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Matthew Holt

Pre-Conferences kick off Health 2.0

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By Matthew Holt

We were coding up a storm yesterday (Saturday) at the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge Code-a-thon and that goes on today–you can even stop by the PariSoma Loft to see the live judging at 3pm — with $13,000 in prizes on the line.

But the main act is starting up TODAY with 4 fabulous pre-conferences.  Don’t forget these are FREE to anyone registered to attend the main conference and to doctors, patients and employers as appropriate for their sessions. There’s also an Innovation Exchange with the Beacon Communities which has some public availability.

The Pre-Conferences: Patients 2.0 brings together more than 150 patient activists. Doctors 2.0 has several leading physicians on stage and in the audience, and more than 15 demos and active panel discussions. Employers 2.0 has leading employers again on stage and in the audience (Wanna meet Facebook’s head of benefits? -scan the badges!) and more demos than you can shake a stick at–as long as some cool case studies from Pfizer on wellness and Cisco on worksite clinics.Continue reading…

DC to VC: Health 2.0 Companies Pitch!

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By Laura Montini

Health Innovation Week continues in San Francisco, but, this past Thursday, Health 2.0 zipped down to the Microsoft campus in Mountain View for “DC to VC” – a fabulously organized event by Rebecca Lynn & Ching Wu of Morgenthaler Ventures and MC’ed by our very own Matthew Holt. Despite the prominent names of the organizers, the stars of this show were really the eleven HIT startups from across the US selected from a list more than 125 companies who had pitched for a spot on the stage.

Up first were six companies in the Seed stage category. Each was under two years old and has raised less than $500K so far. They were followed by slightly older, slightly more experienced startups in the Series A category. These companies were under three years old and have received less than $1.5 million in funding.Continue reading…

Health 2.0 Launch! Finalists Announced

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By Matthew Holt

Since we first put it on at Health 2.0 in 2008, Launch! has introduced over 45 new companies and products, including Unity Medical, Remedy Ventures, TheCarrot, and the WSJ’s 2010 top (and not just in health!) start-up company, Castlight Health. Launch! is the first time a company has demoed at a conference, and the product must either be coming out soon or have been in very limited beta to this point. This year, we’re seeing some larger better funded companies on Launch! but everyone’s had to compete to get on and there are some teeny start-ups here that you’ve never heard of that might just blow you away. It’s 10 continuous 4 minute demos, and the winner gets a main stage spot next year, not to mention bragging rights. Who wins? The audience decides. Yes you can still get one of the last few tickets (but we’ll sell out in next day or two).

Below (in alphabetical order) for the first time, we’re thrilled to announce the Launch! finalists for 2011:

  • Basis–There’s been lots of excitement in the Health 2.0 offices about getting hold of one of these devices. It looks like a watch but it tracks heart rate more than time. CEO Jef Holove will finally show us what they’re like.
  • Clarimed–CEO Nora Iluri will show us her ambitious attempt to measure devices and much more in health care and communicate the results to lots of constituencies including consumers
  • CareCoach–Almost everything we hear in a doctor’s office is lost by the time we get to the parking lot. But a visit to the doctor is an expensive and important time that should be captured, reviewed and shared with family. CEO Jeff Kozloff shows how CareCoach does that.Continue reading…

Health 2.0 Code-a-thon: Novartis invites all-comers to innovate around their API

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By DAVE CHASE

As Health Innovation Week kicks off, before 1300 of our best friends arrive for the Health 2.0 Conference on Sunday-Tuesday, on Saturday we are hosting a Health 2.0 Code-a-thon in San Francisco at the PariSOMA loft (11am  Saturday 25th to 3pm Sunday 26th). Spots are filling up fast but you can register here & yes, it’s free and there’s $10,000 in prizes at stake (not to mention pizza & beer). But it’s not just SiliValley techies who care. Big pharma Novartis is getting into challenges big time including sponsoring one at this very code-a-thon. THCB favorite (and CEO of Avado) Dave Chase explains more–Matthew Holt

“We’ve spent billions developing new drugs and we’ve spent billions marketing drugs but we’ve spent nothing on the actual use of our drugs.” That is how a senior executive at a major pharmaceutical company described the model in which they’ve operated historically. In a “do more, bill more” reimbursement environment, there was little economic incentive for a pharmaceutical company to pay close attention to what was happening with patients in clinical practice. This has been in stark contrast with clinical trials where a trial makes or breaks a drug. For obvious reasons, in clinical trials, there is a tremendous amount of attention paid to what happens with an individual’s use of a drug.

Times have changed. Not only have the first warning shots been fired across the bow of the pharmaceutical industry, the first shots have landed. Whether the payer is a national government or private insurance company, increasingly, they are refusing to pay for drugs that haven’t demonstrated efficacy in clinical practice (not just trials).

