What: Join healthcare data journalist Fred Trotter‘s lecture on graph theory and find out how to translate healthcare issue into solvable graph problems.
When: Thursday, October 24th at 2pm PT/5pm ET (TODAY).
Where: Sign up here.
Health 2.0 Introduces Big Players in Big Data
Bob Rogers isn’t just the Chief Data Scientist at Apixio, he’s also a physicist, prior hedge fund manager, and now an instructor for Health 2.0 EDU’s joint three-day executive education course with UC Berkeley on digital health startingOctober 3rd. Bob’s career shift to health care gave what he references as “a sense of intrinsic value” to his work in a time where the value of health care technology is only increasing:
EDU: What are you focused on right now at Apixio?
BR: My number one goal right now is to help health care organizations get seamless, simple access to all of their data, including structured data, textual documents, and images. The business and financial challenges to health care organizations to simultaneously increase efficiency and improve care are impossible to overcome without reliable data. Studies show that over two-thirds of key clinical information is missing from the coded layer of EHRs, so we are developing technology that surfaces the information hidden in clinical narrative and scanned documents. Given the number and diversity of the documents generated by health care systems, this is truly a big data problem.
EDU: Your work in application and algorithm development seems like a hard concept to grasp: How do you explain something so new but fundamental to people in health care without a tech background?
BR: The goal of information technology is to answer questions and to solve problems: The underlying technology is secondary. I like to focus on specific examples and use cases and analogies that everyone in the industry can understand and appreciate.
EDU: Why do you think it’s important for executives in organizations like hospitals and pharma companies to understand big data?
BR: Decision makers in health care and pharma need reliable information to run their businesses, but many have been burned by clunky, expensive technology that has not met expectations. Health care data is big and requires big data techniques to make it useful, so a good understanding of the opportunities and risks of big data is crucial to navigate successfully.
EDU: What new application of big data in health care are you most excited about?
BR: There are two areas that are exciting to me. In the therapeutic arena, it has become possible to make meaningful discoveries about the safety and applicability of drugs by mining clinical narrative. For example, Stanford professor Nigam Shah is doing some very impactful work in this area. On the clinical care side, it is now possible to construct a network model of an entire health system using big data techniques. This creates opportunities to empower care coordination, chronic disease management and cost management for populations.
EDU: What are you most looking forward to in your upcoming UC Berkeley course with Health 2.0 EDU, and what do you hope your students will take away?
BR: I’m looking forward to learning about the challenges and use cases that are impacting my students. I hope they will come away with the confidence and knowledge to embrace the aspects of big data analytics that can help them run their organizations successfully.
Registration for the executive course ends September 1, 2013. The full agenda is available HERE.
Health 2.0 EDU: The Shifting Value of Health Care with Kim MacPherson
The health care environment isn’t just changing for digital technology, it is also changing in education for instructors and professionals like Kim MacPherson, the Associate Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Health Technology. Kim MacPherson will be joining forces with Health 2.0 EDU October 3rd, as part of a three-day executive education course on digital health, where she will share her insights as to how and why this changing environment is important to the value of health care:
EDU: Can you discuss the origins of the shift from volume to value in health care and why this concept is fundamental to the marketplace today?
KM: We have seen multiple attempts over the years to shift away from a volume mentality, but it has been thwarted in the past, in part by the lack of technology and actionable information to support value based efforts. Right now we are seeing an exciting convergence of economic and policy signals, a growing demand to prioritize value by employers and consumers, as well as acceptance by providers that change is inevitable. The focus on outcomes over volume and the new access to timely and more accurate cost and quality data makes the shift to a value focus possible on a larger scale than ever before.
EDU: In what key way is digital technology changing how the marketplace derives economic value in health care?
KM: For me it comes down to engagement, connectivity, and decision support: How to get the right parties meaningfully involved, make sure they have a clear pathway to follow to achieve the desired outcome, and are well supported with actionable information so the entire interaction creates value. This will involve a diverse range of technology including, tele-health, crowd-sourcing, digital diagnostic tools, protocol/pathway tools/simulations, stratification software, and consumer directed applications. We historically have seen a great deal of wasted time and resources when elements of this chain are not in place or are ineffective. The default to status quo is very easy in health care where there is a high degree of resistance to change by all stakeholders and where outcomes are not easily defined or agreed upon in advance. Digital technology enables change, making new processes and ways of improving health care delivery, financing and patient outcomes finally within reach.
EDU: How have some of the financial and research organizations you have consulted for best used digital technology to improve both outcomes and their bottom line?
