HealthContentAdvisors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

HealthGrades latest annual study of patient outcomes by hospital.

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.

RWJF funds Kaiser’s biobank, the largest and most diverse repository of data genetic data that includes info on lifestyle and environmental factors.

Great article on imporantance of teaching students how to mine through and analyze data–an increasingly important skill especially in medical research.

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.

How access to info–and especially DTC ads–help drive up costs by increasing demand for tests, procedures and drugs.

Harvard launches new mobile apps on public health, starting with H1N1 info.

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.

Great post and related comments from E-patient Dave about the importance of including patient input/comments into medical web 2.0 applications like Medpedia. My further comment: the patient-created content also needs to be “peer-reviewed”, organized and aggregated in a way that leads to useful analysis by professionals and patients/consumers.

Oops, I forgot to annotate this story last week. Thomson Reuters 2008 earnings. Healthcare group within professional division reports 4% increase in revenue (CC) and 0% increase in operating margin. TR is selling Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) product, which has declining revenue.

MedImpact customers will soon (summer 09) be able to store prescription info on their HealthVault PHRs. “Headquartered in San Diego, MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Inc., is the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit management (PBM) company that does not sell drugs. MedImpact clients include Fortune 500 corporations and employers, unions, managed care organizations, insurance carriers, third-party administrators, as well as local, state and federal employee programs.”

GenomeQuest, an HC08 Innovator, releases new functionality that allows easy annotation and visualization tools to its sequence data management solution.

The new MediSlate “mobile clinical assistant” was created specifically for healthcare professionals in a clinical environment with drop-resitant and spill-proof features that allow cleaning & disinfection. Also has touch screen that can be used with gloves.

Google Health adds feature that allows users to share data with doctors, family or trusted friend. Also, added ability to print out wallet-sized medical profile.

Getwell network, an in-hospital network that “delivers personalized information, education and communications tools at the bedside” via the television, raises 3rd round from previous investors (Valhalla Partners, Grosvenor Funds, Point Judith Capital, Village Ventures) and adds Johnson & Johnson Develpment Corp to the list of investors.

Articles points to ties between med school faculty and pharma companies at Harvard Med.

Tara Parker-Pope of NY Times writes about how concept of comparative effectiveness needs to trickle down to patients to change the current environment where doctors and patients too often seem to chose drugs & therapies based on theory that “if it costs more, it must be better”. Also makes the point that focus on wellness, not just treatment, is needed.

John Halamka’s excellent post on range of quality measurement tools needed to improve our healthcare system–both clinical and administrative.

Rick Siegrist will succeed Melvin Hall who has been CEO for almost 9 years. Siegrist came to PG in January when PG acquired PatientFlow Technology. PatientFlwo focuses on streamlining hospital operations to reduce overcrowding, wait times, and delayed surgery. Press Ganey is a leading research & consulting firm to hospitals and one of the largest HCAHPS vendors.

Good collection of analysts opinions on likely acquisition activity in the medical device sector.

Medtronic will begin reporting payments to physicians that exceed $5,000 beginning in March 2011 for payments beginning January 2010. Fees include consulting fees, royalties or honoraria.

Boston-based AMICAS has agreed to acquire Emageon for $39M. Previous offer to buy Emageon for $64M was terminated when Health Systems Solutions could not secure funds from its banker (Stanford International Bank). Note, Stanford is also principal stockholder of HSS. Emageon is public and latest 10K for 2007 reports rev. of $104.6M and negative earnings. Emageon also got an $9M escrow payment from HSS. Both AMICAS and Emageon provide medical imaging systems and software.

Article from Chattanooga Times Free Press reports on the significant investment in time & money to implement electronic medical records in small practices, but concludes that the investment pays in a few years in lower costs and improved efficiency.

Research carried out on behalf of Wolters Kluwer’s Provation Medical indicates that existing CVIS sytems are not delivering promised ROI due to lack of acceptance & usage by some physicians who continue to use dictation & transcription services.

