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Archive for the ‘medical devices’ 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 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 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 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 6-13
- Posted December 13th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Press Ganey acquires Patient Impact, announced 12/6/09. Patient Impact to become the unit specializing in physician practice & outpatient surveys. More details to come. Note, Patient Impact was a Health Content Innovator and presented at our Health Content08 conference: http://www.infocommercegroup.com/healthcontent/index.html
Headline says it all. Gary dissects an actual memo used with TV journalists that promotes tying recent medical research to exaggerated claims of short-term benefits–and the specifically recommends against mentioning research labs or clinical work.
No doubt CME needs a redesign to change the current heavy subsidies by Pharma.
Article on the new building extension of MIT’s media lab designed by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. Contrasts Maki’s style of open space with lots of glass to original IM Pei buildling with limited windows. Interesting metaphor for move of technology from “black box” to enabling and thriving on “transparency”.
Article questions the affordability of new cancer drug, Folotyn, produced by Allos Therapeutics. Allos says price is in line with other specialty treatments and so far health insurers have agreed to cover it to treat aggressive tumors. Shines light on problem of high cost of developing drugs, but doesn’t offer any solutions.
An indictment of doctors and drug companies that promote drug interventions for preventive care. Uses example of hormone drug replacement for women.
Ad Age lists top magazines that have ceased publishing in 2009.
References CBO study (with link) that describes the allocation of marketing $$ to detailing, CME support, DTC and a measly $400 M in professional journals. Journals publishers need to reinvent themselves as a vehicle for reaching doctors/clinicians.
EBSCO’s DynaMed write-up on breast cancer screening. I don’t find their analysis and coverage very helpful.
Conversation between Milken and Pfizer CEO Kindler
Reports of small survey of device manufacturers; results show that social media isn’t yet part of the marketing mix for device companies.
John Moore writes a brief post about MSFT’s announcement of long-term care provider Golden Living’s adoption of Amalga & HealthVault.
Some commentary on benefits of move to ICD10 codes.
McClellan, former CMS adminstrator, MD, and PhD economist, will keynote Advanstar’s Center for Business Intelligence (CBI)’s Annual Strategic Medicare Policy Summit.
Good overview with links to other stories about Pharma’s slowness in developing mobile apps.
Nancy McKinstry interview: journals renewals are strong even with price increases; hospitals are spending more capital in 2009 than 2008 in anticipation of ARRA funds to come in 2010.
Note, this is the first I’ve heard of ebizMBA, who writes on their site that ebizMBA is “an eBusiness knowledgebase that helps you find the webs best ansers to your online business questions on topics ranging from online marketing and analytics to website development and venture capital”. To their credit, they offer some indication of the parameters they use to measure popularity.
Humana will establish MinuteClinic for its own employees and will encourage all members to use MinuteClinic for basic screening tests for cholesterol, blood pressure, bmi–and will couple basic screenings with its own LifeSynch health coaching.
Ovid to announce Universal Search, which allows clients to search across Ovid and client’s other internal databases in single search. Nice development.
WebMD, HealthVault (MSFT) and GoogleHealth comprise the panel moderated by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn. About 50 minutes long. Worth a look.
Not surprising to hear that Informa has decided against going forward with bid for Springer. Debt levels of Springer make the deal hard to digest and current Springer owners PE firms Candover and Cinven want a sale to conclude quickly. If PE company acquires Springer, perhaps they would sell off pieces.
Very good analysis of trends in IT research. Essentially says that high priced IT research reports are becoming commoditized and used for lead gen that is paid for by vendors. Analysts can still make money consulting, firms can put on events, and carry out customized research. Totally in line with my writings and demonstrated in the content value pyramid in my Publishing for e-Patients preso (on Slideshare/janicemc). Like comment about individual analysts becoming branded more so than firms. Agree there, too.
Dow Jones Venturesource reports Q2 2009 VC investments by industry. Healthcare the best performer and it outpaces IT for first time on record.
Kent Bottles provides excellent summary of recent lecture by David Eddy, MD (the “founder” of EBM) who has consistently challenged the robustness of existing methods of clinical decision guidelines. Dr. Eddy believes the future requires more complex models that consider a larger number of factors and interactions that in effect provide more personalized medical treatment. Eddy’s own company, Archimedes, builds “virtual patients” that can be used for complex modeling of probable outcomes. I don’t know enough about Archimedes to judge its efficacy, but I think Eddy has the right approach. We know that more data are available about patients and outcomes and will accelerating adoption of EHRs, the amount of data will expand rapidly. Along with the improved data sources, there is clearly a need for more complex models to analyze the data and test the benefits of medical treatments.
