HealthContentAdvisors

McKesson & HP partner to provide EHR s/w and hardware for physician practices.

Interesting. Wolters Kluwer has set up a system whereby doctors will receive CME credit for clinical research done via their mobile phone.

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.

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.

Good interview with David Blumenthal, Director, ONC, on meaningful use of EHRs and plans for national health data exchange.

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 short piece on why publishers are distributing content via Kindles even though there are business considerations.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Home page of Jan 2010 report from RWJF 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.

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.

Brief article describing MedeAnalytics revenue cycle management solution being adopted by St. Joseph’s Hospital in Maryland.

Info on work Tim Berners-Lee is doing for UK govenment to make sources of gov’t data more available and meaningful.

“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.

InformationWeek profiles Transparent health Network, which is compiling prices for direct purchases of healthcare services by patients.

Flybridge invests in woman-owned pilates equipment seller, which has sold over $500M in equip on QVC over the past 12 years.

Workflow study that follows patient through hospital identifies areas for improvement.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wonder what Lexis and Westlaw will say about this?

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.

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.

Physician posits that dependence on checklists may not be to the benefit of good patient care if insufficient attention to individual patients is paid.

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?

How much information is optimal to share between patients & doctors? Great comments here.

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…

Excellent round-up of Day 1 of FDA hearings on social media use by Pharma.

CVS sees value in studying interaction between genes and medication for its PBM business and for its end-customers.

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.

Nice rundown of vetted sources of online health information from medical librarians.

David Blumenthal’s latest statement on goals of the ONC for interoperability of electronic health records.

linking patient data and related information

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.

More outlets for distributing health and fitness gear as focus on wellness and prevention increases.

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.

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.

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.

SDI Health, a PA company that provides healthcare data analytics services, receives funding from Tailwind Capital.

Article on lack of transparency in reporting health research and health statistics.

Narrated slide slow illustrating new features of reports on Patients Like Me. Impressive.

PhRMA proposes methods for verifying FDA-approved data in health info provided to consumers. FDA logo on sites?

Excellent slide deck that describes influence of social media in healthcare: pharma, med school, epatients, doctors, nurses.

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.

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.

Microsoft will launch a video web series on health IT beginning Nov 11, 2009.

Long interview with David Brailer, now a PE exec, fmly Director ONC.

Anne Woods promoted to CNO (Chief Nursing Officer) at WK Health. She’s responsible for nursing strategy across Medical Research & journals publishing businesses.

Does technology interrupt the communication between doctors & patients? That’s the question posed by this book. Sounds interesting.

New site that compiles info about neuroscience research.

Great example of the how new sources of data will transform medical research.

Jay Parkinson on specialized providers v. general hospitals.

Review of Adam Bosworth’s company, Keas, which uses custom “care plans” that collect personal data - directly or indirectly.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

WK Health announces new customer who will use Provation, now branded as Provation Order Sets, powered by UpToDate Decision Support.

UnitedHealth exceed analyst estimates despite declines in #insured, due to increases at drug unit.

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).

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.

presentation materials from Sept 24, 2009 webcasts on CAHPS Clinician and Group Survey

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

RightHealth is dba name of Kosmix, a Mt. View California search technology company that initially focused on the health space.

Digitas Health lists 140 possible uses of Twitter in healthcare. Nice.

Florida-based video sharing site that posts videos for docs to use for patient education.

Excellent article that emphasizes that providing information to stakeholders (esp. patients and doctors) is the best approach to assuring optimal decisionmaking.

Market forecast for medical device segment in France.

More examples of how Pharma is using social media.

New book forthcoming from Sage Publications, Encylopedia of Medical Decision Making. Seems like an obvious good online reference work.

Profile of Gawande from Harvard Magazine.

James Murdoch lambasts publishing industry for resisting change.

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.

Deloitte’s whitepaper on how pharma could make use of data from EHRs to improve their research, clinical trials, and post-market surveillance processes.

Heart monitor that detects, analyzes & stores info about patient’s heart. AngelMed Guardian. Smart devices are a growth segment.

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.

Minnesota provides website with price info on primary care services, labs, etc for over 100 providers.

Interesting case where patient’s wife suggested experimental treatment that eventually was accepted. She wants $300M plus % of profits.

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.

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?

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.

Free whitepaper from Manhattan Research on Pharma use of digital marketing.

Article includes comments from Susannah Fox of Pew & ePatient Dave (deBronkart) about finding experimental medicine and specialist doctors to combat fatal diagnoses.

U. Washington dept that studies global healthcare, funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dr. Vince Kuraitis describes the foundations of a “network economy” and asks if healthcare industry fits the bill.

Study attempts to measure level of empathy (or lack of empathy) in medical students. Thesis and conclusions are rather scary.

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.

Program for AHRQ’s upcoming conference (Sept. 13-16). Registration is closed; it’s a sellout.

US Bank offers HSA with access to WebMD Coverage Advisor, which helps consumers manage out of pocket costs.

Hospitals are finding that reporting medical errors and making the info easily available helps reduce the number of malpractice lawsuits. Transparency helps!

