Thursday afternoon reads

1. China’s fake Apple Stores:  (Bird Abroad)

– the facade can be imitated but not the culture and every detail of a brand like Apple cannot be imitated.  Still this could have faked more than few customers.

2. No New Social Networks Launched Today (Borowitz Report)

– A friend of mine told me that in Silicon Valley every business plan thats being hatched up now is about a social network of some kind – are we in another tech bubble?

3. Tale of two countries: The Growing Divide Between Silicon Valley And Unemployed America (Tech Crunch)

4. Clinician to Clinician Communication (Healthcare Informatics)

– In this world of social networks, paying using your smart phone, come to healthcare world you will find FAX and Phone as the greatest thing since sliced bread.  There are numerours reasons for that, lets not get into what’s wrong with Healthcare, that’s another conversation over a beer.

Nhin Direct project is taking a think small and simple approach to connecting the physicians with other physicians using existing applications,  communication protocols(SMTP and XDR) and what not.  Simple direct to direct communication is key for healthcare technology adoption among providers.

5. The DNA–People, Processes, And Philosophies–Of Innovative Companies (Fast Company)
– innovation starts from within a person, who believes that a world can be a better place and the system (organization or country or any entity) they are in has to foster a culture of innovation.  If the system doesn’t foster, its just one more barrier to bring down for the innovator and create a new system.

3D comes to Electronic Health Record

3D EHR

While 3D is making a comeback in movies and entertainment business to get viewers back to theaters or to provide a new experience,  3D enters Electronic Health Record business as well.

Nhumi Technologies in Denmark recently released a demo version (currently being tested in a hospital) of 3D EHR .  Here is the press release from big blue, who is partnering with Nhumi to commercialize the technology.   It’s not clear yet, when will the technology get introduced in North America.

So what’s the under the hood of this product ?

Nhumi website states that their 3D EHR uses Primal Pictures derived from the Visible Human project in US and specific information derived from the patient’s medical history is added to personalize the model.

Where the technology scores is presenting visible image, which is really worth more than 1000 words.  But it has to be seen whether the model is flexible and programmable enough to personalize using patient’s health information.  I am looking forward to HIMSS 2010 to get a demo of this solution if it gets presented.

And sure this will be a slick demo in trade shows compared to other EHR solutions.  Will patients be interested to see their personal health record in anatomical model ? I will be very interested. Microsoft HealthVault or ICW LifeSensor and other PHR vendors please note.

Future at the Top of the Pyramid: Enabling connected personal healthcare

Using technology to manage personal health care is not new, as most of us have pedometers, weighing scales etc., to regularly or occasionally check our progress.

For people with certain type of diseases there are variety of devices in the market to monitor glucose to blood pressure and what have you, to monitor the progress or digress from the recommended care plan.

What’s missing though, is that these devices are not connected to anyone – for example a care provider, a family member, care team – who are interested in the patient’s well being and care progress.

That’s where Continue Health Alliance , an alliance of more than 200 companies,  comes in – as stated in their mission – to enable an eco-system of interoperable personal health systems for that empower people & organizations to better manage their health and wellness.

Here is a video from Continua that shows the outcomes of a connected personal health care.

If it sounds like the StarTrek of personal healthcare, here is where Continua sees the opportunity in the cream of the pyramid (western world)

• 1 billion adults overweight
• 860 million chronic disease patients
• 600 million elders age 60 or older
• 75-85% of healthcare spending is on chronic disease management

And there are already few devices that are Continua certified which can connect to personal health record softwares like Microsoft’s HealthVault or ICW’s Life Sensor

More to come on the technology behind Continua certified products…

EMR (eletronic medical record): does it exist in Ontario ?

Electronic Medical Record as defined by HIMSS Analytics is an application environment composed of the

• clinical data repository
• clinical decision support
• controlled medical vocabulary
• computerized order entry
• provider order entry
• pharmacy and
• clinical documentation applications

This environment supports the patient s electronic medical record across inpatient and outpatient environments, and
is used by healthcare practitioners to document, monitor, and manage health care delivery within
a care delivery organization (CDO) like a hospital / clinic / doctor’s office and imaging centers.

The data in the EMR is the legal record of what happened to the patient during their encounter at the CDO and is owned by the CDO.

If you still have confusion between EHR and EMR, please refer to this document published by HIMSS Analytics which explains the difference and does a good job.

So where is Ontario in terms of EMR implementation compared to the United States.

Healthcare a brewing crisis for a long time!

In most parts of the world one thing that’s common across the board for every country is that they always have a health care crisis.

My definition of crisis comes from Wikipedia’s definition of crisis and tend to take the meaning of “testing time”.

From the view, East or west, first world or third world,  almost all the countries are facing some sort of health care crisis and governments, businesses,  Not-for-profit organizations, individuals are all involved in working on a solution.

For example, to name a few crisis’ in brewing in coutries, here is a breif list.

• In America – 46 million(about 1/6th) of the population is uninsured, with the highest spending in health-care as % of GDP(see image) and poor adoption of IT in health care.

• In Canada (where I live), where its public health care, though most of the population thinks that we have the best health care the crisis is in supply of capacity and demand, efficiency of patient care, which results in a some unacceptable level of wait times for care

• In India, where I grew up, the crisis is totally different as Health Insurance is not prevalent, affordable health care for Indian population is an oxymoron, big gap in health care infrastructure and the list goes on

• In UK and other European nations, I would presume they are dealing with capacity and efficiency issues and its a learning curve that I have to take to understand more in detail on the health care crisis in Europe

In this blog I attempt to look at various solutions that are being proposed or worked at either by government, not-for-profit organizations or private enterprises towards continuous improvement in health care delivery across the world.

Stay tuned for more!

Thanks,