Good article with data and charts on changes in pharma sales & marketing over time and expected effects of health reform on pharma sales techniques.
Comprehensive article on HSAs and high-deductible health plans.
Perspective on whether use of EMRs reduce liability for physicians. Focuses on discounts offered by insurance cos to doctors and practices that use EMRs.
Schein will merge its animal health business with Butler; Schein to own 50.1%.
Press releases doesn’t provide many details; I will look at Elsevier site soon. Embase is an index to biomedical research; relaunching as standalone product seems old-world.
Good article that mentiones pricedoc.com, healthcarebluebook.com, and outofpocket.com, sites that provide info on prices for various procedures or office visits by doctor.
Story about Full Yield, a wellness program for employers that provides its own food & nutrition programs. Story describes how Safeway, IBM, Pitney Bowes and others have saved money on health care costs via wellness programs. Major issue, however, is that these are companies that self-insure.
Another story that critiques overly simple health care rating schemes. IMO, ratings needs to be based on analysis of outcomes, using real data, not observations from a third-party, which are subject to error.
A one-sided critique of the shortcomings of EHR/EMR systems from Huffington Post. Whereas I agree that there are shortcomings, a more balanced report would have more credibility. Still, it offers some good basic info on what the feds are trying to do with ARRA funding.
Excellent post and comments. I just added my own comment (7th in list).
Article mentions strong interest in healthcare sector by PE. Do PE professionals smell, taste and feel an opportunity in healthcare, too?
Good commentary on public reaction to public health announcements and EBM. More “infodemiology”, that is, providing trustworthy information and monitoring public response to epidemics, is needed.
Excellent video presentation by Peter Norvig of Google. Data, semantics, search and much more.
IDC Health Insights report on EHR vendors ($4,500)
Interesting article and site (which I just discovered) about opportunities in scientific/medical writing and journalism. Site focuses on female scientists.
Sponsored by Google, survey lists most popular resources used to find medical info. Surprise! Search engine/Google is at the top, followed by peer-reviewed journals. No category for online clinical information resources, such as UpToDate, MDConsult, DynaMed, as far as I can see. If no breakout were given on survey, Search Engine category may incorporate these resources too.
Money-Driven Medicine site with free streaming version of the movie. Nice example of offering free streaming with promo for the paid DVD.
FDA would need legislative action to approve new db, but given the ability to track more data from electronic records and online user-input, federal db makes sense.
More on Informa bid for Springer from FT, which quotes analyts.
Study of search behavior indicates that online search is often used to confirm or refute one’s internal knowledge. Hm, sounds rather Bayesian to me.
With over 2.1B Euros in debt (8X EBITA), Springer is a loaded target. Bids are expected to be under 400M Euros. But bigger question is: is there sustained value in publishers of scholarly research, an sector that is being disrupted by new models of scholarly communication and research?
Good review of press related to new mammogram guidelines. Interesting that so many who say they want EBM, object when they don’t like the data. “Don’t like” often means they stand to lose business or stature.
Zynx Health’s order sets will be integrated with Keane’s Optimum EHR system thru this partership. Another example of embedding EBM info into EHRs.
Article describes how students are sharing for-fee medical articles in a Napster-type environment.
“It” in this case, is the information in medical journal articles. Really good article about what could be done to help add context to each medical journal article that reports on new research so that journalists, patients, and even doctors can better understand the implications.
With pressure from patient groups and regulators, hospitals have make significant progress in reducing hospital-acquired patient infections. Checklists and focus on solving the problem (using best practices from other institutions as one means) are noted as key to changing the procedures and culture at hospitals.
Study performed by Prof. Ashish Jha at HSPH and Catherine DesRoches at MGH indicates that using EHRs makes little difference in outcomes. This article goes on to point out that researchers also focus on the importance of changing processes & culture in hospitals to benefit from positive effects of using EMRs/EHRs. I’d add that hospitals and hospital systems that incorporate clinical information systems (order sets, point-of-care CDS) are more likely tho demonstrate improved outcomes. At this stage, not enough evidence-based content has been incorporated into EMR/EHRs.
MD who wrote this post suggests that Kolata’s article is biased toward the big pharma position, since her only sources were from pharma.
