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Archive for the ‘Conferences’ Category
TEDxBoston: It’s Not Just About Information
- Posted August 5th 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
I had the great pleasure of spending last Thursday at the TEDxBoston conference. TED stands for Technology, Education, and Design. From my vantage point as a publishing industry consultant, I’d say that the value of content is a function of technology, education, and design: Content=f(T,E, D).
Three talks at TEDxBoston that held the most for publishers were those by César Hidalgo, Seth Priebatsch, and Eric Mongeon. Hidalgo spoke of the benefits of incorporating more complex relationships in predictive modeling. He used the example from his studies of development economics, but on his website he also describes his collaborative research project related to predictive modeling of human diseases: HuDiNe. Advances in computer technology and analytics have enabled his work that models complex relationships between a large number of variables. Underlying his research are cross-discipline data sets, a trend that data publishers in all industry should take note of.
Priebatsch, who is founder of SCVNGR, a game platform for completing place-based challenges, addressed how engaging users through interactive learning experiences that offer tangible or virtual rewards can guide behavior. He referred to the medication compliance problem in healthcare where patients don’t take their prescriptions as directed and mentioned Cambridge-based Vitality that has a partial solution with its smart device GlowCaps. Too bad he wasn’t aware of HealthPrize, [1] another start-up that is targeting the same medication compliance issue with a solution that embraces the gaming mentality and rewards positive behavior.
Eric Mongeon, who includes the line “Denier of the death of print” in his Twitter profile, underscored how design can transform a publication into a multi-dimensional experience. In his 4 by Poe series, design isn’t an afterthought, it’s an integral part of the publication. The same thinking should hold for digital publishers that want to rise above commodity status. Another lesson from Mongeon’s talk: publishers won’t enhance the lifetime of their print publications by scrimping on design and quality.
TEDxBoston included an imaginative collection of speakers from academia, industry, non-profits, start-ups, students, musicians, artists, and journalists. Every talk and performance was inspiring and passionate. Filtering it for to B2B and healthcare publishers, the message was: always consider the three TED elements when planning content products and services. Think beyond the informational value of your content to consider how to optimize the experience of consuming your content—that is, if you want to rise above commodity status.
—————
1 HealthPrize’s CMO, Dr. Katrina Firlik, will be speaking. at our upcoming Data Content 2010 conference.
Creating Digital Environments Around Content
- Posted June 10th 2010
- Comment (1)
- by Janice
Last week, I moderated a panel session at the American Business Media (ABM) Boston regional program on the topic of content marketing. Larry Weber, the PR and marketing strategy guru, kicked off the morning with an inspiring talk about how marketing communications and advertising agencies are changing and how that will impact the future of publishing. Quotable outtakes included:
“Marketers have to be content creators.”
“Content first, then transactions.”
“The Web is becoming more mobile, more emotive, more experiential.”
Weber set the stage perfectly for our panel that followed: How Content Marketing is Shifting the Role of Publishers. In the changing landscape he described [1], all marketers are becoming publishers, and the content they produce creates new opportunities for publishers to aggregate information. Our panel of three digital publishing leaders provided great examples of how to this can be done. For most B2B publishers, the ultimate goal of their digital environment (or community) is to bring together the buyers and sellers in their market segment to inform buying decisions and facilitate transactions. The markets represented on the panel ranged from medical products, non-alcoholic beverages, commercial marine professionals, integrative practitioners , to even brides-to-be.
Some key recommendations for creating digital environments from our session:
- Listen to your customers. This may seem obvious, but most B2B publishers aren’t using social media and the interactive nature of the Web to its full extent to gain understanding of the characteristics and needs of their buyer and seller audiences.
- Facilitate communications between audience members to create a community. Prospects and buyers are more likely to exchange views on a neutral publisher’s site than on an individual vendor company’s website.
- Once you have an engaged community, consider live events that enable the community members to interact in person. The quality of the event is enhanced when attendees have already interacted online.
- Try including video interviews on your site. The shelf-life of video interviews is much longer than that of current news, and video has become much easier to produce. Put them on YouTube and they may go viral!
- Final practical tip: check your company’s profile on LinkedIn. It’s there whether you know it or not; you may as well take control of it.
The many other ideas presented and discussed in the Q&A reflected two mindsets. 1) New media tools are to be feared because they turn marketers into competitors; or 2) content produced by marketers creates new opportunities for publishers to aggregate and add value. However, this session underscored that, instead of fearing and resisting new technologies, publishers should seize the day and use them to improve relationships with customers, suppliers, advertisers, and sponsors.
Note, although this post is written for a general B2B audience, the pharmaceutical sector where pharma-sponsored content is growing at the expense of pharma advertising, would make an excellent case study on how content marketing is affecting publishers.
[1] See Roger Wilson’s summary of the ABM event for additional perspectives on the program.
I would like to thank the panelists who participated in the session: Melissa Chang, President, Pure Incubation; John Craven, President, BevNet.com; and Brian Randall, VP, e-media, Diversified Business Communications.
Changing the Healthcare Story
- Posted May 26th 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
“The world view is a narrative - it’s a narrative we got from our parents, our teachers, our employers and our culture, and to change that narrative with good data and good statistics takes more than numbers. But it can’t be done without the good numbers.”[1]Hans Rosling, Director, Gapminder Foundation.
Last week, I attended Patient-Centered IT ‘10 produced by the health and wellness team of Capstone Partners, an investment bank that serves middle market companies. The quality of speakers and the interesting mix of health IT and health content start-ups combined to make it one of the better healthcare conferences I’ve attended in a while.
Among the highlights:
Jim Champy-of Reenginering the Corporation fame–opened the meeting with a preview of his new book, Reengineering Health Care, co-authored by Harry Greenspun, MD, CMO of Dell. Available in June, it is targeted to clinicians and exhorts them to take a stronger role in calling for improvements in our healthcare delivery system. In Champy’s words, we “need proof to convince clinicians” of the benefits of changing and automating processes in healthcare provider institutions.
Toward of the end of his talk, Champy expressed surprise that more consumers are not clamoring for change in our healthcare delivery system. Why aren’t they? I think it’s because they don’t have enough information about the often dangerous flaws in our current system or enough knowledge of how much better the system could be with improvements that are eminently doable with existing information sources and IT resources.
