Medicare selects 4 companies for a PHR pilot program

Medicare announced their selection of 4 companies to run a pilot PHR (personal health record) program in Utah/Arizona. So who are the companies? I don't think you'll be surprised to hear that Google Health is one of them. The other 3 are: HealthTrio LLC, NoMoreClipboard.com, and PassportMD.

This collaborative pilot should provide some really exciting results! There is such a need to improve health information management on the consumer end. As IT capabilities improve, so much can be done to improve public health by empowering consumers and helping clinicians have access to vital health data.

More information about the selected companies may be found here:

https://www.google.com/health
http://www.healthtrio.com/phr.html
http://www.nomoreclipboard.com/
https://www.passportmd.com/

2008 AAPS Annual Meeting and Exposition

The 2008 AAPS Annual Meeting and Exposition is about to begin in Atlanta, Georgia. It's been a few years since I've been to Atlanta. Although I've never attended an AAPS annual meeting, it seems to me that the meeting draws people who are primarily researchers (e.g., PhD, PharmD, etc.).

Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2009

The Cleveland Clinic has released its 3rd edition of the Top 10 Medical Innovations. The most exciting one for me is #1 - the use of circulating tumor cell technology. Most people fear that cancer may recur after it's treated. What if you could detect microscopic traces of cancer through a simple blood test? I believe that advancing medical technology will eventually lead us to find ways of detecting key biomarkers that are tied to cancer.

#10 was about the "Private Sector National Health Information Exchange." Health IT was booming in 2008 with many advances on both the professional and consumer ends. 2009 will only bring more advances and collaborations in the area of health IT, with a focus on combining and integrating data from the EHR to the PHR.

Congratulations to MIT researchers named Discover's 'Top 20 Under 40' list

Congratulations to MIT researchers named Discover's 'Top 20 Under 40' list! According to MIT news, Discover magazine named two MIT researchers -- Ed Boyden and Sara Seager -- among its top 20 scientists under 40.

According to the report, Discover cited Boyden for his work on "engineering brain implants that can stimulate … with light pulses," which he hopes could help treat brain diseases including Parkinson's. Sounds like Course 9 (Brain and Cognitive Sciences), doesn't it? What about Biological Engineering (Course 20)? That didn't exist when I was a student.

Exciting developments from AHA

The American Heart Association Scientific Session is wrapping up today. Some really exciting developments emerged at this meeting. Primary prevention, hs-CRP, and statins are very hot topics because of the results from the JUPITER study. Much debate and discussion has emerged on the topic of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular risk.

If you're middle-aged (I'll let you define what that is), if you have normal cholesterol levels, and if you're otherwise healthy, would you take a statin? Most people would answer "no" unless they've seen the results of the JUPITER study. For me, my answer would be "it would depend on my hs-CRP level."

Career Builder: Average US Physician Salary

This is a follow-up post to an earlier post on physician salary surveys.

According to CBsalary.com (Career Builder):

$144,845 is the average US physician salary. The range is quite broad and you can refine that average for your city.

Monster.com pulls information from salary.com

So who's right? Like any type of survey, it really depends on who you're surveying. If you're relying on self-reported data, people may over-report. If you're pulling it from HR departments, then you're likely to get accurate data.

More on Windows 7 for UMPC

The more I see about Windows 7, the more I wait with eager anticipation. I'm mainly interested in using Windows 7 on my Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC (ultra mobile PC). Although I've been using XP, I really like the features found on Vista for the touch screen (like the on-screen mouse and the improved writing recognition). Vista is just too slow for my UMPC, so I think Windows 7 will be the optimal operating system for that device.

Google Flu Trends

Have you heard of Google Flu Trends? Want to know about flu activity before the CDC tells you about it?

How does Google Flu Trends work? According to their website:

"We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems."

Would this also work for other infectious outbreaks? I think this is a great application of technology to improve public health and epidemiology. I'm sure Dr. John Snow (the father of modern epidemiology) would have found Google Flu Trends to be absolutely fascinating.

