Please consider attending the inaugural eCollaboration Forum taking place at HIMSS12 on Thursday, February 23, 2012 in Las Vegas at the Venetian Sands Expo Center.

Theme — Collaborative Platforms and Applications in Health Care

This is the Health IT industry’s first-ever event focusing on collaborative health platforms and applications! We take an expansive view of platforms and will be exploring the required technologies, business ecosystems, and clinical care delivery needed to achieve accountable care.

Speakers

Sponsored by HIMSS and Collaborative Health Consortium (formerly the Clinical Groupware Collaborative), the inaugural eCollaboration Forum has scheduled the following speakers [updated as of 2/3/12]:

• Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM – National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
• Esther Dyson – Principal, EDventure Holdings
• John Mattison, MD – Assistant Medical Director and CMIO of Kaiser Permanente, SCAL
• Jinesh Varia, Technology Evangelist, Amazon Web Services
• Mark Blatt, MD, MBA – Worldwide Medical Director, Intel, “Collaborative Care: An Economic Imperative for Care Delivery Systems”
• David Whitlinger – Executive Director, NY eHealth Collaborative “Supporting New Models of Care Through Collaboration with States & Vendors”
• Steve Adams – President and Chairman, Collaborative Health Consortium; EVP Collaborative Care, Alere
• David Kibbe, MD, MBA – The Kibbe Group and American Academy of Family Physicians “Developing Trust in the Health Internet as a Platform”
• Vince Kuraitis – Principal, Better Health Technologies “The Future of Collaborative Health Platforms”
• Shahid N. Shah – CEO, Netspective and Blogger at HealthcareGuy.com “The Future of Collaborative Health Platforms”
• Brian Ahier – Health IT Evangelist, Mid-Columbia Medical Center
• Joshua Newman, MD, MSHS – Director of Product Management and Health Strategy, Salesforce.com
• West Shell III – Chairman and CEO, Healthline
• Scott Rea – Vice President GOV/EDU Relations and Senior PKI Architect, DigiCert
• Joe Miller – Director of eBusiness, AmeriHealth Mercy
• Richard Migliore, MD, EVP Health Services, United Health Group
• Jordan Shlain, MD – CEO, HealthLoop
• Joseph Miller, Director, eBusiness, AmeriHealth Mercy
• Bettina Experton, MD, MPH, President and CEO, Humetrix
• Josh Mandel, MD, Lead Architect, SMART, Harvard Medical School
• Brian Prestwich, MD, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, Keck School of Medicine USC
• Rushika Fernandopulle, MD, President, Iora Health
• Jonathan Hare, Chairman, Reslient Networks
• Richard Migliori, MD, Executive Vice President, Business Initiatives & Clinical Affairs, Chief Healthcare Officer, UnitedHealth Group Alliances
• Dave DeBronkart, @ePatientDave
• Robert M. Kolodner, MD, Chief Health Informatics Officer, Open Health Tools
• Scott Barclay, Chief Strategy Officer, SureScripts
• Jinesh Varia, Technology Evangelist, Amazon Web Services

For the latest up-to-the-minute list of speakers, click here.

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“So Mom, are you learning to talk like a pirate? …like ‘aye, matey’”?

“I baby?” she asked.

“No, aye matey’”

“I-80?”

“…er, never mind Mom…how’s Benji?”

Vince’s mom (sans eyepatch) and Benji

by Scott Shreeve, MD

We are entering an unprecedented season of change for the United States health care system. Americans are united by their desire to fundamentally reform our current system into one that delivers on the promise of freedom, equity, and best outcomes for best value. In this season of reform, we will see all kinds of ideas presented from all across the political spectrum. Many of these ideas will be prescriptive, and don’t harness the power of innovation to create the dramatic breakthroughs required to create a next generation health system.

We believe there is a better way.

This belief is founded in the idea that aligned incentives can be a powerful way to spur innovation and seek breakthrough ideas from the most unlikely sources. Many of the reform ideas being put forward may not include some of the best thinking, the collective experience, and the most meaningful ways to truly implement change. To address this issue, the X PRIZE Foundation, along with WellPoint Inc and WellPoint Foundation as sponsor, has introduced a $10MM prize for health care innovators to implement a new model of health. The focus of the prize is to increase health care value by 50% in a 10,000 person community over a three year period.