Another speaker, Katrina Firlik, MD, CMO of HealthPrize, brought up the point that “data can drive better behavior“. Her company uses techniques from human behavior studies to create engaging programs to improve patient adherence to prescription drug treatments.
Both speakers emphasized the role of “evidence-based narratives” in changing human behavior. We are producing and collecting increasing amounts of health-related data, and we’re making good progress in introducing standards and improving the interoperability between currently fragmented data sets, though the need for aggregators and consolidators will remain strong for the foreseeable future.
What is needed are compelling stories based on the data-stories that link back to the source data and exhibit a solid understanding of it. But Rosling warns that misrepresentations will be rampant as access to data becomes more open. I recommend watching Rosling’s presentation that is referenced below–especially the first 20 minutes–for an entertaining and inspiring view of the power of data to change the healthcare story.
[1] Hans Rosling from the Gapminder Foundation in a presentation at World Bank, May 24, 2010. Rosling uses examples from public health, but his descriptions of building narrative from data bases, especially using graphics, equally applies to other situations.
Health Content: There’s an App for That in EHRs
- Posted March 20th 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Approximately 30,000 people convened in Atlanta last week for the HIMSS conference. HIMSS stands for Health Information Management Systems Society, and its annual event has become the meeting place for vendors and users of electronic medical and electronic health records systems (EMR/EHR). This year’s conference program had a major focus on the impact of the ARRA HITECH[1] funding and incentives for adoption of new EHR systems. One of the most common topics of discussion at the event was “meaningful use” of EHRs.
I’ll reveal my bias upfront. My background is in digital information services, and I’ve always viewed information management systems as tools for increasing the utility of the content that flows through these systems. An information system that doesn’t optimize the utility of the content in a way that adds efficiency to a process or leads to better outcomes is not all that compelling to a user.
With EHR systems, it has been long apparent to me that their value would be far higher to the clinicians who use them if the knowledge embedded in medical textbooks, scholarly research publications, and other reference sources were incorporated into the EHR systems at or near the point of care. Over the past 10-15 years, we’ve witnessed the gradual migration of information that had been stored in separate online reference systems to systems that physicians and other clinicians can access on their handheld devices or EHR/EMR screens. Epocrates for drug reference information on early PDA devices was a pioneer. Now, nearly all the reference and research content is digitized, but most of it hasn’t been incorporated into EHRs in a manner that maximizes its utility for clinicians.
At this year’s HIMSS conference, there were myriad signs of accelerating convergence of EHR systems and health content. EHR vendors are eager to embed clinical information into their systems to demonstrate the value of incorporating accepted clinical guidelines, procedures, lab values, drug dosing suggestions, regulatory benchmarks and any other useful clinical reference content that would save the clinician’s time and lead to improved outcomes. Embedding the accepted rules and guidelines into an EHR system also provides the ability to customize recommendations based on the patient’s characteristics (sex, weight, other drugs being taken, allergies, and increasingly personal genome). The advantages of having the appropriate rules and guidelines embedded in the software are obvious. Just think TurboTax. [Note, I am focusing on clinical content in this post; benefits for administrative/performance improvement applications are equally compelling.]
Granted, medicine is more complex than the tax code. (It may be hard to believe anything is more complex than the tax code, even taking into account the state-wide variations, but it’s true!). Hospitals will continue to follow different procedures, guidelines will remain suggested guidelines to allow for individual variations, and new medical knowledge will be acquired daily. Nonetheless, the value of automating the practice of applying widely accepted medical rules and guidelines is immense-for practitioners and patients.
Medical publishers have been slow to adapt their content for usage in EHR/EMRs. Zynx Health, a Hearst Business company, was a leader in providing order set workflow systems that incorporate content. Their sister company, First DataBank, also proved the ground for transforming drug information to medication management systems. Based on my discussions at HIMSS, other medical publishers are accelerating their efforts to create clinical decision support systems from their collections of content that can be embedded in EHR/EMR systems. Elsevier, Thomson Reuters, and Wolters Kluwer, the big 3, have made great strides.
HIMSS is still a very technology-centric event with limited focus on health content and relatively few publishers exhibiting. Along with the big 3, a handful of other publishers, including EBSCO/DynaMed, Lexi-Comp, PEPID, and several patient education publishers (ExitCare, Healthwise, Patientedu.com) were present. And, of course, MedTech, the publisher of Healthcare IT New and Healthcare Finance News, which also publishes the Exhibit Guide and the daily HIMSS10 Guide, was there. BNA, a publisher of regulatory information, had a booth, too.
However, I see 2010 as a turning point for health content publishers. They have to learn to adapt their information for inclusion in EHRs. A digital version of a reference work is no longer good enough. The content has to become an “app” that can be incorporated into electronic systems.[2] Standalone content that doesn’t plug in to a user’s system or get embedded into clinical decision support systems will be left on the sidelines. By the time HIMSS11 rolls around next year, expect to see more health content publishers among the exhibitors and more clinical decision applications that can be integrated into healthcare information systems on display. Soon it will be difficult to identify where the content ends and the technology begins.
______________________
1 Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) bill of 2009 (aka, the Stimulus Bill). For details see: http://healthit.hhs.gov/.
2 Official standards for Meaningful Use that include use of evidence-based order sets and other clinical decision support systems by 2012-2015 will fuel this trend.
Headline Commentary Mar 1- Mar 19
- Posted March 19th 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
RT @HealthVault: Register today for the Microsoft Connected Health Conf May 19-20. https://www.msconnectedhealth.com/SiteLogin.aspx
iVillage’s new Health site w/ content from Healthwise & Cleveland Clinic: http://bit.ly/ciOVt9 /Still looks like woman’s magazine 2 me
Detrioit’s largest nonprofit hospital 2 B acquired by for-profit Vanguard Health: http://bit.ly/aDIKjS /more consolidation amg providers
RT @HealthBizBlog: Health Wonk Review blog carnival at RWJFs Health Reform blog http://tinyurl.com/ybq6ow7
RT @SusanCarr @ctorgan: e-patient conference April 6-7, in DC. By NLM, at NIH http://www.fnlm.org/Events-2010-Conf.html
RT @iHealthBeat: Cleveland Clinic Project Finds Benefits in Linking Devices With Physicians - http://bit.ly/9vYBOb
Stephen Schoenbaum, MD, MPH’s testimony to Mass. Division of Health Care Finance & Policy on costs of healthcare in MA. Slidedeck links included. Thanks to Paul Levy for pointing to this info.
