e-CareManagement blog

Chronic Disease Management • Technology • Strategy • Issues and Trends

We’re Building a REALLY BIG Health Internet!

How big a network will the Health Internet (aka National Health Information Network) be?
My BOTE (back-of-the-envelope) calculation is that this network could consist of about 301 million nodes.  Here’s my math (pls. clarify or amplify):

300 million individuals in U.S.
700 K doctors
5 K hospitals
295 K — other B2B healthcare entities

Very rough…but I hope you get the point.
So let’s put into perspective [...]

Continue reading

 

What’s a Network Industry? Is Healthcare One?

This post is a foundational overview of characteristics of network industries.  Much of the terminology will deserve deeper discussion, but we have to start somewhere.
In his book The Economics of Network Industries, Professor Oz Shy lists four characteristics of network industries.
The main characteristics of these markets which distinguish them from the market for grain, dairy products, apples, and treasury bonds [...]

Continue reading

 

“Meaningful Use” Criteria as a Unifying Force

by Vince Kuraitis, Steve Adams, and David C. Kibbe MD, MBA
Over the past several years, many diverse initiatives have arisen offering partial solutions to systemic problems in the U.S. health care non-system. 
We see Meaningful Use Criteria recommended by the HIT Policy Committee as a unifying force for these previously disparate initiatives. These initiatives have included:

Patient Centered Medical Homes [...]

Continue reading

 

Microsoft HealthVault is a Serious Business Strategy. Will Google Health Become More than a Hobby?

Google Health…please stick around….but please also get your stuff together.
Over the past few days, several of my respected colleagues have written excellent blog posts essentially asking “Does Google Health have life?”

Scott Shreeve — CLEAR! Shocking Google Health Back to Life
John Moore — Is Google Health Irrelevant?
Will Crawford — Future of Google Health

I share their observations and sentiments.  [...]

Continue reading

 

Adieu, LifeCOMM

“Qualcomm pulls the plug on LifeComm”  announced Brian Dolan of mobihealthnews recently. 
As demonstrated by e-CareManagement blog readership, there has been a lot of interest in LifeCOMM.  My first blog post on LifeCOMM in 2007 has been single the most commented on post and the second most widely read blog post.
It’s taken me a while to sift through [...]

Continue reading

 

Time for EHRs to Become Plug-and-Play

by David C. Kibbe MD, MBA
The remarkable report, “Initial Lessons From the First National Demonstration Project on Practice Transformation to a Patient-Centered Medical Home,” published in the May/June issue of Annals of Family Medicine, the Nutting Report, makes this point about the state of primary care IT offerings:
Technology needed in a PCMH is not “plug [...]

Continue reading

 

Privacy Law Showdown? Legal and Policy Analysis.

#2 in a series — Modifications to HIPAA Privacy Laws: Impact on Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health, and other PHRs. 
by Deven McGraw JD, MPH, Center for Democracy & Technology
Introduction
There has been considerable discussion lately about whether or not the stimulus legislation (ARRA) extends HIPAA coverage to commercial vendors of personal health records (PHRs) any time they contract with entities [...]

Continue reading

 

Privacy Law Showdown? Setting the Stage

Today’s post is the first in a series entitled:
Modifications to HIPAA Privacy Laws: Impact on Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health, and other PHRs. 
We’ll explore how recent changes in privacy provisions of  ARRA/HITECH Federal stimulus legislation affect personal health information (PHI) platform companies (e.g., HealthVault, Google Health,  Dossia) and personal health record (PHR) companies.
Health IT expert and journalist Neil Versel described the issue in the April [...]

Continue reading

 

EHR 2.0: Thinking Outside the Cat Box

One of the potential dangers of limiting $17 B HITECH federal stimulus funds to electronic health records (EHRs) is the risk of locking-in outdated technologies. Let’s consider what this might mean.
If you think of today’s EHR technology as EHR 1.0, what might EHR 2.0 look like? This post presents a number of innovative ways to conceptualize [...]

Continue reading