8 posts tagged “health”

James Littlejohn, Enoch Choi, Kevin Braithwaite led a seesion on Startup Opportunities in Healthcare:

StartupCamp

link to the StartupCamp wiki page

Participants:

• James Littlejohn 5 years ago had illnesses that got him interested in using technology to improve health.  Mepath.com is about lifestyle linking
• Charles Wiltgen, interested in doing a startup that's weight related, since he needs it for himself
• Samir Majumdar (Ingenuity Systems), 6 year old startup, pharma&biotech, reducing time of scientists to do their research.  Content Management System.  Has prior healthcare experience.
• Gary Krane (founder of outcouplespace) 1888morewow.  Happily married men at Kaiser have  50% less heart disease.  Wants an intro to health insurers.  Looking for VP business development for 5-10% of the company.  Finalist of UCBerkeley business plan competition.
• David Ding, bioengineer, will start a company in healthcare, from Singapore for 1 year educational program.  Currently working on assisted living management software for document management.
• Kevin Braithwaite, technology incubation, HealthCamp, unconference focused on healthcare.  Early Dec for small event. February larger event
• Richard Shoenhair Founder VP Prod Dev  (RedMedic.com) sold company to BC/BS South Carolina, Consumer health information, for urgent/emergency  medicine, ASP + call center, target: 30-45 year old female.
• Daniel Ho, interested in healthcare industry, web based solutions to make small practices more efficient
• Jason May, pre-alpha data visualization, not healthcare related
• Iein Valdez , his wife did Katrina relief and knows about Enoch Choi from that.
• Narasimhan Kasturi, KickStartup.com , looking for startup that's insurance related, patient records, outsourcing healthcare

Discusssion

Regulations: HIPPA, CA senate bill 1386 (requires notification if disclosed personal medical info PMI)

Richard: Started RedMedic to help take care of his father with Parkinson's.  HIPPA prevents communication of PMI without a relationship with patient.  RedMedic provided information to caregivers without a previous physician-patient relationship already existing.  RedMedic's records provided portable past medical history: web based, which you could bring to a new physician or give the physician a phone number to call a call center to fax the record. CCR continuity care record.  Used partnerships such as with BC/BS for their trusted base of patients.  When a patient leaves one network, they need a way to bring their records to another provider.  

Samir: Consumers will not trust web-based sites to store them to store their health information

David: Why aren't communications standards more set

Richard: Politics has gotten in the way of interoperability.  HHS sponsored  EMR and connectivity decreases private industry's interest in building a soluction.

David: moving between countries is problematic

Richard: HL7 is international

Charles: Mpeg4 was in everyone's self interest to interoperate.  Why don't MDs see that?

Richard: $$$ is in treatment, not prevention.  Insurance companies foot the bill for treatment, and are interested in improving health through prevention.  Compliance management system company (palo alto), reward patients based on how well they take care of themselves.  Decrease employee illness, increase productivity.   Self-insured companies like Cisco are interested in this.  HSAs/FSAs are a way for patients for directing their own savings towards health care purchases, as long as they have a high deductible insurance plan (the HSA can pay the high deductible in case of a catastrophic injury/illness).

Enoch's question: how are you picking who you're going to take your own healthcare savings (HSA)?

Jason: traditional insurance does not incentivise you to find highest quality at lowest cost.  New HSAs do since you can pick who you go to.  

Richard: even gathering information is reimbursable

Jason: I don't trust my insurance company to provide unbiased information about quailty of health providers

Richard: insurance companies don't have consumer trust

Jason: my claim history has just come online, but I don't trust them to do innovations, only to do things that are beneficial to them

Richard: Epic is huge.  What are the opportunities for startups?

Enoch: How are you all, as healthy people, going to find good quality information to choose who you want to get your care from.

Iein Valdez: a friend had knee surgery, with problems coordinating care among all providers, since they couldn't communicate among providers.