NIH creates public database, Genetic Testing Registry (GTR)that will help consumers and providers determine best options for genetic testing. Goal of GTR is to have providers of genetic test enter info on the tests and identify laboratories that perform the tests.
Study by MedPAC reports that hospitals that lose money on Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements have higher fees and higher profit margins and represent large hospitals with strong negotiating power. They charge commercially insured patients higher fees to compensate for losses on CMS patients. But, majority of hospitals have incentive to keep fees lowers and manage to make money on Medicaid/Medicare patients. Consistent with Paul Levy’s post today.
Very nice case study of how Vida y Salud has grown their brand and achieved substantial audience growth in under a year. Emphasizes importance of quality unique data and a cross-media marketing campaign.
Matt Holt interviews Glen Tullman at HIMSS10. Glen does nice job of describing how Allscripts have some footprint with 1/3 of US doctors and is working toward interoperability and connected care. Slams Epic.
RT @healthblawg: RT @Paulflevy: Cost Driver Hearings in MA are worth viewing: http://bit.ly/a8M7FN ^ cf background http://bit.ly/9JC7Qx
Massachusetts is holding hearings on drivers of healthcare costs. Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel/DMC, provides links to prepared statements & points out that higher costs are correlated with market power/negotiating strength of hospitals and not to type of payment system (global payments vs. fee-for-service).
Coke tries for compatibility between its health insurance plans and its wellness programs–with some success. Hm, wonder if cutting out sugary softdrinks buys points in wellness programs.
Emdeon, a large revenue cycle management (RCM) company, acquires Healthcare Technical Management Services, a health IT consulting fimr that assists insurers in purchasing and implementing IT. Services to aid in transitioning to ICD-10 seem to be the major attraction in this acquisition. Emdeon to pay $11M with additional cash payments of up to $14M based on financial performance.
RT @roskadigital: Text4Baby surpasses 22,000 users, 500k msgs sent http://ow.ly/1nqbW #hcsm CDC, J&J backed
RT @wroush: Top national players in #healthIT (Sebelius, Blumenthal) coming to Boston next month for conference. http://bit.ly/9EyvQg
RT @tgoetz: why does technology drive costs UP in medicine? @huffpo http://bit.ly/ayMAtt /I agree w/ lack of transparency, but not scale
Interesting counterpoint — or complement– to my latest blog post about how healthcare content is being transformed into apps for integrated systems. Guerra questions whether the healthcare sector will accept a plug-and-play environment. I’m a bit more optimistic than he, based on external incentives.
Official gov’t site with summaries of recent HIT Standards Committee meetings.
RT @VinceKuraitis: Here’s the health care chapter of the FCC Broadband expansion report! http://bit.ly/92hv61 #healthit via @mobilehealth
Lates recommendations from HIT Policy Committee to the ONC re: meaningful use, certification/adoption of EHRs, and privacy & security.
RT @HITNewsTweet: Professional registration at #HIMSS10 saw an increase of 9 percent http://ow.ly/1lccO #healthIT
More evidence that the health IT sector is healthy. Registrations were up 9% in 2010 for a total of 27,855.
RT @healthcentral: Google allegedly polling AdSense sites on showing pharmacy + liquor ads http://bit.ly/axCicw
Reviews recent survey by Surescripts, the largest e-prescribing network, on adoption of e-prescribing by physicians. Even with $$ incentives from CMS that started in Jan 2009, uptake has been slow. Combo of CMS incentives and inclusion of e-Rx app in an EMR seems to be biggest driver of growth.
Dr. Kevin Pho addresses some of the drawbacks of tying physician compensation to patient satisfaction survey scores. Hospitals do receive incentives from CMS to report survey results. But there are other measures that should help balance the issues raised in Dr. Pho’s article. But I agree that assessing quality of care of a physician by averaging patient satisfaction scores is dicey.
RT @ahier: Premier comments on #MeaningfulUse (pdf) http://bit.ly/aTRj4z /Long…but enjoyed the section on Problem lists & codes.
Finally posted my comments on #HIMSS10 from my “health content” perspective: http://bit.ly/9CVkjo #in
RT @robertloakes: RT @jimmyweeks: Thoughts on #HIMSS10 http://post.ly/S9Kv /thx for the notes, Jim. Wish I had seen Thurs keynotes.
RT @SusannahFox: What if food inspection results were searchable? Drug approvals? http://bit.ly/9Qk6zb (via @nwatzman) #gov20 #datacontent
RT @ClinicalCafe: CMS orders UC Irvine Medical Center 2 improve medication mgmt (Via @PSeditor @AbbieCitron) http://bit.ly/9fFQOh #ptsafety
RT @ePatientDave: Beth Israel Deaconess “learned from implementing EHR as a service” http://is.gd/afFCK
WebMD launches core community feature, WebMD Health Exchange with group of medical experts who will provide info on a range of topics. But, primary purpose is to encourage peer-to-peer patient/consumer sharing. It will be interesting to see how successful WebMD is in building patient communities. Most patient community sites started small with tight focus.
RT @Health_IT: From MicrosoftMD, Crushing Complexity from Healthcare, http://bit.ly/bR1LJv #healthIT
RT @healthblawg: Patient safety not taught in medical school? Lucian Leape Institute releases report… http://bit.ly/94R424
RT @knowledgevision: Gr8 use-case: Emerson Hospital using KnowledgeVision 4 Dr. briefings http://ow.ly/1gP4B /Fmr colleagues lead new MA co
RT @Eclipsys: Video of Eclipsys’ Phil Pead on CNBC to discuss the benefits of electronic medical records. http://bit.ly/c0HHKA
RT @KentBottles: RT @iHealthBeat: British Medical Group Calls for NHS To Halt EHR Database Project - http://bit.ly/bTD1M8
RT @john_chilmark: Why I’m not crazy about the WebMD Exchange http://wp.me/p6shx-CC Poor SM execution
RT @GlobeHealth: Few drug studies meet comparative effectiveness definition - http://b.globe.com/co6JTr ;yea but it’s f(RCT) process.