Headline Commentary Nov 9-22
- Posted November 22nd 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Very good article by Linda Peitzman, MD, CMO (Medical) of Wolters Kluwer Health on benefits of order sets. Article provides some detail on how to implement order sets to ensure everyone receives latest most current version. Note, hour long interview with Linda, Nancy Greengold (of Hearst Business Media and co-founder of Zynx Health), Sundeep Karnik (fmr VP Strategy Elsevier Health) and Gary Kennedy, CEO of Remedy MD can be found here: http://www.berkerynoyes.com/pages/innovations_in_evidence_based_medicine.aspx
InformationWeek profiles Transparent health Network, which is compiling prices for direct purchases of healthcare services by patients.
IL launches its hospital compare site. Article points out that public ratings rarely reflect quality of care.
Flybridge invests in woman-owned pilates equipment seller, which has sold over $500M in equip on QVC over the past 12 years.
WSJ writes about new x-discipline collaboration among research scientists. Key point relates to how these scientists are creating their own databases. No mention of third party publishers in this new world of data-driven research.
Workflow study that follows patient through hospital identifies areas for improvement.
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn reviews recent study by Buck Consultants on growth of wellness programs in a variety of countries and compares the priorities of each country’s wellness programs. US is only one where cost-saving is key objective.
Brian Ahier writes about recent developments in electronic healthcare records with a focus on Practice Fusion and GoogleHealth’s attempts to offer patient info that is consistent with physician info.
Matt Holt comments on Practice Fusion’s announcement of patient portal to coincide with their free EHR s/w.
John Moore of Chilmark Research, who moderated closing panel, recaps the day’s highlights. I’ll add that John did a very good job on the last panel, which included Esther Dyson, Steve Munini COO Dossia, Fred Smith of CDC, and George Willock, CEO of HealthString. Audience appreciated the focus on the patient (Adam Bosworth did focus on patient, too). I believe it was Esther who said: “the patient is the most important input into health decisions”. She mentioned the “quantified self” movement and Society for Participatory Medicine also got a plug. This was the most forward-looking session that addressed social media and the exploding amount of new data that will be available for analysis.
Very good video by Nobel laureate in biochemistry, Paul Nurse, who makes the point of the importance of recording healthcare outcomes and analyzing data to prevent misunderstandings based on false correlations. He uses the vaccination scare as an example.
DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth) is one of two $20 million awards made this year as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) DataNet program. The collaboration of universities and government agencies coalesced to address the mounting need for organizing and serving up vast amounts of highly diverse and inter-related but often incompatible scientific data. Resulting studies will range from research that illuminates fundamental environmental processes to identifying environmental problems and potential solutions.
Good balanced view of response to recent breast cancer screening guidelines.
Center for Ix Therapy, which was represented at our first Health Content07 conference, to shut down Nov 30, 2009. The Center was small organization with limited resources, and suffered from trying to define a space that already existed and was far more widespread and diverse than their definition of Ix Therapy.
Lois Wingerson writes about Healthcamp NYC and ePatients.
Wonder what Lexis and Westlaw will say about this?
HR and billing IT apps are helping hospitals save money that can be applied to clinical improvements.
Makes sense. FDA and other govt sources are not best at marketing and distribution. Everyday Health (Waterfront Media) can take on that role to extend reach of FDA info.
Latest version of Allscripts (version 11) was launched before it was debugged. HDM asks if Allscripts has overreached its grasp since its merger with Misys. Note also the prices for the KLAS reports: $980 for providers; $11,850 for others!
Grove, former CEO of Intel, promotes concept of new degree to help accelerate the cycle from medical research discoveries to mass production of new treatments. Essentially, Grove wants to combine skills of researchers and engineers to disrupt current cycle that can take many years from bench research to broad availability.
ModernMed, a concierge medical service in Milwaukee, launches with 2 primary care MDs. Founder believes healthcare costs can be controlled via effective primary care.
Physician posits that dependence on checklists may not be to the benefit of good patient care if insufficient attention to individual patients is paid.
CambridgeSoft, which provides IT solutions for pharma BI (esp R&D), receives funding from Health Evolution Partner (David Brailer’s PE company). CambridgeSoft is touting its SaaS solution for pharma & chemical research.
Gary slams the morning TV shows for their promotion of junk information about weight-loss and other health issues. I agree that for the most part, TV news health info is superficial and very seldom put in context. Wouldn’t it be great if the money were spent on disseminating helpful information and pointing people to more trustsworthy sources?
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to boost data sharing among its various programs that have common functions using the Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) and the nationwide health information network (NHIN).” Sounds reasonable…
How much information is optimal to share between patients & doctors? Great comments here.
