Category: Uncategorized

HEALTH 2.0: Sept 19 pre-ConferenceGet Together(s)

Sep 18, 2007

If you’re in San Francisco for Health2.0 Bob Coffield is organizing a Health 2.0: Sept 19 Get Together.

There’s also a speakers/sponsors party (which is different to Bob’s get together) at the same time. If you’ve been invited to that (and you know who you are) the venue has been changed. Please check your email or email *******@***il.com“>Indu Subaiya for information on that.

Meanwhile, expect some special surprises at the post conference wine and cheese party!

Finally, the real party is going on at the Health2.0: User-Generated Healthcare Facebook group. Go there to meet other “Health2ers”. There are over 160 members and counting, and it’s the best way to network before and after the conference.

POLICY: Edwards copies my idea, and a damn good one it is too!

Sep 18, 2007

For a very long time I’ve been saying that the quickest way to get effective health care reform would be to kick Congress out of the FEBHP and make them all buy their care in the individual market. Well in his reaction to Hillary’s plan announced yesterday, John Edwards has stolen my idea.

Mr. Edwards, in remarks earlier today in Chicago, added a new proposal
to his plan: He said that as president he would press legislation that
ends health care coverage for the president, members of Congress and
political appointees on July 20, 2009, until the Congress passes the
Edwards health care plan.

This is the most impressive thing Edwards has ever said. I wonder if we can extend this legislation to include certain Wharton professors and employees of certain right-wing think tanks?

As for Hillary. She promised to bash insurers, and like the rest of the Democrats she wants to ban underwriting. Well here’s her plan. I’m not sure that there’s much in place in her plan to regulate insurers…although she may prove me wrong. Meanwhile I’m inclined to agree with Michael Cannon. This is pretty similar to Romneycare, although Mitt doesn’t want to admit to what he did in Massachusetts anymore, and Hillary does have the other wrinkle of extending FEBHP to the uninsured, and offering tax credits/subsidies with an individual mandate.

But essentially she’s hoping that this can be pushed through in compromise a la Massachusetts. The sensible moderates will wonder why she wants to strengthen the anachronism of employer-based health insurance, without putting a risk adjusting body in place. The right will say she’s extending FEBHP to all via the back door (much as Edwards is trying to semi-explicitly do with Medicare), and that eventually the tax credits and subsidies will lead to a government take-over (whatever the hell that means). And the left will wonder why she’s leaving the insurance companies in place at all.

My sense is that unless we convince Congress how bad things are via some innovative technique like mine or Edwards’, not much will happen for a few more years. Any worthwhile health care reform plan is too complex and too easily smeared to pass Congress unless the wolf is not only at the door but eating the children in the living room.

HEALTH2.0: More on the conference, and the Google situation

Sep 17, 2007

Health 2.0 is officially sold out. However, if you
still want to come there is a chance that we will be able make room for
you, as cancellations and other changes open up spots. You can still register on our waiting list. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible — although we may not be able to tell you anything until early next week.
This will also (hint, hint) put you on the list to be notified when spots become
available for the next Health 2.0, tentatively scheduled for the first
quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, to receive updates on conference developments please sign up for our newsletter.

Also, a big welcome (cue applause) is due to HEALTH 2.0’s latest charter sponsor. PeerClip hasn’t launched yet, but you can go take a sneak peak at what they are up to on their site. What exactly are they about? The mystery will be answered soon! Stay tuned to THCB for more details.

DVD boxed set

Meanwhile, if you can’t make it to Health 2.0 but want to catch all the action or share the Health 2.0 experience with your colleagues, we will be making a DVD set available shortly after September 20th. To reserve your set, please email in**@********on.com with "DVD boxed set" in your subject line. Full details will be provided.

What About Health Plan Transparency? – Brian Klepper

Sep 16, 2007• 8

As you might have noticed, Matthew has been a little preoccupied lately. He and Indu are putting the finishing touches on the Health 2.0 conference. This meeting will be 4 times the size they originally conceived, with content that describes a good portion of how health care will undoubtedly be shaped in the future. I’ll be there, typing furiously, trying to capture the blow by blow for THCB.

In any case, while Matt’s energies are elsewhere, I thought I’d float a topic that’s been on my mind recently.

Senator Clinton plans to roll out her health plan tomorrow, but in the roll-up last week she pointedly singled out the health plans as a big part of the problem.

"I intend to dramatically rein in the influence of the
insurance companies. They have worked to the
detriment of our economy and of our health-care system."

There has been a lot of discussion and progress lately on the transparency of doctor and hospital pricing and performance. But health plans are also very important, costly system players. What about the transparency of their pricing and performance? At this point, nearly all health plan costs and performance are opaque to the purchasers who buy coverage and to the vendors whose services they broker.