» Survey shows nurses spend most of their time on paperwork | Healthcare IT News
RT @ahier: Survey shows #nurse’s spend most of their time on paperwork | http://bit.ly/asw1Vq (via @HITNewsTweet) /Need workflow apps
RT @PracticeFusion: Use of e-prescribing nearly tripled in 2009 http://tinyurl.com/yzjex4b /Driven by Gov’t incentives; will it work for #MU
RT @patientslikeme: PLM & Novartis launch free online community 4 organ transplant recipients: http://bit.ly/cZyqNo
RT @vaibhavb: “Checklists” and Rapid Innovation with Amalga http://bit.ly/cjpwyT #HIMSS10 #HIT /Nice video demo.
Recent Harvard School of Public Health study points to increased risk of heart disease & diabetes from eating processed meats. Unprocessed meats didn’t have same association to heart disease. This was meta-analysis of previous studies. Wonder if AAFP still advertises Buddig & Boar’s Head on their Healthy Living pages.
RT @healthblawg: Dr. John Glaser, CIO Partners Health Care, speaks w/ David Harlow about health. http://bit.ly/bgcetK /Look fwd to reading.
Headline Commentary Feb 14 - Feb 28
- Posted February 28th 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
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.
FDA charges Guidant (a Boston Scientific company) with failure to report safety problems with some of its implantable defibrillators.
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.
Eclipsys Sunrise Enterprise suite of health IT software applications to integrate with Microsoft’s Amalga UIS platform.
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”.
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.
MIT Technology Review feature series on personalized medicine. Haven’t taken good look at the articles yet, but will return to explore.
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.
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.
Mayo, GE Healthcare & Intel partner on year-long study of effects of monitoring seniors & people w/ chronic illnesses with home monitoring devices.
John Moore at Chilmark provides insightful analysis of today’s announced alliance between Microsoft Amalga and Eclipsys.
“”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.
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.
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?
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.
Obama’s healthcare proposal 2/22/10
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.
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.
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.
IMS offers decision support service for regulatory compliance for Pharma and med device companies.
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.
National Center for Quality Assurance (NCQA) paper on evolving standards for Patient-Centered Medical Home metrics.
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.
Grassley questions Pharma sponsorship of content on WenMD
E-patients consult Web to find ratings on doctors and providers, but fewer post ratings themselves. Link to full report from Pew.
Eclipsys beat expectations in Q4 2009, with earnings of $3.8 Million, up 15% YoY. Rev. up 5% YoY.
John Mack on the role Pharma can plan in providing information directly to consumers via social media.
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.
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.
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.
Story of how Louisiana has seen improvements in rural health care through implementation of health info exchange.
AHRQ
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.
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.
TOC and links to full report from CDC on trends in health statistics.
“Must read” article in NEJM on creating national program for CER.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius releases report that includes info on requested premium increases by health insurers across the country. Link to full report included.
Description of study in Worcester, MA to implement evidence-based theraputic management guidelines for cardiac patients.
Shared Health Clinical Xchange, the largest HIE in Tennessee, has partnered with Elsevier’s MEDai to provide clinically-relevant HIE.
Meta-analysis indicates that use of statins to control cholesterol is correlated with higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
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.
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.
NaviNet chosen as communications network in pilot intended to document benefits of provider-payer health info exchange in NJ.
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.
GE producing TV ads for Healthymagination campaign during Olympics. Also sponsoring content online. Good to see someone beside Pharma sponsoring content!
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.
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.
Headline Commentary Jan 1 - Jan 22
- Posted January 22nd 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
“Press Ganey Associates, Inc. today announced the addition of Philip Marshall, MD, MPH, as senior vice president, clinical products. Dr. Marshall joins the company at a time of continued growth and will be responsible for expanding the clinical product lines for the company.” Dr. Marshall was most recently VP Product Strategy at WebMD Health.
New Study in NEJM points to benefits of reducing salt intake in american diet. See my article on NY’s planned program to reduce salt and my criticism of AAFP for promoting salty foods in advertisements on their site. Note, a recheck of the AAFP FamilyDoctor.org site indicates that fewer packaged foods are advertised today. My blog appears to have been influential!
Superb analysis of impact of Scott Brown’s win to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat in the Senate on health reform. David Harlow (whom I finally got to meet yesterday) and Joseph Kvedar offer insightful quotes. Kvedar suggests that if health reform legislation doesn’t pass, we still have raised awareness of need for change to control costs and that some changes will occur even w/o legislation. Harlow says that costs and quality will continue to decline w/o legislation and could lead to a stronger bill with some form of a public option down the road.
UMass Medical selects NDoc to automate home health services care. NDoc provides billing and operational s/w for use at pointofcare for home health services.
Good article from former HBS professor on how companies can mine their own propriety data about customers and partners to their advantage. Lays out the 5 keys to doing it right: 1) create a network to collect proprietary data; 2) use best technology; 3)analyze with insight & precision; 4) figure out how to act on info to your advantage; 5) be lucky enough to have good timing.
Trish (about.com) recounts story of pediatrician who molested patients and how comments on doctor rating sites prior to his conviction were positive. She suggests that the current array of ratings sites all share weaknesses. I tend to agree. Comments can be useful, but there need to be a large number and attributes of the people providing the ratings are needed. Plus, multiple criteria from formally reported and collected info need to form the basis. I’d want to know about outcomes, not just opinions.
Nuval, a Boston-area company that provides numeric ratings that reflect nutritional value of foods, gets official endorsement from American College of Preventive Medicine.
Martin Fenner in Nature’s Nature Network on growing options for reading scholarly articles. Covers various devices as well as the concept of using connected information to provide context. No clear-cut perfect solution yet.
Very good commentary about shortcomings of continued medical education (CME) from a Canadian physician’s perspective. In Canada, CME (called CPD in Canada) is more structured and reporting is more detailed. Dr. Rob is very critical of US system that relies primarily on attendance at medical conferences.
