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I’m joining TriMed Media’s Clinical Innovation + Technology

I have some big news to share with you this Friday afternoon. I have accepted an offer to become digital editor of Clinical Innovation+ Technology, a publication you may be familiar with. I’ll be responsible for the daily e-mail newsletter, among other things. It’s my first full-time job since the end of 2003.

Clinical Innovation + Technology is published by TriMed Media Group of Providence, R.I., which also publishes Health Imaging + IT, Cardiovascular Business, Healthcare Technology Management, Health CXO and the recently revived CMIO. (I freelanced for the first few issues of the original incarnation of CMIO, which later became Clinical Innovation & Technology.) This is a telecommuting job, so I will remain in Chicago.

Of course, this means I will have to give up most of my freelance work, in part because I won’t have the time and also because I don’t want to be in direct competition with my new employer. At least in the short term, I do intend to keep up this blog, since it never really was my primary outlet or source of income anyway, Lately, I haven’t been posting more than 2-3 times a month anyway, so you may not even notice much of a difference. Once I figure out my routine at the new job, I’ll decide on whether or not to continue this site.

I don’t know all the details yet on what kinds of things I’ll be focusing on, so please do not start inundating me with pitches. The last time I did multiple newsletters a week, I got burned out in no small part due to the volume of e-mail I received. Do note that “clinical” is the first name of the publication, and that TriMed has other titles devoted to the business side of things. That should be a clue as to what I’ll be interested in. As far as I know, there is no change to the staff of the print magazine.

January 23, 2015 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.

More accolades for Topol as ‘connected health’ gains

I’m convinced that Dr. Eric Topol is one of those rare people, like Dr. John Halamka, who can function on minimal sleep, perhaps four hours a night. He just gets that much done.

Yesterday, AT&T named Topol chief medical advisor. As such, the company says, Topol will “impact the design, development and delivery” of connected health products and services for the AT&T ForHealth business. This is on top of his appointment last year as editor-in-chief of Medscape, his many speaking engagements and TV appearances and, lest we forget, his day job as cardiologist, geneticist and chief academic officer at Scripps Health in San Diego and leader of the Scripps Translational Science Institute.

Topol will not, however, be replacing Dr. Geeta Nayyar, who was full-time CMIO at AT&T until September.

This news comes a couple weeks after CBS News ran a segment on the possible demise of the stethoscope at the hands of the portable ultrasound.

 

This is not the first time we have heard this idea. Yes, it was Topol who dropped his stethoscope in the trash on stage at TEDMED 2009 and suggested that the handheld ultrasound should become the standard of care by the time the 200th anniversary of the stethoscope rolled around in 2016.

Given how slowly medicine moves, I wouldn’t bet on the stethoscope being extinct in the next two years; the cost of the GE Healthcare Vscan ultrasound, the one Topol demonstrated in 2009, hasn’t really budged since then. A new one will still set you back $7,900. I can’t see primary care physicians shelling out that kind of cash when the old technology is $200 or less.

Meanwhile, this week we get more evidence that “connected health” may be winning the terminology battle over mobile, wireless and digital health. The February edition of Health Affairs examines this field, which the policy journal says encompasses telemedicine, telehealth and mobile health. On the other hand, the lead author of one of the overview articles is Dr. Joseph Kvedar, founder and director of the Center for Connected Health at Partners HealthCare in Boston. He is the champion of the term, and possibly the creator of it.

 

 

February 4, 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.

My week in review

Since I’m starting to write a lot of daily/breaking news, I’m going to try something new today that might become a regular Friday feature: posting my week in review. It will consist of a quick rundown of stories I’ve written this week. Here goes:

Monday

“Patient Safety Initiative To Leverage Health IT: The $1 billion federal Partnership for Patients initiative aims to cut $35 billion in healthcare costs, save 60,000 lives, and decrease hospital-acquired conditions by 40% by 2013.” (InformationWeek)

Tuesday

“Medicare Opens EHR ‘Meaningful Use’ Attestation” (InformationWeek)

“How mobile health can abide by HIPAA” (MobiHealthNews)

“State of mobile and wireless healthcare” (video/slides of my recent presentation to Meharry Medical College)

Wednesday

“CMIOs to begin testing BlackBerry PlayBook” (MobiHealthNews)

Thursday

“More Unrealistic Expectations From the Public, This Time Involving CDS” (EMR and HIPAA)

 

I’ve got another InformationWeek story to crank out this afternoon that may or may not get posted until Monday, and a podcast in the works, too. Bring on the weekend!

 

April 22, 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.