Tag: Startups

Dude! The $100m VistA Open Source Opportunity

Aug 7, 2008• 21

By Scott Shreeve

Dude.

I am known for throwing an occasional “Dude” into my jocular speech. Ok, maybe more than a couple when excited. OK, maybe more than a couple when I am not so excited as well. OK, maybe I use it indiscriminately at random times. But hey, I am just following Merriam-Webster definition of the appropriate usage of the term “practically anywhere” within a sentence.

But dude! Have you actually read the recent GAO reports regarding the status of the current VistA modernization project? I was literally shocked – let me save you the trauma by pulling in the highlights (where is WorldVistA, VistA Software Alliance, Roger Maduro, or any of the VistA luminaries in terms of reporting on this?)

Three-quarters of Internet users seek health info

Aug 7, 2008• 9

By Susannah Fox

The Pew Internet Project released the latest estimate for the e-patient population: 75 percent of internet users. Here are some details from the survey. Epatients

My colleagues recently updated our top three trend charts: Who’s Online, Internet Activities, and Daily Internet Activities.

Two of the new data points relate to health and health care. The October-December 2007 national phone survey shows that 75 percent of internet users answered yes to the single-line question, "Do you ever use the internet to look for health or medical information?"

Ten percent of internet users say they searched for health information "yesterday," which in a tracking survey like this one yields a picture of the "typical day" online. Health has moved up in the "typical day" list (from 7 percent in 2006 to the current 10 percent of internet users), but for most people the average day includes lots of emails (60 percent of internet users), general searches (49 percent), and news reading (39 percent) if they are online at all (30 percent of internet users are offline on a typical day).

Little footsteps toward data mobility?

Aug 6, 2008• 5

By Matthew Holt

These few stories may be straws in the wind, or may be little streams rushing to a Athena bigger confluence. You be the judge!

AthenaHealth kicks butt in its most recent quarterly numbers, showing a 35% increase in revenue and a change to a profit compared to a loss the same quarter a year before. This marks the second quarter that once the post-IPO euphoria cooled down, they’ve been delivering on their numbers. Now stock-wise this may all remain tricky—the PE ratio still looks like 90’s dotcom stock, but what’s more interesting is the strategy.

After adding the Clinicals EMR to the core practice management Collector product, yesterday AthenaHealth bought a little company called MedicalMessaging for $7.7 million. What’s interesting about that is that it provides a front end for doctors using the AthenaHealth system to provide those little functions to their patients like online visits, record summaries, Rx refills, appointment booking and all the other stuff that needs to go online to make today’s doctor office more user friendly.

2.0 takes off but benefits are not yet fully realized

Aug 6, 2008• 1

By Joshua Seidman

A new report in McKinsey Quarterly on “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise” suggests that companies around the world continue to deploy more Web 2.0 tools, but they have not yet figured out how to realize desired benefits yet.

On average, the typical company responding to the McKinsey survey uses 3.4 Web 2.0 technologies including Web services, blogs, RSS, wikis, podcasts, social networking, peer-to-peer, and mash-ups (Web application that combines multiple sources of data into a single tool).

However, only 21% of respondents expressed overall satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools and an equal portion were dissatisfied. It wasn’t entirely clear from the data why that’s the case–though there was some suggestion based on data related to barriers to success of 2.0 initiatives–but there clearly is a long way to go (not surprisingly, given the nascent nature of 2.0).

CollabRX aims to make drug development faster and cheaper with power of Internet

Aug 1, 2008• 3

By Sarah Arnquist

Harnessing the collective power of patients needing new treatments and therapies to speed up and lessen the cost of the development process drives a new venture called CollabRX. Callobrx

Jay M. Tenenbaum, Collab RX founder, learned he had melanoma in 1998 and had a recurrence five years ago. He found many patient advocacy groups working to raise awareness of the deadly skin cancer and to raise money for research, but felt they lacked collaboration.

Tenenbaum saw a business opportunity in that lack of collaboration and founded CollabRX with $2 million of his own money.

The Wall Street Journal profiled Tenenbaum and his new company this week. An excerpt from the Journal:

CollabRx aims to expand patient-funded research
further by connecting individuals or small numbers of patients with the
tools and services they need. Each CollabRx client is assigned a
project manager, a specialist who works with patients to devise a
research strategy, interpret the results and later steer any promising
prospects toward development of possible treatments.

