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Next Generation Healthcare Analytics
Medical claims, pharmacy claims, lab values, HRAs, genetic markers, biometrics – the abundance of data is having an immediate impact on how analytics shape healthcare. Next generation analytics are bringing attention to health and wellness rather than disease-specific guidelines, and generating novel approaches to value-based medicine and care management.
Traditionally, analytics, such as predictive modeling, have been used to identify individuals for chronic care management and to set rates. New predictive models, however, include financial and clinical algorithms, which allow healthcare organizations to implement advanced ways to identify, manage and measure risk across and within a population.
A few examples of these pioneering applications of advanced analytics are outlined below.
The Doctor Is In and Logged On.
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Wow. I’ve just taken care of three patients in 12 minutes, and I didn’t do it by “churning” them through my office as if it’s some sort of factory assembly line. Rather, those patients (their parents, more specifically — I’m a pediatrician), e-mailed me over a secure network with questions and descriptions of signs and symptoms.
One mother attached a digital photo of a rash on her 3-month-old daughter’s face; it turned out be nothing more serious than baby acne (it’ll go away in a month or so). Another mom had noticed that her son was missing one of his pre-kindergarten immunizations (she had pulled up his shot records online) and requested that I order it. And the father of a 5-month-old boy told me that his son has been constipated off and on for the last month. I e-mailed him a questionnaire so I could determine whether the family should try something at home or bring the child to the office.
American Well bags BCBS Minnesota
American Well, who were big stars at (and sponsors of) the recent Health 2.0 Hawaii symposium have announced the second big Blues to sign on to use their service. It’s Blues of Minnesota, who Health 2.0 watchers know have their own online activity going on with Consumer Aware.
On the other hand, I’m not so sure that I’ll be keen to go the next regional Health 2.0 meeting if it’s held in winter in Minneapolis….
Herzlinger–Enthoven was right all along
In a blog piece called Why Republicans Should Back Universal Health Care Regina Herzlinger says something that I more or less agree with. Switzerland’s system isn’t a bad option. Neither for that matter is Holland’s. Now of course Maggie Mahar has debunked Herzlinger’s notion that there isn’t state regulation of insures and providers in those systems. And Regi also talks a lot of tosh about Medicare, the UK and the evils of the government in the same piece. But I guess she feels she has to do that to keep whatever’s left of her audience (that would be the four Republicans who care about health care, rather than the health care business types who have moved on in pursuit of who now holds the purse strings).
But I’m just left with one little question. Where’s Herzlinger’s mea culpa to Alain Enthoven? After all he’s been promoting the Dutch answer (he basically designed it) since 1978 or thereabouts. And I don’t recall Herzlinger mentioning that in the numerous times she’s been slamming managed competition and its father.
The public’s belief in scientific uncertainty and the importance of the social health Internet
Americans believe that scientific evidence is not always clear when differentiating between different treatment options for their health.Yesterday, as I moderated the the kick-off Great Debate session of the Health 2.0 Conference, co-hosted by the Center for Information Therapy in Boston, I felt this was a key tension between the fields of Health 2.0 — the use of web 2.0 tools in health, especially among health citizens — and Information Therapy, which aims to 'prescribe' the right information at the right time for the right patient in the process of care.The public belief in scientific uncertainty statistic comes from the latest NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health poll, The Public and the Health Care Delivery System.Don Kemper of Healthwise, the guru and proponent of Information Therapy, discoursed with Matthew Holt on the differences and synergies between Ix therapy and Health 2.0. A panel of reactors listened and responded: they were Gilles Frydman of ACOR, Dr. Alan Greene of DrGreene.com, Amy Tenderich of DiabetesMine, and Dr. Ted Eytan of Permanente Foundation. All four of these panelists are on Twitter, all four are active and important voices in their respective websites and blogs, and all four hold deeply passionate visions for Health 2.0.
Commentology:
Deron liked Matthew's interview with athenahealth CEO Jon Bush.
He had this to say about Jon:
"He's an amazing guy with great vision and clarity. If I were starting a practice from scratch, using Athena's platform would be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, we've already invested big $$ in one of those standalone systems."
RBaer weighed in on Matthew's morning post, "A Liberal is a Conservative Exposed to the NHS."
"I am actually a former German physician, (I am in the US because my wife is US American), and I can tell you that German physicians, especially hospitalists are underpaid (many physicians in private practice do reasonably well, though). I hear from friends and family that Germany is paying a price for that by seeing many physicians go abroad (England, Switzerland), being replaced by doctors from Eastern European countries who are often faced with language- and cultural barriers."
Interview with Mark Leavitt
Interview with Jon Bush
A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Continuity of Care Record Gains Ground As A Standard
We live in a time of such great progress in so many arenas that, too often and without a second thought, we take significant advances for granted. But, now and then, we should catalog the steps forward, and then look backward to appreciate how these steps were made possible. They sprung from grand conceptions of possibilities and, then, the persistent focused toil that is required to bring ideas to useful fruition.
We could see this in a relatively quiet announcement this week at HIMSS 09. Microsoft unveiled its “Amalga Unified Intelligence System (UIS) 2009, the next generation release of the enterprise data aggregation platform that enables hospitals to unlock patient data stored in a wide range of systems and make it easily accessible to every authorized member of the team inside and beyond the hospital – including the patient – to help them drive real-time improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of care delivery.”