Excellent overview of trends in healthcare research being influenced by patient particpation via Internet channels. Specific focus on last October’s ePatient Connections conference. David Ellis and Julian Bond of HFD conclude that healthcare data analytics will become increasingly important in divining patterns from all the data being generated by epatients and even diagnosing for individual patients. They also point to the importance of mobile computing in healthcare.
Highlights IdeaBounty and InnoCentive as examples of companies that facilitate crowdsourced innovations. In these two cases, winning participants are paid for their ideas/solutions. Good article that describes how 1 company replaced their ad agency with IdeaBounty for creative.
Boston company that repurposes discarded specimens and matches basic EHR data to allow for additional medical research studies to be carried out on the specimens. iSpecimen then aggregates and uses datamining techniques to analyze patterns in the data.
Pearson FT is apparently shopping Interactive Data.
Insititute for Safe Medication Practices reports results of recent survey about impact of recession on hospital staffing, capital expenses, patient acuity, and medication safety.
DeepDyve makes another move toward making scholarly journal articles more accessible. The partnership with CiteULike expands the utility of DeepDyve to knowledge workers who don’t have high-priced subscriptions through their corporate or academic library. CiteULike is a “delicious”-type bookmarking service popular in the scholarly community. DeepDyve also announced partnership with publisher De Gruyter. I am impressed with the pace of innovation and content deals carried out at DeepDyve. Their $0.99 rental price for journal articles is an important step toward opening up access to scholarly research on a much wider scale.
MedScape article that explores the value of online searching for patients. Shallow article with no conclusions, but it does offer some good criticism of existing options.
Good article and comments about expectations of enhanced ebooks. Key themes IMO: 1) publishers have to understand the technology platform/distribution platform that is appropriate for their audience; 2) pricing plays a role in selecting the right platform (CD-ROM allowed fixed pricing at a time when online access charged per second); trying to use new technology as a guise for increasing prices is a risky move.
HubSpot marketing director explains why they have chosen to drop trade show exhibiting from their marketing mix. They still will attend events and seek speaking slots and will sponsor some events, but they don’t find the process of shipping booth & collateral and several sales people to be as worthwhile as other marketing options. Very good comments and responses.
Poll of 800 physicians on Sermo indicate that large percentage feel current Medicare policies are out of sync with market needs. “[O]ver 40% of the physicians polled feel the US government “never will” understand how declining reimbursement rates from Medicare negatively affect the care patients receive from their physicians. They fear reimbursements will continue to decline in the coming years, reducing patient access to physicians.”
MSNBC story that picks up on recent article in NEJM about pros and cons of sites that provide patient comments and ratings of doctors. Hook in this article is how some of the ratings sites, including Angie’s List, now flag doctors who are part of the Medical Justice Services group that require patients to sign contract that prohibits them from posting comments online. I agree that anonymous comments are a problem, and I’ve written before that a single numeric rating is insufficient, but it’s short-sighted of doctors to try to prohibit patients from expressing their opinions online.
Nice article that describes some reliable sources of health info for consumers from a Minnesota pub. Note, they still have PDR listed as owned by Thomson Healthcare, even though it’s a winter 2010 article.
Quidel, a San-Diego point-of-care diagnostic testing company, buys Diagnostic Hybrids, an Athens, Ohio company for $130 Million in cash. Acquisition expands the range of tests provided by the combined company, and should provide some economies in R&D.
Good overview of the two companies and the impact of the acquisition. John Moore of Chilmark views the acquisition as a long-term investment since he doesn’t see much life in the PHR segment at this time.
Quest offers new test for early detection of colorectal cancer.
Adams replaces Carl Byers, athena’s initial CFO, who last June said he wanted to live abroad.
Cegedim Dendrite, the life sciences group of Cegedim, Paris-based CRM solutions provider, acquires SK&A, the leading US healthcare professionals directory. According to press release, revenues of SK&A are about $15 M.
Credit rating firm TransUnion has acquired MedData LLC, a Charlotte, N.C.-based health care transactions processing firm, for an undisclosed sum.
Pfizer provides $3m in funding to Stanford to develop CME framework that incorporates a more participatory learning environment. Can it be donew/o industry influence given the source of the funding? Stanford says “yes”….
Healthcare IT News reviews Allscripts/Misys Q2 results. Rev. up 30% yoy. Allscripts CEO, Glen Tullman, calls 2010 “year of the EHR” due to stimulus funds.
Another content + IT deal that will help hospitals/providers achieve meangingful use of EHRs. Zynx Health provides order sets; Meditech will integrate order sets from Zynx into EHR–press release doesn’t provide much detail on how they will integrate the info.
Origin, a CT-based provider of RCM and clinical and BI analytics, gets growth equity funding from TCV. Previous investors include Beecken, Petty & O’Keefe & Company (“BPOC”), an investor since 2006, and management as investors in Origin.
Quantros, a health IT company that helps hospitals with patient safety and risk assessment, names Gerard Livaudais, MD, MPH, as EVP Product Management.
Not enough info is provided in blog entry to make much sense of the results. Asking people what general categories of content they would pay for isn’t very telling; better research methods are needed. Plus, there’s such a range of content in each type that results aren’t very valuable.
athenahealth’s athenaClinicals was rated highly in recent KLAS ambulatory EMR report on confidence that athenaClinicals will meet meaningful use criteria.
Good article on outlook for Informa. Author indicates that asset sales are likely in 2010 and points to Performance Improvement as a top candidate, since it doesn’t fit with other Informa assets. However, Informa’s CEO, Peter Rigby, is against divestments and would prefer to grow through more acquisitions, according to article. Also, academic/scholary publishing division is called out as their best performer (due to high margins). Given pressures on this segment and lack of innovation from Informa, I would be worried if I were a shareholder.
SF-based Practice Fusion raises $5m of anticipated $7.1 round for it’s EHR software. Practice Fusion offers s/w for no charge and makes money with advertising–and has plans to sell data mined from customers.
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Inc. has won a $72 Million grant from the FDA to build a system to monitor the safety of drugs and medical devices after they have gone on the market.
Adidas introduce miCoach at CES. Similar to Nike’s popular Nike+.
Good commonsense views on what will and will not change in 2010.
