Thursday, October 23, 2008

Health 2.0 - Day 2

Johnathan Bush of AthenaHealth got the audience going with the opening discussion. Some zingers included:

"People aren't adopting EMR's because they don't let people import electronic data."

EMRs at the moment are more like a Google Maps where you have to load the maps yourself and then you can look at the maps you setup.

The first thing AthenaHealth does when their practice management system is installed is kill the fax machine. They divert it to a data center in MA and convert the input to PDF files. The clinical side needs three times the storage of the revenue side of practice management.

Daniel Palestrant of Sermo followed the Johnathan Bush show. In simplistic terms Sermo was described as a private Facebook for Doctors. Sermo was designed to tap the wisdom of a very knowledgeable crowd. The 90,000 community is growing at 7,000 new Doctor subscribers per month.

Sermo validates and credentials each physician applicants. They act as a broker to Financial Services, AMA and Pharma to access this community.

There are three phases of evolution that Sermo sees:

  1. Learning phase,
  2. Research phase
  3. Engagement phase

AskRx is an example of this in a service offered with Pfizer.

Sermo has announced a strategic alliance with Bloomberg. The HealthCare Exchange. This applies the wisdom of the crowd in an advisor role to Wall Street.

The busiest Doctors are the ones embracing the Sermo community. This seems to tie with the idea of e-Consulting which is using online tools to reach patients more efficiently and effectively.

Physicians are trained and grounded in a collaborative world. They are trained to share information to consult on cases. Sermo is enabling this via the web and breaking down geographical and time-based barriers to that information exchange.

"EMRs are a four letter word"

Kerry Hicks, CEO from HealthGrades came on. The company was founded in 1998. They provide ratings of Physicians, Hospitals, Nursing Homes, procedures and prescription drugs.

Their outcome based approach enables conclusions such as: A patient has a 70% better survival expectation if they choose a five star rated rather than a one star rated hospital.

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