healthcare reform

Posted Comments on WSJ Article-“Can Data From Your Fitbit Transform Medicine?”

Posted comments on June 23rd WSJ Technology article addressing telemedicine – I follow this area and emphasized need to do more to develop telemedicine in the United States

We lag most developed countries in the telemedicine arena which reduces the quality of our healthcare system and increases costs

You can see the WSJ article and my comments at

http://online.wsj.com/articles/health-data-at-hand-with-trackers-1403561237?mod=djem10point

Here is a copy of comments I posted:

A winning formula- integrate telemedicine into patient’s EHRs. Mayo Clinic problems shows challenges. We are going in the wrong direction here. Three strategies to fully leverage telemedicine:1.Establish standards integrating remote monitoring devices with EHRs. The ACA ensures ‘meaningful use’ of EHRs. Well defined standards jumpstarts the remote health monitoring market moving from niche focus  2. Use analytics to emphasize benefits. Powerful analytics assess health issues and develop optimized treatment plans. For what is emerging, check out comments I posted on a healthsystemCIO.com site Posting HealthSystemsCIO.com. 3. Pro-actively address security concerns. “Tops down” national initiative emphasizing benefits- prenatal care, chronic conditions, improved outcomes particularly in rural areas with 25% of population but only 10% of physicians. Need to counter serious security concerns. e.g., April 26th guidelines from the Federation of State Medical Boards which can hamper growth.

Paul B. Silverman

 

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

 

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THE ‘SUGGESTIVE’ VS. ‘PREDICTIVE’ ANALYTICS ISSUE

I posted comments on the HealthCIO.com site in response to article suggesting ‘suggestive’ rather than ‘predictive’ analytics (“PA”) provides real, demonstrable benefits and that, rather than PA,  should be today’s primary focus. My point is with the proper vision and commitments here, PA tools offer powerful, exciting new tools to improve health care, both from patient care and financial perspective, reducing claims fraud and improving processes.And these same tools are spawning exciting new ‘analytics-centric’ ventures which I see as a high potential new venture sector and is one of my focus areas.

You can visit the HealthCIO.com site to see the original article “A Suggestion About Predictive Analytics” at http://tinyurl.com/7nw6twd and also see a reply to my comments. Copy of my comments follows:

Paul says:

‘SUGGESTIVE’ AND ‘PREDICTIVE’ ANALYTICS WILL BOTH HELP IMPROVE HEALTH CARE
Thanks for sharing your insights. As a former CEO of a predictive analytics company, and currently leading a new ‘analytics-centric’ leading edge, personal health and wellness company, among other activities, I am pleased to also contribute my perspectives here.
I like your idea of contrasting Suggestive vs. Predictive Analytics- there is obvious proven benefit in using analytics to improve quality at the point of patient care.
With regard to predictive analytics, I am pleased to offer comments:
–Predictive analytics is often muddled in with other statistical tools as you say, it is often difficult to appreciate and understand just how powerful these tools are and what is their specific contribution
–Rather than saying there are two flavors of PA, “easy and hard”, I suggest a better approach is to say there are two PA target opportunity areas in health care (and also in other sectors):
— Using PA to analyze the “known unknowns” – all of the patient treatment enhancements you described fall into this category- addressing known issues and processes, using analytics to improve processes, quality of care, and doing this more efficiently and at lower cost.
—Using PA to analyze the “unknown unknowns” – this is the real and power of predictive analytics and I believe really offers high upside for all health care players, and patients as well
–Look at the magnitude of today’s health care issues. As one example, increasing complexity of medication regimens used by patients, coupled with a fragmented health care system involving multiple prescribers, has made the occurrence of serious drug-drug interactions more likely today than ever before. For example, one study suggests Preventable Adverse Drug Events injure 1.5 million people a year, costs the U.S. healthcare system $3.5 billion and resulting in an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 deaths every year. Some studies show even higher numbers.
–Our aging population exacerbates the above issues. Studies show 41 percent of seniors take
5 or more prescription medications, and more than half has 2 or more prescribing physicians. And 24 percent- about 1 out of 4 – seniors having 3 or more chronic conditions have not shared information with their health care providers during the last 12 months. No wonder medication errors among seniors on Medicare are estimated at almost $900 million.

–We can use the real power of PA to better understand the “unknown-unknown” drivers here that are impacting our health care system, and create powerful new tools, improved processes and do this more efficiently while improving patient care.