David Walt, professor of chemistry at Tufts and chairman of Illumina, provides his top 5 trends to watch in biotech. Optimistic outlook for advances in curing cancer, but thinks that the data management and analysis issues will be a challenge due to the magnitude of data (”Moore’s Law just can’t keep up”).
Short but insightful article that reports some interaction between Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and Atul Gawande, MD, author of new book The Checklist Manifesto. Key point, workflow or “clinical encounter” is not understood by the computer scientists who create EMR systems. Also, systems analysis and performance improvement (my terms) are not respected uses of time for MDs.
Interesting example of how incentives from CMS can trickle down to specific programs within hospitals. In this case, residents can earn up to $1200 per year in incentive pay for reaching 3 goals related to patient satisfication–two from Press Ganey survey results and 1 from UCSF Medical Center compliance audits. Results are measured for a team and each teammember receives payment.
Dr. Fabius, among other things, served as president and chief medical officer for i-TRAX, which was acquired by Walgreens in 2008. “I-TRAX was the parent company of CHD Meridian Healthcare, a leading provider of worksite healthcare centers for large employers.”
AHA endorses Surgical Info Systems for its scheduling, reporting and analytics modules.
Inside Out provides interactive training on the human body for K-12 market.
Nice overview of Cell Press’s (Elsevier) new beta of their planned “article of the future”. Good features for zooming in on charts and link to more data and references. I need to do a more thorough review and hope to see it in action at Cell Press in Cambridge soon.
Brian Ahier summarizes Sec’y HHS Sebelius’ Health Security program.
I’ve mentioned NuVal before. Intriguing company that provides single numeric rating of the nutritional value of foods and works with grocery stores to put labels on shelves. Concept is good, but like the writer, I think the single digit is insufficient. Good for shelf; but maybe more detail could be available via mobile device?
Kaiser and VA (Veteran’s Affairs) will use NHIN to exchange patient data (with permission) in pilot program in San Diego area.
A physician reviews online doctor rating sites. Slams Vitals, in large part because only single numeric rating is available w/o paying. I’ve commented before that single number is ineffective for rating doctors–or most any other item. The reviewing physician likes the comments, however. Note, as list of comments gets larger, some kind of summary indicators become more necessary to annotate and summarize the long comments.
Some good insight here. E.g., 6)PMS vendors will acquire RCM companies (didn’t I just write that yesterday?),8) Payers, PBMs and Pharmacies will use EHRs to deliver information (add publishers to that list).
Nice article from Ingenix analytics on employer wellness programs.
Kevin Noland resigns to make way for former CFO Mark Adams to take helm. Could this be result of change in strategy to focus more on benefits management services than content?
Commonwealth Club program on medicine. Video.
TabSafe, an Indiannapolis company, showcases its medication management system at CES.
AdvancedMD, which provides practice management and RCM solutions to medical practices, acquires PracticeOne, an EHR vendor. Interesting that the vertical integration is occurring in this direction–the vendors of admin/financial systems acquiring the EHR vendors. There’s lots of room for more consolidation in both markets.
“23andMe has completed a $27.8 million second round of funding. In addition to funding from Google and Google founder Sergey Brin (husband of 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki), 23andMe has been funded by Genentech and New Enterprise Associates.”
“Krames has partnered with eClinicalWorks to provide consumer-friendly patient education to physicians using the electronic medical records system, eClinicalWorks 8.0.” Makes good sense.
As my colleague Russell Perkins said, “betcha thought there already was one”.
Sramana Mitra interviews co-founders of NaviNet, a real-time health info exchange based in Boston area. 5-part interview with lots of good stats and info.
Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of AHRQ, describes new report for consumers on anti-depressants. Includes link to full report.
Gawande speaks about his new book, Checklist Manifesto, and the benefits of checklists in medical settings. Specifically mentions how checklists improve teamwork to the benefit of patients, and addresses the issue of physician resistance (20% of those surveyed after trying out checklists said they didn’t think they were useful; however >90% of that 20% group would want checklists to be used if they were the patient!).
“Atenda is one of the largest home health benefit management companies, providing care and exclusively managing more than 1.3 million lives. Atenda is used by major health plans as a single point of contact for managing all home care services, resulting in improved care and cost savings to plans and their members.” Univita was established by Genstar Capital last year with its acquisition of Long Term Care Group, and subsequently acquired ENURGI.
Infotrends broad multi-client study on changing communications needs of small-to-medium sized businesses. TOC and list of tables only. Complete study >$10K
HIMSS writes up new CDSC created by Blackford Middleton at Partners Healthcare.
Caritas hospital group in Boston expands their relationship with athenahealth to include athenaClinicals. They already used athena’s revenue cycle management (RCM) s/w.
“The National Association for Children’s Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI), a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the operations and quality of care in its almost 200 member hospitals, is using a web-based research database and reporting system developed by IT Consulting Services of Quantros to report on quality improvement initiatives. Quantros is a leading software and services provider for the healthcare industry.”
Lots of reaction to ONC’s release of MU requirements. This article highlights a few key concerns, including lack of focus on patient’s rights and support for outdated technology that will not provide advancements that are needed.
Nice article on Google’s view of future of advertising. I agree with Arora from Google that online ads shouldn’t be an afterthought, but a critical part of overall advertising strategy.
Article in NEJM questions equity of wellness program incentives in health reform package.
Nice summary of major milestones in medical research in the last 10 years. Emphasizes the impact of the mapping of human genome a decade ago. Also points to advances in preventing disease. Note, although preventive medicine is a much better long-term goal than treating illness, based on my experience, funds tend to be focused on the crisis of the moment and savings of prevention often get forgotten over time (e.g., vaccinations). However, for the present time, there is likely to be renewed focus on prevention in medicine.
One of the questions posed by David Carr in this column about the reports of a new tablet device from Apple (rumored to be announced later this month (jan 2010)). If Apple can produce an e-reader/tablet that considerably improves the user experience over the Kindle, it could take off even at $800-$1000 per device. Publishers of all types–B2C and B2B–should be planning bus models (mostly advertising) around tablet devices.
Good thought-provoking piece by Joe Esposito. He uses example of early enthusiasm from entrepreneurs and Wall St. to build broadband pipes to households, which puzzled the established RBOCs who couldn’t imagine why HHs would need such high bandwidth. Contrasts that situation with today’s need to radical change in scholarly publishing model to provide more direct interactive between researchers and scientists. Implication is that the needed change won’t come from traditional players. I agree.
