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Monday Morning Update 6/28/10

June 26, 2010 News 7 Comments

From MaxPayneUK: “Re: iSoft. Shares hit 17c AUS – penny stock range. Directors and CEO reportedly selling off shares and rumors of massive layoffs in the UK and India have come up. ANZ MD sacked – will the UK MD be next? Too right!” Shares dropped to as low as 13.5 cents Friday when CEO Gary Cohen sold some of his, saying he had no choice due to margin calls. Denis Tebbutt, managing director in Australia and New Zealand, has been replaced. Wanna buy a train wreck cheap? Someone could pick iSoft up for a song, disengage from its money-losing UK business, and still become the non-US world’s biggest healthcare IT player.

capsite

I appreciate the support of CapSite, new to HIStalk as a Platinum Sponsor. CapSite is a healthcare technology research and advisory firm that offers an easy-to-use online database of evidence-based information to support healthcare technology capital expenditures. It provides the always-elusive pricing transparency (i.e., “Am I getting a good deal compared to hospitals like mine?”) by offering line-item details from contracts and proposals, broken out into software, hardware, and services. Its scope includes healthcare IT, imaging equipment, and medical devices. CapSite offers services to vendors as well, helping them understand pricing, competitive positioning, and industry trends. They’ll give you a live demo if you ask nicely. Thanks to the folks at CapSite for supporting HIStalk and its readers.

Orlando Health (FL) signs a deal with Health Care DataWorks for an enterprise data warehouse.

Finally, a meme (and a background buzz) even more annoying than Meaningful Use: vuvuzela.

The MyMedicalRecords people seem to be desperate to make something happen with the PHRs that nobody wants (including free ones, and theirs runs $100 per year), so their latest attempt is to run a commercial during the Daytime Emmy Awards (honoring the best of Unemployment TV). Last time I checked, the money-losing company had a dozen or so employees with microscopic revenue going down instead of up and with an odd D-list celebrity board of advisors that includes former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, former politician Dick Gephardt, and former boxer Sugar Ray Leonard. I was going to include their commercial video here, but it doesn’t work unless you manually switch to HD mode, so I’ll just link.

John Glaser e-mailed to confirm that he’s moving from Partners HealthCare to Siemens, where he’ll be CEO of its healthcare IT business, reported here first thanks to a non-John tipster (if you haven’t signed up for updates, do it now to avoid future in-your-face gloating by those who have). John will have held three big jobs in one calendar year: Partners CIO, ONC advisor, and now vendor CEO. Some are speculating that his move was due to announced Partners cost cutbacks, but he tells me he was just getting restless after 22 years at Partners and his ONC stint stimulated his desire to try something new. Congratulations to him. I always say the best times to take risks are in your 20s (no money, no kids, no clue) and your 50s (money, kids grown, ready for deferred excitement). If he wanted a tough job, I think he found it.

Singapore’s national EHR project chooses its vendors: Accenture, Oracle, and Orion Health get the $144 million USD deal to tie together Singapore’s EMRs to meet its “one patient, one record” vision.

We’re firing on all cylinders on HIStalk Mobile, double-teaming mobile health news with Travis (MD, MBA, software developer reporting news and opinion) and the enigmatic M (who’s contributing app spotlights and iPhone news). Sign up for the e-mail list over there and jump in with comments or guest articles if you are so inclined.

poll062610

This is encouraging: nearly 2/3 of readers say their doctor used an EMR in the exam room during their most recent visit (mine did too, by the way). New poll to your right: which factor most directly affects a hospital’s adoption of CPOE?

MIT researchers develop a $2 cell phone add-on called PerfectSight that will let patients, particularly those in developing countries, check their own eyesight. Also using consumer technology to create diagnostic tools: Rice University, whose biomedical engineers worked with MD Anderson to rig a $400 Olympus digital camera and special dyes that can detect cancerous cells in the cheek, which could make it possible for non-pathologists to perform portable cancer screening.

