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See you at Healthcare Unbound

Happy 5th of July! I hope you had a happy 4th, and that you don’t have to work today as I have to.

I just wanted to let everyone know that I will be on a panel next Thursday at the 10th annual Healthcare Unbound conference at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Denver:

TRACK C: PANEL DISCUSSION: WHAT’S NEXT FOR mHEALTH?

The market for mobile health (mHealth) products and services is an important area which can be a catalyst for healthcare’s evolution, dramatically altering healthcare delivery and the patient experience. In the health system of the future, patient care will be greatly enhanced by a connected and seamless information flow between patients and other stakeholders, with mobility being a core need for all users of health information. With a growing ocean of mHealth applications, scalability, sustainability, security, interoperability are some of many points which will continue to be vital for developers.

mHealth can provide new ways for patients to be engaged in their health, beyond those interested in the “quantified self”, to shift the focus in healthcare from treatment to wellness. The healthcare industry therefore has the unique chance to harness this opportunity to create positive change.

There is the argument that regulation and restrictions could impede innovation, as the freedom of the market has fostered the rapidity of modernization in mHealth technology. However, other hurdles exist for developers, such as achieving adoption and sustained use of mobile applications, where users from physicians, to patients need to better understand what apps can make a real difference and which are just noise.

The panel will explore some of the ways mHealth is transforming healthcare and also tackle some of the serious questions, offering insight and solutions for those facing mHealth’s distinct challenges.
Moderator:
Daniel Ruppar, Research Director, Connected Health, Frost & Sullivan

Panelists:
Proteus Duxbury, , Director of Technology Strategy – Virtual Health Services, Catholic Health Initiatives
Wayne Guerra, MD, MBA, Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer, iTriage
Keith Toussaint, Executive Director, Business Development, Global Business Solutions, Mayo Clinic
Neil Versel, Contributing Editor, MobiHealthNews
Malinda Peeples, RN, VP Clinical Advocacy, WellDoc

This breakout session starts at 4:15 p.m. MDT. As the last thing standing between conference attendees and happy hour that day, we sure had better be engaging. Hopefully there will be video available after the fact. If there is, you can be sure I will post it here.

To register for the conference, click here.

July 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.

Healthcare conference scam alert

There is a group out there called EPS Global Medical Development Inc. touting what seem to be bogus healthcare/medical conferences. I got the following email today:

Dear Dr. Versel N.

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to attend the EPS Montreal International Gene Conference to be held November 3-4, 2011 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The conference will provide a forum for researchers in Genetics and Genomics to present cutting edge research and learn about the latest breakthroughs and technologies.

We would like to welcome you to our Conference as our valuable speaker and present your recent work and ideas of Connect the docs. Study shows IT issues could create common ground for physicians and hospitals. that were published in Mod Healthc.. Please visit our website at www.epsglobal.ca  and www.epswordlink.com for program details.

Montreal International Gene Conference is organized by EPS Global Medical development Inc. Professor Massaro, the editor-in-chief of the journal Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics (CBB) will be present at this event and call for submission of papers in this field. All of the papers presented in the conference may have a chance to be published in a special issue of Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics (CBB).

EPS Global Medical Development Inc. is a Canada-based biomedical consultant agency that promotes continuing academic education, knowledge transfer and scientific exchange through life sciences-oriented conferences. We are delighted to host the EPS Montreal International Gene Conference in Montreal in order to foster and promote excellence in Genetics and Genomics through education and research, and to provide leadership in promoting development of evidence-based clinical genetics and genomics as well as the basic research that supports these clinical advances.

We look forward to meeting you in Montreal and wish you all an enjoyable time.

 

Warmest regards,

Yao Lu, MD, PhD

Executive Chair of Montreal International Gene Conference 2011

President of EPS Global Medical Development Inc.

 

What’s wrong? Well, first off, I’m not a doctor. Duh.

Secondly, I know little or nothing about genetics or genomics.

Third, the article referenced here is nearly eight years old, and it appeared in Modern Physician, not Modern Healthcare—though it may have been distributed as a supplement in the latter. I wrote it at the end of 2003, when I was a lame duck at Crain, after I had been told I was being downsized out of a job.

And fourth, at the very top of the message was this disclaimer: “If you no longer wish to receive email from us, you may unsubscribe.” You know, the kind of thing you see in mass mailing lists.

As a kicker, the message came to an old address. FYI, please don’t use nversel@rcn.com. I still have it, but it may go bye-bye soon, since the building I’m in just switched Internet providers. I’ve been using nversel@gmail.com for years. It’s about time you updated your records.

I was going to write back to ask for clarification, but I Googled “EPS Global Medical Development scam” and found more than 30,000 hits.  Also, one of the links in the message was dead. (I’ve removed those links in this post.) The link that did work actually redirects through a tracking URL embedded in the message, so clearly this was a marketing ploy.

There is in fact a journal called Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics, edited by Edward J. Massaro, but everything else looks fishy. I wonder if Massaro knows his name is being used like this?

Consider yourself warned if you receive a similar invitation.

October 9, 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.