HEALTH2.0: User Generated Healthcare, Health2.0FAQ (by Matthew) with UPDATE

Sep 16, 2007• 7

Q. What is Health2.0 and why are we running a conference about it?

The term Web2.0 has been around since 2003. The O’Reilly organization both coined the term and created a definition that year, and then they went on to create the Web2.0 Conference. Meanwhile over at The Health Care Blog and in his by now relatively long consulting career, Matthew Holt (your author–I’ll be switching to "I & we" from now on) has been following technology in health care since the early 1990s. Some of my eHealth era reminisces were relatively poignant…

Best of: AthenaHealth’s Jonathan Bush on the end of software

Sep 16, 2007• 3

AthenaHealth’s Jonathan Bush was patient enough to talk through two interviews with me. The first died in a software flameout–the second crashed my computer, but thankfully the recording was still there after my very fearful restart! Jonathan explains AthenaHealth’s business model, why software is "nearly dead", and why he might just send a detective to your house if you want a job with him!

The rumors are true–he’s entertaining and "provocative". And he’ll be coming (assuming his schedule clears up) to the Health2.0 conference. So take a listen to the interview

Best of: The AMA goes 2.0

Sep 16, 2007• 3

Most of you reading about Health2.0 will be bored by now of me talking about Sermo and how they’ve become the quickest growing physician online community in well under a year–although there’s now competition in that space from the likes of Within3. You’ve also probably got bored of me saying that the big question about Health2.0 technologies is whether "the health care establishment" is going to adopt them.

However, you’d probably be a little surprised to find that one of the bastions of America’s health care establishment–and one that doesn’t get much good press on THCB–has decided that it needs to jump on board the Health2.0 bandwagon. Today Sermo announces a deal with the AMA that allows the AMA to see what doctors are talking about on Sermo, and gets its user docs free access to all the AMA’s journals, as well as starts making Sermo’s ranking and discussion tools part of those journals.

This is a coup for Sermo and a big move for the AMA. Not to mention a validation of the impact of at least one part of the Health2.0 movement. Want to know more? I thought you did–which is why I interviewed Sermo CEO Daniel Palestrant about the deal yesterday. Listen to the interview.

And yes, Daniel and Sermo (and the Within3 folks) will all be at the Health2.0-User Generated Healthcare conference. But you all knew that too!

BEST OF: JD Kleinke talks about PHRs, Omnimedix and the Dossia controversy

Sep 16, 2007• 4

JD Kleinke is always one of the more controversial and fun people in health care policy and health care IT. He doesn’t just write about stuff–he also gets really involved. From his early days at HCIA to his more recent roles at Healthgrades. And now of course he’s the head of Omnimedix — which was developing the technology for the employer based PHR Dossia, funded by WalMart, Intel et al. But apparently not funded enough.

I had a wide-ranging discussion with JD about his policy work, his career, what he thinks about health plans, and what went wrong with Dossia. The interview is of course well worth a listen.

BLOGS: A wonderful new blog

Sep 13, 2007• 1

A brilliant new blog by a wonderful health care consultant. Go read it. The first post is really, really on point. Go read.

HEALTH2.0/TECH: Way too much going on!

Sep 12, 2007• 1

I’m trying to organize a conference with everyone and their brother claiming that they need the last seat and that the dog ate their mouse so they couldn’t register. And we’ve been coaxing our demo panelists through their demos–which are all going to be really great, other than no one believes you when you tell them that four minutes went by in just 240 seconds.

And Tuesday was just one of those days…

Perennial THCB Health2.0 favorites Sermo are cooking up some fun stuff for the wine and cheese reception they’re sponsoring to close the Health2.0 Conference. But they’ve had a huge few days. Last week they announced that the FDA will be using Sermo to monitor potential new adverse drug events and much more. Initially FDA staff will be looking at what docs are talking about online, later they’ll be posing questions. Then Tuesday Sermo announced a $27m Series C Round, which should just about cover the cost of the cocktails….

Meanwhile, Kosmix has taken the beta tag off its RightHealth stealth search engine site. You can hear far more about this from my interview with Venky a month or two back. But they’ve announced that they got 2.5 million visits and 9 million searches generated a month and are in the top 12 health search sites measured by Hitwise. The concept is to extend the "home age for a search" to let people explore topics in context, while still making those top 10 search results visible.

Speaking of searches, OrganizedWisdom is changing its spots and moving from being a user-generated content site, to being a community search site that integrates user-generated content from all over. More details here and to be revealed at the conference next week. CEO Steven Krein tried to explain this to me at lunch a while back but I didn’t understand what he was talking about. Now I do and it’s really very interesting.

Finally, we’ll have more to say about how the news that Adam Bosworth is leaving Google health will impact Health2.0 shortly. But rest assured that Google is still participating in the conference and that they remain committed to health care.