–The “unknown-unknown” data I would like to see addresses questions such as why do we have adverse drug events; what are the rules we should be looking at and changing to reduce these events save lives, and reduce health costs; what are the underlying drivers and patterns for adverse drug events- do these vary by geography, treatment modalities, user demographics, specific types of medical facilities, maybe how and where medical practitioners are trained. “Unknown-unknowns” may, for example, identify certain treatment modalities and drug regimens used by select groups of medical professionals which drive adverse drug events. Predictive analytics, an inductive rather than deductive process, offers a powerful tool to help us identify these and many other critical underlying health care drivers.

I agree there are many PA projects that today may seem academic, but I do see great possibilities to improve our health care system, using powerful new predictive analytics computing tools and platforms coupled with more traditional analytics (both suggestive and deductive ‘rule based’ analytics), to dramatically improve the quality of our health care system. These new analytics and tools will address clinical issues such as the growing problem of adverse drug events, as well as addressing Medicare and other health care claims fraud and errors.

We are making progress, but I still believe we can be doing much more to achieve significant improvement in our nation’s health care system and very clear to me predictive analytics and other tools, with the proper vision and commitments, will play a substantive role.

Paul B. Silverman writes about entrepreneurship, healthcare, analytics, and strategy management and serves as Advisor, Speaker, Educator, and Managing Partner of the Gemini Business Group, LLC, a new venture development firm, and author of “8 Building Blocks To Launch, Manage, And Grow A Successful Business.” He also serves as Adjunct Professor in the School of Business at George Mason University. See more at Paul B. Silverman Blog and sign up for Entrepreneurship Today! email updates to track latest new venture developments.

 

v. is what we need to focus on to improve health care

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Buy Health Monitoring Devices Off The Clothing Rack?

In my recent  book, I talked about how technology is reshaping traditional markets and strategies. Given new directions in integrating health care monitors into clothing, I suggested we may be buying health care monitors in Lands End, and discussed how this will impact traditional retailer strategies. Sales staff questions may move from “What size and color jacket would you like to see?” to “Can I show you our blood pressure-only monitoring jacket or our top of the line full featured model tracking glucose, oxygenation and includes a USB port?”

And what about health care coverage. Expect to see some interesting issues emerge here- are you buying a jacket or a medical device; where do you draw the line?

The recently announced MisFit Wearables, with an investment by John Sculley MisFit Wearables Health Care Startup , I expect is moving in this direction joining other players and more are coming. The proliferation of sensor data from a wide range of devices (some you wear as clothes, some you attach to your body, some are like  band-aids, you use and dispose), and the need to track, securely manage, share, analyze and communicate  this data is spawning a new sector.

What is really exciting is moving from collection of basic vital sign data and using advanced analytics to analyze vital sign data, understand the real time impact of medications (both pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals) and empower users and clinicians with new tools that can, I believe make a real contribution to improve our personal health and wellness, a market sector I am pursuing with a talented team. Lots of exciting developments here. Stay tuned.

 

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Entrepreneurship in the Health Care Sector and Syndicated National Radio Interview – Entrepreneurship- New Directions

Upcoming – TV Interview :Entrepreneurship in the Health Care Sector and Syndicated National Radio Interview: Entrepreneurship- New Directions

I have agreed to do a one hour TV interview on entrepreneurship in the health care sector. The interview will be scheduled for early January and follows my recent live TV interview discussing entrepreneurship on the weekly Upside Business Show on November 21st- the program was well received – copy of broadcast now available at http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18671440 (click on Nov.21st show if needed)

While we see enormous challenges in today’s health care market, positive developments are emerging. One perspective, which I shared in my recent book ( Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/84texaf), is the pharmaceutical market includes two primary sectors—therapeutics (i.e., drugs) and diagnostics. Therapeutics is the pharmaceutical firms’ traditional business, reported to be about a $400 to $450 billion market.

Compare that to the diagnostics business, which includes several hundred companies, including many early stage entrepreneurial companies. Revenue estimates vary, but total diagnostic sector revenues are estimated at less than $30 billion, or less than 10 percent of a major pharmas traditional business. But diagnostics reduces health care costs and improves patient care, and many exciting developments are emerging providing the tools needed to improve early disease detection and wellness. Most important, we see entrepreneurial firms creating real excitement here. In the upcoming interview, I will share my vision on new directions I foresee and also invite one or more industry representatives to also share their insights.

I also accepted an invitation for an interview on a nationally syndicated NYC radio show to discuss new entrepreneurship directions and policies.

Stay tuned for dates and times – schedules to be firmed up shortly.

 

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