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Chronic Disease Management • Technology • Strategy • Issues and Trends

Archive for the "DM Megatrend #6: Technology" category

Perspectives on the Upcoming 5th Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference

 The Healthcare Unbound Conference is a highlight of my year and I always look forward to it!
What’s so special about this conference?

First, the caliber of the people attending.  It’s a stimulating mix of high-level clinical, technical and business types.  The energy is flowing and many people have told me how much they like to go […]

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Next Generation Disease Management, ala Google

   
Google Wants to Index Your DNA, Too Business Week; April 18, 2008
A few years ago I remember reading a vivid description of how much information is contained in one person’s genetic code:  a stack of phone books high enough to reach the top of the Washington Monument.
    

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Is the Medical Establishment the Best Guardian of Your Medical Data?

David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA and Vince Kuraitis
Drs. Mandl and Kohane begin their recent article in NEJM with the statement that “large corporations are seeking an integral and transformative role in the management of health care information,” and then warn that this “will profoundly affect the biomedical research enterprise.”   
At issue for the authors is who […]

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Could a Linkage Between Amalga and HealthVault Become a Centerpiece of Microsoft’s Healthcare Strategy?

Writing in ZDNet, Mary Jo Foley ponders the question of whether it might make sense for Microsoft to link HealthVault (HV) and Amalga.
I’ll take this a step further and ask “Could a linkage between HealthVault and Amalga become a centerpiece of Microsoft’s broader health care strategy?”
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Healthcare Informatics Webinar: Google, Microsoft, & Dossia Create the Personal Health Information Network

What are companies like Google, Microsoft, and Dossia (sponsored by Intel, Wal-Mart, AT&T and others) hoping to accomplish in health care?
What is the emerging Personal Health Information Network (PHIN) and why should you care?
What’s the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) Standard, and how is it destined to become an initial focal point of data exchange initiatives?
Why is the PHIN potentially disruptive to […]

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Data Incompatibility Remains A Barrier to Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) Devices Reaching the Mainstream

The Continua Health Alliance is doing a good job in getting remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices to become plug-n-play — where devices and peripherals from different manufacturers complying with Continua Guidelines will be able to talk to one another.
Continua’s work-to-date is a necessary, but not yet sufficient effort to make RPM devices mainstream.
Knocking down the […]

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Three New Reports On Aging and Technology

Older Americans 2008: Key Indicators of Well-Being, AgingStats.gov, Federal Agency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics
Healthy@Home, commissioned by AARP and the Blue Shield of California Foundation
State of Technology in Aging Services, Center for Aging Services Technology (CAST)
These reports are succinctly profiled with links to the full studies at Profiles of older health care consumers: living longer, longing for technology on […]

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Feds Call on Google and Microsoft to Breathe Life into the NHIN

Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe, MD MBA
Who is the federal  government calling on to breathe life into the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN)? Google and Microsoft.
In our first article of this series describing the Personal Health Information Network (PHIN), we noted early entrants as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and Dossia.  We also noted that the […]

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Search Engines Using Your Personal Health Information: Creepy or Cutting Edge?

When using a search engine, should results be customized based on your personal health information (PHI)?  Should your search engine of choice take into account your previous history of medical searches, or even provide results tailored from data about your personal medical history?
Two companies — Aetna and Microsoft — have come up with 180 degree different answers.
In […]

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4 Reasons Why Health Plans Struggle with PHRs

Aetna recently made another big announcement relating to their PHR.  While the concept of what they’re doing is very appealing, it strikes me that health plans in general face an uphill battle in getting consumers to adopt and use personal health records (PHRs).
I’ll describe 4 factors behind my thinking:

Lack of Trust
Lack of Access to Clinical Data
Lack […]

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Birth Announcement: the Personal Health Information Network (PHIN)

Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe, MD MBA 
The Internet and digital technologies have transformed many aspects of our lives over the past twenty years.  We can get cash at ATMs all over the world; we can book our own airline reservations; we can shop and get best prices over the Internet.
Why hasn’t this happened in […]

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A First Comparison of Google Health and MS HealthVault

While details are thin, here’s a first pass at comparing and contrasting Google Health (GH) and Microsoft HealthVault (HV).  Overall, there are many common features, some differences, and many common challenges between these two platforms. 
A High Level Comparison
Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault Personal Health Information (PHI) Platforms

There’s still not much information available about the specifics of GH, although […]

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Are HIEs a Dead Horse?

Do local Health Information Exchange (HIE) participants have the right economic motivations to make them work?  
A report released this week raises strong doubts. The study — Creating Sustainable Local Health Information Exchanges: Can Barriers to Stakeholder Participation be Overcome? — was  funded by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change (CSHSC). The […]

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The PowerPoint — DM Megatrends 2008

Last week I did the major annual tune-up of my presentation on Disease Management Megatrends for the MCOL Future Care Web Summit. 
I’m pleased to share a copy of the PowerPoint presentation with you, and I hope you find it useful and provocative.  You can view and/or download a copy here (6MB).  This version contains 77 slides, which would […]

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UnitedHealth a First Mover for “PHRs for Life”. Way to go!

CONGRATULATIONS to UnitedHealth!  They’ve announced that they are making their personal health records (PHRs) transportable:
The OptumHealth and UnitedHealthcare units of Minneapolis-based UnitedHealth Group have made their personal health records service accessible for life.
That means an individual covered by UHC insurance or OptumHealth’s outsourced health and wellness services will be able to access their PHR–and continue to […]

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Podcast: The 20 Minute Version of “DM Megatrends”

Over the past week I’ve been doing a major tune-up of my presentation on Disease Management Megatrends for the annual MCOL Future Care Web Summit. 
More typically, DM Megatrends is 45–90 minute presentation with accompanying PowerPoint slides.
As part of the Web Summit, the good folks at MCOL asked me to do a short podcast on highlights of this presentation. They’re […]

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Hospital as Mainframe, Wireless Technology as Liberator

Sometimes the serendipity of airplane readings provides for insightful connections.  I thought I’d share one from this week’s travels.
The aha of “hospital as mainframe” came from reading Eric Dishman’s epilogue in Dr. Mike Magee’s excellent recent book, Home-Centered Health Care:

As with mainframe computers only a couple of decades ago, today we have to make a pilgrimage to […]

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What Will Microsoft’s HealthVault Mean to the Telehealth Community?

My colleague Tim Gee and I are guest bloggers on the Get-Connected Forum at the Center for Connected Health.  We speculate on:
What Will Microsoft’s HealthVault Mean to the Telehealth Community?
Our bottom line:  HealthVault overall is a positive for telehealth industry growth and scale, even though it will speed the inevitable commoditization of remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices.
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Four Misconceptions About HealthVault and the Emerging Personal Health Information Ecosystem (PHI-Ecosystem)

by Vince Kuraitis and David C. Kibbe, MD MBA 
The health care and technology worlds are still trying to figure out what Microsoft’s HealthVault (HV) is all about.  We believe that there are a number of misconceptions out there about what HV is and isn’t:
Misconception #1: HealthVault is a personal health record (PHR).
Misconception #2: People don’t trust Microsoft, […]

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Microsoft’s HealthVault: User Manual = C-, Strategy to Create a New Ecosystem = A

Would you like to have the experience of being parachuted into a deep forest with no map of where you are or clues about how to get out?  If so, I suggest that you go directly to Microsoft’s new PHR at www.healthvault.com and just TRY to figure out where you are or where you’re headed.
Initial […]

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Guest post: Health 2.0 Deserves Careful Watching

by David C. Kibbe, MD MBA
Dear Colleagues:
Thursday I attended a wonderful one day conference, entitled “Health 2.0 — User Generated Health Care.” One of the most interesting events of 2007. Held in San Francisco. I had a chance to talk with Adam Bosworth and Missy Krasner of Google, with Peter Neuport of Microsoft, and with David […]

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Cardiac Monitoring System: “Go Directly to the Nearest Hospital, Do Not Pass Go, You Are Having a Heart Attack”

NOT science fiction.
A Bluetooth heart monitor could text your local hospital if you are about to have a heart attack, according to research published in Inderscience’s International Journal of Electronic Healthcare. The device measures electrical signals from the heart, analyses them to produce an electrocardiogram (ECG) and sends an alert together with the ECG by […]

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Ruminations on the 2007 Healthcare Unbound Conference

Although a bit late, I’d like to share perspectives from the latest Healthcare Unbound conference. The conference took place in San Francisco on July 16 and 17 and attracted 400 attendees with a rich blend of business, information technology, and clinical backgrounds.
PowerPoint from Opening Keynote
Here’s a copy of the PowerPoint for my opening keynote presentation. My colleague and […]

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“In God We Trust” is NOT an Option for Your PHR: 5 Responses to the Google Health Trust Issue

Dear readers, 
Thanks for your interest and feedback on my recent posting Connecting the Dots…Google Health Promises to Create AND Dominate Next Generation PHRs.
Despite being over 3,500 words long, this essay has quickly become the #1 most widely read posting on my blog.  It continues to generate several hundred views per day and has been linked to […]

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Connecting the Dots…Google Health Promises to Create AND Dominate Next Generation PHRs

Google Health (GH) could be the event of the decade in advancing health care reform — not just healthcare information technology (HIT) reform, but health care system reform. GH promises simultaneously to create AND dominate the market for next generation personal health records (PHRs). There is nothing else in our solar system or in the […]

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