Tag: Startups

A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Continuity of Care Record Gains Ground As A Standard

Apr 10, 2009• 23

By BRIAN KLEPPER

Brian Klepper We live in a time of such great progress in so many arenas that, too often and without a second thought, we take significant advances for granted. But, now and then, we should catalog the steps forward, and then look backward to appreciate how these steps were made possible. They sprung from grand conceptions of possibilities and, then, the persistent focused toil that is required to bring ideas to useful fruition.

We could see this in a relatively quiet announcement this week at HIMSS 09. Microsoft unveiled its “Amalga Unified Intelligence System (UIS) 2009, the next generation release of the enterprise data aggregation platform that enables hospitals to unlock patient data stored in a wide range of systems and make it easily accessible to every authorized member of the team inside and beyond the hospital – including the patient – to help them drive real-time improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of care delivery.”

Glen Tullman, CEO of Allscripts

Apr 7, 2009

By Matthew Holt

Glen Tullman, Allscripts CEO is one of the more charismatic, opinionated and politically connected players in health IT. I grabbed a few minutes with him at HIMSS 09 on how he’s positioned Allscripts to be a survivor in the coming consolidation, why he likes CCHIT (he’s a happy cat!), if SaaS (and AthenaHealth) is a real threat, and whether his buddy Barrack Obama (for whom he was on the original fundraising committe) is going to whisk him off to DC any time soon….

It’s, err, gulp, HIMSS time

Apr 6, 2009• 2

By Matthew Holt

Yes, the annual cavalcade of boat-show sized booths and late night partying—interspersed with frequently mind-numbing presentations that most people skip— is on. In Chicago in a snowstorm! I touched down on Sunday midday and managed to compound the craziness in HIMSS by starting in London (thanks to American Airlines for the free upgrade this time!), but I did make it to bed before midnight. And yes, there was 3 inches of snow/slush in Chicago and I did throw snowballs.
Before I got in there appears to have been a rather odd session on Health 2.0 (at least judging by this report, it seems it was all about hospital marketing and excessive use of FaceBook which I don't think is the whole point).

Andy Slavitt, Ingenix

Apr 6, 2009• 8

By Matthew Holt

So we're going to start with one of the more controversial people I'm meeting at HIMSS, Andy Slavitt the CEO of the newly discovered and reviled by the Senate Ingnix. As you may recall, despite the fact that (not entirely to Andy's pleasure) I called them arms dealers, I was not entirely unsympathetic to what Ingenix was up to in the recent mess. So I talked to Andy about that, about what Ingenix actually does and whether it made sense for a health plan to own a big informatics company (his short answer…they don't!) An interesting interview you can see immediately below.

Response to “Doctors Raise Doubts on Digital Health Data” S. Lohr NY Times

Apr 3, 2009• 6

By STEVE MCKINNEY

1410 Cambridge, England. Minor Canon Thomas Rangle did a final count of the books at Trinity Hall. He counted 122. Most of the books are biblical in nature or celebratory of our good and righteous benefactor Pope Urban V. Few have access to these fine artifacts because of their enormous value (costing as much as a farm or vineyard) and the cloistered clergy and Master of the university are unwilling to share their contents.

1448 Mainz, Germany. Goldsmith and known spendthrift Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with move-able type. It is known in town that he has printed school book texts and some indulgences; although, word is out that he is working on a fine bible. Cost is 30 Florins or the equivalent of three years working wages.

The Hawaii Health 2.0 Chapter meeting

Mar 27, 2009• 1

By Matthew Holt

Image for health2con hawaii post

Indu & Matthew traveled to Hawaii (tough gig but someone’s got to do it) to take part in the Hawaii Health 2.0 chapter on Online Care, held on Thursday March 26. The chapter meeting was rather more fancy than the average Health 2.0 local meeting, with the dolphins in their own lagoon at the Kahala resort being a few steps away from the meeting.