Good article that points out the importance of system change (behavior change) for checklists and the like to be effective.
Article makes the point that it’s great that gov’t agencies are providing more open data, but that data needs to be put in context and displayed in an engaging manner to really have full impact. And that, dear publishers, is what you should be doing…
Another outstanding post by DC patient, who writes that een though she is an engaged patient, she never would have thought to file reports of adverse effects (AE) via FDA’s MedWatch. Her comments make it pretty clear that the MedWatch channel is not effective for monitoring Rx AEs. Patients consider many factors before they single out any particular cause.
Excellent round-up of Day 1 of FDA hearings on social media use by Pharma.
Another story on the funding for Caring.com which recently acquired the Gilbert Guide.
CVS sees value in studying interaction between genes and medication for its PBM business and for its end-customers.
Google’s proposed ad format for Pharma ads. Presented at FDA’s hearing on social media.
Dr. Pauline Chen’s column about the decline in # docs who want to go into primary care. In large part, it’s due to large number of routine cases they deal with and the amount of paperwork and coordination required. Of course, pay is an issue too. This ties with articles I’ve published about the commodization of routine health care enabled by health IT. Programming routine tasks and allowing nurses and other clinicians to take over these tasks should relieve primary care physicians of the “burden” of routine tasks.
Forrester’s CEO on how old media needs to reinvent itself for digital world where customers decide what is valuable.
Nice rundown of vetted sources of online health information from medical librarians.
Explorys, a start-up search engine, partners with Cleveland Clinic to develop search/analytics tool for patient records.
David Blumenthal’s latest statement on goals of the ONC for interoperability of electronic health records.
Chris Truelove’s review of 1st morning of #FDASM
linking patient data and related information
Very good article and great comments on hurdles that impede implementation of electronic health records/electronic medical records.
Live webcast of FDA’s hearing on use of Internet and Social Media Tools by FDA-regulated Medical Products, Nov. 12-13. Much anticipated meeting on topic of use of online media by Pharma and other FDA-regulated companies.
Geonetric survey lists top objectives of patient portals created by hospitals.
More outlets for distributing health and fitness gear as focus on wellness and prevention increases.
Pretty interesting application. Not as far-fetched as it seems.
No matter the outcome on ONC pronouncements about meaningful use, CCHIT, the certifying board for EMR/EHR systems, is continuing to play its previous role. CCHIT describes itself as a “community” and believes they offer meaningful services to small hospitals and group practices.
Lots of info on various IT standards for EMR/EHRs
Comments on Erik Engstrom’s new position as CEO of parent company Reed Elsevier. Engstrom has been CEO of Elsevier, the STM group of RE, for some time. Smart and analytical, I think he’s a good choice.
CareMedic, a Florida revenue cycle management (RCM) company, to be acquired by UnitedHealth’s Ingenix group. Ingenix now has near end-to-end platform for managing every step of the revenue cycle, from patient registration to reimbursement.
Well, even though someone’s gotta pay for the production and dissemination of information, I don’t like this alliance and don’t believe AAFP can be objective in its research on effect of sugary soft drinks if Coke is the sponsor.
WaPo on how some people may overreact to info they find on online health sites. Writer overreacts a bit herself in implying that online resources shouldn’t be used to help diagnose one’s condition. Agree that health literacy is needed; that is, consumers need better training to vet health resources. But, we’ll have hypochondriacs in the real and virtual worlds. Not everyone will gain the same benefits from online health resources.
Google now incorporating dat aon flu shot availability and mashing it up with Google Maps to illustrate where flu shots are currently available. Note, Google is compiling info provided by clinics. More proof positive that Goog is a content publisher.
SDI Health, a PA company that provides healthcare data analytics services, receives funding from Tailwind Capital.
FastIgnite site offers tools for start-up companies to calculate pre-money valuation, vesting, and more.
Article on lack of transparency in reporting health research and health statistics.
CareFocus, parat of the Clinical Xpert suite of CDS workflow solutions from Thomson Reuters (fmly Mercury MD) extends functionality of product line.
Narrated slide slow illustrating new features of reports on Patients Like Me. Impressive.
Dr. Danny Sands on why he believes in participatory medicine and informed patients.
PhRMA proposes methods for verifying FDA-approved data in health info provided to consumers. FDA logo on sites?
Good concise review of Merck Manual Professional Ed. for iPhone
Excellent slide deck that describes influence of social media in healthcare: pharma, med school, epatients, doctors, nurses.
