Healthcare Innovations

New Funding for Risky Ideas

The focus on "world-changing" ideas is less important than the acceptance of a high level of risk.

Houston Chronicle: Howard Hughes charity giving $600 million to 56 scientists. 2008-May-27, by Philip Rucker

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is expanding its flagship investigators program to nurture a new class of scientists. By endowing their research over many years, the institute hopes they will make major discoveries in a variety of fields, including genetics and biology.

The scientists, chosen from more than 1,000 applicants, said they want to answer such ambitious questions as how global climate change affects the spread of cholera, malaria and other infectious diseases and whether doctors can apply the engineering behind the building of airplanes and computers to the human immune system.

Innovating the Medical Practice

I was going to post about Dr. Jay Parkinson six months ago, but I'm glad I waited because his story is much bigger now. Despite the snarky headline, the story below is very positive. Instead of joining the health care system, Parkinson tried to start a bare-bones practice in Brooklyn that took cash only, employed no staff, and relied heavily on internet technology. What he discovered was that he couldn't continue without some kind of record-keeping infrastructure. Now he has a new partner, Myca. I think the marketing plans are sort of scary. If I were them, I wouldn't spend anything on marketing until they have more of a track record. Guess they're scared of not covering fixed costs fast enough.

MDNG: Jay Parkinson Sells Out?, 2008-May-12, by Bill Schu

What he’s building now is a practice called Hello Health that looks and feels like his (no office staff , no waiting rooms, open communication lines directly with physicians and patients), but with several improvements that only a huge investment can provide. Parkinson says the patient and physician interfaces on the operating system are leagues beyond a traditional EMR. Hello Health will offer free generics to patients and by-the-minute appointments that physicians will travel to via Vespa scooter should a face-to-face be necessary.  Parkinson is nothing if not a master at marketing, and now with Myca’s resources at his disposal, the sky is the limit. Hello Health has enlisted the talents of the Barbarian Group, the marketing geniuses behind Burger King’s subservient chicken Web ads. But, according to Parkinson, the best feature of Hello Health may be the group’s unique takes on franchising, marketing, and quality, borrowed in part from other successful consumer brands, such as the car-rental service Zipcar and fast food chain Chick-fil-A.

Medicine for Communication

Although I forgot to post it when I found it, the slide show linked below is still an amazing compilation of efforts to improve communication both doctor-to-doctor and doctor-to-patient using the internet. It contains lots of individual juicy bits to follow up later. Hungarian Mesko is a big fan of the virtual reality site Second Life, but he keeps up with almost all web-related medical endeavors.

ScienceRoll: Web 2.0 and Medicine: The Slideshow. 2008-Feb-16, by Bertalan Meskó

"Medical professionals should take control of publishing medical information on the internet."

Required: New Ways to Organize Research

At some point (soon), medical research will have to invent new types of organizations because the existing ones are just overwhelmed. Read the whole article for lots of detail about what will be required.

Bio-IT World: Accelerating Intuition, 2008-May-7, by Catherine Varmazis

John Reynders, VP and CIO at Johnson & Johnson (J&J), said the “absolutely insane” amount of data being generated in the life sciences, and the heterogeneity of that data, require new ways of working and connecting with people. Specialists in all fields need to work in the “white space” between fields, and to collaborate more with colleagues within, and partners beyond, their organizations. “The company that thinks it’s sufficient to connect great minds behind its walls – well, it won’t be a great company for very long,” Reynders said.

Innovation Constrained by Status Quo

I hate to be a wet blanket but there's something creepy about this site, which is sponsored by Humana. So far the issues are being discussed are not disruptive and probably not significant. Well, they are still worth watching...

Innovation xChange

Do you want to improve the U.S. health care system? Or at least be part of the much-needed dialogue?

 

If you have ideas or solutions to improve the system, submit your ideas through ChangeNow4Health’s Innovation xChange and you can win up to $10,000 or have your ideas published in the e-book, Tomorrow’s Health Care.

 

The Innovation xChange is looking for practical ideas and suggestions for improving the health care system. All participants in the system, from providers and health plans to consumers and government, are encouraged to join in the discussion.

Possibility of Gaining Control

The healthcare industry doesn't lend itself easily to "consumer control."

Hospital Impact: Health Care and Social Media. 2008-Apr-28, by Tony Chen

I think the real innovation will come when consumer-savvy folks put their heads together with web-savvy folks and medical experts. We will see new types of patient communities, new collaborations between industries, and in general, the lowering of walls between traditional silos. We'll see more healthcare organizations investing in some sort of presence within online networks as more eyeballs (especially the viral type) seem to be glued there. And we'll see personal health records thrown into the mix as well, making it easy for consumers to manage it (instead of feeling like it's managing us).