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  • February 26th, 2013

    Federal Government Makes Silo-Busting, Startup-Unleashing Healthcare Move

    Unleash ventures

    Editor’s note: Dave Chase is the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal and relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist.

    For the first time, the federal government has provided large financial incentives to share one’s health data between authorized healthcare providers and with patient themselves to facilitate patient engagement. In the past, there was a… → Read More

    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 25th, 2012

    Torrid Rate of Growth for Digital Health Funding

    Rock Health Report on Digital Health Funding

    After investments in digital health doubled from 2009 to 2011, the torrid pace of growth has continued in the first half of 2012. Rock Health’s founder Halle Tecco stated why they released a report at this time. “The impetus of this report was the notable growth in venture funding of digital health–so much so that we are seeing 65% more investments than the same time last year. As we strive to… → 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 22nd, 2012

    Pharma’s Huge Threat (and Opportunity): mRx

    Happtique mRx

    It was only a matter of time before healthcare providers would start prescribing mHealth apps as soon as they proved to be as or more effective than prescription drugs. Happtique, a mobile health application store and app management solution startup will launch a trial of mRx. They claim this is the first program to enable doctors to prescribe mHealth apps to patients. mHealth pioneers are calling… → 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

    May 2nd, 2012

    Community Hospital Joins Wave Of New Strategic Venture Funds To Drive Disruptive Innovation

    Rex Health Ventures

    This first part of a two-part series on strategic investors in healthcare focuses on the expansion of the venture business beyond traditional venture and large strategic investors. In the second part, I will outline the backdrop for the investment thesis that strategic healthcare investors are using to guide their capital allocation.

    Healthcare providers are finding their “play it safe”… → Read More

    April 15th, 2012

    Government Poised To Provide A Huge Boost To Healthtech Startups

    Regina Holliday - Meaningful Use

    Currently, the federal government is poised to level the playing field for healthtech startups. An unprecedented wave of innovative healthtech startups has been developing over the last few years. You can see them at conferences such as Health 2.0TechCrunch Disrupt, TEDMED and demo day events that Blueprint Health, Healthbox, Rock Health and StartUp Health host. Nonetheless, the health sector… → Read More

    March 29th, 2012

    Patients Are More Than A Vessel For Billing Codes

    Patient as Billing Code Vessel

    It will be virtually impossible to succeed in the new reimbursement model without recognizing what has long been said, but little done about it — “the most important member of the care team is the patient.”

    Having implemented or reviewed over 100 health IT systems, there is one common purpose at the core of the architecture of these systems — how to get as big a bill out as quickly as… → Read More

    March 6th, 2012

    Khan Academy Inspires Flip of Doctor-Patient Relationship Model

    Salman Khan

    Education and healthcare are typically held up as the industries least affected by the technology revolution, however this has begun to change. From Bill Gates to millions of students and parents, the Khan Academy has impressed many of us and inspired teachers to flip the classroom lecture/homework model on its head as described in the video below. Similarly, doctors are now recognizing similar… → Read More

    February 26th, 2012

    What Pharma Can Learn From the Railroads and IBM

    Train wreck

    Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Dave Chase, the CEO of Avado.com, a patient portal & relationship management company that was a TechCrunch Disrupt finalist. Previously he was a management consultant for Accenture’s healthcare practice and founder of Microsoft’s Health platform business. You can follow him on Twitter @chasedave. Pharmaceutical companies are in trouble… → Read More

    February 15th, 2012

    Communication is the Most Important Medical Instrument

    Control & Acuity Diagram

    “A good scalpel makes a better surgeon. Good communication makes a better doctor.” The future of medicine in the U.S. is clear. The days of the “do more, bill more” model of reimbursement are numbered as it has produced one of the most inefficient healthcare systems in the world. While there are many unknowns regarding the future model, one thing is crystal clear — highly effective… → Read More

    February 6th, 2012

    WWJD? The CEO Every Healthcare Leader Should Learn From

    Innovator's Prescription

    As healthcare goes through massive changes, health system CEOs would be well advised to study what newspaper industry leaders did (or perhaps more appropriately, didn’t do) when faced with a similar situation. In the late 90′s, the following dynamics were present:

    Owning printing presses was a de facto barrier to entry allowing newspapers unfettered dominance.
    Newspaper companies bought up… → Read More

    February 2nd, 2012

    Why It’s Good News HealthIT is So Bad

    HealthIT is bad

    I know of no industry where technology is as despised as it is in healthcare. It’s telling that it took government money to incentivize healthcare providers to finally do what virtually every other industry has done — apply information technology to streamline processes. “Established technology is being given a federally funded new lease on life,” athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush said. “Traditional… → Read More

    January 24th, 2012

    The Rise of Nimble Medicine

    Innovator's Prescription - New Wave of Disruptive Models in Healthcare

    In the New Yorker, Dr. Atul Gawande outlined how, at the turn of the 20th century, more than forty per cent of household income went to paying for food and food production consumed nearly half the workforce. Starting in Texas, a wide array of new methods of food production were tested. Long story short, food now accounts for 8% of household budgets and 2% of the workforce. As a wide array of small… → Read More