Rules for conference season

Fall is in the air. That means it’s conference season again in health IT. I’m at Health 2.0 in San Francisco right now, and I’ll be taking at least two more business trips to the Pacific time zone before Thanksgiving, plus at least one trip east. That means I’ll be seeing a lot of PowerPoint presentations in the near future.

Needless to say, some presentations are better than others. Some are more accurate than others. On my last trip to California back in July, I hit the AMDIS Physician-Computer Connection. There, one slide show contained a fairly serious factual error regarding mergers and acquisitions in the EHR market. I won’t repeat it because I don’t want to spread falsehoods. You could see the shock on the faces of several people in the audience.

An hour or so after that session, I was sitting at a table where one particularly perturbed individual had been earlier. He left the following on a notepad: Read more..

September 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.

Winter/spring conference updates

I’ve just updated the conference listings in the right-hand column of this page. For a more comprehensive, more international directory, I draw your attention to this page from Wireless Health Strategies.

December 20, 2010 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.

Fall speaking engagements

My fledgling speaking career—one that seems to be finding me rather than me pursuing it—is getting a big boost this fall.

Next week, I’m part of the opening keynote session at the mHealth Initiative‘s 2nd International mHealth Networking Conference in San Diego.

On Thursday, Sept. 16, it looks like I will be moderating a roundtable on mobile patient management at the half-day Mobile Healthcare and Medicine Symposia in Toronto, as part of Mobile Innovation Week in that fantastic Canadian city.

I’ll be headed to Las Vegas in mid-October to moderate three sessions at the Mobile Health Expo 2010:

  • “The Real Time Healthcare Enterprise,” Oct. 19, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. PDT
  • “Carrier or Wired Connectivity as the Backhaul From a Central Aggregator? Wireless Architectures and Industry Alignments for Approaches to Establishing Successful, Interactive Healthcare Monitoring,” Oct. 21, 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
  • “Mobile Payments and Health Information Exchange at the Point of Care Using Multi-Modal Mobile Apps to Engage Patients for Healthcare Providers,” Oct. 21, 1:30 – 2:30 p.m.

Also, FierceMobileHealthcare is planning some kind of event around the mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C., Nov. 8-10. As editor of that publication, I expect to play a role in the event, which will be separate from the actual conference that the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health is putting on. Stay tuned for details.

I hope to see you at one or more of these events.

I’ve also, finally, updated the list of upcoming health IT-related conferences that you see in the right-hand column of this page. This should take you all the way through HIMSS next February.

Oh, if you were wondering what I think of the term “mHealth” (with a forced capital H), read my column in this week’s FierceMobileHealthcare.

September 2, 2010 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.

Slides from my UMB presentation

As you may have heard, I gave a keynote presentation on Wednesday at the University of Maryland-Baltimore Health Sciences and Human Services Library’s “@Hand Symposium on Mobile Technologies in Medicine and Academia.” It’s not something I’ve done a lot of, but feedback has been positive. I’m still waiting to see the audience evaluations, though.

I understand the whole symposium was streamed live on the Web–something I didn’t know until after the fact. I also wasn’t aware that there was a video camera in the room, since it apparently was hidden in the same drop-down compartment that holds the video projector.

UMB is in the process of archiving the video and will make it available for streaming on the symposium site, probably sometime next week. In the meantime, here is a PDF of my slides.

Thanks to Hello Health co-founder Dr. Sean Khozin, Dr. Andrew Barbash of Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., Peter Waegemann of the mHealth Initiative, Dr. Steven Lane and Dr. Enoch Choi of Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Michele Guthrie of the West Wireless Healthcare Institute and Joyce Lofstrom of HIMSS for providing me with photos and graphics for the presentation. And, of course, a big thanks to the staff of the Health Sciences and Human Services Library for inviting me. Unfortunately, the library’s executive director, M.J. Tooey, was stranded in Italy thanks to the cloud of volcanic ash that covered much of Europe this week.

April 22, 2010 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.

Updated conferences

I’ve updated the list of conferences in the right-hand column of the screen.

January 6, 2010 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.

MedInfo paper deadline extended

The deadline for submitting papers for the 13th World Congress on Medical and Health Informatics, also known as MedInfo 2010, has been extended to Oct. 15. MedInfo 2010, the triennial meeting of the International Medical Informatics Association, is scheduled for Sept. 12-15, 2010, in Cape Town, South Africa.

This will mark the first time a global health IT conference has been held in Africa, and it comes just a few months after South Africa also becomes the first African nation to host the FIFA World Cup next June and July (you know, winter in the Southern Hemisphere).

I covered the last two MedInfos, in Brisbane, Australia, in 2007, and in San Francisco in 2004. I had stories to write for months after the fact. I also was the only professional journalist from either North America or Europe to make the long trip to Brisbane, and, if all goes as planned, I expect to be in Cape Town a year from now for all your coverage needs. (Subtle hint.)

September 20, 2009 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.

Conference listings updated

Take a look just below the blogroll in the right-hand column of this page and you’ll see that I’ve updated the conference listings with many of the events I’m interested in this fall. That doesn’t mean that I’ll be going to all of them, but I expect to attend at least a few of them.

Am I missing anything?

August 10, 2009 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.