Nashville-based ConnectivHealth divests VerusMed to focus on HealthTeacher, which provides health & wellness educational materials for the K-12 market. ConnectivHealth retains Discovery Hospital, a collabortation with Discovery Communications, and PeerClip, a provider of reviewed medical news to medical & healthcare professionals. VerusMed was sold to Intellerus, a new entity headed by Roscoe Smith, fmly of PBI, McGraw-Hill, and Agent Media Corp.

NY Times reports on study published in NEJM (based on clinical trials sponsored by Boston Scientific)that provides evidence that stents are as effective as coronary bypass in many cases.

DNA Electronics, a spinoff of Imperial College London, has announced a partnership with Pfizer to carry out trials of its prototype handheld device that assesses risk of adverse reactions to drugs. From the press release: “The device undergoing trials is the Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Doctor, or SNP Dr (pronounced ‘snip doctor’). It is a portable technology that gives fast accurate spot test results for specific DNA sequences that indicate how we are likely to respond to certain drugs. The SNP Dr works by analysing genetic variations found in DNA called Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). SNPs are the parts of human DNA that make us all respond differently to disease, bacteria, viruses, toxins or medication.”

Delmar, a Cengage Learning company, acquires Concept Media,a publisher of nursing education multi-media content.

Title is midleading; article describes key areas of healthcare innovation that are progressing and being financed by PE companies. All the companies profiled include incentives or monitoring/coaching to encourage healthful behavior and compliance with disease management programs. Profiled companies include: Availity, HealthEdge, Prematics, Triveris, Health Hero Network.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Boston event on Feb. 26 with focus on e-health and health policy, moderated by Scott Kirsner of Boston Globe and with great roster of Boston-area healthcare industry notables, including Charlie Baker, Jonathan Bush, e-patient Dave and others.

Quotes Clayton Christensen, Matt Holt, Uwe Reinhardt and others emphasizing the need to re-focus incentives of hospitals and care providers toward patient-centered care–and away from fee for services–when considering Health IT investments and implementations. Uses Kaiser as a model.

Not health specific, but Glam Media doesn focus on women’s publications which attract health and wellness advertisers. Glam owns a range of publishing sites and serves as ad network for many others.

David Kibbe and Brian Klepper, in an open letter to Obama, argue against putting healthcare investment $$ into current electronic medical records systems without careful consideration.

Round-up of funding news for Boston-area companies, most of which are pharma/bio or med device companies.

Study finds that only 25% of surveyed patients could name their doctor–and 60% of those who could were incorrect! Implications not obvious.

MedAvant, a RCM services provider, hires new CTO. MedAvant has been active in hiring and bolt-on acquisitions since it was acquired by Marlin Equity Partners last year.

Bob Wachter on how insurers are getting into the act and promoting medical tourism for their insured patients.

Post isn’t health-focused, but anything Google does is relevant to publishing. Mentions Knol, which was seeded with paid medical contributors, and the fact that it hasn’t caught on.

Related to story earlier this week about settlement between UnitedHealth and NY atty general to fund development of independently produced database for calculating out-of-network reimbursement rates. UnitedHealth’s Ingenix group will pay $50M to help new db; Aetna will pay $20M to help fund the db.

David Williams on the Ingenix/UnitedHealth database settlement. Good points about wide variations in costs among providers.

Chilmark reports on merger of two vendors in RHIO/HIE market that combined serve approx. 10% of US hospitals.

More on the new Family Health History tool from Surgeon General.

5-8% of Pfizer’s 10,000 research employees to be laid off by end of year.

Neil Versel provides a list of the members of the leadership board for the National eHealth Collaborate, the successor to AHIC 2.0. Versel points out limited representation of nurses, and lack of medical librarians on the board.

Abry buys minority stake in Gateway EDI, a healthcare billing service compnay.

Kolltan, a spinoff from Yale Medical School, closes Series A fo over $35 M and names CEO. Kolltan is developing cancer treatments.