I've been blogging at Tech Medicine for a few months over at a new health search company, Healthline, and they launched our blog network today, "Health Matters."  It's been great working with the team as their blogfather (heh), encouraging these great writers in good blog etiquette. 

It's also been a blog anniversary for me of sorts, since today I hosted the weekly carnival of best posts across the medical blogosphere: Grand Rounds.  I needed something to bide my time while suffering thru the multiple cancellations and missed connections between here and Madison last week, and it only took 18 hours to put together. 

It's not just any Grand Rounds, but the second anniversary heralding it's third year.  Here's to hoping for many years to come!

I've been blogging at Tech Medicine for a few months over at a new health search company, Healthline, and they launched our blog network today, "Health Matters."  It's been great working with the team as their blogfather (heh), encouraging these great writers in good blog etiquette. 

It's also been a blog anniversary for me of sorts, since today I hosted the weekly carnival of best posts across the medical blogosphere: Grand Rounds.  I needed something to bide my time while suffering thru the multiple cancellations and missed connections between here and Madison last week, and it only took 18 hours to put together. 

It's not just any Grand Rounds, but the second anniversary heralding it's third year.  Here's to hoping for many years to come!

Kaiser Santa Clara's second annual Women's Health Event

Tenet Healthcare Corp is paying HealthGrades Inc. for free access to physician reports.  This doesn't make sense on a number of fronts.  Sure, I can see why Tenet would want to co-opt the presumably objective ratings of HealthGrades to confer greater trustworthiness to their docs.  But looking at the information provided in a report, it's publicly available information, including board certification and disciplinary actions against the doc.  I guess it's hard to go dig that up from the state board, and it may be easier to get at HealthGrades, but I don't think it's worth $13 for me, I'd just go dig up that information.  It's information that's not that useful in most cases, since >99% of docs will have no disciplinary actions against them, and most are board certified in order to have HMO payment or be on preferred provider panels.

Let's examine the reports for the Tenet hospital I know best, Doctors Medical Center, Modesto:  these are presumably all of the docs that are on staff there.  When you do a general search on family physicians in Modesto, you also can buy reports for Lara Iwamoto (a past residency pal) and John Payne (the director when I was a resident) who currently live in Cambodia and Zimbabwe, respectively.  I don't think I'd want to buy those reports.  Looking at the reports of my past residency pals and MD attendings, I couldn't find one who wasn't board certified or had any disciplinary actions against them.  No new information, and I'm glad of that.  Also no original information-- HealthGrades allows patients to rate their own docs and HealthGrades will include that in their report, but I couldn't find 1 record that included these kinds of ratings.

It looks like marketing fluff for Tenet.  I can find this info elsewhere for free.  I wonder how much Tenet paid ;)

via HFMA blog

The Parents Club of Palo Alto and Menlo Park Presents:
1st Annual Children’s Health Symposium

Date: Sunday, June 25
Time: 12-4:30 PM
Location: Palo Alto Medical Foundation, 795 El Camino Real, Palo Alto
Conference Center, Third Floor
Park in the underground parking and take the elevator to the third floor.
Follow the signs for the PAMP Children’s Health Symposium.
Cost: Free

Program
12-12:45 PM
Searching the Net for Useful Medical Information
Enoch Choi, MD

12:45 – 12:55 PM
Parents Help Line
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital

1:00 – 1:20 PM
Nutrition for Healthy Kids
Chrysa Caulfield, DC, MS

1:20 – 1:50 PM
Food Allergies: Diagnostic and Treatment Approaches
Kari Nadeau, MD, Ph.D.

2:00 - 3:20 PM
Understanding ADD/ADHD: A Panel Discussion
Richard Greene, MD, Sujata Patel, MD, Elisa Song, MD, Randall Neustaedter OMD,
Julie Hall, Parent

3:30 - 4:30 PM
Reduce Stress: Fun and Easy Techniques for the Whole Family
Natalia Gabrea, BS, MBA

Sponsored By:
The Palo Alto Clinic
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital
DayOne
NutraBella
Holistic Health Resource Center