 2008
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Sermo joins the fray — along with Google — in using online tools to track spread of flu. Sermo has advantage of compiling clinical observations rather than inferring data from search queries as does Google.
From Toronto Public Library Consumer Health Information Service, a list of top 10 health-related websites from 1999 and update on where they stand today, as well as some notable new sources.
Google’s Research Datasets project is shutdown. Announced about a year ago, Research Datasets was seeking to aggregate large datasets that backed research projects. One 30 datasets were uploaded, but some were huge (Hubble project with 120TBs). Media focus has pointed to storage costs as problem, but the need to reduce # of early-stage projects at Google also contributed to the decision. Google says it will focus on G Scholar instead.
Informa plans to cut its debt, which will likely require selling off some assets. In Healthcare (with heavy emphasis on Pharma BI), Informa owns Taylor & Francis publishing,PJB (Pharmaprojects, Scrip, and other pharma bi databases, publications and events),Citeline TrialTrove, and recently acquired Datamonitor (see: www.informa.com/divisions/academic_and_amp_scientific/informa_healthcare for full list. In other divisions, Informa is known as the owner of Lloyd’s list, finance and insurance publications, and global events producer IIR.
More on the investigation into undisclosed influence from Wyeth (purportedly hiring medical communications company to ghostwrite and article and finding an academic to put his name on it) in Elsevier’s American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Elsevier has launched its own investigation.
David Harlow takes the new Massachusetts’ online hospital database MyHealthCareOptions, for a spin. Reveals that cost data are only given in broad ranges and ratings in the form of star, which don’t provide sufficient data to make informed decisions.
PaidContent on 8-K filing by WebMD that reports a 4-5% workforce reduction at WebMD, accompanied by $2.5M restructuring charge.
Thomson Reuters to issue up to $3B in debt to use for general corporate purposes. Thomson Healthcare is a division of Thomson Reuters.
Health insurers and other payers are organizing community meetings to provide input into Obama administration’s health policy.
Wolters Kluwer Health’s ProVation medical coding product “has been designated Number One in the Clinical Procedure Documentation category of the 2008 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Professional Services report”.
FDA study finds that information provided with new prescriptions fails to provide the level of usefulness called for by FDA: “The current voluntary system has failed to provide consumers with the quality information they need in order to use medicines effectively and safely,” said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Because the congressional goals have not been met, the FDA intends to seek public comment on initiatives that can be used to meet the goals.” “We need to work with pharmacy operators, drug manufacturers, health care professionals, and consumers to come up with a sensible, comprehensive and more effective solution,” said Woodcock. Link to full study included.
CMPMedica to provide drug info content to iSOFT, one of the world’s largest providers of healthcare IT solutions. (iSOFT press release was distributed on 11/25/08)
“Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), announces the launch of myLWW, a new, personalized and intuitive interface that integrates medical journal content and rich media to enable collaboration, sharing, and innovation among medical professionals. LWW is part of Wolters Kluwer Health.” Uses MS Sharepoint to host over 280 journals and allows collaboration.
“The Center for Improving Medication Management ( The Center ) today launched http://www.LearnAboutRxSafety.org, a new Web site where consumers can learn how to use medications safely. Developed in conjunction with the National Council on Patient Information and Education ( NCPIE ), the Web site is primarily intended as a resource for families and all individuals seeking information on medication safety. The Center will collaborate with consumer organizations, provider and payer organizations and other groups interested in promoting medication safety and adherence for consumers.”
KLAS’ annual Best in Klas winners announced and listed in this article.
Xconomy reports on how foundations are more carefully considering the investments they make in pharma and biotech companies due to the economy. Cites a CenterWatch study.
MediKeeper provides web-based PHR technology for providers and employers and is now partnered with Dossia.
2009 edition of Scrip 100 - Informa Healthcare’s annual analysis of pharma industry is now available online: http://www.scripnews.com/supplements/download_today/Scrip-100
Headlines for October 24-26
- Posted October 26th 2008
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Good run-down of presentations of consumer health tools at Health 2.0 conference.
High-level perspective of consumer attitudes toward health system and health IT responses to improving the system (drawing on Health 2.0 conference). Bottom line: we have a long way to go to change a complex system via tech improvements.