KM: Lately I have been most interested in some of the digital technology aimed at consumer engagement; How do we get people involved in both their own health and their health care? Digital technology is being used by health plans and large employers that I work with to both promote wellness through “gaming” style competition applications and web-based technology that allows them to “shop” for the best services. The ability to personalize the experience seems to be a key dimension and a lever to promote real behavior change. Through these applications to digital technology, they hope to shift emphasis and resources toward prevention, improve worker productivity and satisfaction and over time, and see meaningful change in health as well as in their benefit costs.
EDU: How will this Health 2.0 EDU course differ from your usual classes at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health?
KM: In some ways it will be similar as I use a highly interactive format in both environments. The main difference is that I typically teach classes at Berkeley where digital technology is one facet of the overall course material vs. it being the focus. My areas of specialization involve health care finance, policy interpretation and understanding the incentives that drive a range of stakeholder behavior within health care. This course offers the chance to go a little deeper into this one key element: examining how some of these core health care areas touch and are impacted by digital technology.
EDU: What are you most looking forward to in your upcoming UC Berkeley course with Health 2.0 EDU, and what do you hope your students will take away?
KM: I am mainly looking forward to engaging with the diverse and dynamic participants. I love the energy and enthusiasm of Berkeley graduate students, but it is also stimulating to have industry professionals in a course, bringing their perspective and more immediate issues into the discussions. I hope that they get some economic and policy context that can stimulate new insights into their work. I also hope that being in an environment that fosters open interaction and exposure to material that may be new or unfamiliar, pushes them outside of their day-to-day roles and thought processes to consider different approaches and ideas to existing challenges.
Registration for the executive course ends September 1, 2013. The full agenda is available HERE.
Develop a Strategic Initiative with UC Berkeley’s Steven Weber and Health 2.0 EDU
Technology is changing at a rapid pace, so what does this mean for those developing business strategies attempting to keep ahead of the curve?
Steven Weber PhD, Professor at Berkeley Haas School of Business, will put your mind at ease in his joint class with Heath 2.0 EDU this October. His years of expertise with national and international security strategy will provide health care executives the foundation and insights they need for the future of digital health.
EDU: Your background is in international and national security. What are the parallels between security and health care? How does security factor into how an organization implements new innovations?
SW: My work in national and international security has always focused on strategic interaction — how the agendas and actions of one country modify the landscape of choices for another country. It’s a historical pattern, almost a constant, that national leaders have a very difficult time understanding these strategic responses because they find it almost impossible to see the trade-offs that they impose on others, from the other’s perspective. And since strategy is almost always about modulating trade-offs, the most important thing a great strategist can do is to change the trade-off calculation for other players in the environment. My guiding principle is simply this: “make it as easy as possible, for the ‘other guy’ to do what would most benefit you.” Putting that simple notion into practice is the hardest and most important ingredient of innovative strategy.
EDU: You have also consulted for numerous public, private, and international organizations: how are they each using digital technology to foster innovation?
SW: Innovation means many different things to different people. When I say ‘innovation’, I mean the use of ideas, both new and recombinant, in the service of creating new value. Digital technology can obviously be a major driver of innovation because digital is very good at encoding ideas [rather than throwing] new resources at an old problem. But I think the most important contribution of digital technology to the innovation agenda is in creating transparency within organizations. The kind of transparency that matters? Exposing dead conventions, old and encrusted ways of doing things that have been around so long that no one puts a question mark over them anymore.
UC Berkeley’s Jaspal Sandhu Personalizes Health Care with Health 2.0 EDU
Jaspal Sandhu has used his role as an Associate Professor at Berkeley School of Public Health as well as his position as the Co-Founder of Gobee to reach numerous populations in order to improve health through innovation- and he’s at it again with Health 2.0 EDU in October. Jaspal will be leading a joint course with Berkeley Haas School of Business and Health 2.0 EDU as part of a three-day executive education course on digital health, a unique experience even for this expert:
EDU: The courses you teach on design and innovation at UC Berkeley are unique in the field of public health to begin with. What are you teaching now, and how will the upcoming Health 2.0 EDU/Berkeley course differ from your other graduate courses?
JS: I teach design and innovation for public health, including health care. The focus of my teaching is less on the innovations that already exist and more on how to innovate. The main course that I teach is called “Designing Innovative Public Health Solutions.” It’s a graduate-level, interdisciplinary, project-based course that brings together students from public health, the business school, the policy school, and engineering – with a smattering of others at UCSF. Digital health projects that have emerged from that course include a social paging solution for medical centers in the US and a text-messaging emergency response system for Libya. In my on-campus courses, we are trying to create leaders who will facilitate innovation in their careers. At the upcoming Health 2.0-Berkeley course, we’re already dealing with leaders. What we want to do is give these executives the ability to take the innovation process back to their organizations and teams, to help them create better services and products more quickly and cost-effectively.
EDU: How do you get consumers and patients to engage with new technologies?