Describes use of mobile devices to monitor steadiness of eldery to prevent falls. Good descriptions of how data from monitoring devices can be used in research to vastly improved current snapshot approach of medical research.
Focus on shortage of primary care doc and how nurses will take on more resposibility. Agree, but shortage isn’t the source of problem. Rather, commoditization of basic medical care & procedures due to digitization of health care info is source of change. See piece on “heatlh content is rapidly becoming a commoditiy” in my blog at Health Content Advisors.
Merck offers iPhone app that allows chemo patients to track symptons, etc.
Sermo creates community on practice management topics for docs to share info about healthIT and the business issues of running a practice. There are even CME activities with 8 module curriculum titled: The New Business of Medicine.
Chief scientist at Endeca, a specialist in faceted search, joins Google.
Microsoft will launch a video web series on health IT beginning Nov 11, 2009.
Review of data.gov with emphasis on healthcare data.
Long interview with David Brailer, now a PE exec, fmly Director ONC.
Emap titles Health Servie Journal and Nursing Times partners with Doctors.net.uk to share content and conduct research.
Anne Woods promoted to CNO (Chief Nursing Officer) at WK Health. She’s responsible for nursing strategy across Medical Research & journals publishing businesses.
Hope Leman’s interview w/ John Sharp of Cleveland Clinic.
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.
Headline Commentary Oct 12-18
- Posted October 18th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Paul Sheils, who has led many top quality healthinfo-related companies in the past, named CEO of DocSite. DocSite provides “modular, upgradeable, affordable, Web-based tools tied to evidence-based guidelines”. Interesting.
CEO of OptumHealth’s Care Solutions group describes their programs to encourage healthy behavior before and after health care is needed.
HealthGrades latest annual study of patient outcomes by hospital.
Webmedx, which transcribes doctors’ voice recordings, implements new system powered by MarkLogic to create indexed data that can be fed into other apps.
Intuit’s Quicken Health Bill Pay partners with Allscripts to improve efficiency of patient billing. With better information provider to patients about what they owe, bills are being paid faster and can be paid online.
Phase Forward signs Hungarian pharma company, Gedeon Richter, to multi-year deal for PF’s clinical trial management s/w.
RWJF funds Kaiser’s biobank, the largest and most diverse repository of data genetic data that includes info on lifestyle and environmental factors.
Incentives for employees to participate in wellness programs are growing. Safeway is an example of a company that offers financial rewards to employees who achieve certain wellness goals. To encourage similar programs, health reform legislation will increase existing limits for rewards. This amendment is becoming known as the “Safeway Amendment”.
Great article on imporantance of teaching students how to mine through and analyze data–an increasingly important skill especially in medical research.
John Sharp’s presentation at Cleveland Clinic seminar on how IT is transforming medical practice and research. Good preso with good examples.
Lawrence Lessig warns that complete transparency of govt data will lead to misuse of data by those who draw incorrectclusions. Sunlight foundation begs to differe. My point: access to govt data provides opportunity for data publishers to build quality info products and market them.
Article on MD who won HHS contest to prepare a PSA on H1N1. Dr. Clarke wrote a rap music PSA. Links to Youtube video of him performing the short video included.
How access to info–and especially DTC ads–help drive up costs by increasing demand for tests, procedures and drugs.
Among issues mentioned in article, complexity of medical knowledge and explosion of # of journal articles.
Harvard launches new mobile apps on public health, starting with H1N1 info.
Headline Commentary Aug 24-30
- Posted August 30th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Excellent article that emphasizes that providing information to stakeholders (esp. patients and doctors) is the best approach to assuring optimal decisionmaking.
ER MD writes about loss of relationships between doctors & patients & how increased use of hospitalists may have contributed.
Market forecast for medical device segment in France.
Good article that describe recent instances of data center projects by providers.
More examples of how Pharma is using social media.
Good news for PE companies.
New book forthcoming from Sage Publications, Encylopedia of Medical Decision Making. Seems like an obvious good online reference work.
John Hussman, founder of Hussman Econometric Advisors, pledges $20M to U. Miami for genetic research. Genetics center has been renames John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics.
Profile of Gawande from Harvard Magazine.
Dana Blankenhorn on how Fast Forward (a medical foundation) uses SaaS computing.
James Murdoch lambasts publishing industry for resisting change.
Site with info on generic drug programs of various pharmacies.