Like this list, esp. the top 3.
Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe, on trio of young companies that provide outsourced R&D, using crowdsourcing. Innovcentive, Hypios and Yet2.com are highlighted. Innocentive & Yet2.com are Boston area companies; Hypios is in Paris.
Interesting comments from former insiders and analysts on what made Dow Jones vulnerable and changes under Murdoch. Note, I didn’t see any mention of the enterprise division of Dow Jones (there may be some comments, but most focus in on WSJ and the Telerate mess).
Editor of Journal of Spinal Disorders & Techniques for past seven years receives royalty payments from certain Medtronic devices. “Studies involving Medtronic spinal products or that were funded by Medtronic appeared in the journal at least once per issue, on average.” And, are uniformly reviewed in a positive light. More trouble for scholarly publishing sector–fueled in part by Richard Smith, former editor of BMJ.
Mitch Wagner’s last article for InformationWeek w/ 2 examples of hospitals with successful implementation of business intelligence (document management, integration, analytics, dashboards) software.
Nice post that focuses on improving access to healthcare data–by all stakeholders.
“URAC, the nation’s leading health care accreditation and education organization, today announced its new Consumer Education Initiative, which teaches consumers about health insurance and identifies ways they can make more informed decisions about their health care.”
Interesting news about licensing deal between AllTheContent, a Geneva, Switz based content syndicator, and Pharma Channel, which provides info to pharmacies in Europe.
Nice video explanation of HL7 and how the standard facilitates sharing info between various IT systems in hospitals.
Headline Commentary Dec 14-31
- Posted December 31st 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Quadrant HealthCom, publisher of The Female Patient, announced Tuesday that it has acquired Dowden Professional Publications from Lebhar-Friedman.With the deal, Quadrant takes control of four medical journals and an events group. The journals are: OBG Management, Current Psychiatry, The Journal of Family Practice and Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Thomas Goetz, exec editor of Wired, on why personalized medicine is really about personal data.
Mentions Polka, an iPhone app, that allows remote monitoring.
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.
From press release: “iGuard is a free, personal drug safety monitoring service that now provides 2 million consumers and caregivers with timely, personalized information about drug-drug interactions, drug-disease interactions, medication safety warnings, breaking safety news and medication recalls that may affect their health. In return, patients provide feedback on their medications to help researchers learn how to treat diseases better and minimize medication side effects. In 2009 alone, iGuard users have contributed toward 92 medical research studies – helping to develop new drugs for such diseases as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and diabetes.”
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.
Healthy Humans (www.healthyhumans.com), an online wellness solutions company, received the 2009 Life Sciences Startup Company of the Year award from the Eastern Technology Council. The award, sponsored by the University of Sciences in Philadelphia, recognizes the company’s business and technology achievements. Healthy Humans provides online wellness programs that address the underlying causes of chronic disease and encourage prevention through personalized solutions and self-care methodologies. The company’s proprietary portal technology combines state-of-the-art medical protocols with evidence-based therapies. Note, Healthy Humans was highlighted as a Health Content08 Innovator at our HC08 conference.
CVS’ underperforming PBM unit names Lofberg new CEO. Lofberg is currently CEO of Generation Health, a genetic PBM.
Cerner acquires IMC Health Care, a provider of on-site health clinics for employers. Cerner established its own subsidiary to handle its self-insured and health & wellness needs. With acq. of IMC, Cerner is expanding to serve other self-insured employers.
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”?
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn on PWC’s new report on 10 top trends in healthcare in 2010. Link to full report included.
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.
More on HHS grant for designing db for comparative effective research.
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).
Nice comparison table of existing e-book readers.
Health Data Management reports that Thomson Reuters Healthcare (Ann Arbor) is entering the HIE market with a data analytics platform.
Good article that describes how electronic laboratory notebooks (ELN) could become the foundation for effective data management in R&D enterprises.
Healthcare IT News briefly reviews the top 20 list from KLAS.
Pfizer is equipping detailers with tablet computers that limit what samples can be provided to physicians based on their specialty and record the amount and type of samples. Doctors have to sign for receipt. It’s astonishing that sampels given to doctors in the past were not recorded!
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.
A.D.A.M., long-known for its collection of anatomy images for medical education, launches an e-commerce enabled website that sells individual images. Prices seem to depend on the image and use. An graphic with multiple images related to carpal tunnel is priced at $39.95 for use in PPT; a simple image of the eye related to radial keratomy appears to be free, but site asked user to indicate how the image will be used.
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!
Very interesting. “December 14, 2009 — Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), a leading international publisher for healthcare professionals and students, and part of Wolters Kluwer Health, has partnered with ProtoMED Medical Management Corporation (PMMC) to build a student version of its ProtoMED medical practice management software and its ProtoCHART electronic medical record (EMR) software.”
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.
NY Times highlights the conundrum of Wm Styron’s estate where Random House and Styron’s family both claim ownership of e-book rights. I was involved in licensing books for an early e-book reader (SoftBook Press) in the late ’90s and met with all of the major NY & Boston publishing houses, including Random House. At that time, the majority of recent contracts with authors included incomplete clauses that essentially wrote that the publisher had rights to new electronic formats for the content licensed in the contract with terms to be negotiated. It was a terrible situation where rights were tied up but terms and conditions weren’t defined. It seems as though these same publishers have done very little in the past decade to update the terms of contracts that existed at that time, at least with terms that are fair to authors. As in the B2B publishing world,B2C publishers (and authors and agents) have to recognize that the digital version of the work is now the primary work.
Content and Technology: A Love-Hate Relationship
- Posted November 24th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
In late October I participated in a couple of conferences that underscored how information technology (IT) has changed business publishing. The first event, e-Patient Connections 2009, had a diverse audience comprised of Pharma marketers, medical communications agencies, health literacy experts, and health care publishers. Special guests included e-Patients who spoke about their use of community, content, medical expertise, drugs and devices to manage their conditions to allow them to live life as ordinarily (or extraordinarily) as they would if they didn’t have their disease or condition.
