83% of physicians in a survey acknowledge practicing "defensive" medicine, ordering excessive tests and procedures to avert lawsuits, according to the Massachusetts Medical Society. The study also shows that 13% of hospitalizations are ordered for defensive reasons. Defensive medicine is often cited as a major reason why health care costs are high in the United States.You can read the full report here.
Have you heard of Keas? Maybe you've heard of Adam Bosworth. He's a Harvard grad (I think he should have gone to MIT) and he headed Google Health when he was at Google. Now, he's the Founder, President & CEO of Keas.Keas (www.keas.com) is an interactive service that enables the best medical minds in healthcare to provide individuals with ongoing advice and interpretation about their unique health data—such as lab results and current conditions—and help them take action to achieve their health goals. The mission of Keas™ is simple: To help you understand what your health data means and how you can use it to be as healthy as possible.So, what's happening at Keas these days? The latest news is a press release from Feb 8:
Pfizer and Keas announced today they have entered into an alliance to collaborate on the Keas platform to enable Health and Wellness experts to author, sell and distribute personalized online Care Plans directly to patients. Pfizer and Keas will collaborate to develop care plans and related capabilities that seek to provide consumers, patients and their providers an intuitive, engaging, easy-to-use, and low-cost way to manage their health & wellness, prevention and care delivery...
Many of my friends went to Stanford. I chose to head out to the East Coast, so I ended up at MIT. As a result, I made many friends at MIT, Harvard, Tufts, and Boston University.
Stanford has a Biomedical Informatics program that I'd like to write about. This program, the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research (BMIR), used to be called Stanford Medical Informatics. Back in 2007, Stanford changed the name from Stanford Medical Informatics to the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research. Here's a little snippet from their website:
The BMI training program encompasses bioinformatics, clinical informatics, and public health informatics. Bioinformatics focuses on methods for relevant to basic biology. Clinical informatics focuses on methods relevant to patient care. Public health informatics focuses on methods relevant to entire health systems.Now, if you head to the east coast, you'll find the BIRT. What's BIRT?
The Boston-area Biomedical Informatics Research Training (BIRT) program is a consortium of leading informatics laboratories at Harvard, MIT, Boston University, and Tufts and is supported by a grant from the National Library of Medicine. BIRT participants comprise a vibrant academic community of individuals with diverse backgrounds and broad-ranging interests, providing fellows with many opportunities for interaction and collaboration.Speaking of BIRT, here are the different labs that offer programs:
| Harvard |
|
| Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center |
Division of Clinical
Informatics |
| Brigham and Women's Hospital |
Center for Clinical and
Quality Analysis |
| Decision Systems
Group | |
| Children's Hospital |
Children's Hospital Informatics
Program |
| Massachusetts General Hospital |
Laboratory of
Computer Science |
| Partners Healthcare |
Center for Information
Technology Leadership |
| Clinical Informatics
Research & Development | |
| School of Public Health |
School of Public Health |
| MIT |
Clinical Decision
Making Group |
| Tufts Medical Center |
Division of Clinical Decision Making, Informatics, and
Telemedicine |
| Boston University |
Medical Information
Systems Unit |
I don't think I can give all the credit to a single MIT alum. Joshua Wachman is the president of Vitality and he's an MIT alum. David Rose, the CEO, is a St. Olaf College and Harvard alum, but I won't hold that against him since he teaches a course at the MIT Media Lab. Vitality GlowCaps illuminate, play a melody, and even ring a home phone so patients don't forget. They can send weekly emails to remote caregivers, create accountability with doctors through an adherence report, and automatically refill prescriptions. Vitality improves medication adherence, health, and peace of mind.
Vitality is currently working with researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Center for Connected Health on a study to measure the impact of the GlowCaps CONNECT system.Sounds pretty exciting, doesn't it? It's great to see what these bright minds are doing. When you combine an MIT alum with a Harvard alum, you get innovation. I suppose you often get that even without the Harvard alum, but who's comparing, right? Check it out: http://www.vitality.net/
All 40 students of this charter class that begins Monday have received full scholarships totaling $7 million, donated entirely by members of the community -- including individuals, hospitals, banks and law firms.Why can't I be so lucky? Would you turn down acceptance at Harvard to attend UCF if you could get a free ride? Read the CNN Money.com story here. Things like this don't happen every day.
