HealthNex

Enabling Smarter Healthcare

Enabling Smarter Healthcare.

The following is a guest post from Lonne Jaffe, Director, Public Sector Solutions, IBM Software

This Smarter Health video describes some of the benefits of connecting electronic medical record systems with each other and with other healthcare software systems. Technology like the IBM Health Integration Framework that brings all these systems together can enable a better patient experience, improve treatments, lower costs, and allow scientists to confidentially use data for disease research. That’s health information working together.

As healthcare software becomes more sophisticated, security and privacy remain a priority. IBM helps protect patient information and helps healthcare organizations comply with government privacy regulations while achieving the extraordinary benefits of smarter healthcare.

AI: Analytics Innovators Series Video

This web video series features examples of groundbreaking companies, services and products that epitmize the age of smarter analytics, pervasive computing and new intelligence that IBM's new Business Analytics & Optimization Services was created to advance.

See more BAO content and clips at the Global Business Services New Intelligence Video Studio.  Know of other analytics innovators we should feature? Share in comments here!

Episode 2:

• RecycleBank a kind of "frequent recycling" rewards program
• Earthmine a 3D city mapping service based on Mars Rover technology
• FitBit Tracker a $99 wearable health monitoring device that measures your bodily activity and sleep patterns

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

How making primary-care physicians the center of America's health-care system could drive down costs

Interesting story in BW that includes some discussion around IBM's patient centered medical home model. Here's an excerpt:

This medical home may sound like the "gatekeeper" model of the 1990s, a managed-care creation that was all about holding down costs. But advocates say the new concept is designed to help patients, not insurers. It's more like doctoring 1950s-style, when a Marcus Welby figure handled all the family's medical needs. This time it's juiced up with digital technology.

It also represents a politically painless way to streamline a disorganized and wasteful system that chews up a crippling 18% of the U.S. gross domestic product. That burden is felt particularly by private industry, which covers 60% of the nation's insured. Since most businesses try to ferret out waste and disorganization in their own operations, the medical home is a concept they can embrace in good conscience.

One of the biggest advocates is IBM (IBM), which shelled out $1.3 billion last year on health benefits for its U.S. employees and retirees, equal to one month of the company's net income. Dr. Paul H. Grundy, 57, who holds the unusual title of director of health-care transformation for IBM, is a medical-home evangelist who led the company to start the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, a coalition of some 500 large employers, insurers, consumer groups, and doctors. Part of his goal, he says, is to show that "employers can drive the medical-home idea as buyers of care."

With healthcare reform taking centerstage in Washington in the weeks and months ahead, we wanted to share this section of clips in the IBM Global Business Services Video Studio, which debuted with the launch of IBM's new consulting organization, Business Analytics & Optimization.

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Janet Marchibroda is the chief health care officer of IBM

"As President Obama and Congress take on what the president in his American Medical Association speech called the "ticking time bomb" of health care costs, they need to know that they can't succeed without harnessing the massive data generated by modern medicine. Getting the best information into the hands of doctors and patients, while protecting patient privacy, is not just a desire but an overriding need if we are to get a handle on spiraling costs and also improve care. "(read the rest @ There Can Be No Health Care Reform Without An Information Revolution - Forbes.com)

IBM System S, which was released in May, has been in the works for more than 20 years. The software uses a new streaming architecture and mathematical algorithms that can analyze thousand of simultaneous data streams in real-time. Officials say organizations, like those in the healthcare industry, will benefit from the technology’s ability to help them improve decision-making. Traditional computing models retrospectively analyze stored data and don’t have the ability to continuously process massive amounts of incoming data streams, they say. (via IBM unveils “stream computing” software | Healthcare IT News)

For more on Smarter Healthcare, see The Smarter Health channel on our Tumblr site.

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Download Patient Center Medical Home (MP3)

The Patient Centered Medical Home: Blogger Briefing on new white paper from IBM's Institute of Business Value, and IBM Healthcare & Life Sciences.

With:

• Dr. Paul Grundy, Director, IBM Healthcare Transformation
• Jim Adams, IBM Center for Healthcare Management
• Ed Mounib, Healthcare Lead, IBM Institute for Business Value

Smarter Healthcare on ibm.com

This week, Smarter Planet moves to the pressing issue of healthcare.  As the "op-ad" thought leadership story for this vital topic notes:

"The problems with our healthcare system are well known and well documented and endlessly debated. What's not so apparent is that many of them arise because our healthcare system isn't, in fact, a system."

Adam Christensen's post on the Building a Smarter Planet blog picks up on how of all aspects of smarter planet, healthcare is understandably one that is both deeply personal, as well as a societal front that we all have a vested interest in.

On the Smarter Planet Tumblr site, we've added a channel for all posts the touch on the way in which healthcare is becoming instrumented, interconnected  and ultimately, infused with a new kind of intelligence.  You can see more about this frontier of advance analytics, predictive modeling, simulation, business decision support via the New Intelligence channel on our Tumblr site.

(reblogging this interesting update on health record banking, the idea of all patient data flowing to an account they, not doctors, control)

Channel:

Source: Patty Enrado, NHINWatch.com

Date: February 2, 2009

E-mail to a Friend

Sometime during the next two months, through grants totaling $1.7 million, the Washington State Health Care Authority, or WSHCA (pdf), will launch three consumer-controlled health record bank pilots in the communities of Bellingham, Spokane and Cashmere.


WSHCA’s efforts are part of a movement toward implementing health record banking, or HRB, systems, said William Yasnoff, MD, PhD, managing partner of NHII Advisors and founder of the Health Record Banking Alliance.

The volume, variety and velocity of data in healthcare is a very good example of where our world needs "new intelligence." Such a new infrastructure would help us better manage and process medical records to lower the cost and increase the quality of healthcare, put more research and genetic data to work and shift from a system that treats disease to one that prevents and manages it.  Check out this video for an entertaining overview of what we mean by new intelligence.

And to see more on some of the healthcare implications for Smarter Planet -- new types of sensors and devices, new models such as evidence-based medicine and clincial decision support -- take a look at this "channel" of tagged posts on the Smarter Planet site on Tumblr  http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com/tagged/healthcare

BusinessWeek: The Family Doctor: A Remedy for Health-Care Costs?

How making primary-care physicians the center of America's health-care system could drive down costs

Interesting story in BW that includes some discussion around IBM's patient centered medical home model. Here's an excerpt:

This medical home may sound like the "gatekeeper" model of the 1990s, a managed-care creation that was all about holding down costs. But advocates say the new concept is designed to help patients, not insurers. It's more like doctoring 1950s-style, when a Marcus Welby figure handled all the family's medical needs. This time it's juiced up with digital technology.

It also represents a politically painless way to streamline a disorganized and wasteful system that chews up a crippling 18% of the U.S. gross domestic product. That burden is felt particularly by private industry, which covers 60% of the nation's insured. Since most businesses try to ferret out waste and disorganization in their own operations, the medical home is a concept they can embrace in good conscience.

One of the biggest advocates is IBM (IBM), which shelled out $1.3 billion last year on health benefits for its U.S. employees and retirees, equal to one month of the company's net income. Dr. Paul H. Grundy, 57, who holds the unusual title of director of health-care transformation for IBM, is a medical-home evangelist who led the company to start the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative, a coalition of some 500 large employers, insurers, consumer groups, and doctors. Part of his goal, he says, is to show that "employers can drive the medical-home idea as buyers of care."

Smarter Healthcare Channel via GBS Video Studio

With healthcare reform taking centerstage in Washington in the weeks and months ahead, we wanted to share this section of clips in the IBM Global Business Services Video Studio, which debuted with the launch of IBM's new consulting organization, Business Analytics & Optimization.

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

IBM Chief Health Officer Janet Marchibroda on Smarter Healthcare

Janet Marchibroda is the chief health care officer of IBM

"As President Obama and Congress take on what the president in his American Medical Association speech called the "ticking time bomb" of health care costs, they need to know that they can't succeed without harnessing the massive data generated by modern medicine. Getting the best information into the hands of doctors and patients, while protecting patient privacy, is not just a desire but an overriding need if we are to get a handle on spiraling costs and also improve care. "(read the rest @ There Can Be No Health Care Reform Without An Information Revolution - Forbes.com)

System S: Stream Computing for Healthcare

IBM System S, which was released in May, has been in the works for more than 20 years. The software uses a new streaming architecture and mathematical algorithms that can analyze thousand of simultaneous data streams in real-time. Officials say organizations, like those in the healthcare industry, will benefit from the technology’s ability to help them improve decision-making. Traditional computing models retrospectively analyze stored data and don’t have the ability to continuously process massive amounts of incoming data streams, they say. (via IBM unveils “stream computing” software | Healthcare IT News)

For more on Smarter Healthcare, see The Smarter Health channel on our Tumblr site.

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

The Patient Centered Medical Home: Blogger Briefing (MP3 Audio)

Download Patient Center Medical Home (MP3)

The Patient Centered Medical Home: Blogger Briefing on new white paper from IBM's Institute of Business Value, and IBM Healthcare & Life Sciences.

With:

• Dr. Paul Grundy, Director, IBM Healthcare Transformation
• Jim Adams, IBM Center for Healthcare Management
• Ed Mounib, Healthcare Lead, IBM Institute for Business Value

Smarter Healthcare on ibm.com

Smarter Planet: Healthcare, This Week's Focus

This week, Smarter Planet moves to the pressing issue of healthcare.  As the "op-ad" thought leadership story for this vital topic notes:

"The problems with our healthcare system are well known and well documented and endlessly debated. What's not so apparent is that many of them arise because our healthcare system isn't, in fact, a system."

Adam Christensen's post on the Building a Smarter Planet blog picks up on how of all aspects of smarter planet, healthcare is understandably one that is both deeply personal, as well as a societal front that we all have a vested interest in.

On the Smarter Planet Tumblr site, we've added a channel for all posts the touch on the way in which healthcare is becoming instrumented, interconnected  and ultimately, infused with a new kind of intelligence.  You can see more about this frontier of advance analytics, predictive modeling, simulation, business decision support via the New Intelligence channel on our Tumblr site.

Health Record Banking Advances

(reblogging this interesting update on health record banking, the idea of all patient data flowing to an account they, not doctors, control)

Channel:

Source: Patty Enrado, NHINWatch.com

Date: February 2, 2009

E-mail to a Friend

Sometime during the next two months, through grants totaling $1.7 million, the Washington State Health Care Authority, or WSHCA (pdf), will launch three consumer-controlled health record bank pilots in the communities of Bellingham, Spokane and Cashmere.


WSHCA’s efforts are part of a movement toward implementing health record banking, or HRB, systems, said William Yasnoff, MD, PhD, managing partner of NHII Advisors and founder of the Health Record Banking Alliance.

Healthcare and the New Intelligence

The volume, variety and velocity of data in healthcare is a very good example of where our world needs "new intelligence." Such a new infrastructure would help us better manage and process medical records to lower the cost and increase the quality of healthcare, put more research and genetic data to work and shift from a system that treats disease to one that prevents and manages it.  Check out this video for an entertaining overview of what we mean by new intelligence.

And to see more on some of the healthcare implications for Smarter Planet -- new types of sensors and devices, new models such as evidence-based medicine and clincial decision support -- take a look at this "channel" of tagged posts on the Smarter Planet site on Tumblr  http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com/tagged/healthcare