HealthContentAdvisors

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?

Article questions the role of employers in sponsoring wellness programs that tie participation to financial incentives such as reduced premiums.

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.

Els adds SNIP and SJR to Scopus to provide more complete citation metrics.

Prof. Robert Fogel, U. Chicago, contends that healthcare costs are high because consumers demand the high-cost extras and innovation.

John Halamka’s brief description of the breakout of grant funding plans by ONC.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

John Sharp’s overview of Robt Wood Johnson Foundation’s new report on PHRs.

Commentary on why it is a positive sign that an MD is now leading Navigenics, a personalized genomics company.

Andrew Spong’s analysis of Twitter followers/followings of pharma companies.

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.

“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.”

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.

Brief review of Health IT Stimulus Summit sponsored by Health Data Management.

Review of Dr. Margaret Hamburg’s remarks from a recent speech where she emphasized need for more resources for regulating drugs to keep up with growth in research activity.

Good profile of Innocentive, a Boston area company headed by former Hoover’s CEO Dwayne Spradlin. Innocentive provides marketplace to bring together inventors and companies that seek solutions (largely life science companies). Companies post challenges they want solved; inventors post their fees for executing. Company’s goal is to improve the research process.

This is a very interesting move. Scientific news feed direct from major universities. See: www.futurity.org.

MDVIP respresents one of the new breed of physician practices that charge fixed fees for primary care, wellness & preventive care and offer more access to patients. Fees are far lower than typical high-deductible insurance premiums, but patients still need catastrophic coverage and have to pay for lab fees, etc. This new model of primary care, along with retail clinics, will be the major disrupters in healthcare delivery in US. Note, key reason cited for creating the new model: admin o/h expense of insurance claims processing.

Darin Steward of Oregon Health & Sciences Univ. writes very good overview of PHRs and coves the concept of “infodemiology” without using the term!

Librarian Loren MccRory questions the longevity of current for-fee subscription databases sold to public and academic libraries. With more good info available for free, why should libraries continue to buy “big deal” subscriptions of unknown value to their audience?

Atty General Jerry Brown unveils site that tracks prescription drug use to help physicians with durg interractions and to spot possible illegal drug abuse.

Dirk Stanley, MD, writes of his hospital’s experience with “Jedi Informaticists”, a special breed of clinical specialist who has crossover skills in health IT, healthcare analytics, and a workflow process mindset. Sounds like a systems analysts with subject specialty to me. He’s right that individuals with these crossovers skills are critical to successful EMR/EHR implementation and adoption. The right “Jedis” will see the big picture and focus on key success factors.

Published by Wiley with support from Aetna, Navigating Your Health Benefits is available for free.

Very helpful presentation by John Moore of Chilmark Research on state of personal health records (PHRs).

Malamud’s preso was a big hit; here’s the video.

MD describes why current system with 3rd party payers doesn’t lend itself to price transparency. Dr. Jindal suggests patients examine their EOB statements and note how much goes to doc v. insurance co. IMO, EOB statements are purposely designed to confuse, not explain and they impede transparency in pricing.

HealthLeaders writes about Data Advantage’s Hospital Value Index and suggests that hospitals have to adapt to increased scrutiny and pay-for-performance measures.

Just learned about Harvard’s suspension of funding for its Div. of Primary Care. Wow!

JAMA now requires independent review of data analysis in industry-sponsored research and has seen a dramatic drop in commercially-funded submissions.

Good comments on security as process not product.

ER MD writes about loss of relationships between doctors & patients & how increased use of hospitalists may have contributed.

Good article that describe recent instances of data center projects by providers.

Good news for PE companies.

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.

Dana Blankenhorn on how Fast Forward (a medical foundation) uses SaaS computing.

Site with info on generic drug programs of various pharmacies.

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.

Links to reports by Berkman Center on copyright policies at private foundations.

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.

Editor & Publisher on ebooks and newspapers. To read.

Good article on the placebo effect.

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.

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.

Description of how Intuit’s QuickHeatlh helps consumers interpret medical expenses; esp. useful for high deductible plans with HSAs.

Gary Price summarizes program for 8/28 conference at UC Berkeley about Google Books Settlement.

iAtros introduces eRoentgen, an iPhone app that helps in choosing best imaging test.

More reason to combat obesity: the research shows it leads to shrinkage of the brain, esp. areas used for decisionmaking.

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.

EPub versions of 1 million books now available on Google. EPub offers some advantages over PDF versions.

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.

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.

MIT lab turns toys into med devices. Good use of design expertise.

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!

BI lays off pharma sales reps and more layoffs are purportedly planned.

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.

A group of predictions for the future; some health oriented, some not.

Embedded IT trainers to help with transition to Eclipsys was key.

Information Week lays out basics of enterprise business management that should be applied to health care IT.

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.

Amer Assoc Family Physicians (AAFP) has launced Delta-Exchange, a social networking site for primary care physicians.

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.

Kodak partners with MMR (MyMedicalRecords.com) to resell Kodak scanning technology for digitizing and importing paper records into EHRs.