Good post by Bill Crounse, MD, Sr. Dir, Worldwide Health, MSFT about translating Health IT developments into useful tools that add value to the patient’s healthcare experience. Good contrast between Health2.0 and Health Content08, where we stress the importance of intermediaries (whether they be publishers, navigation tools/advocates, or producers of decision tools) to guide consumers and medical professionals in finding and using new tools that are ready for the market.
Comprehensive slide show on future of health care.
“(Reuters Health) - If you’re searching the Internet for surgery information, you may want to stick with sites run by professional medical groups and other sources free of commercial sponsors, a new study suggests. In a study that examined the quality of various surgery-related websites, researchers found that unsponsored sites generally gave more reliable information than sponsored sites did. When it came to the specific sources, sites run by professional medical groups got the highest marks, followed by government-run sites. The findings, published in the Journal of the American College of Surgery, underscore the need for consumers to consider the source when looking for online medical information.”
“October 23, 2008 — Sermo, Inc. (http://www.sermo.com), the world’s largest physician-only online community, today announced the creation of The Healthcare Exchange™, a new forum that for the first time provides healthcare investors with instant access to exclusive medical information directly from 90,000 practicing physicians.” Exclusively via Bloomberg.
Librarian Hope Leman gives positive review of Infovell, a new search service that “culls content from thousands of journals, millions of documents and billions of untapped pages of Life Sciences, Medicines, Patents, Industry news, and other reference content from trusted and expert sources.” Note, Infovell is one of 12 companies to present at Health Content08’s Innovators Showcase Nov. 12. (www.healthcontent08.com)
Good round-up of recent announcements by consumer-focused health content companies (mostly announced at the Health 2.0 conf in SF). Implications will be explored in more depth at Health Content08.
“Yahoo! Health will incorporate HealthGrades data into a new search-driven directory that will leverage numerous Yahoo! technologies and applications. The new physician directory will offer detailed physician and care provider pages, insurance coverage information, ratings and reviews from other users, comparable physician charts and health-focused Yahoo! Answer and Yahoo! Group modules.”
The Hartford, Conn.-based insurer will pay for the technology from Zix Corp., Dallas. It includes an electronic prescribing device and connectivity for transmitting the prescriptions. The services also include access to health plan formulary and drug interaction information. The three-year contract follows pilot programs Aetna has done with Zix in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York. Aetna roughly estimates 40,000 of its covered members could be served under its new program in northern New Jersey.
Web 2.0 Eclipsed by Web $1.00?
- Posted September 17th 2008
- Comment (1)
- by Janice
Mitch Wagner at InformationWeek offers a good summary of last week’s DEMOFall 08 event in his Web 2.0 Goes to Work article. He quotes Chris Shipley, executive producer of the event, as saying that the current manifestation of the social Web “didn’t generate a lot of wealth. There really aren’t a lot of Web 2.0 millionaires,” Shipley said. “By comparison, the dotcom Web generated a great deal of wealth. Moreover, many social Web sites just aren’t useful. Or, they haven’t demonstrated their usefulness just yet.”
If usefulness is measured by revenue earned, the same could be said of the slew of Health 2.0 companies that exist. However, some interesting revenue models are emerging for both professional and consumer health content sites that incorporate social networking.
At Sermo, CEO Dan Palestrant has repeatedly demonstrated an openness to explore new methods to leverage Sermo’s community of physicians. For example, Sermo’s derives revenue from pharma companies that pay for streamlined access to the physicians in Sermo’s community for market research studies.
On the consumer side, disease-specific network sites are finding an analogous opportunity by charging for access to their ready-made pools of potential recruits for clinical trials.
A recent Forbes article reports an even more interesting twist on business models for health 2.0 social networking sites: the participants in some sites, especially those that are closely aligned with a foundation, are rallying together to raise funds for drug development. This is an ironic twist on the many business plans for health 2.0 social networking sites that were written with the assumption that pharma advertising would support them.
It is not surprising to see business models morph over time as the health industry stakeholders gain experience with leveraging interactive content and community on the Web. We view the path of innovation in medical research, healthcare delivery, and healthcare consumption as an evolutionary path and think it may be time to retire the numeric labels borrowed from last century’s software industry that don’t capture the diversity of business models that are emerging in the health industry.
Recent Posts
- Health Content: There’s an App for That in EHRs
- Today’s Health Content Headlines
- Headline Commentary Feb 14 - Feb 28
About InfoCommerce Group