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Some truths about health IT and innovation

This morning at the annual SAS Health Analytics Executive Conference in Cary, N.C., former national health IT coordinator Dr. Farzad Mostashari dubbed Dr. Eric Topol “the high priest of personalized medicine.”

That reminded me of an e-mail I received a couple weeks ago, suggesting that someone should start a blog called, “What’s Eric Saying?” As this correspondent explained it, all you need to do is read Topol’s Twitter stream to know where health IT and the practice of medicine are headed. I checked it out. It’s true.

Some examples:

 

 

 

And that’s just since Monday.

Meanwhile, Mostashari added some truisms himself this morning. “Med speed is slow. Tech speed is fast,” he said, apparently paraphrasing current TEDMED owner Jay Walker. Then, speaking as a physician, Mostashari said, “Most of what determines our outcomes isn’t what happens in our office.” Which is kind of what Topol has been trying to get across for several years.

If only the financial incentives would encourage care outside the office, we might be getting somewhere. It’s starting to happen, but, as it says above, med speed is slow.

May 14, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

All my HIMSS coverage in one place

The last of my 10 MedCity News stories from HIMSS14 has been posted. It’s a nice mix of news, features, analysis and commentary. Here are links to all of them, in chronological order.
NantHealth launches Clinical Operating System – biggest of big data startups – with $1B (Feb. 25)

Body + biology + behavior: Intel exec explains how technology is making N=1 care possible (Feb. 26)

Tavenner: 2014 is your last chance for a hardship exemption for Meaningful Use 2 (Feb. 27)

HIMSS crowd skeptical of promise for flexibility on MU2 hardship requests (Feb. 27)

Google Glass startup expecting third healthcare client in less than 6 months (Feb. 27)

DeSalvo: True EHR interoperability – and a national HIE – is possible by 2017 (Feb. 28)

DeSalvo meets and greets – briefly – while Tavenner keeps her distance at HIMSS (March 3)

HIMSS Intelligent Hospital tracks patients, pills and clinicians in completely connected loop (March 5)

Interoperability Showcase uses car crash to show how connected data really can improve patient care (March 5)

Athenahealth’s first inpatient product isn’t quite an EHR, but a ‘Trojan horse’ into hospitals (March 10)

 

March 12, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

On a personal note: Celebrity chef joins MSA cause

This is not related to health IT, so if that’s all you’re looking for, I won’t be offended if you skip this post—unless you’re involved in wearable sensors, in which case, there’s something near the end that may be of interest.

No, this post is about multiple system atrophy, the rare, progressive, always-fatal neurodegenerative disorder that killed my father in 2012. While my dad was fighting this evil disease, more than a few physicians he saw had either never heard of MSA or had never seen a case of it. One marked it down in the medical record as “MS,” as in multiple sclerosis, a completely different condition.

Recently, MSA awareness got a shot in the arm in the form of some bittersweet news: Las Vegas-based celebrity chef Kerry Simon, who has been called the “rock n’ roll chef” by Rolling Stone magazine and probably is best known nationally for beating Cat Cora on “Iron Chef America” in 2005, told the world he had this illness. He went public in December in an interview with his friend Robin Leach — yes, that Robin Leach.

Rather than go into seclusion as his body starts to wither away, Simon has chosen to become the public face of the disease. He just started a new organization called Fight MSA, and has a high-profile fundraisers planned Thursday in Las Vegas. Simon is friends with a lot of rock stars, and these are big-dollar events with big names, including entertainment from Sammy Hagar, Slash, Alice Cooper and Vince Neil of Motley Crue, and food by a long roster of famous chefs from around the country. If you can make it, tickets are still available.

The same night, his restaurant in his home town of Chicago, Chuck’s: A Kerry Simon Kitchen, is holding a smaller benefit. It just so happens that I’m returning from the HIMSS conference in Orlando, Fla., that evening, flying into Midway Airport. Chuck’s is at 224 N. Michigan Ave., in the Hard Rock Hotel, which is right on the way home for me from Midway. If all goes well, I plan on being there around 8 pm, and I invite you to join me. Unlike the $500/$1,000 Vegas event, the Chicago fundraiser will only set you back the cost of a hamburger or a cocktail.

(If you happen to find yourself at one of Simon’s restaurants in Las Vegas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlantic City, N.J., or Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, please put in a good word about his fight against MSA.)

I’ve been trying to sell this story to national and local mainstream and foodie media, so far, to no avail, so I’m posting it here. If you have any leads for me, please let me know.

Also on the MSA front, perhaps the foremost researcher of this disease in the world, Dr. Gregor Wenning of the Medical University of Innbruck, Austria, last year published the first medical textbook dedicated to understanding MSA. Wenning just flew 18 hours each way to meet with Simon. If you’re a neurologist or other physician treating MSA patients, you can buy a copy here.