Article in chicago Sun Times says 28% of those seeking health insurance will look online to find providers. eHealthInsurance is profiled.

Wikimedia is testing a new policy that will insert an editorial review step before articles about living people are published or modified.

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.

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).

Brief article on Microsoft’s increasing activity in health/biotech space.

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!

To read: article on Drupal, a popular open source CMS for Web publishers. Talks about their business model.

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.

Morningstar on health reform’s impact on public companies in pharma & managed care industries.

Nice comparative analysis of drug info on Wikipedia v. Medscape Drug Reference. I think the conclusion applies to almost anything on Wikipedia relative to authoritative sources that have been carefully produced with editorial guidelines: “Wikipedia has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission than the comparator database. Wikipedia may be a useful point of engagement for consumers, but is not authoritative and should only be a supplemental source of drug info.”

NPR now offers archival transcripts for no charge. Makes good sense, esp. if they can gain addt’l advertising/sponsorship rev. as result.

Actually, the article is about the initial ARRA spending on health IT, which will go toward regional training and HIEs.

HealthLeaders writes on new regs that require patient notification of security breaches.

AHRQ will hold a free webcast on Sept 24 on the clinical & group CAHPS (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), with two case studies presented by clinics who implemented the clinical CAHPS.

Dan Roam provides an entertaining slideshow to explain healthcare policy reform options under debate. Interesting for 2 reasons: 1) does a good of explaining the issues clearly; 2) demonstrates how good simple storytelling using basic graphics and data can provide entertaining content. Publishers take note!

Nice entry by CMIO (chief medical info officer) at Phoenix Childrens detailing the key success factors of their implementation of EHRs. InfoWeek is providing some very useful coverage of health IT.

Interesting event planned by Mayo Clinic in Sept to discuss innovation in health care.

Some good arguments, but overall Felstein’s points make a case for a public option to sit alongside private insurance. The rich can afford the costly innovative treatments, which if proven successful, will become more widely available at lower prices.

Kru Research has prepared a brief video that defines the participatory class of epatients. Their conference in October “Epatient Connections2009″ will focus on what this emerging segments means to healthcare vendors and information providers. Health Content Advisors is on the program speaking about publishing information for ePatients.

Short article by Steven Spear reinforces my recent blog “Health Content is Rapidly Becoming a Commodity”.

To be released next year: attachment for Wii that measures pulse.

Overview of eprescribing role in Health IT & reform.

More detail on “medical ghostwriting”, which is in fact quite common. I don’t think the whole category of medical communications agencies that write on behalf of research organizations needs to be overturned, but more transparency is definitely needed. And, more guidelines on under what conditions doctors in academia can lend their name to research articles.

Ascend Media sells Allied Healthcare to Anthem Media Group and Practice Builders to undisclosed buyer. Allied provides traditional trade pubs in 10 healthcare specialities; Practice Builders provides consulting to help medical practices with business issues, including selecting and managing IT services for practice mgmt.

Gina Kolata reveals the lack of transparency in health care costs. Explains why shifting the burden to consumers via HSAs won’t help keep costs down.

Managing expenses helps hospitals improve their financial results in Q1 2009, according to Thomson Reuters study. Link to study included.

I got to say that I find Gartner’s Hype Cycle out of touch with reality. The basic curve and phases along the curve make sense, but their taxonomy and placement of technologies along the curve seem less helpful than throwing darts. I’m sure there’s some sensible analysis in the whitepaper, but I don’t find their visual models useful.

NPR doing a series on the role of Free in digital content. Increasingly, Chris Anderson’s thesis resembles the traditional B2B trade publishing model. “Plus ca change…”

Datatrak, an electronic data capture (EDC) company, improves its performance. Was delisted from Nasdaq. Compare to Medidata that went public recently.

another story about changes in medical school curricula & teaching methods.

As part of greater revenue cycle management (RCM) efforts, hospitals now rate patients on ability to pay and use risk calculations in estimating their revenue.

Large percentage (82%) of drug ads on Yahoo! lead to illegitimate pharma sites. (Bold thought: there is clearly a demand for a different way to buy pharmaceuticals; our existing system in the US isn’t serving needs of consumers. We need a change.)

Good point about lack of CMS director.

John Moore of Chilmark will moderate panel on PHRs at upcoming AHRQ event.

Advice for redesigning Rx drug labels to make them less likely to be confused by patients; and for label inserts to have greater relevance & usability for patients.

Paul Levy, CEO BIDMC, writes of Consumer health Quality Council, founded by Health Care for All, which is seeking stories from patients or caregivers about their experiences with hospitals-esp. experiences that involve avoidable errors.

NPR does story on Patient Central, a site from Consumers’ Checkbook. At first glance, yet another site that offers patients a chance to rate doctors. Most aren’t very good. What I like about this one: they get lists of doctors & patients from insurance companies and sent surveys to patients, which gives them a good base and higher # ratings per doctor.

InfoWeek reports on Vanguard Health’s joining the Dossia consortium and writes on the role of employers in providing PHR info to employees. Seems to me that role of employers has been underreported by other media in the helath reform debate.