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Is healthcare industry economic intelligence becoming too tough to track?

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At the annual Life Sciences Alley meeting held in Minneapolis (December 8, 2010), presenters dissected the economic benefit of new medical innovations to our global society. It was an eye-opening discussion trained on the theoretical best methods to capture new innovations’ relative and absolute economic value.

Presenters from most sectors of our industry – manufacturers, healthcare providers and government – were pressing on the core theme — the need for a centralized system to act as a dynamic repository for capturing the economic value of therapies and diagnostic modalities, as well as their procedures, throughout the life-course of patient’s care to assess the true economic value to our healthcare system.

In the U.S. they call this “Comparative Effectiveness Research” (“CER”); in the EU they call it “Health Technology Effectiveness” (“HTE”). No matter what it is called, this grassroots movement is slowly evolving us to a new breed of clinical trial protocols capturing not only safety and efficacy/effectiveness but also economic value and comparing that value with that of the “gold standards” of care at any point in time.

What was not presented was what agency or group that would take the responsibility to fund and create the central data repository. There was a large minority agreeing that in the U.S. it will need to be a centralized service, similar to ClinicalTrials.gov…and it would likely cost billions of dollars to develop, commercialize and manage.

But where does that leave the developer and manufacturers of our new medical innovations? I am convinced that manufacturers need to act now and on a smaller scale. Each company will need to establish its own data management system (DMS) that is easy to use and compatible with the newly evolving central system, allowing as seamless uploads to this planned national central repository as possible.

Your comments?

Next week…likely solutions for practical DMS.

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Victoria Hunsicker Sanko – Senior Editor

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Jordan Zornes – Editor & Senior Analyst

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Jordan Zornes – Editor & Senior Analyst

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko – Senior Editor

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No man is an island. Neither is his medical record file.

To practice intelligent medicine and advance medical technology discovery and development, the power of consolidated medical data needs to be harnessed.

Clinical trials are not the only source of scientific discovery. Retrospective analysis of site-specific procedural and product use and consumption metrics reveal essential medical professional decision and use insights without violating the individual’s personal medical records, satisfying HIPPA and other regulations. And the later source of data can do so in a much more cost effective manner using current bar coding technologies and data entry, securely and selectively accessing remote hospital databanks. Since medical records for patient cohorts would be pulled as consolidated groups, no one person’s medical records would be inappropriately revealed.

But all has to operate in a virtual space to be fully accessible and must be fully compatible to be most effective. And what better way than through cloud computing where content management meets essential applications?

Ask yourself, “In this extremely tough economy, how will my company cost effectively manage its own content-rich databases of retrospective data to improve our decision-making capabilities?”

Stay alert, be intelligent -

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko
Senior Editor

If anyone has had a physician hand personal diagnostic films over for safe keeping it may stir thought about the future of  medical data storage.

The increasingly urgent need to manage the growing number of petabytes of diagnostic data is driving development of a new breed of personalized medicine.

Consider for example the recent WeirdMedical post from June 4 ["Weird New Advances in Ancient Device Material"]. The article gives you a glimpse into the future of how medical practitioners and industry may be able to gather and report on personal medical intelligence about a patient. According to Technology Review’s “10 Emerging Technologies 2010” or “TR10″ published by MIT in the article “Implantable Electronics,”

“Tufts University biomedical engineer Fiorenzo Omenetto is using silk as the basis for implantable optical and electronic devices that will act like a combination vital-sign monitor, blood test, imaging center, and pharmacy–and will safely break down when no longer needed.”

Further consider, this additional diagnostic data needs to be managed. We need to ask who will keep up with capturing and storing additional streams of data from this and other new sources in addition to those from current sources. We can barely manage now. As updated patient progress reports are produced, patient records transcribers, data entry techs, auto bar code readers, etc., will not be able to keep up. Data flow will be too rapid and voluminous.

We need intelligent capturing, recording and storing solutions for accurate retrieval   To be discussed next posting…is “intelligent cloud computing” the solution?

Let us help you master your business and competitor intelligence content management.

Stay alert, be intelligent -

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko
Senior Editor

Keeping up with the deluge of information that is coming at you every day – from email, news feeds and online…even low tech mail, newspapers, periodicals, radio and TV – is becoming daunting. Wherever you are it never ends. Streaming 24/7.

The periodical The Economist perfectly summarizes our present situation in its February 27, 2010 issue editorial page, “The data deluge:”

“Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analyzing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still. Even so, the data deluge is already starting to transform business, government, science and everyday life…It has great potential for good – as long as consumers, companies and governments make the right choices…“

That is what MedIntelliBlog is about – helping you learn how to make the right choices, intelligent choices, when managing information in your daily business lives.

The editors at The Economist go on to say that, “Plucking the diamond from the waste,” has been mastered by a mere handful of industries – credit card companies, insurance firms, mobile phone operators, and retailers – and, of course, government agencies.*

You as executives of the life sciences industry need to embrace doing the same. You need to master the deluge of information, culling it to get the precise intelligence that you need.

The editors at MedIntelliBase have conceived this blogspace, at Blog.MedIntelliBase.com, to:

• give you insights on how to remain focused on getting the precise intelligence you need
• prevent you and your organization from becoming overwhelmed by information overload
• most importantly, prevent you from missing critical nuggets of intelligence that will help you make the right business decision…the first time…and every time

Each week MedIntelliBlog editors will post proven solutions to the information deluge and offer quick tips to selecting intelligent management tools. To read more in the coming weeks join our subscriber list.

We look forward to helping you master your market, business and competitor intelligence.

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko
Senior Editor

* To read more about this subject visit The Economist editorial page, “The data deluge,” and associated feature article. “Data, data everywhere,” in the February 27, 2010 issue at the The Economist online.