Todd Cozzens is the CEO of Massachusetts-based Picis, a company that’s made a lot of headway in selling clinical automation software to operating rooms, emergency departments and ICUs in American hospitals and abroad. Last week I got the chance to talk to him about what the company does, the state of the health care IT business (he’s not too worried about the big guys!), whether public money should buy IT for health care, and who was going to win the Superbowl. To find out everything — including whether Todd’s forecast matched the actual score — listen to the interview.
HEALTH 2.0/TECH: Collective intelligence in AthenaHealth
Scott Shreeve has spent much of his career promoting open source as a way to
harvest collective intelligence. But (irritated by a description from a knocker)
he’s done a great job at defining one shining example of a network that
becomes more intelligent as more data (and nodes) get plugged into it. And that
network is a private SaaS company, AthenaHealth.
This is a great example of two of O’Reillys constituents of Web 2.0, especially
the second one:
- Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability that
get richer as more people use them - Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as
more people use them
Now of course that control over data is in a private network. And
it’s not an open source project. but the point is AthenaHealth is using that
business positioning to add features and gets more powerful as the company adds more
clients.
TECH: An Anonymous Bit of Cynicism, by Anonymous
Sometimes THCB’s anonymous contributors really stick the boot in—I got this email last week after Wal-Mart Dossia progress was announced.
Twenty-odd Wal-Mart employees (including the VP of benefits / former CIO) are piloting a ten-year-old PHR system (built by Children’s Hospital Boston in 1998) and it makes the front page of iHealthbeat and InformationWeek .
The same VP of Benefits / former CIO is "pleased with the progress" of the pilot, whatever that means. I’m sure we’ll hear that same will be announced as “transforming healthcare” at HIMSS in a few weeks. It’s really sad what passes for “progress” in the world of health IT these days.
I was going to write up some thoughts on the CHCF report on NHIN progress (or lack there-of) and how the people in charge of "the plan" are now describing how it was a bad idea/approach from the start (kind of like the retired generals who are now saying that they would have invaded Iraq with more troops), but I got distracted by the Wal-Tard story…
TECH: Google Health getting closer
Those purists who spend their time pondering Google’s next move have found a login page for Google
Health….
Here’s what it says Google will do (no, the page itself doesn’t work!)
With Google Health, you can:
- Build online health profiles that belong to you
- Download medical records from doctors and pharmacies
- Get personalized health guidance and relevant news
- Find qualified doctors and connect to time-saving services
- Share selected information with family or caregivers
Hat-Tip: Tech Crunch
TECH: Best headline ever?
Experts: Internet Helpful, But Not a Replacement for Doctors
One wag who sent me this noted that it was not very likely that doctors would think that they were replaceable by the Internet, or any one else for that matter. He suggested that a survey of wives or husbands might find that they didn’t think that they could be replaced either….
PHARMA/TECH: Drug interaction checkers and more
I’m up over at the Health 2.0 Blog talking about my favorite drug interaction checker. Meanwhile if you (yes, that means you) want to write on the Health 2.0 Blog, please *******@*********lt.net” target=”_blank”>email me and let me know.
TECH: Telepresence–very cool & that’s official!
I’ve mentioned a couple of times on THCB that Telepresence from Cisco is a really cool technology that had a big future in health care. But now it’s official! Healthcare’s coolest CIO, John Halamka has proclaimed it his Cool Technology of the Week. You should read the piece, as he actually gives lots of details—especially about the potential reduction in price that will make full time always on telconferencing much more available. BTW you may have noticed an excess of BIDMC on THCB today. Must be fun hanging out in the executive suites in Beantown, having nothing to do all day but write blog posts (just kidding guys!!).
PODCAST: Interview with Michael O’Neil GetWellNetwork
This podcast I did with Michael O’Neil who is the founder of GetWellNetwork. Michael had an episode of cancer relatively early in his adult life and although he was the recipient of great medical care from one of our nation’s leading academic medical centers, he was also very upset about the quality of the in-room patient experience. The result is a new system of using the TV to improve patient care in hospitals. You can hear much more in the interview.
On a technical note: this interview was conducted in the middle of a significant California winter storm, so there will be occasional tricky patch. Thanks for your patience and thanks to Michael too for his.
TECH: UPDATE The British & Germans are coming…..to Disease Mangement?
Health Dialog sold itself to partial investor BUPA, a British insurance company, today. The price tag valued Health Dialog at $775m
However, this may not be the only European incursion into DM this week. Rumor has it that The Health Buddy may find itself has a new owner very shortly too. Bosch, the German auto parts manufacturer, bought Health Hero Network, Thursday.
Finally although its off its recent highs, Healthways’ stock is still some 25% about where it was in the summer.
Hey maybe after all this time someone has decided that DM works?
Policy- vs. Market-Based Reform: RHIOs as a Case Study – Brian Klepper
As Anonymouse insightfully commented, the Harvard team’s RHIO study in Health Affairs is very telling
about the barriers facing do-gooder health care projects. That said, I wanted to add two comments.
First, while RHIOs are unquestionably good public policy, what they might accomplish can be seen as counter to their interests of many organizations expected to support them. (The same can be said for EHRs, by the way)
Second, this is why health care reform will emerge not from within health care and not from policy, but from the marketplace, driven by non-health care interests.
Read the rest over at the Health 2.0 Blog
