Tag Archives: healthcare IT

96 Ways To Say “Bite Me”

Posted on September 17, 2011 by
The forgotten codes...

Once upon a time we marveled at the fact that Baskin Robbins had come up with 31 flavors—what a smorgasbord of opportunity.  Then they branched out into seasonal flavors, regional flavors, even frozen yogurt, which vaulted them upwards into having more than 50 flavors.  What a joy to behold:  more is definitely better when it comes to ice cream.

Same story for television.  Some of you, those that are resting comfortably next to me in a nursing home, will remember the old days when we had ABC, CBS, NBC and Channel 13 as the primary TV channel choices.  Then there were 13 channels, then around 20, and now my mercenary cable providers shows me more than 700.  This example is a little sketchier.  More than 4 channels is definitely better.  As many as 700?  Well, I guess it works if you figure that they are trying to capture everyone in the world’s tastes, even those that want to watch Jersey Shore and Deadliest Catch.

So what do we make, then, of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid’s (CMS) recent announcement of the updating of the diagnosis codes that … (read the rest)

Posted in Diagnostics and Screening, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare Reform, Random Thoughts of the Day | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

FemBots, Rise Up!

Posted on August 21, 2011 by
I believe the Fembots are our future

If you are a regular follower of my blog, you know I like to write about the plight of women in business and the challenges we sometimes face in being treated equally to our male colleagues.  As a regular reader you would also know that I am fascinated by how technology is being adapted and adopted to improve the human condition and that I sometimes like to make fun of some of the more over-the-top applications (see FitBit article HERE).  And yet, when I read a story in the International Business Times entitled IBM Develops Brain-like Chip, I immediately recognized that my two of my pet issues were on a collision course.

According to the IB Times article, “IBM is deploying its [research] expertise in the attempt to accomplish the unthinkable: developing a chip to mimic the human brain.  IBM says its new chip, called SyNAPSE, comes closer than anything done before at replicating the human brain, a breakthrough considering the system is capable of “rewiring” its connections as it encounters new information the same way the biological synapses of a human brain would.”

According to IBM Research … (read the rest)

Posted in Girls Rule!, Healthcare Information Technology, Random Thoughts of the Day, Uncategorized, Women in Venture Capital & Private Equity | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Living on the (Health) Edge

Posted on August 6, 2011 by
It's good to stay outside the lion

 

Can you imagine if every day you went to work and 20% of the time you screwed up?   I realize that this is how baseball players live their lives, with a batting average around .300 or less, but I’m talking about other people.  Say you’re Beyonce and 20% of the time, when you step up to the microphone, your voice cracks uncontrollably.  Or you’re a race car driver and 20% of the time you finish your day upside down with the wheels spinning.  Maybe you’re a lion tamer and in 1 out of every 5 circus performances you end up inside the lion. I’m guessing you would not be in business for long.  Or maybe you’re just a regular person, say a mailman, and you deliver 20% of the mail to the wrong address, or a Starbucks Barista and 20% of the time you make a latte when the customer asked for a Frappuccino, which is really bad when said customer needs their coffee STAT.

Now imagine you’re in a job that fundamentally affects other people’s lives, like say healthcare.  What if people in the healthcare field made … (read the rest)

Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Second Coming of Healthcare IT

Posted on July 26, 2011 by
black

Once upon a time there was “ehealth.” That time was the late 1990’s and there was a temporary ripple in The Force when anything that combined healthcare and the Internet had a suddenly popularity in the venture capital investment community. Companies like the original WebMD, the original Medscape, Mediconsult.com, DrKoop.com, Medibuy, Adam.com, PlanetRx, and a host of other online pharmacies, healthcare group purchasing entities and online health portals were born and sought after by investors looking to capitalize on the collision of the Internet and the healthcare industry. The theory at the time was that you could take any traditional industry, add a soupcon of Internet, and “voila!” instant value creation.

Unfortunately, it turned out not to be so easy and by the early 2000’s, the ehealth industry died a painful death, leaving behind a few bedraggled companies, a mountain of cashed checks with venture capital firms’ signatures on them and thousands of vacant Aeron chairs. Healthcare technology became the Mike Tyson of venture capital investment: wistfully remembered for what it might have been but shunned for how it had behaved towards its fans. “Never again,” the VCs muttered, “never … (read the rest)

Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Private Equity, Uncategorized, Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

General Hospital

Posted on July 13, 2011 by
General Hospital's Luke and Laura

 

General Hospital is credited by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running American soap opera currently in production (according to Wikipedia).  What a perfect metaphor this is for the real hospital industry, which is facing more drama than ever.

This week I visited two hospitals, one a very large and well-known academic medical center, the other a very small community hospital.  Fortunately, neither visit was as a patient. In both cases I was there to talk about healthcare information technology and the hospitals’ respective strategies for innovation in that general area.

It is always really interesting to talk with hospitals about how they want to use technology to enhance their operations. There is an inherent tension between the desire to, on the one hand, do the right thing for patients by continuously improving quality of care and, on the other hand, to respond to the fiscal challenge that sometimes doing the “right thing” might just cost more or at least take a while to pay off.  Often times the decision to provide better care can result in hospitals actually losing money, because it means that patients need … (read the rest)

Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Reform, Patient Safety, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

TMI, Dude!

Posted on June 26, 2011 by
Hopefully the tracking technology is improving!

