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Google Insights for Search + Google Diagnosing = The New Public Health Department?
Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 06:36 PM - 5 months ago - Blog - Health Business Blog
Google’s new Insights for Search service is designed to provide marketers better information on search terms over time and across geographical areas. According to The New York Times (Google’s New Tool Is Meant For Marketers ): The tool is aimed primarily at marketers, who may use it to devise and track advertising campaigns. A car company, for instance, could experiment with different versions of a television ad in Cleveland and Columbus, and check the number of resulting searches in each city to see which one is more effective. Or it could use the data to find out where users are searching most actively for “fuel efficiency” and aim ads for a gas-sipping vehicle there. It seems pretty clear that there will be implications for health care, too, especially public health. As I’ve described, people often enter their symptoms into Google in the hopes of turning up the diagnosis for an ailment. That means it should be possible to track the spread of diseases as people try to diagnose themselves. Here are a couple of hypothetical examples: Tracking the keywords abdominal cramps, diarrhea, vomiting to see where gastroenteritis is emerging Tracking the source of foodborne illnesses (like the recent tomato/jalapeno pepper salmonella scare) by seeing how many people enter salmonella symptoms along with specific foods Relying on Google may seem a bit weak, until you consider how outbreaks of illness are tracked now. Cold and flu outbreaks are tracked by looking at sales of over the counter cough and cold medications and reports from hospital emergency rooms. Tracking down the source of the salmonella outbreak involved looking at individual cases and asking people what they ate. Meanwhile, Google could provide the information a lot faster and in a more segmented manner. Only a small percentage of people with the flu or salmonella poisoning are likely to report it or seek hospital care, but a lot use Google. At a minimum it makes sense to consider adding the Google data to complement what’s out there today. It will take a somewhat different tool to mine the data for public health, but clearly Google has the underlying information. There are dark sides to this, especially when the analysis moves to the individual searcher/patient level. For example, I can imagine the government quarantining people who’ve identified themselves as being contagious, and we’ve already noted the possibility of Google figuring out you have cancer before you’ve been formally diagnosed.

A Spoonful of Humor Makes the Science Go Down
Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 06:07 AM - 5 months ago - Newspaper & TV news - Medscape Business of Medicine Headlines
An MD/PhD student uses his blog to translate developments in neuroscience and to entertain his readers along the way. Medscape Med Students

Hospital transparency an illusive ideal
Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 01:09 AM - 5 months ago - Newspaper & TV news - GLG News(sm): Healthcare
Patients requiring health care today demand quality. Quality from their physician, their diagnostic services, and the insurance companies.CMS already mandates certain levels of quality and hospitals. They assure these quality levels by doing spot inspections, and also contracting with the joint commission, which mandates certain levels of care in order to get paid by CMS. Most patients desire to trust the physicians and hospitals that they choose for their care. Many patients when asked will say that they do not know the reason they are having a certain test or procedure only that the physician has requested it be performed. Often they simply want to trust the physician to care for them in the appropriate manner. people requiring health care would like to have transparency in pricing. It would be great for patients to understand the cost of their health care, and the actual reimbursement.

There is a need for a total joint registry in the United States
Wednesday, August 06, 2008 - 12:35 AM - 5 months ago - Newspaper & TV news - GLG News(sm): Healthcare
The AAOS has established the need for a total joint registry however there are financial and legal hurdles that must be overcome. The value of total joint registries have been realized in Europe and Australia with a significant reduction in the revision rate of implants. A joint registry can provide an early warning system on issues or problems related to a particular implant design or surgical technique. With the rising cost of healthcare, a registry in the United States can be a cost effective use of our limited healthcare resources. If the data can be delivered to the orthopedic community in a timely and understandable fashion, it should and will influence the surgeon's behavior and decision making such that patients and society are benefited.

Tenet Quarterly Loss Narrows as Admissions Rise
Tuesday, August 05, 2008 - 09:05 PM - 5 months ago - Newspaper & TV news - Medscape Business of Medicine Headlines
Hospital operator Tenet Healthcare Corp reported a narrower quarterly loss on Tuesday as admissions edged higher at hospitals open at least a year. Reuters Health Information

