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Hospitals worry about footing the bill for medical devices
FierceHealthcare, 2011-03-30
Harkin: Forget defunding healthcare
The Hill, 2011-03-30
Reform law still expected to curb deficit: CBO
ModernHealthcare, 2011-03-30
Medicare to pay for $93,000 prostate cancer drug
Huffington Post, 2011-03-30

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Jordan Zornes – Editor & Senior Analyst

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko – Senior Editor

Is U.S. healthcare intelligence getting tough to track?

Keep up to date with “Economic Issues in U.S. Healthcare” Breaking News Free:

Current News “Top Picks” by MIB Editors…

…read all our Current News stories at “MIB Breaking News.”

Most Read News from Last Week…

After earthquake, tsunami, Bay Area biotechs keep close eye on Japan ties
Business Times, 2011-03-17
With Health Care Law Hitting First Anniversary, White House Tries Hand At Yet Another Sales Job
Huffington Post, 2011-03-17
Healthcare Reform: Overtreatment and Medical Error Are Still Driving Up Costs
BNET, 2011-03-17
Democrat pitches individual mandate as key to genetic testing innovation
The Hill, 2011-03-17

Stay alert, be intelligent -

Jordan Zornes – Editor & Senior Analyst

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko – Senior Editor

Subscribe to “Economic Issues in U.S. Healthcare” Breaking News”

Is healthcare industry economic intelligence tough to track?

Keep up to date with “Economic Issues in U.S. Healthcare” Breaking News Free:

Current News “Top Picks” by MIB Editors…

Streamlined FDA process could aid biotech device makers

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.

Stay alert, be intelligent -

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko – Senior Editor

Subscribe to “Economic Issues in U.S. Healthcare” Breaking News”

Jordan Zornes – Editor & Senior Analyst

Is healthcare industry economic intelligence becoming too tough to track?

Keep up to date with “Economic Issues in U.S. Healthcare” Breaking News Free:

Current News “Top Picks” by MIB Editors…

Sebelius: Health care repeal would put insurers in charge
McClatchy, 2011-01-05
“Repealing the new federal health care law will put power back in the hands of insurance…”

Department heads urge against repeal, outline reform’s benefits
The Hill, 2011-01-05
“Federal agency leaders outlined the progress of the new healthcare reform law in a letter…”

Amendments to health reform repeal filed by Dems to force vote
The Hill, 2011-01-05
“House Democrats on Wednesday filed four amendments to Republicans’ healthcare reform…”

Puget Sound Health Alliance Launches Nationwide Project to Improve Healthcare Using Health IT
Hospital Review, 2011-01-05
“Puget Sound Health Alliance, a non-profit organization aimed at improving healthcare quality…”

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Jordan Zornes – Editor & Senior Analyst

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko – Senior Editor

Subscribe to “Economic Issues in U.S. Healthcare” Breaking News”

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.

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Victoria Hunsicker Sanko
Senior Editor

Let’s applaud Gienna Shaw at HealthLeaders Media for insight into a new intelligence that presently dismissive patient care maps miss.

Gienna’s article, “Ready or Not, Tech-Savvy e-Patients are Coming,” shares a glimpse of how simple doctor-patient communications can be. It’s observations are simple – doctors can use “e-information exchange” via emails and patient-centric educational websites with databases storing critically key articles to patient education…amazing simple yet profoundly incomprehensible in today’s paper-intensive healthcare system. And it’s exactly like we use in our daily business and personal lives? Yes, exactly.

There’s a critical  message here – intelligent patient care is most cost-effective when it is direct and easy to use.

Stay alert, be intelligent -

Victoria Hunsicker Sanko – Senior Editor