The Healthcare X PRIZE team has released an Initial Prize Design and is actively seeking public comment. We are hoping, and encouraging everyone at every opportunity, to engage in this effort to help design a system of care that can produce dramatic breakthroughs at both an individual vitality and community health level.

Here is your opportunity to contribute: (more…)

These hilarious exchanges are from a book called ‘Disorder in the American Courts’.

They were recorded verbatim and published by Court Reporters that had the torment of staying calm and remaining professional while these exchanges were actually taking place.

ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He’s twenty, much like your IQ. (more…)

Vince

by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team

We make choices throughout our lives – where we want to live, what types of activities will fill our days, with whom we spend our time. These choices are often a balance between our desires and our means, but at the end of the day, they are decisions made with intent. But when it comes to how we want to be treated at the end our lives, often we don’t express our intent or tell our loved ones about it.

This has real consequences. 73% of Americans would prefer to die at home, but up to 50% die in hospital. More than 80% of Californians say their loved ones “know exactly” or have a “good idea” of what their wishes would be if they were in a persistent coma, but only 50% say they’ve talked to them about their preferences.

But our end of life experiences are about a lot more than statistics. They’re about all of us. So the first thing we need to do is start talking.

Engage With Grace : The One Slide Project was designed with one simple goal: to help get the conversation about end of life experience started. The idea is simple: Create a tool to help get people talking. One Slide, with just five questions on it. Five questions designed to help get us talking with each other, with our loved ones, about our preferences. And we’re asking people to share this One Slide – wherever and whenever they can…at a presentation, at dinner, at their book club. Just One Slide, just five questions.

Lets start a global discussion that, until now, most of us haven’t had.

Here is what we are asking you: Download The One Slide and share it at any opportunity – with colleagues, family, friends. Think of the slide as currency and donate just two minutes whenever you can. Commit to being able to answer these five questions about end of life experience for yourself, and for your loved ones. Then commit to helping others do the same. Get this conversation started.

Let’s start a viral movement driven by the change we as individuals can effect…and the incredibly positive impact we could have collectively. Help ensure that all of us – and the people we care for – can end our lives in the same purposeful way we live them.

Just One Slide, just one goal. Think of the enormous difference we can make together.

(To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org . This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team)

In a little less than three weeks, DMAA: The Care Continuum Alliance will open its 10th annual meeting , in Hollywood, Fla. – a notable milestone for an organization that has evolved with its membership over the past decade.

I’ll be there, presenting with Dr. Victor Villagra on the "March toward Data Interoperability" and the outlook for disease management.

The content this year promises to be among the best yet, with a new track on the medical home and a keynote on population health and the medical home by American Academy of Family Physicians leader Bruce Bagley, MD, and Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative Chair Paul Grundy, MD.

Other tracks include innovations in care, HIT, engagement and behavior change and public-sector programs. You’ll also get an outlook on the November elections and the implications for health care reform from former U.S. Sen. John Breaux, political analyst Charlie Cook and health policy expert Ken Thorpe, PhD.

The Forum site has all the details and information on discounts still available for members of DMAA and partner organizations, including the Case Management Society of America, the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors and others.

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 just for the networking.

Second, the caliber of the conference organizer.  I’ve worked with many conference planners, and Satish Kavirajan is not your ordinary conference organizer.

Satish really knows his stuff and he’s a pleasure to work with.  I’m impressed how from a year in advance of the first Healthcare Unbound in 2004 he delved into the substance of the topics.  He read every link and every report I sent him, he talked with experts in the field, he asked deep questions about how best to structure a session or find the right mix of people for a panel.  In addition to many years of conference experience, Satish has an MBA in finance from Columbia — not your typical conference organizer.

Finally, there’s the caliber of the faculty.  Here’s the list of session titles and keynoters for Day 1 of this year’s Healthcare Unbound Conference:

• The Personal Health Information Network (PHIN): Opportunities and Implications for Healthcare Unbound. Vince Kuraitis, Better Health Technologies and David C. Kibbe, The Kibbe Group; American Academy of Family Physicians
• Healthcare Everywhere – How the New Culture of Wellness Is Opening the Door for Healthcare Unbound. Liz Boehm, Forrester Research
• A Behavioral Economist, a Roboticist, and a Healthcare Unbound Advocate Walk Into a Bar: Meanings for the Rest of Us. Mike Barrett, Critical Mass Consulting
• Keynote (title pending). Jay Srini, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
• From Mainframe to Personal Healthcare: A Progress Report on Addressing Technology, Policy, and Cultural Challenges. Eric Dishman, National Chair, CAST; Intel Corporation
• The Internet of Bodies. Don Jones, Qualcomm
• Google Health Overview. Jerry Lin, Google
• Continua Health Alliance:  The Next Generation of Personal Telehealth is Here! Dave Whitlinger, Continua Health Alliance; Intel Corporation
• Microsoft HealthVault Overview. David Cerino, Microsoft
• Disruptive Healthcare Innovation – Changing the Rules of Diabetes Management by Marrying Wireless and Clinical Innovation in the Healthcare Ecosystem. Anand Iyer, WellDoc; In-Building Wireless Alliance
• Improving Health Outcomes and Lowering Costs Using a Distributed Care Management Model. Larry Leisure, iMetrikus

I hope to see you at the 5th Annual Healthcare Unbound Conference! Please consider attending, sponsoring and/or exhibiting.

Vince gave me Dorothy’s story to read, and here’s what I said:  GO DOROTHY!   ::::goofy little happy dance:::   Dorothy is my new hero. I love people who are willing to go to the mat for a cause, especially one having to do with the elderly, children, the disabled and less fortunate than we.

Since Vince and I have been overwhelmed by the swamp of details of taking care of our family elderly for about, oh, 13 years – my parents, his aunt and uncle, pretty soon his mom -  nobody knows better than us how utterly nonsensical the systems are.

Our friends call us “The Geezer Whisperers” and email us for advice dealing with their relatives’ health care paperwork nightmares.  Since Vince has a deep understanding of  how American health care got to a point of old ladies being dragged out of hospitals in chains and shackles, and I’ve  demanded a lot of things from hospitals and doctors over the years, our friends think we have all the answers.

Vince is lucky.  He’s famous for being the smartest, most levelheaded, steady, reliable and adorable guy in the world.  Me?  I get the notoriety of being the proverbial rock, as in “between a rock and a hard place.” Taking no for an answer is not in my playbook.  You don’t want to get in my way when I’m organizing something, or you will end up firmly clipped to a barbed-wire clothesline. I can get You-Knighted States Senators to park my car. I take every defective purchase back to the store and always get a cash refund.  When I call the bank, they just waive any fees to avoid the hassle of talking to, uh, me.

Since I’m sure you get the picture by now, just imagine what hospital records departments have had to deal with. When told “you can’t have that” and it’s something I need to take care of someone I love, I am relentless. I’ve always gotten what I came for, but not without some big damned silly, er, disturbances.  No handcuffs have been involved yet, but ….(HINT:  When the guys in uniforms show up, smile and suddenly become unfailingly reasonable. Pisses ‘em right off.  When they leave, you can just swipe the folder and bolt.) (Oops….Um, Vince?  Did you know about that one?)

I’m proud to report that one doctor’s office staff refers to me as “that woman” and now gives me anything I want immediately.  Reputation is not as high on mine and Dorothy’s  lists as taking care of loved ones. If I remain kind and reasonable as long as possible, and only escalate to teeth-gritting, death-stare, devil-voiced determination when the refusals go on and on and on…..it comes out  even with Heaven.

I’ve always wondered if they are suspicious of imposters demanding strangers’ medical records. Do they think I’m selling them on eBay, or something?

So. What would REALLY happen if people like Dorothy were simply handed Auntie’s medical records?  Would anyone turn purple and explode? Would the hospital walls come-a tumblin’ down? Would Britney Spears wake up and smell the coffee? (more…)

Dorothy Tillman wanted it so badly that she was arrested!  Read more at Jaz-Michael King’s blog, A Scanner Brightly.

Hat tip to Jen McCabe Gorman for spotting this amazing story.

Yes I’ve trademarked Health2.0. No, I will not stop anyone using it. I’ll be giving control over the trademark to the collective advisory board for the Health2.0 Conference. All I want to make sure is that no one uses the trademark offensively (pun intended) as for instance has happened with the term eRx.

Why did Matthew obtain the trademark for Health 2.0 only to give it back to all of us?

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What does this have to do with disease management?  Nothing, really….well, actually I could use a disease management program targeted at dads who have the condition of having recently become empty nesters.

Vince

1. The POE Award — for plain old English
2. The POO Award — for pervasive obfuscatory oration

When I work on projects, the room typically has a combination of people who are native speakers of three very different languages:

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