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure
Monday, August 04, 2008 - 09:24 PM - 5 months ago - Blog - Health Business Blog
In last week’s HealthLeaders article, “Connecting with Prevention ,” the author described that employers are adding more armament to their arsenal on managing healthcare costs. “Not long ago, employers tackled bulging health costs one way—by shifting more costs onto employees…but businesses are turning to health and wellness programs as a way to both reduce healthcare costs and improve employee health. A report released last week is giving employers some pointers as to how to create programs that engage workers.” The report mentioned was conducted by the Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy reviewing the BlueCross BlueShield Association’s Engaging Consumers@Work program. This is a 10-week pilot program aimed to study the impact of different interventions on physical activity, nutrition, self-reported health status, self-reported workplace productivity, and health knowledge. The report’s key findings included: “Education combined with an activation program is more effective than education alone Knowledge and awareness of health-related information improved post-intervention Employees are more likely to remember in-home communication than worksite materials “ Prevention and wellness programs continue to get attention as promising approaches to medical cost containment. MedPharma Partners did some work last year on best practices in the area of medical cost containment. In speaking with many brokers, employers, and solutions providers, there were many different approaches to cost containment. The more traditional approaches focused on cost shifting and consumer-driven healthplans. More innovative approaches tried to address the root causes of escalating healthcare costs - healthcare utilization. Some of the more common programs included preventive/wellness programs, health risk assessments, disease management, and in-house clinics. The cost containment reality for employers is that utilization drives rates. ROI is more difficult to measure for a wellness program, and there is more of a leap of faith in buying these. There was an article in USA Today several years ago with one company achieving a 3:1 ROI. Industry insiders balked at this, complaining about unsubstantiated claims which will create unattainable expectations upon the entire industry. We have seen that managing utilization can only be done by integrating plan design and modifying employee health behavior. Even the best wellness program cannot be effective if participation rates are low. Some industry best practices integrate wellness programs into benefit plan design, often including ‘play or pay’ incentives with lower employee contributions, co-pays, and deductibles for those who participate. This can lead to participation rates in the 90%+ range. Prevention alone cannot solve the escalating healthcare costs in this country, but it is a very important part when integrated intelligently within an employer’s overall healthcare arsenal. 2064

Well done bro’
Monday, August 04, 2008 - 03:31 PM - 5 months ago - Blog - Health Business Blog
I’m proud to announce that my brother, Dr. Andrew Williams, has joined the CP Family Health Care Center in upstate New York as its medical director. Andrew is a great physician and is extremely dedicated to serving uninsured and underinsured patients. Here’s an excerpt from the announcement : Dr. Andrew Williams, M.D., FACP, a board certified, Harvard-trained internist will join CP Family Health Center in Canton, NY as a full time clinician and Medical Director in August. Dr. Williams joins us from the University of Rochester Medical Center where he was a full time member of the medical school faculty and recipient of numerous honors including the Lawrence Kohn teaching fellowship and the Arthur W. Bauman award. Dr. Williams is originally from Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from the University of Rochester Medical School with honors and was elected to the AOA medical honor society. He completed his residency training in Internal Medicine at Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital. As a National Health Service Corps Scholar, he served as physician and Chief of Staff at Northern Navajo Medical Center in New Mexico. While working for the Public Health Service, he was an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 2006 he was elected as a Fellow in the American College of Physicians (FACP) based on his leadership, scholarship, community service, and patient care… CP Family Health Care, operated by Cerebral Palsy Association of the North Country, views the addition of Dr. Williams as a major step toward fulfilling its goal to provide quality health care and other services to all members of the community, regardless of physical barriers, and/or ability to pay. “Having Dr. Williams on staff will give our patients continuity of care. The comfort of knowing they will have the same physician from admission, to discharge, to follow-up when they need in-patient care is very important,” says Rebecca Washburn-Reynolds, Director of Health and Clinical Services for CP of the North Country. “His goals fit in nicely with our recent designation as a Federally Qualified Health Center,” says Washburn-Reynolds.

La sortie du rouge d'Advanced Medical Optics ne suffit pas au marché
Monday, August 04, 2008 - 07:49 AM - 5 months ago - Newspaper & TV news - La Tribune.fr - ACTUALITÉ CHIMIE PHARMACIE
La société affiche pourtant des bénéfices trimestriels de 22 millions de dollars contre une perte de 166,8 millions un an plus tôt.

FDA Restrictions on ESA's Will Have Minimal Effect of EPO Usage.
Monday, August 04, 2008 - 07:09 AM - 5 months ago - Newspaper & TV news - GLG News(sm): Healthcare
1) Concerns over the new FDA restrictions on ESA's is being overstated. 2) Amgen will continue to do well in the ESA market place, in spite of these changes. 3) J&J will receive the brunt of these changes, strictly because of their market concentration in the oncology market. 4) Amgen will continue on as the "King of US ESA's".

Veterans Admininstration Sets The Standard for Electronic Medical Records: Why Re-invent The Wheel?
Monday, August 04, 2008 - 07:08 AM - 5 months ago - Newspaper & TV news - GLG News(sm): Healthcare
The VA has already won many awards for an electronic medical records system, which tax payers have already paid for. Adopting the VA "CPRS" program would save the taxpayers and the private sector hundreds of billions of dollars.

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