Just last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a drug called Northera (droxidopa) for treatment of neurogenic orthostatic hypotension (NOH), a sudden drop in blood pressure when standing up that occasionally is a symptom of MSA, Parkinson’s disease, pure autonomic failure and even diabetic neuropathy. My dad had at least a couple of fainting spells due to NOH.

This summer, I am planning a huge undertaking to raise awareness this summer, a bike tour from Chicago to Washington, D.C. My dad lived in the area, and there just happens to be an MSA-related conference there in July that I may use as my finish line. That’s 800 miles, for those of you keeping score at home, and I think I can do it in less than two weeks. There may be an opportunity to ride a segment or two with me as well, particularly the final leg through Maryland. I expect to have some details to announce during March, which happens to be MSA Awareness Month.

I will be putting up a separate blog soon to share details of my tour and, hopefully, updates en route. (You know, quantified self folks, I might be able to make use of some of your technology if I’m going to be on a bike for 6-8 hours a day for 10-14 days. Just saying.)

For more information about the disease and the research underway, I’ll refer you to the Multiple System Atrophy Coalition in the U.S. and Canada, and the Multiple System Atrophy Trust in the U.K. There are support groups in other countries, and I’m happy to help you track them down if you ask.

February 21, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Transcript from Leslie Saxon’s appearance on CNN’s ‘The Next List’

LOS ANGELES—Yesterday, I covered the seventh annual Body Computing Conference at the University of Southern California, hosted by Dr. Leslie Saxon, chief of cardiovascular medicine at USC’s Keck School of Medicine. That got me thinking: Whatever happened to the video from Saxon’s appearance on CNN’s “The Next List” back in March?

I’m pretty sure CNN never actually posted the full video anywhere online, though the network did share a short teaser clip a couple days before the show, hosted by CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, first aired. However, I did find a full, albeit unverified, transcript of the episode on CNN’s Web site if you care to imagine what the pictures might look like.

Several of the people who were on the show also appeared at USC yesterday, including AliveCor’s Dr. Dave Albert, Zephyr Technologies CEO Brian Russell, Misfit Wearables CEO Sonny Vu and product designer Stuart Karten, as, of course, did Saxon and her Oscar-winning film producer-brother, Ed. I’ll have more coverage Monday in MobiHealthNews.

In the meantime, here’s Friday’s news about AliveCor earning FDA 510(k) clearance for the universal, Android-compatible version of its smartphone ECG, the newly dubbed AliveCor Heart Monitor. I’ll see you next week at CHIME’s Fall CIO Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz.

October 5, 2013 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

Maybe Topol and Agus are rock stars after all?

I saw this advertisement on bus shelter near my home in Chicago Tuesday night:

 

Topol-Agus

Yes, that’s Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, and Dr. David Agus, co-founder of Navigenics, flanking pop star Seal, in an ad for fashion house Geoffrey Beene’s Rock Stars of Science program. (The www.rockstarsofscience.org URL currently redirects to Geoffrey Beene’s home page, but the Facebook page still works.) The photo actually is from a GQ shoot in 2009, as readers of MobiHealthNews might recall, but I’ve only noticed the outdoor ads recently. I guess the band must be on hiatus right now.

FWIW, Topol is keynoting Tuesday morning at HIMSS13 in New Orleans.

February 26, 2013 I Written By

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Podcast: Intel’s Eric Dishman on connected care management

Did you miss Eric Dishman’s keynote address Tuesday at the Medical Group Management Association‘s annual conference in Las Vegas? That’s OK, because I secured a few minutes with Dishman, director of health innovation and policy at Intel, immediately after his talk, and the results are right here.

This podcast, recorded in the somewhat noisy press room at the Las Vegas Convention Center, is a companion piece of sorts to my coverage in MobiHealthNews on Thursday, so I hope you have a chance to check out both.

Podcast details: Intel’s Eric Dishman on connected care management, recorded Oct. 26, 2011, at MGMA annual conference in Las Vegas. MP3, mono, 64 kbps, 5.2 MB. Running time 11:08.

0:30 Virtual care coordination in nontraditional settings
1:05 Overlap/collaboration with Care Innovations joint venture
2:10 Prototype device for monitoring symptoms of Parkinson’s patients
4:00 Home monitoring of “classic” chronic diseases
4:55 Tracking behavioral changes for prevention and early detection
6:05 Realizing the potential of mobile health
6:55 Care coordination and health reform
8:30 ACOs and payment for quality
9:35 Intel’s future providing “strategic blueprints” for healthcare
10:20 How to share ideas with him

October 26, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.