HMSA, American Well and Kaiser Permanente hosted the meeting which focused on online care. David Kibbe kicked off the meeting with a little reprise of the Great American Health 2.0 Motorcycle Tour. Jay Sanders “father of telemedicine” gave a great presentation going back to future showing the “radio doctor” in a picture from 1924, which looked pretty much like what online care looks like now! Jay was very provocative about the potential of telemedicine and the role of physicians in the future—for example, if you have a physical and you don't check the doctor's hearing first, how do you know that they’re reporting is correct? Indu & Matthew followed with the introduction to Health 2.0 and putting online care in place within the wider technology change….but you’ve all heard way too much about that (slides to come)

Bluementhal is new health IT czar

Mar 20, 2009• 10

By Matthew Holt

David Blumenthal, known slightly more for being a policy wonk than a geek (or perhaps known best for being a wonk about geek issues!), has been appointed the new Director of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. No official word on Rob Kolodner’s new role, although John Halamka suggests that he’ll stay on to run the stimulus package. Don’t forget that ONC gets $2 billion as part of the HITECH bill, so someone needs to be there to manage the bureaucratic part of that.

And no, none of the five candidates pimped on THCB by Kibbe and Klepper got the job…I’m sure we’ll hear from them about Blumenthal shortly.

A Sticky Solution to a Sticky Problem

Mar 16, 2009• 23

By ALISTAIR ROCK

“Don’t pull the knot tight,” the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once warned, “before being sure you have got hold of the right end.” Those who hope to sort out the tangle of health care spending would do well to heed his advice.

Clearly, there’s been no lack of solutions put forward since the Clintons first put health care atop the national agenda more than a decade ago. But with health care spending still rising at twice the rate of inflation, few have made any real and lasting impact.

Employers (who still pay the lion’s share of health insurance premiums here in the U.S.) know, of course, that keeping employees from getting sick in the first place—and minimizing the severity and duration of their illness when they do—is the first step in reducing this unwelcome “growth sector” of our economy. They understand, for the most part, that healthier employees equal not only lower healthcare costs but reduced absenteeism and greater productivity for the economy as a whole.

Health Affairs is all about IT

Mar 10, 2009• 6

By Matthew Holt

Most of the Health care geek squad is in DC as I write, at a press conference conducted by Health Affairs which has an entire issue out today about IT in health care. Here’s the table of contents. And for those of you who don’t have a subscription, well here are four articles for free including those from David Brailer and John Halamka.

As you might guess KP’s HealthConnect is featured prominently with academic articles about the impact of its installation on physicians & the system (office visits down 25%) and patients (they love it).

There’s lots and lots more, including an article that makes stars of nerdy docs Jay Parkinson, Danny Sands and Ted Eytan—if “star” is the right word for this rarefied environment. (Oh, and somehow Bob Coffield got in there too!) My early tweetings on that one (which is the only one I’ve read so far) were captured and blogged by e-Patient Dave. Converting tweets into a blog post and making it make sense may be the new art form. Be warned that despite the words “Facebook & Twitter” in the title, this is about using Health 2.0 tools for patient to physician communication not about the social networking side of Health 2.0. Still I guess there’s room for another article in the next Health Affairs about that.

Five Recommendations for an ONC Head Who Understands Health IT Innovation

Mar 6, 2009• 14

By David C. Kibbe, Brian Klepper and John Moore. Kibbe

Now that the legislative language of the HITECH Act — the $20 billion health IT allocation within the economic stimulus package — has been set, it’s time to identify a National Coordinator (NC) for Health IT who can capably lead that office. As many now realize, the language of the Bill can be ambiguous, requiring wise regulatory interpretation and execution to ensure that the money is spent well and that desired outcomes are achieved. Among other tasks, the NC will influence appointments to the new Health Information Technology (HIT) Policy and Standards Committees, refine the Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology certification process, and oversee how information exchange grants and provider incentive payments will be handled.