The FDA and FCC will meet in July to “identify regulatory challenges” with mobile health devices and ensuring their safety and effectiveness. A UK article says the FCC is interested in reports that wireless broadband could interfere with medical equipment, saying that GE Healthcare has asked for increased regulation to avoid interference to its hospital equipment.

patientpoint

Raj Toleti, who founded kiosk maker Galvanon and content management company Cytura in the Orlando area, joins another Orlando kiosk company, PatientPoint, as CEO.

The West Virginia Health Information Network outsources its entire six-person payroll, including its CIO, in a no-bid contract with a research institute. They say it’s cheaper because the employees don’t receive state benefits and that its structure could change anyway.

E-mail me.



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Currently there are "7 comments" on this Article:

  1. Agree on Mr. Glaser having a tough job as Siemens has had their ups and downs with management over the last couple years and with Siemens and Microsoft HealthVault collaborating maybe we might see a bit more in this area too. I also read where the DOJ is looking into the Partners pricing issue with a civil investigation but hey if somebody isn’t investigating you today, it’s an oddity it seems:) I caught the press release that was put out.

    http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2010/06/john-glaser-vp-and-cio-of-partners.html

    It is getting to be a changed world too with hospitals and the emergence of private equity firms coming in, i.e. Caritas in Massachusetts and I think we may so more of that as some run out of money and file bankruptcy and the balance between care and profits will be interesting.

    I had one hospital a few years ago where I consulted and recently they ran out of money and have now been acquired by Memorial Care for free I understand and the Long Beach Community hospital will benefit from Memorial’s investments in technology which is Epic and they have done a good job pretty much all the way around with their efforts.

    We all talk with the best minds on the web with Health IT, but sometimes forget what is hiding out there in the real world and that can be yucky. That same community hospital about 3 years ago had an IS staff whereby nobody knew how to install an instance of SQL server, yes sadly some of that still exists with the wrong leadership and I went against my own grain and decided to talk about it (professionally I hope with no names) and cite a few issues that literally almost make your hair stand on end and I figured it gave me a chance to not only vent a little but hopefully bring this awareness around as to what you may still find potentially lurking out there. The post below talks about a few scenarios but there were a bunch more and it was fortunate I could figure out their network to help them with the SQL server instance:)

    http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2010/06/long-beach-memorial-medical-center-in.html

    In short they will be getting a huge and long needed shot in the arm with Memorial Care coming in and the tech dead folks left will start breathing some new Health IT oxygen soon:)

  2. MedicalQuack said in the previous post stated that Siemens has had ‘their ups and downs’ in recent years. Uhh, what ‘ups’ have they had? Given that Soarian Financials is still a work in-progress and Soarian Clinicals (with pathetic CPOE usage according to a recent study), I’d say Siemens needs a miracle worker. We’ll see if they hired John Glaser the Mortal or St. John Glaser.

  3. Your blog is immensely helpful. I learn much. What I do not get is where are all of the benefits of this remake of providing medical care? It seems to me that if you are a chronically ill patient with multiple comorbidities, you still need an efficient doctor.

    I am seeing deterioration of care directly proportional to the degree of HIT and wiredness. The thread linking these is that the data is not in the doctors’ hands…the doctor needs to waste time looking for it and there is not any notification of new data and new consultation reports.

    As a result of CMS payments decreasing and the time and financial costs of HIT increasing, patients who are sick, ie not in the class of “worried well personal health record devotees”, are suffering from neglect.

    MyMedicalRecords problems is no surprise. Sugar Ray ain’t no doctor.

  4. Now come on Mr. HIStalk, using MMR as the poster child of PHRs is hardly fair as MMR is easily one of the worst out there – really nothing more than a fax server. Terrible PHR, terrible business model and one bizarre set of directors for sure.

  5. Re: FDA and FCC/mobile device regulations. I heard on NPR this morning I heard that 500 more megahertz of the wireless spectrum are going to be auctioned off soon; I wonder if that will help or hurt the HIT wireless device area.







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