A little counterpoint to all of the pharma industry bashing that’s been in the news recently. IMO, some incentives should be shifted to encourage development of needed drugs & not just me-too drugs.
Vendors of EHR systems for large hospitals are now targeting smaller providers, since 95% of large hospitals have already chosen EHR vendor. Cerner, Epic, Eclipsys, and Siemens are 4 big vendors singled out.
Deloitte’s whitepaper on how pharma could make use of data from EHRs to improve their research, clinical trials, and post-market surveillance processes.
Links to reports by Berkman Center on copyright policies at private foundations.
Heart monitor that detects, analyzes & stores info about patient’s heart. AngelMed Guardian. Smart devices are a growth segment.
Good evidence that healthcare analytics companies are well-positioned, with or without health reform. Private sector will increasingly study effectiveness of treatments using outcomes data & comparing them to costs.
WSJ points to Business Week article on biggest R&D spenders. Merck led the pharma cos, but much of their R&D expenses went to licensing, not internal drug discovery.
Editor & Publisher on ebooks and newspapers. To read.
Minnesota provides website with price info on primary care services, labs, etc for over 100 providers.
Good article on the placebo effect.
Interesting case where patient’s wife suggested experimental treatment that eventually was accepted. She wants $300M plus % of profits.
PharmaTimes reports that NEJM editor, Dr. Jeffrey Drazen and BMJ editor, Dr. Fiona Godlee, will argue next month at Oxford Union that clinical trials should not be conducted by the pharma companies that are developing the drugs due to conflict of interest.
United Health promotes compliance with Rx drugs with discount off next Rx. Negotiated lower prices with pharma companies, which will also benefit from long-term compliance.
American heatlh Care Association reports on letter sent by 31 state attys general to HHS sec’y Sebelius to critique CMS Nursing Home Five Star Rating System, which was put in place at the end of the last administration.
Experiment to charge minimal fee vs. free shows that far more will accept free than fee. But, isn’t segmenting the audience the right path?
Description of how Intuit’s QuickHeatlh helps consumers interpret medical expenses; esp. useful for high deductible plans with HSAs.
Hope Leman reviews the book Internet Cool Tools for Physicians, which I have been planning to read since it came out. Thanks Hope, I’ll do my best to remember to order it the next time I’m on Amazon.
Gary Price summarizes program for 8/28 conference at UC Berkeley about Google Books Settlement.
Free whitepaper from Manhattan Research on Pharma use of digital marketing.
iAtros introduces eRoentgen, an iPhone app that helps in choosing best imaging test.
Article includes comments from Susannah Fox of Pew & ePatient Dave (deBronkart) about finding experimental medicine and specialist doctors to combat fatal diagnoses.
More reason to combat obesity: the research shows it leads to shrinkage of the brain, esp. areas used for decisionmaking.
U. Washington dept that studies global healthcare, funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center finds that “universal floor” where multiple patient types are grouped and care is coordinated by nurses. Sounds like the old model with a twist.
Dr. Vince Kuraitis describes the foundations of a “network economy” and asks if healthcare industry fits the bill.
EPub versions of 1 million books now available on Google. EPub offers some advantages over PDF versions.
Study attempts to measure level of empathy (or lack of empathy) in medical students. Thesis and conclusions are rather scary.
Long and quite detailed critique of WebMD the Magazine. Author criticizes the “woman’s magazine” nature of WebMD’s mag (and I would extend the comment to much of what is on the website for consumers). In efforts to make the information entertaining, author says that WebMD crosses the line by not providing scientific basis and important related information for much of the editorial info in the publication. Author also criticizes the acceptance of advertising by questionnable vendors. IMO, it is unfortunate that too much of the info provided on so-called consumer health portals is similar to the info that Dr. Atwood criticizes in this article. There’s a big gap between the scientific literature and the material produced for consumer audiences. Far too little info is published for intelligent motivated consumer/patients.
Interesting & worthwhile read about the future of scholarly publishing. Author posits that old model of journals publishing will be replaced by open model with actual usage metrics replacing journal impact factors.
From Medical Connectivity, brief article on how doctors are using Twitter to communicate with patients. Best for mass communication, such as public health alerts and distributing info on clinical trials.
Program for AHRQ’s upcoming conference (Sept. 13-16). Registration is closed; it’s a sellout.
MIT lab turns toys into med devices. Good use of design expertise.
US Bank offers HSA with access to WebMD Coverage Advisor, which helps consumers manage out of pocket costs.
manage out of pocket costs.