The second event, Data Content09, was the InfoCommerce Group’s 17th annual event for b2b directory and data publishers. Themes ranged from improving lead-generation applications of directories, the importance of understanding the workflow needs of your customers, and the overarching theme of how over time technology is commoditizing content.
The keynote speaker at Data Content09, Sharon Rowlands, CEO of Penton Media, described how she has aligned Penton by markets and is undertaking a thorough customer analysis to understand how the company’s information can be integrated into customer workflow and improve productivity. Sharon described why in today’s economy, in order to rise above commodity status, publishers need to offer point-of-need solutions that are tailored to each segment of their user base. Standalone reference works and print publications may still play a role, but it is an increasingly marginal one.
The final session of Data Content09 presented four examples of companies that are employing IT to their advantage. These companies (Capterra, KnowWho , Skyscape, and EDA) effectively use technology to move up the value chain. Publishers need to ask themselves how their data can be put to use to make their customers more productive: for example, can their data be integrated into the customer’s supply chain process or sales pipeline process? Or can technology and Web 2.0 tools help improve the quality of the data that are provided, through reviews and ratings, deeper verification, or mash-ups with related content? In some cases, it’s as simple as offering a mobile version or including video or interactive quizzes to enhance the experience for the user.
Forward-looking publishers recognize the inevitability of commoditization of information due to better, cheaper, and faster IT and digital distribution. These leaders use the commoditization trend (“the race to the bottom” in the words of Barry Graubart from Alacra) to their advantage by scouting more and more free inputs for their higher value information packages, and they know how to use commodity-level information as a marketing tool.
For more on the topic of content commoditization and the importance of moving up the content value chain, see the slides from my e-Patient Connections 2009 presentation (esp. slides 7-11). Although focused on the opportunities in the health content sector, these slides apply to all types of information.
Also, for detailed examples from the companies that presented at Data Content09, full video of the sessions for those who were unable to attend are available for purchase here.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Headline Commentary October 19-31
- Posted October 31st 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Usage of free PHR services hasn’t yet taken off. Peter Neupert of MSFT hints that wider adoption of IT by physicians and better connectedness between the stakeholders are needed before the value of using PHRs is obvious enough to incent consumers to adopt them.
Does technology interrupt the communication between doctors & patients? That’s the question posed by this book. Sounds interesting.
Short article on health IT with focus on MSFT. Quotes Peter Neupert, MSFT Health head.
New site that compiles info about neuroscience research.
Nice brief overview of EHR solutions for smaller practices with a description of some of the vendors.
Great example of the how new sources of data will transform medical research.
AMedNews writes up the recent PWC report on secondary data from EMRs. This is a major focus of ours at Health Content Advisors.
Jay Parkinson on specialized providers v. general hospitals.
Keas expands through partnership programs with CVS Caremark (MinuteClinics), Quest, and now Partners Healthcare.
Review of Adam Bosworth’s company, Keas, which uses custom “care plans” that collect personal data - directly or indirectly.
Bob Stern, founder of MedPage Today, delivers his perspective on how medical societies that publish research and organize medical conferences inhibit distribution of research information, much of which is funded by tax dollars via NIH, HHS, NSF, etc. The current model is undergoing a slow but steady transformation, which I think is accelerating.
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.
CVS Caremark offers mobile site that includes access to medication history, drug info, special offers, and driving directions/phone numbers of CVS pharmacies or MinuteClinics.
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?
Hope Leman writes an enthusiastic review of American Well, the online healthcare service that provides access to medical professionals from home and handles billing, too.
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.
Good overview of status of standards for ensuring that secondary data produced by EHRs will be useful for research purposes.
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.
long article on why “lifestyle” medicine is needed to reduce costs and improve outcomes. Note, focus on healthy behavior is gaining traction in large part because of the research that can be conducted on electronic health records of patients.
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
HealthGuru Media raises additional $3.2 M from Castile Ventures and Village Ventures. VV’s Po Beabody is co-founder/Chairman
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.
Due to “operating” costs (and debt loads from med school) MDs less likely to go into solo practices.
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.
Birmingham, AL based MEDSEEK listed 455 in Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500. MEDSEEK provides patient portals for hospitals and claims >650 hospital clients.
WK Health announces new customer who will use Provation, now branded as Provation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support.
PEHub reports that IMS Health is in talks with PE firms to sell the company. IMS shares surged almost 22% yesterday (10/19)
UnitedHealth exceed analyst estimates despite declines in #insured, due to increases at drug unit.
Prof Teisberg on why gov’ts shouldn’t legislate comparative effectiveness requirements. Essentially because of variation in outcomes. Focus should be on value for each patient.
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).
With goal of trimming 100 positions in newsroom, NY Times editor Bill Keller offers buyout to entire newsroom staff. If fewer than 100 respond, they’ll have layoffs.
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.
CDW Healthcare, Vernon Hills, IL, partners with Cerner to market EHR solutions to physician practices.
presentation materials from Sept 24, 2009 webcasts on CAHPS Clinician and Group Survey
Wow! AstraZeneca seeks 5,000+ sales people to “self identify” their interest in taking buyout.
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.
Epic and Apple working together on Mobile EHR project.
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.
Great review of new iPhone version of Merck Manual Home Health Handbook.
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.
Akaza Research, provider of OpenClinica 3.0 open source s/w for clinical trials, adds electronic data capture features.
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.
More proof that medical apps are far ahead of any other professional (b2b) mobile apps.
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.
Although there’s resistance, trend toward incentives for following healthy behavior is on the increase.
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.
Halamka reports on latest HIT standards Committee meeting.
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.
Quantified Self, group that advocates and facilitates patients to track health and wellness data about themselves, names impressive advisory board.
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.
iTriage, an iPhone app from Healthagen, offers info on wait times at ERs and info about providers (hospitals). Providers pay to be listed with marketing info.
RightHealth is dba name of Kosmix, a Mt. View California search technology company that initially focused on the health space.
MedSeek announces recent deals for installations of their consumer information portals in hospitals.
Digitas Health lists 140 possible uses of Twitter in healthcare. Nice.
Review of recent conference on Personalized Health at Ohio State.
Florida-based video sharing site that posts videos for docs to use for patient education.
Deloitte offers database and analytic tools on pharma/biosciences alliances.
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