I realize it's been quite a while since I taught - or was in school myself - but I'm distressed…
Morning Headlines 12/15/15
Top health industry issues of 2016 Thriving in the New Health Economy
PwC publishes its annual report on health industry issues, in which it predicts 2016 will bring expanded patient engagement through mobile technologies, heightened cybersecurity threats, and expanded adoption of non-relational databases.
Digital Health Funding: 2015 Year in Review
$4.3 billion was invested in digital health startups in 2015, matching 2014’s funding levels, according to Rock Health’s annual VC funding report.
CMS expands quality data on Physician Compare and Hospital Compare
CMS updates both its Physician Compare and Hospital Compare websites, adding quality metrics for individual health care professionals and updating performance scores for ACOs and several hundred provider groups.
Where Are STDs Rampant? Google Wants To Help Researchers Find Out
Researchers at the University of Illinois are mining Google search data to create a Flu Trends-like map that will track the spread of STDs.
Re: PwC trends report talks about “New database improve patient care, consumer health” and has this as an example:
“For example, take two female consumers, both age 57, with the same chronic condition — asthma. In a relational database, these two women may appear to be virtually the same: female, 57, asthma. And yet, digging deeper reveals that one is a triathlete who only uses her rescue inhaler before training, while the other uses hers during hay fever season — insights buried in handwritten physician notes that had been converted to PDFs. New database tools could help clinicians distinguish between these two women, offering insights to drug makers about how the inhalers are being used, to pharmacies about these patients’ unique buying patterns, and to the patients’ clinicians about how best to treat them.”
Really? So, the two example female consumers are not being treated appropriately today because of relational database? Do people writing this stuff have even the basic knowledge of technology and healthcare workflows?