If you are a baseball fan like I am, it is not unusual for you to spend time with your fellow sports fanatics comparing statistics.  A player’s batting average, on base percentage, runs batted in, earned  run average, home run stats and how those compare to their team mates’ stats–all fair game for friendly conversation.  The personal analysis of players’ worth doesn’t stop there, as each of them has their height, weight, age and home town displayed on the screen as they step up to bat.  Can you imagine if every time you went to work a big Jumbotron screen with all your vital statistics followed you around for all to see.  “Look, there’s Lisa on deck.  Man, she really is that short.”

Well, you might be horrified to think that the intimate descriptive details of your being might be published and used to compare your value to others, but there is a growing cadre of people who willingly do exactly that despite the complete impossibility that they will ever be found sliding into home plate. In case you have missed it, there is a burgeoning movement built around “self-knowledge … (read the rest)

Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Preventive Health, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

There’s Gold in Them There Healthcare Hills

Posted on June 21, 2011 by
The second coming of the gold rush?

Once upon a time in 1955, Fortune Magazine published its first Fortune 500 list, an annual list that ranks the top 500 U.S. public and private companies based on their gross revenue.   The original Fortune 500 was restricted to companies whose revenues were derived from manufacturing, mining, or energy exploration, although Fortune published some ancillary lists of the 50 largest commercial banks, utilities, life insurance companies, retailers and transportation companies.  Look closely at those early lists; the closest thing to a healthcare company that appears in the original Fortune 50, the top of the list, is Procter & Gamble.  I am not really sure what P&G’s primary brands were in 1955, but their claim to fame in healthcare currently includes toothpaste and tampons, not the “big stuff” such as pharmaceuticals, health insurance, medical devices or healthcare services/IT.

Procter & Gamble remained the only healthcare-ish company in the Fortune 50 until 33 years later in 1988, when Johnson & Johnson joined it on the list.  While there were a few companies that may have dabbled around the fringe of healthcare before 1988, such as Hewlett-Packard, healthcare has had a real … (read the rest)

Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Your Cell Phone IS Trying to Kill You

Posted on June 8, 2011 by
Now that's a killer phone

Many people are talking about (or actively trying to ignore) the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recent declaration that cell phones might actually cause cancer.  WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer did a review of dozens of published studies on cell phones and cancer before classifying cell phones as “possibly carcinogenic.”  “Possibly carcinogenic” is a specific category that WHO uses to characterize medical risk; other categories include “probably carcinogenic,” “carcinogenic, “ or “probably not carcinogenic”.  Other things in the “possibly carcinogenic” category are night-shift work, engine exhaust and coffee.   Guess we know what that means?  I’ll die from coffee before the cell phone gets me.

Meanwhile, hospital leaders have for years taken extra precautions with cell phones, barring visitors and staff from carrying them into patient areas for fear that they might interfere with medical equipment and monitors. What they didn’t realize was that they had the right villain but the wrong crime, according to a study in the June issue of the American Journal of Infection Control.  Turns out that the real risk that cell phones present at hospitals is that they are chock full of bacteria, some of … (read the rest)

Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Patient Safety, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Irritable? Could be Worm on the Brain

Posted on May 26, 2011 by
worm2

My co-worker of 21 years, who many of my colleagues know as the Other Lisa (I am sure her fans think of me as the Other Lisa), has one of those daily calendars where each day has a new quote.  In this case her calendar features the wit and wisdom of one of my favorite humor writers, Dave Barry.  On May 2, 2011, the calendar offered up this particular Dave Barry sentiment:

If you ever experience a medical symptom, such as itching, you don’t need to waste time sitting in a doctor’s waiting room reading 1997 issues of Redbook.  Instead you can go to the Internet, and with just a few mouse clicks, you’ll discover the reassuring truth:  There might be a worm in your brain.  Really.  According to a medical site called Medline Plus (“Trusted Health Information for You”) sponsored by the National Medical Library AND the National Institutes of Health, itching can be a symptom of a condition called visceral larva migrans (literally, “a worm in your brain).  And before I get a bunch of nasty letters from irate physicians attacking me for unnecessarily scaring people, let me … (read the rest)

Posted in Health and Wellness, Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s the End of the World As We Know It

Posted on May 22, 2011 by
duh

Well, we’re alive. Despite the possibility that the world would pass its “use by” date on Saturday, everyone I have checked with is still here. At 6:00 pm on May 21st, 2011, the official time scheduled for the Rapture, I was using my last few moments to crack open peanuts at the Giants v. A’s baseball game (Tim Lincecum pitched a full game shut out—maybe it should have been called the Freakkkture?).  Years from now, when we think back on this day, will people be asking each other, “where were you when nothing happened?”

To be honest, I assumed the whole Rapture thing was the Republican’s insidious plot to kill off Obamacare once and for all. And yet, since it didn’t work out as planned, maybe it was actually a Democrat plot.

One thing’s for sure: our current healthcare system is definitely reaching the so-called end of days.  There is no way our economy can sustain the ongoing inflation it has been experiencing.  Healthcare cost the country $2.5 trillion in 2009 but is expected to hit $4.5 trillion by 2019, according to the Altarum Institute. The healthcare … (read the rest)

Posted in Healthcare, Healthcare Information Technology, Healthcare Policy, Healthcare private equity, Healthcare Reform, Healthcare Venture Capital, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment