October 2018 - The Health Care Blog

Life-Saving Data That Is Nowhere To Be Found: Hospitals’ C-section Rates

By DANI BRADLEY, MS, MPH The United States is the only developed nation in the world with a steadily increasing maternal mortality rate — and C-sections are to blame. Nearly 32% of babies are born via C-section in the United States, a rate of double or...

Published Wed, Oct 31 2018 6:00 AM by THCB

Filed under: Patients, Hospitals, Tech, Data, Pregnancy, maternal health

Come to the Society for Participatory Medicine conference (Boston, Oct 17)

Join me at the 2nd annual Society for Participatory Medicine (SPM) conference, co-located with the Connected Health Conference at the World Trade Center in Boston. It’s magical and very inexpensive–Matthew Holt DEMOCRATIZING HEALTH CARE! Me...

Published Tue, Oct 02 2018 10:13 AM by THCB

Filed under: Patients, Casey Quinlan, Rasu Shrestha, Sarah Krüg, Ivan Handler, Bill Marder, s4pm, Brennen Hodge, Jason Bobe, Patti Brennan

4 Signs that Disruption is Accelerating in Health Care Delivery

By REBECCA FOGG Hardly a day goes by that I don’t read the term “Disruptive Innovation” cited in relation to health care delivery. This might seem like a good thing, given that our expensive, wasteful, and in some cases frightfully ineffective traditional...

Published Fri, Oct 05 2018 8:56 AM by THCB

Filed under: Technology, Patients, Tech, The Business of Health Care, Disruption, disruptive innovation, Finance, disrupt, Health care Disruption

A Challenge Posed; A Challenge Answered

SPONSORED POST By JOHN EL-MARAGHY What is the first word that comes into mind when someone says “health” or “health tech?” In 2018, the answer is likely “Opioid” and “Artificial Intelligence (AI).” With a growing public interest in combating opioid abuse...

Published Tue, Oct 09 2018 7:12 AM by THCB

Filed under: Tech, Catalyst @ Health 2.0

10 Houses, 2 Days, 1 City SERENDIPITY Returns to SF and We’re Joining In!

By ANNE COCQUYT On October 26-27 SERENDIPITY is coming back to San Francisco with an opportunity-packed, two-day personal and professional development conference. Hosted by the digital networking platform GUILD, this conference is not your average conference...

Published Fri, Oct 12 2018 9:23 AM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized

Ensuring that the 21st Century Cures Act Health IT Provisions Promotes Interoperability and Data Exchange

By KENNETH D. MANDL, MD; DAN GOTTLIEB; JOSH C. MANDEL, MD The opportunity has never been greater to, at long last, develop a flourishing health information economy based on apps which have full access to health system data–for both patients and...

Published Tue, Oct 16 2018 11:12 AM by THCB

Filed under: Medicare, Patients, primary care, Medicaid, Politics, Tech, HIE, HIPAA, patient engagement, Interoperability, health information exchange, value-based care, HealthIT, Information Blocking, patient loyalty, referral leakage, strategy, hoarding, Business model, interop

THCB Spotlights: Livio AI

Today we are featuring another #TechCrunchDisrupt2018 THCB Spotlight. Matthew Holt interviews LivioAI, which is an AI hearing aid created by Starkey Technologies. Worldwide, there are 700 Million people with hearing loss but only 10% wear a device to...

Published Fri, Oct 19 2018 1:00 PM by THCB

Filed under: Tech, Artificial intelligence, Livio.AI, THCB Spotlights, Techcrunchdisrupt2018, Starkey Technologies, hearing aids

The Futility of Patient Matching

By ADRIAN GROPPER, MD The original sin of health records interoperability was the loss of consent in HIPAA. In 2000, when HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) first became law, the Internet was hardly a thing in healthcare. The...

Published Thu, Oct 25 2018 9:30 AM by THCB

Filed under: Physicians, Patients, ONC, Politics, HIE, Interoperability, TEFCA

Facts, Conclusions, and More Questions on the Road to Solving Disparities

By SCOTT COOK, PhD We tested whether new payment mechanisms could be harnessed in health care delivery reform to reduce health and health care disparities. Here’s what we found. First, there were facts that couldn’t be ignored: #1: Children in rural Oregon...

Published Tue, Oct 30 2018 6:46 AM by THCB

Filed under: Medicaid, Health Disparities, Uncategorized, Health care payment reform, health care delivery reform, health care disparities

THCB Spotlights: TestCard

A few weeks back, I met with TestCard (another Brit like me) at TechCrunch Disrupt 2018. Greg, from TestCard, spoke to me about how their device can test multiple different illnesses using urine and a clinical grade camera, which then spits out results...

Published Mon, Oct 01 2018 1:52 PM by THCB

Filed under: prevention, Tech, UK, NHS, pregnancy detection, THCB Spotlights, testcard uk, FemTech, fertility, STI detection

Part 2: Bypassing Prior Authorizations

By NIRAN AL-AGBA, MD A few weeks ago, I saw a young patient who was suffering from an ear infection. It was his fourth visit in eight weeks, as the infection had proven resistant to an escalating series of antibiotics prescribed so far. It was time to...

Published Thu, Oct 04 2018 9:12 AM by THCB

Filed under: Physicians, Patients, pharmaceuticals, Medicaid, Aetna, Washington state, CVS, pharmaceutical, Pharmacy Benefit Manager, Pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, andameds

Dr. Patti Brennan – #SPM2018 speaker preview “Supporting the Care Between the Care: The Role of the National Library of Medicine”

By ePATIENT DAVE deBRONKART I’m a supporter of the Society for Participatory Medicine’s second annual conference on Oct. 17 in Boston. This article taken from the SPM “ePatients” blog tells you about just one of the great speakers who’ll...

Published Tue, Oct 09 2018 11:03 PM by THCB

Filed under: Physicians, Patients, s4pm, Patti Brennan

Health in 2 Point 00 Episode 53

Where is Matthew Holt reporting from today? He is at the Novartis Biome Launch Event! And that’s not all, we have some special guest stars for you: Unity Stoakes from StartUpHealth and Zoya Khan from THCB & SMACK.health! Join Jessica Da Massa...

Published Thu, Oct 11 2018 6:00 AM by THCB

Filed under: Matthew Holt, Tech, Health Tech, Health in 2 Point 00, Jessica DaMassa, Novartis, health innovation, novartis biome, hit lab, Startuphealth

Health in 2 Point 00 Episode 54

On Today’s episode of healthin2point00, Jess asks me about the CVS & Aetna’s merger, CSweetner & HIMSS new partnership in women’s health care, HLTH’s new pledge with Parity.org, Noona Healthcare getting acquired by Varian Health Systems...

Published Mon, Oct 15 2018 11:53 AM by THCB

Filed under: Uncategorized

Hoarding Patient Data is a Lousy Business Strategy: 7 Reasons Why

By VINCE KURAITIS & LESLIE KELLY HALL Among many healthcare providers, it’s been long-standing conventional wisdom (CW) that hoarding patient data is an effective business strategy to lock-in patients — “He who holds the data, wins”. However…we’ve...

Published Wed, Oct 17 2018 10:50 AM by THCB

Filed under: Patients, primary care, Tech, HIE, Data, HIPAA, patient engagement, Interoperability, health information exchange, value-based care, HealthIT, Information Blocking, patient loyalty, referral leakage, strategy, hoarding, interop