Some research on effectiveness of free text (fulltext) search v. search via taxonomies like MeSH in Medline. Results indicate that fulltext performs as well. My comment: combination is likely the most effective!
Hospitals are finding that reporting medical errors and making the info easily available helps reduce the number of malpractice lawsuits. Transparency helps!
BI lays off pharma sales reps and more layoffs are purportedly planned.
Important issues about how doctors communicate to patients risks & tradeoffs using statistics described in this paper.
High profile case where quality of life v. cost could be debated. Not everyone can afford the treatment Ted Kennedy received, nor will everyone want it.
Suggested reading from RWJF.
A group of predictions for the future; some health oriented, some not.
Interesting comparative study of using 3 different medical search platforms: Dialog (ProQuest), OVID (WK) and EBSCOhost. Same search gave different results, with Dialog returning more than twice as many results as others.
Embedded IT trainers to help with transition to Eclipsys was key.
Wired UK highlights how doctors & hospitals are using Twitter in UK & US.
Information Week lays out basics of enterprise business management that should be applied to health care IT.
Article provides good context for current activity in managing hospital supply chains. Several stories in past week about purchasing cooperatives to reduce cost of supplies.
Sec’y Health in MA writes about Rand report that provides analysis of 12 possible interventions with highest likelihood of reducing costs. Link to full report included.
Survey of medical students by Epocrates shows high usage of health IT, low confidence in info provided by pharma detailers.
Amer Assoc Family Physicians (AAFP) has launced Delta-Exchange, a social networking site for primary care physicians.
AMA uses Impelsys’ iPublishCentral s/w to publish frequently updated versions of its books in ebook format.
Forbes appears to be pro-public utility for healthcare info exchange in this article. Patrick Soon-Shiong describes reducing the gap between medical research and clinical use (translational medicine), a topic that I just noted in the post about the Army & Navy project at Walter Reed.
Army & Navy doctors collaborate real-time with medical researchers on wound care for injured soldiers–bridging the time gap in tradtional “translational medicine”.
Kodak partners with MMR (MyMedicalRecords.com) to resell Kodak scanning technology for digitizing and importing paper records into EHRs.
NaviNet, a Cambridge, MA claims clearinghouse vendor (RCM) (formerly known as NaviMedix), is promoting its clearninghouse services as preliminary health info exchange (HIE). Currently, EDI is limited to certain payment-related data types, but NaviNet suggests that scope could be increased. Their argument: Why recreate the EDI wheel if the basic network is already in place?
Article in chicago Sun Times says 28% of those seeking health insurance will look online to find providers. eHealthInsurance is profiled.
Informatics Corp. of America (ICA) partners with Mark Logic to offer OEM version of Mark Logic server to allow users to search across structured and unstructured data in EHR systems.
Wikimedia is testing a new policy that will insert an editorial review step before articles about living people are published or modified.
iMedX, a US-based EHR/ medical transcription outsourcing company, acquires Worldtech, Inc., a competing health IT/med transcription company that serves over 800 small physician practices in US and has global medical language specialists. Worldtech will become a division of iMedX.
Rx Ohio Collaborative (RxOC), a coop for group purchasing of Rx drugs, expands to include all Ohio public sector entities & now has about 12 participants. RxOC replaces independent PBMs and is expended to yield greater savings.
P&G to sell prescription drug businesses to Warner Chilcott for $3.1 B. Warner Chilcott, an Irish company that specializes in drugs for women’s health, has annual rev. of $938M. Deal will increase size of WC by huge percentage. P&G’s strategy is to sell off slower-growing units to focus on growth.
Aon survey shows that cost of claims paid in 2010 will increase 10.5% over 2009. Many employers say they won’t pass higher costs onto employees (and some employers won’t have higher premiums due to composition of their insured base) since employees have already taken so many hits in pay freezes & increased co-pays. I like this quote: “Employer contributions are not gifts, they’re part of total compensation. And if you end up having a more expensive health benefit that your employer pays most of, that means that your wages aren’t going up as fast as they would have” (Joseph Antos, AEI).
Healthland, a health IT solutions provider to small rural hospitals, acquires American Healthnet, an Omaha based health IT company to expand its customer base. Last year, Healthland acquired Advanced Professional Software.
Brief article on Microsoft’s increasing activity in health/biotech space.
Scary to read that many doctors don’t know when they are prescribing for off-label uses. David Williams suggests pharma detailing/marketing is cause.