Continue reading…

ONC Invests in Innovation Challenges

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By Matthew Holt

Health 2.0 is thrilled to announce that we are launching two challenges as part of the official kick-off of the Investing in Innovation (i2) program. Over the next 2 years the ONC will be issuing nearly $2 million in prize money for numerous challenges all designed to inspire innovation in health information technology. Along with our colleagues at Capital Consulting Corporation, Health 2.0 is the contractor supporting this effort. We started with a joint NCI/ONC effort which is already underway, but now the first two challenges are live. And they are:

  • Reporting Device Adverse Events Challenge ONC is asking multi-disciplinary teams to develop an application that facilitates the reporting of adverse events related to medical devices, whether implanted or used in the hospital, clinic, or home. This challenge has $40,000 in total prizes
  • Ensuring Safe Transitions from Hospital to Home Challenge. ONC is challenging software developers to improve care transitions and build upon these tools by generating an intuitive and easy-to-use application to empower patients and caregivers that fits into existing ways that providers communicate. This challenge also has $40,000 in total prizes.

These are both critical parts of health care where new innovation can make a big difference–and developers can win a substantial prize to get them on their way.

AHIP Video Series: McKesson

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By DEB LINTON

Continuing with our AHIP Video Series, Health 2.0 and THCB sat down with McKesson‘s VP of Decision Management, Matt Zubiller. McKesson Corporation is the world’s largest and oldest healthcare services company, and McKesson Health Solutions (MHS) is its payer-focused business unit. For 35 years, MHS has delivered solutions with the industry’s soundest and most widely used clinical evidence and expert technology to help payers and providers collaborate to achieve better healthcare outcomes at lower costs. Each solution in the MHS portfolio is designed to decrease administrative costs, create efficient provider networks, manage both risk and medical costs, and improve care quality and outcomes. In this video, learn more about why MHS solutions touch more than 160 million cov­ered lives, and are used by 96% of the top 25 health plans, payers of all sizes, 4,000 hospitals, and numerous federal agencies.

Will One Medical justify $40m in venture funding?

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By MATTHEW HOLT

One Medical is a San Francisco-based “concierge lite” primary care service. I happen to know it pretty well because I’m a patient there and have known CEO Tom Lee and given free (probably unwanted) consulting to COO Sharon Knight since before the NY Times made them famous.  So yesterday’s news that they’ve raised another $20m (making their total $46m) gave me pause. Not because I don’t think my doctor (Andrew Diamond) isn’t fantastic. He is. Plus when you go to an appointment–which really can be booked same or next day online–you get a full half an hour, it really runs on time and the office environment is fabulous. Ian Morrison used to tell us that quality in health care was being in a waiting room with people richer than you. At One Medical everyone is better looking than you (well, than me anyway!).

The added cost for this? Only about $150 a year. Oh and that added cost is actually voluntary, as Tom Lee pointed out in an email last year after local IPA Brown & Toland complained. Yes that fee gets you rapidly answered emails, online prescriptions, same day appointments and way more. So what’s the catch? There doesn’t seem to be one. This concerns me for several reasons:Continue reading…

Hearts on Fire: a Tale of Two Californias

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By MATTHEW HOLT

The concept of practice variation raised its ugly head again this weekend in the northern California news media. And buried in the stories are several themes for our ages. But the conclusion is, the power of individual health systems and very small numbers of physicians to change patterns–and the cost–of care are enormous.

First the stories. Both about health care but also both revealing the future of investigative reporting. The BayCitizen is a non-profit blog about the San Francisco metro, created as response to the local papers cutting their reporting. It also provides stories to the NY Times–I’m unaware about how much of its revenue comes from the Times, but it’s part of  the Times’ entry into non-NY competition with retreating local papers.

For this story on heart program readmission picked up on an older UCSF press release and showed how UCSF used a $500K+ donation from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation (that’s the Moore of Intel & Moore’s law fame) to create a very sensible program that gave in-home support to newly discharged elderly cardiac patients. It cut readmission rates by 30%. The BayCitizen though will upset Gary Schwitzer as it did not include the actual numbers but the UCSF press release does, and yes this is a relative not an absolute cut. Here’s the key graf

Over the past 11 months, only 16 percent, on average, of the hospital’s heart failure patients were readmitted within a month of discharge, down from 23 percent in 2006. That’s well below the national 30-day readmission rate of 25 percent. The average readmission rate was 11.6 percent during the first four months of 2011.

So UCSF was about average and got much better and seems to be getting better still–but there’s quite a way to go. But it is an indication that at least one AMC is capable of moving the ball in the right direction. Of course UCSF is a leader in the pro-Dartmouth “use resources sensibly” camp, and we may or may not see the “keep em alive at all costs” folks at UCLA follow suit.

Meanwhile up in rural northern California it looks like the same Dartmouth data set is about to bring a series of visits from the FBI. Continue reading…

Wendell Potter reveals Rick Perry’s ignorance

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What does a know-nothing Republican who doesn’t believe in science and is front-runner for his party’s nomination for President say about health care? Pretty much the same that the rest of them now do–unlike McCain, Huckabee et al in 2008. What’s the new Republican ideology? Apparently. there’s not much wrong with health care and what there is wrong, caps on malpractice payouts will fix. Perry cites the increase in the number of doctors in Texas since tort reform caps were put in as proof that it works. Wendell Potter at PR Watch shows that, when corrected with facts, everything Perry says is rubbish. But then again, were you surprised?

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