Dangers of buying drugs online

The FDA recently updated their page about the dangers of buying drugs online.
http://www.fda.gov/consumer/features/drugsonline0707.html

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's (NABP) Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites™ Seal, also known as VIPPS® Seal, gives a seal of approval to Internet pharmacy sites that apply and meet state licensure requirements and other VIPPS® criteria.

I get so much SPAM e-mails about buying drugs online. Do people actually click on these messages and order drugs from these websites?

Mobile Millennium : traffic based on GPS-based phones

Mobile Millennium is a partnership between Nokia, NAVTEQ, and UC Berkeley, based at the California Center for Innovative Transportation (CCIT), a deployment-focused research center at Berkeley's Institute of Transportation Studies. It is supported by the U.S. Department of Transportation's SafeTrip-21 Initiative and the California Department of Transportation.

Do you live in the San Francisco Bay Area of near Lake Tahoe? Then you should register and participate.


I'm still waiting until we can use GPS-enabled tracking to help me find a parking spot.

Annual Physician Compensation Survey by Physicians Practice

Physicians Practice released their annual physician compensation survey. Every time I see one of these types of surveys, I seem to see totally different types of results. Perhaps that's because the range varies so widely based on practice setting and specialty. This survey did not separate the earnings by specialty. Why didn't they?

We all know that salary varies so much based on specialty. This is why we see a bi-modal distribution with a fair percentage at the highest end, and the majority towards the lower end.

Torch Mobile

There's another web browser out there for those of you running Windows Mobile 5 or 6 on your PDA/smartphone/Pocket PC. It's called Torch Mobile and you can get the beta version by going here: http://www.torchmobile.com

Everyday Health gets more visits than WebMD

According to Medical Marketing and Media, Everyday Health surpassed WebMD in unique visitors in October. According to comScore data, Everyday Health had 25.7 million unique visitors in October, compared with 19.6 million for WebMD. AOL Health was third with 10.4 million, followed by About.com Health at 9.1 million.

Have you visited Everyday Health? How about WebMD? As consumers aim to learn more about their personal health conditions, these types of health portals will receive more and more traffic.

If you're a healthcare provider, which website do recommend to your patients? Is the information reliable? Understandable? Up-to-date?

The next robotic pill that can deliver drugs: intelligent pill

Philips has now developed an innovative pill that can deliver medications in a specific part of the body. This could be one of the first therapeutic robotic pills if it makes it to the market. This iPill doesn't appear to have a camera, but it has built-in sensors to let it know when to release the drug. I wish I was still at MIT designing and creating prototypes of different medical devices.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 e-Mail Patch

Looks like Microsoft just released a patch for a problem with the SMTP server leading to a corrupt e-mail account. Are you running Windows Mobile 6.1 and do you use your mobile device to send/receive e-mails? If that's you, then go to the Microsoft page and download this patch.

Just got back from the NAMCP Fall Forum

I just got back from Las Vegas. I was there for the NAMCP fall managed care forum. It was an excellent meeting and I enjoyed listening to the speakers and interacting with medical directors from various managed care organizations. Because of the recent election, much discussion focused on health policy and reform. There were discussions focused on IPA/PHO/MSO. They made me want to read the book titled, "IPA, PHO, and MSO Development Strategies: Building Successful Provider Alliances." You can find this title on Amazon.

There was also a heavy focus on healthcare IT and genomics/pharmacogenomics. I enjoyed these disucssions since they emphasized how technology is impacting the health care environment for consumers, providers, and payors. Web 2.0 is making a tremendous impact on the way patients are making health decisions and providers and payors need to know how to leverage Web 2.0 resources.

State Medical Licensure Requirements and Statistics, 2009

Several people have been asking me about CME licensure requirements for 2009. I've been referring them to this AMA link to a PDF of the:
State Medical Licensure Requirements and Statistics, 2009

It still amazes me that several states have no CME requirements for relicensure! Do you know which states I'm referring to? If you don't, take a look and you may be surprised.