Important issues about how doctors communicate to patients risks & tradeoffs using statistics described in this paper.

Suggested reading from RWJF.

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.

Wired UK highlights how doctors & hospitals are using Twitter in UK & US.

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.

Survey of medical students by Epocrates shows high usage of health IT, low confidence in info provided by pharma detailers.

AMA uses Impelsys’ iPublishCentral s/w to publish frequently updated versions of its books in ebook format.

Army & Navy doctors collaborate real-time with medical researchers on wound care for injured soldiers–bridging the time gap in tradtional “translational medicine”.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Excellent article that describes how iPhone and other wireless apps are being used by nurses in clinical settings.

Esther Dyson speculates on how Internet could radically change the way patients are involved in their healthcare. Like the way she stresses the important role of information and info tools in changing behavior.

David Rothman gives a brief overview of TrialX, a clinical trials search tool for patients that can incorporate diagnosis and demographic info from Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault.

BMJ article abstract highlights methods for reducing number of unnecessary (and expensive” interventions. Pts out that evidence is often not applied in deciding how to treat.

Quotes David Brailer who says it’s important to consumers to have more control. Currently, hospitals are in the driver’s seat. Author suggests that protecting against fraud will be most important.

Articles describes several employer plans that offer $$ incentives to employees to practice healthy behavior (stop smoking, lose weight, go to the gym, etc). Mentions Tangerine Wellness, RedBrick Health, and quotes Yale economist Dean Karlan.

Article predicts that 85% of doctors will be employed by hospitals w/in next 10 year. Goes on to explain why (primarily reimbursement practices that favor hospitals). Worth a read.

Information Week covers range of doctors’ attitudes toward using social media to communicate with patients.

Article points out how little transparency or rationality there is in current health care pricing and reimbursement systems. AHIP apparently provided data to shore up support for their case, but the article doesn’t portray them in a very positive light. If insurance plans were so good, why would we have so many insured patients receiving outrageous bills?

Canopy Financial, the provider of the platform for the HSA system used by many of the top banks, announces that its statistics show that health savings account (HSA) balances increased in Q109.

Article describes how doctors/surgeons have to make judgements about appropriate devices and treatment for infants (and other groups that weren’t part of the initial clinical trial study), since there often is no established evidence on which to base decisions.

Good brief article that describes 4 search engines that offer features and content that differ from Google or Bing. DeepDyve, which we’ve followed because of its excellent coverage of scholarly research and medical journals content, is one of the 4 mentioned in the article.

CNN lists top inefficiencies in US healthcare system. For example, they quote up to $210B wasted in inefficient medical claims processing that could be remedied through better systems and a simplification (rationalization) of claims used by different insurance companies.

Emdeon, which processes nearly half of all medical payment claims in the US, to debut on NYSE Wednesday (Aug 12, 2009). Expects to raise as much as $333M. “Emdeon has picked a perfect time to test the public equity market. The entire health-care system in the US is in the state of flux, and advancement of health-care IT” is a strong focal point now, according to Alex morozov, Morningstar associate director in a recent research note.

Merge Healthcare, a Wisconsin company, made its 2nd acquisition in past 2 months by acquiring Confirma, a Seattle-based copmuer assisted detection technology company, which specializes in CAD imaging tech for breast, liver, and prostate imaging.

Datamonitor Group, part of Informa, to consolidate its IT research brands under the Ovum name. Datamonitor healthcare & pharma remains separate (as does energy, fin’l svcs, automotive, and consumer). New organization would make it easier to spin off the IT group.

Intriguing idea to use music as part of patient education. I’m a firm believer in using whatever medium is “appropriate” or useful. If music [and poetry] helps people remember key information, then I’m all for it. “The hip bone’s connected to the…”

Netsmart, an enterprise software vendor to behavioral & public health providers, acquires Crown Software. Crown provides pharmacy management s/w that integrates with EHRs.

A short, concise piece that provides some good examples of how newspaper/news publishers could create new revenue streams. Good examples, including some I’ve used in the past (post original documents & databases, better repurposing of archives, special editions, and more).

University presses looking at forming consortium program to promote ebook sales.

Good examples of how healthIT can add efficiency, but physician author cautions that entering data takes time. This doc is part of Kaiser Permanente, which is frequently held up as an example of effective use of electronic health records. Problem is, KP is an integrated system, which makes it much easier to enforce interoperability and usage.

Good roundup of providers and related info about trend toward elderly staying in their homes and retrofitting with safety gear. Role of occupational therapist growing for this purpose, too.

Example of industry information company adding value through data-analytics.

Article provides breakdown of downloaded apps by category & within category, by free & paid.

Lewin Group, a health care policy research firm, launches new center for comparative effectiveness research (CER). note, Lewin won an HHS bid recently to construct CER framework. Lewin will incorporate longitudinal patient data (de-identified)from Ingenix, it’s parent company.

Josh Seidman’s very clear exposition of why needs of clinicians and patients have to be central to efforts to define meaningful use of electronic health records. Sadly, these voices are mostly absent from the discussions (apart from clinicians with IT roles in large provider organizations).

