Some Thoughts, and a Question, on the Declaration of Health Data Rights

I'm a bit late to this, but a bunch of bloggers, self-trackers and companies have endorsed something called A Delcaration of Health Data Rights. The declaration includes four key points, that, "We the people&quot

Confrontational Computing

It's pretty well accepted that the Internet has become home to an astounding amount of useful information--as well as a ton of misleading and inaccurate gibberish, making it a challenge to figure out what to trust. A new tool from Intel's research labs aims to solve that problem through something they've called the Dispute Finder or confrontational computing.

I hope that chip in your brain won't cause problems at airport security

I love it when BoingBoing ("a directory of wonderful things") ends up being the source for one of my posts. This tweet headline defintely caught my eye: "Researchers expand clinical study of brain implant."  Sure enough, BoingBoing guest blogger Joshua Foer writes that he is "excited to see that the BrainGate Neural Interface System is moving to phase-II clinical testing." So am I!

Our Health and Health Care 2020 research has led us to forecast that neurointerventions will have an important impact on health and health care over the next decade. Brain Gate is an excellent signal of that future.  The company's tagline, Turning Thoughts into Action, sums it up.  In simple terms, its technology will allow "patients with brain stem stroke, ALS, and spinal cord injuries to eventually be able to control prosthetic limbs directly from their brains."

In fancier marketing language,

What does state-of-the-art critical care vs. chronic care look like?

Tomorrow (June 25, 2009), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (more commonly known as HIMSS) is hosting a webinar entitled, "Ubiquitous Wireless Enables All-Private Room Critical Care Hospital."  This struck my interest from a technology standpoint, by it also made me pause to consider the question of how and when the hospital infrastructure in this country will start adapting to meet our growing need for chronic care?

A traditional media outlet is taking the lead on examining health care reform

The venerable Washington Post has brought together an impressive group of health and health care observers to share their perspectives on how health care reform is playing out in D.C. The Health Care Rx series will include weekly commentaries from a diverse list of panelists.  According to Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, the voice behind Health Populi and one of the panelists, every stakeholder group in health care is represented on the panel.  "Central is the consumer-citizen health angle, as well as technology, provider, pharma, physician, payer-employer, and policymaker."

The first question presented to the group was, "What should Congress tackle first?"  Sarasohn-Kahn notes that her reply basically said, "Attack chronic conditions through info-tainment."  Others tackled waste, aligning payment with performance, universal coverage, equity, and cost containment.  This week, the panel will be reacting to President Obama's speech on health care reform that he delivered to the American Medical Association on June 15.

Sounds like the Post will be a "must read" for a variety of opinions on health care reform in the coming weeks and months.

Health CEOs for Health Reform

Health CEOs for Health Reform (HC4HR) recently released a report entitled, Realigning U.S. Health Care Incentives to Better Serve Patients and Taxpayers. HC4HR is part of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation. Its members include the CEOs of Group Health Cooperative; Blue Shield of California; Catholic Healthcare West; Global Human Health, Merck & Co. Inc.; Ascension Health; and several health care providers.

According to the Health Policy Program website, three principle guide the members of HC4HR:

1. Health reform is an urgent priority for our nation and should not be postponed.
2. Meaningful health reform entails both quality, affordable health coverage for all and delivery system reform. This will require all stakeholders to move away from "business as usual."
3. A more sustainable health system will require all health care stakeholders to offer and accept changes to their business models as part of a catalytic package that will better serve everyone.

I am particularly intrigued by how principle #3 will play out over time.

The report contains detailed recommendations for moving away from
fee-for-service medicine and refocusing health care delivery on the
patient.  One of the recommendations included is "Implement bundled payment structures," which sounds an awful lot like one of the forecasts we presented at our recent Health and Health Care 2020 Conference.

The report summary offers: 

KNOWME Networks Sends Smart Texts for Health

A group of USC researchers have developed a wearable body area network that can communicate seamlessly with cell phones, with the hope that this sort of sensor network will one day be used to help fight childhood obesity. According to the Los Angeles Times, the system is designed to track what sorts of activities a person has engaged in and if they have been inactive for extended periods of time.

 For example, one person working on the project said she'd hope that:

Neural Prosthetics

Researchers from the Brain Gate team are beginning a second, larger clinical study of their system, which connects to the motor cortex of the brain and transmits and translates neural signals into computable language. The larger trial will test some of the same software, which, according to a New York Times article about the first tests, allowed a participant to:

Read more >

Coming to term with YouTube

I learned the other day from an NPR report that the correct use of the word "term" in the context of a pregnancy is when the gestation perriod ends.  For soon-to-be moms curious about what coming to term looks like, YouTube offers a wealth of "how to give birth" videos.  A New York Times article (in the Fashion and Style section, no less) notes that, "[i]nevitably most childbirth videos are graphic, challenging not just YouTube’s rules but also societal conventions on propriety"; however, YouTube makes exceptions for educational, documentary, or scientific videos.

Eugene Declercq, a professor at the Boston University
School of Public Health, is not surprised that women are logging onto YouTube to watch birth:

[It's a] natural inclination. 'A hundred and fifty years ago women viewed birth on a pretty regular basis — they saw their sisters or neighbors giving birth.' . . . [I]t wasn’t until the late 19th century that birthing moved out of living rooms and bedrooms and into hospitals. 'But now, with YouTube, we’ve come back around and women have this opportunity to view births again.'

I've never been pregnant, but if I was facing the prospect of childbirth, I could understand wanting to learn what it might be like from something a little bit more "real" than a Lamaze class.  And now I know where to go.

Fitness product does social media marketing right

I'm at the Games for Health Conference, which is sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Pioneer program.   A product manager from Electronic Arts (EA) gave the morning keynote about the success of their product launch for Sports Active, which is a fitness program that uses the Wii platform.  EA is well-known for its line of sports games, as well as other genres generally targeted at a male, video-game playing audience.

Sports Active is a new product that is aimed primarily at a female audience, specifically busy moms.