JS: The key is to tap into the needs and values of your users. You need to talk to the people who will be using your technology. You need to know what makes them tick. People will be willing to learn a new technology if there is a strong motivation to do so. Witness how many people in their 70’s figured out how to use Skype, and now FaceTime, to talk to their grandkids in another city: In 2012, MetLife found that 12% of American grandparents were using Skype to communicate with their grandkids. That’s just Skype and that’s now considered old data. There are plenty of people in this group of Skyping grandparents – here I’m just talking about those who would not consider themselves to be tech-literate – who can’t do much else with a computer. It’s not because they can’t learn, it’s because they don’t have reason to.
Jennifer Chatman Helps Welcome Health 2.0 EDU to UC Berkeley
On October 3rd, Health 2.0 EDU will be co-hosting an innovative three-day executive education course on digital health with UC Berkeley. In preparation, Senior Director of Academic Programs, Robin Friedlander, interviews professor Jennifer Chatman, the Cortese Distinguished Professor of Management at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, on what it takes to be a leader in health care today:
RF: Why is organizational leadership so important in developing the new health care landscape?
JC: Organizations cannot be effective without effective leadership. Achieving collective goals requires that leaders ensure that people are prioritizing things similarly.
RF: Your courses at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business focus on organizational and high performance cultures. Can you briefly explain what these are and how they develop?
JC: Culture is a leadership tool and, as such, has three criteria: first, the most effective cultures are strategically relevant; they foster the behaviors that will make it more likely that the organization will achieve its strategic aspirations. Second, the culture is strong; people agree, and care intensely, about upholding cultural norms. And third, the culture is adaptable over time.
RF: How do you expect your course on October 3rd with Health 2.0 EDU to differ from your management courses at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business?
JC: [The course] is meant for working executives in the health care field; real issues, real problems will be discussed based on participants’ experiences.
RF: Do you have a take home message for the health technology executives attending your upcoming UC Berkeley course with Health 2.0 EDU?
JC: That culture is deliberate, not something that simply happens to an organization.
Registration for the executive course ends September 1, 2013. The full agenda is available here.
THCB Calendar: What Change on Capitol Hill Means for Big Data and Health Care
Co-instructors Aman Bhandari and Dr. Tom Tsang of Merck’s Data Partnership Group will lead the next and final class in Health 2.0 EDU’s summer webseries, Big Data, Big Business, on How HITECH and the ACA Are Changing the Data Landscape, today, Tuesday, July 30th at 3pm PT/6pm ET.
Together Bhandari and Tsang bring decades of experience analyzing, predicting, and writing the legislation that most impacts the use of big data in health care. Join us to learn how the fine print in both the ACA and HITECH is creating both new opportunities and new challenges for using data. If you are a startup and have questions about either piece of legislation do NOT miss this class- Bhandari and Tsang will answer your queries live.
Sign up here and join us today.
How Digital Technology is Transforming Value in Health Care
Health 2.0 has collaborated with UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business to offer a first of its kind executive education course to be held this October 3rd-5th in Berkeley, California.
How Digital Technology is transforming Value in Health Care is a three-day course for health care leaders and executives in health IT who will benefit from expert instruction, critical analysis, and high-level discussion around this rapidly changing and exponentially growing area. Digital technology impacts nearly all aspects of health care today, and yet so much of this technology is new to those at the front lines of improving care delivery, be they on the payor side, provider side or service side.
Professors including Bob Rogers PhD, chief data scientist at Apixio, Ann O’Leary, chief expert on the organization and financing of the health care system at Berkeley School of Law, and Jaspal Sandhu PhD, systemic innovation expert, will cover topics including big data, policy and regulatory issues in health IT, and patient-centered design.
The Health 2.0-Berkeley course is part of a larger initiative, Health 2.0 EDU, which is a response to widespread demand for a targeted, learning objectives-driven, and comprehensive education program for the health care and health IT communities. EDU brings draws upon Health 2.0’s seven year history of curating and presenting excellent content as well as its worldwide network of leaders in health care technology. Health 2.0 EDU also offers online courses and workshops through a new virtual learning center.
For those who plan to come to the Health 2.0 Fall Conference, registration for the Health 2.0-Berkeley course grants you a 50% discount for the conference ticket. Space is limited – you can register early here.
Robin Friedlander, MD is the senior director of consumer and academic programs at Health 2.0.
THCB Calendar
Health 2.0 EDU offers online classes with the world’s top experts in health care and information technology.
What: Join Fred Trotter’s lecture on Leveraging Big Data to Fix the Health Care System –How to Approach Large Data Sets Effectively.
When: Tuesday, July 9th at 3pm/6pm ET (TODAY)
Where: Sign up here.