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJ) loses motion to dismiss copyright & trademark infringement suit from HealthGrades for misuse of its ratings info, although RWF is mostly successful in motion to dismiss breach of contract claims. RWJ used copyrighted HealthGrades ratings in press releases & articles.

Post provides some historical context on how medical research in academic settings has changed in age of Google. But, the adage “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” almost always applies, esp. when it comes to business models/pricing models. Note, I worked at Dialog from ‘85-’95 during the time when CDRom was introduced.

Wow, when I have referred to “intermediaries” as a key category in the health content supply chain, entertainment companies weren’t top of mind. But, after reading the description of this program at the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, it makes sense. TV programs and movies have a lot of influence on the health literacy of our population. It’s important that the writers, editors & all parties in media understand where to find authoritative info & learn how to interpret it.

Jim Spanfeller resigns from Forbes, where he has led digital efforts for past 9 years, to start his own media management firm. Forbes had fared better than other business publications in part due to its more aggressive online strategies, but in my opinion, their online presense lacked cohesion and proper design. In print, Forbes remains a notch above most business pubs and can still leverage its readership.

3 PE groups resubmitted bids for Springer at request of Candover & Cinven. New bids slightly higher (>400 M Euros vs. 350-380M Euros of 1st round), but still short of the hoped for 500 M Euro bid for up to 40% of Springer. PEHub rightly points out that Candover & Cinven recapitalized Springer 3 times and paid themselves healthy dividends each time.

Obama administration says it can find $313 B in healthcare savings to help pay for reforms.

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.

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.

Sramana Mitra on some well-positioned health IT and health content companies. Mostly focused on IT companies that help to save costs.

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.

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.

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?

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.”

The government says sipping red wine improves the benefits. Glad to know I’m doing it right!

Steve Outing provides a list of suggestions for newspaper company executives. Food for thought for publishers in other segments, too!

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.

Healthcare Informatics’ June issue with HCI 100 list of top health IT vendors.

Drug interaction/adverse effects info tool added to MSFT’s HealthVault.

A rundown of a handful of online physician ratings sites. Also mentions pushback by physicians who can’t respond to reviews. Mentions RateMDs.com, DrScore.com, AngiesList, Heatlhgrades and some state-specific sites.

IAB PWC research shows that online ad spend declined in Q1 2009 YoY for the 1st time in years.

E-patient Dave’s slides from presentation at National eHealth Collaborative last week.

David E. Williams provides a very nice summary of Michael Porter’s excellent article in NEJM (available for free): A Strategy for Health Care Reform — Toward a Value-Based System.

Some background on why drug companies aren’t flocking to Twitter.

Good post that expands on theme that EHRs (EMRs) should be designed with patient needs in mind and that simply automated current procedures in hospitals won’t likely lead to an improved experience for patients who want to participate in their health care decisions.

Healthcare a bright spot in employement trends: health care jobs grew >23,000 in May, while overall nonfarm payrolls shrank by 345,000.

A new condition of interest to data publishers: Database Hugging Disorder (DBHD). Humor aside, this post addresses trend toward allowing access to the databases that were used in medical and other studies. In line with the Open Access movement in scholarly publishing that campaigns for free access to research articles where the research was funded with public funds, the open database movement seems to be growing very quickly. Oddly enough, even though the databases hold more value than individual articles (especially when data can be combined from multiple databases), the fact that they haven’t been monetized in most cases may lead research organizations to be more willing to make them freely available while still charging for published articles based on the data.

J&J said “pipeline productivity is on track” and outlined growth strategies: -greater marekt penetration, new commercial models, exapnded geographic presence.

Good piece from Michael Porter on key changes required to reform our healthcare system. Porter emphasizes the need to align incentives for insurers, providers, employers, and patients with health of the patients/consumers as the objective. I’ve only skimmed the article, but it looks spot on.

Only PE companies left in bidding. Interesting twist: Springer’s current owners, Candover & Cinven are looking to raise a specific amount (500M Euros) and are asking interested parties to bid on share they are willing to accept for that amount. Springer has large number of scholarly journals & books, and has done well selling ebook versions in the past couple of years, but has lagged behind in creating decision tool applications based on their content. Heavily focused on academic market.

Great post on the potential value of the huge amount of data that are being collected as more info on individual patients is recorded in digital form. Effects of drug interactions across a broad population is key example given here.

Medidata, which provides s/w for managing clinical trials and for managing clinical research data (Rave), sets terms for IPO. S1 was filed in January 09. Insight Ventures key investor. Market cap at expected $11-13 range to be up to $290. See: http://www.mdsol.com/products/rave_overview.htm

Good overview of Google Wave by folks at ReadWriteWeb.

More on Google’s plans to sell ebooks. Even though publishers get to set price, Google retains right to discount at its own expense.

CMPMedica announces new online healthcare education program for patients & their caregivers. Health Empowerment Initiative targets “knowledge gaps” in patient understanding to improve compliance with prescriptions and healthful behavior. Sounds interesting & I’ll check it out, but they should have come up with a better name for the program!