November 4th, 2012

Healthcare Finally Moving Past Wang-Like Legacy Systems

Rock Health Report on Digital Funding Q3

Healthcare has long been a technology paradox. There have been few places further out on the cutting edge of technology than biotech and medical devices. In contrast, healthIT has been in a time warp (see Why It’s Good News HealthIT is So Bad). Nearly 20 years after the advent of the web, the dominant healthIT vendors have thrived on a business model and technology architecture that harkens back… → Read More

June 24th, 2012

Supreme Court Decision On Obamacare Has Little Relevance To Healthcare Disrupters

Supreme Court

When I’m not writing for TechCrunch, my “day job” is working with healthcare providers the disruptive innovators who are reinventing healthcare and slaying the healthcare cost beast as a byproduct. In some cases, these are entrepreneurs. In most other cases, they are pioneers within existing healthcare providers fighting to make changes within otherwise slow-moving organizations. → Read More

June 4th, 2012

Mr. Obama, Tear Down This Wall(ed Garden)

Reagan Berlin Wall

Today, I participated in a meeting at the White House described as an “expert roundtable on patient access to health data” hosted by Todd Park (Chief Technology Officer of the United States), Farzad Mostashari (the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology), Leon Rodriguez (Office of Civil Rights) and Peter Levin (CTO Veterans Administration).

Being at the White House within a… → Read More

May 6th, 2012

Strategic Healthcare Investors’ Investment Thesis

IBM - Healthcare costs

This is the second part in a two-part series on strategic investors in healthcare.

Healthcare IT departments have focused much of their attention on the $19 billion portion of the stimulus bill that is providing billions of subsidies for the adoption of electronic health records. While this is logical given the available money, it is paying for health IT systems optimized for the “do more, bill… → Read More

April 21st, 2010

California hospital orders 100 iPads

While the iPad targets general consumers rather than business users, director of technical services at Kaweah Delta Health Care District Nick Volosin saw a use for the iPad in the hands of hospital staff. The iPad, with its 10-hour battery life and portability, can replace the laptop for usual office applications such as e-mail, as well as for looking at X-ray images, EKG results, and patient… → Read More