CollabRx calls such integrated projects virtual
biotechs because they aim to replicate many of the steps typically
taken as part of a pharmaceutical or biotech company’s search for a new
drug. As the number of private labs available to do sophisticated
research grows, many parts of the drug-development process can now be
contracted separately. Researchers in various locations can share
information and material by means of a Web-based network created by
CollabRx software engineers.

Health apps for the iPhone

Jul 30, 2008• 3

By THCB Staff

US News and World Report has a useful story listing five health widgets for the iPhone.

Absolute Fitness. For $14.95, users can keep a food and exercise diary, monitor nutrition and weight goals,
and track and graph health metrics, including cholesterol, calories, saturated fat, and sodium.
Quitter. Is a program to help smokers kick the habit.
ICE. This In Case of an Emergency card lets you enter emergency contacts, medical conditions and any allergies.
iScale. Is another food diary feature.
Kenkou. It means "health" in Japanese and lets users keep track personal health and wellness data. The authors notes it’s particularly useful for diabetics.

MedSphere CEO talks about big goals

Jul 28, 2008

By John Halamka

I had lunch recently with the CEO of MedSphere, Mike Doyle, to learn about the
company’s plans for OpenVista. The idea is simple — take the the publicly available code from the Veterans Administration clinical information system, add new modules such as revenue cycle interfaces that are needed in practices outside the VA system and include support/implementation services. In effect, you’ll have the "Red Hat Linux" of the electronic health record world. Medsphere

Medsphere has chosen to package Vista in two forms – Enterprise for large hospitals/integrated delivery systems needing departmental system and Clinic for small offices/multi-specialty clinics needing strong outpatient functionality.

Friday frolicks in Nawlins

Jul 25, 2008• 4

By Matthew Holt

I’m in New Orleans taking the day off (shhh…wife is sleeping, don’t wake her yet!). Yesterday I gave a talk about Health 2.0 to a very confused looking group of state legislators at the National Conference of State Legislators.

But what was really confusing was the exhibit hall. There was a complete dogs breakfast of interest groups there. The NRA across from the Brady campaign to ban handguns; There were 4 or 5 variations of the humane society, and PETA had 2 booths, one explicitly about cruelty to elephants in circuses, and Barnum & Bailey/Ringling Bros also had a booth (presumably to try to stop legislators caring about cruelty to elephants). The oil & gas industry was next to a big booth of plug-in electric cars. All the right-wing think tanks (Cato, Heartland et al) were spread around, while the lefties (ACLU, Planned Parenthood, People for the American Way) were all sequestered in a ghetto. There were the correctional guys, the taser sellers, and about 4 booths selling ways to put alcohol breath locks on cars. Plus a bunch of companies selling micro-targeting marketing software—all used for targeting voters….not to forget the nudists—their trade association (who knew? or should that be, who nude?) was there and gave me a “naked-nation” pin. Not sure where I was supposed to pin it!

And of course the health care people were all there. Who knew that there are two different masseuse associations (with booths dead opposite each other), and of course the lab guys, the NPs, etc, etc were all there too. There was a mobile optometrists truck put on by an vision care insurer (VPS) which goes to under-served areas giving free eye exams and glasses.

Medicine meets Wiki

Jul 24, 2008• 2

By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

There’s a new wiki in the health social media town, Medpedia.

Among the most popular online sources for health information is Wikipedia. Millions of people search Wikipedia daily for insights into medical conditions, drugs, and procedures. Medpedia estimates it will cover information on at least 30,000 conditions/diseases and 10,000 drugs.

Now comes the announcement of a sharply-focused wiki from the most credible of academic health institutions: Harvard, Michigan (my alma mater), Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and a host of other highly-branded health associations and stakeholders including the NIH, the CDC, and the FDA.

Hospital rankings for positive press or for real?

Jul 17, 2008• 2

By Sarah Arnquist Wirehospitals

Hospital & Health Networks magazine announced America’s "100 Most Wired" hospitals for 2008 this week.

You can compare this list to the list of "top hospitals," as recently ranked by U.S. News and World Report.

Hospital & Health Networks created the "most wired" ranking a decade ago. This issue’s cover story says that wired hospitals have happier patients and higher quality measures than their less technologically advanced peers.

"Taken together, the patient satisfaction and quality indicator analyses
provide the strongest evidence in the 10-year history of the Most Wired
Survey and Benchmarking Study that information technology makes a
difference in both the patient experience and the quality of care."

Mr. HISTalk has a more cynical take on the ranking.