Change:healthcare, a Health Content08 Innovator, is selected by Keystone Insititute for Translational Medicine as partner in consortium to help bridge gap between scientific discoveries in medicine and clinical practice. Congratulations Chris Parks, CEO, change:healthcare!
Good piece about using patient-generated data in medical research. Although not as controlled as clinical trials, certainly better reporting mechanisms can be created to increase the usefulness of real-world health conditions and outcomes data.
To read: article on Drupal, a popular open source CMS for Web publishers. Talks about their business model.
Excellent article that describes how iPhone and other wireless apps are being used by nurses in clinical settings.
NaturalNews.com has launched NaturalPedia.com, a wiki with contributions from hundreds of individual authors on topics related to natural health, wellness, and disease. Note, minimal testing of NaturalPedia indicates that it is primarily a shopping site with content used to refer readers to books and other content for sale. The wiki format is clever and the site seems very steeped in contextual advertising. Natural Health is headed by Mike Adams.
Headline Commentary June 8-14
- Posted June 14th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Obama administration says it can find $313 B in healthcare savings to help pay for reforms.
UK “Power of Information” taskforce invited Tim Berners-Lee to advise on opening access to UK govt data.
John Moore summarizes his thoughts on the recent Microsoft Connected Health conf. Key point: MSFT has shifted some focus from consumer apps to enterprise apps, in large part because of the faster uptake & more clear business models.
David E. Williams comments on the need to focus on the “content” or “information” side of the IT equation, not just the technology. In particular, he points to how clinical decision support systems (CDS) benefit from application of technology to info. This is the mantra of Health Content Advisors. We’re glad to see more industry analysts poiont out the need to put attention on the “I” in “IT” .
Allhealthcarejobs.com, which was launched in 2006 and is reported to have sales <$1M, is acquired by jobs site Dice Holdings for $2.8 million.
John Halamka’s post on first meeting of HIT Standards Committee on quality measures.
Sramana Mitra on some well-positioned health IT and health content companies. Mostly focused on IT companies that help to save costs.
Here’s an example of a publishing company’s looking at data it can extract from patterns of use of its content. Analysis doesn’t appear to have been done for purpose of creating a by-product, but online news sites should consider more offshoots from mining usage patterns on its sites.
AMA & Covisint are working together to build a portfolio of Web-bases services to physicians and on June 11, announced that the portal will be launched nationally in early 2010 and will provide a link to Microsoft’s HealthVault PHR platform.
Elsevier selects NextBio’s platform to enhance ScienceDirect, by allowing it to integrate search results from other online scientific data along with ScienceDirect results. NextBio is used by many top Pharma companies & research institutions.
Thomas H. Lee, MD writes about effect of IT on role of physician. Comparing what IT has done to publishing (and journalists), Dr. Lee posits that some basic functions of doctors can indeed be automated. This is an important theme and I will write more on this topic soon.
Dr. Chen writes about uses of social media (including Twitter) to motivate patients to comply with treatment and wellness plans.
LifeShirt,a wearable remote patient monitoring system, completes prototype of next-gen shirt. Current version embeds sensors to collect respiratory, cardiopulmonary, & other data from patient. Can also connect to peripheral devices and transmit data to vendor’s db for analysis. New version will integrate all sensors, extend battery life, & make upgrades easier. Sounds cool, but what about washability?
Varian says ’statisticians are sexy’ and ability to interpret and communicate trends from databases is critical skill in today’s business world.
Ed Felten’s suggestions for data.gov & general role of feds in serving as info provider. Great points: “Private actors….are better suited to deliver govt info to citizens and can constatnly create and reshape the tools individuals use to find and leverage public data.”
Lots of tips & references on using Twitter for HC journalists.
The government says sipping red wine improves the benefits. Glad to know I’m doing it right!
Single payer system = longer life expectancy?
Steve Outing provides a list of suggestions for newspaper company executives. Food for thought for publishers in other segments, too!
2nd in 3-part series on eprescribing.
Class action settlement against First DataBank (Hearst) that publishes benchmark drug prices and McKesson, a drug wholesaler, will result in some payments to consumers who bought these drugs, along with some price rollbacks, but not a significant change.
Good summary of new Pew reports with follow-up by Susanna Fox, Gilles Frydman, and more. I’ll dig into the report tomorrow.
Healthcare Informatics’ June issue with HCI 100 list of top health IT vendors.
Medseek, a provider of healthcare enterprise portals for hospitals, listed #72 in HCI 100 rankings.
Drug interaction/adverse effects info tool added to MSFT’s HealthVault.
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