News 12/01/05

From Anonymous Reader: "Have you published a list of reader profiles so I can determine if our sponsorship would reach the appropriate audience?" Good question, but I can't really do that since readers don't have to log on or register to read HIStalk. The best advice I can give: sponsor HIStalk because you like the content, not necessarily to replace traditional advertising. Hey, it's relatively cheap and I appreciate it a lot more than those glossy rag guys, even if I can't bury you in demographic studies.

From Wondering: "Will Kodak be the next big player to get into the HIS market? The CARESTREAM branding announced at RSNA this week and several large wins in the PACS world should make us all wonder." I've mentioned Kodak's efforts in the past, but whether they're too late is the question. We were talking about their intentions a year ago and they were showing off the applications they'd bought from IBA Health at last year's RSNA. If they want to jump, it had better be quick since it's too late to build products from scratch and only a few companies are available for acquisition. Who do you think they should hook up with? As always, I vote for iSoft or Eclipsys.

From RSS User: "Microsoft has a Beta (that works with Firefox, too) of a homepage that allows you to have your RSS feeds up, along with mail, messenger services, their gadgets, etc. Not that I use all of that, but it's a great one-stop-shop for http://histalk.blog-city.com/rss/. The price is nice, too: free." I don't use RSS readers myself, but I had noted when Live first was announced that it would interest those who do. Thanks for the tip.

From California Dreamin': "I am joining our CIO next week at the American College of Emergency Physicians symposium on emergency automation solutions. We are going to Scottsdale, so we (along with anyone else that cares to golf in December) will spend only an hour at the conference, but I would like to go prepared. My CIO is a Cernerite and has a strong connection with our CFO (meaning my voice will not be heard), but I have colleagues not overly thrilled with Cerner's offerings in this area. Before swallowing the Cerner pill, what other options do your Physicians prefer and I am also interested in which solutions that other non Cerner CIO's feel are "best of breed" work well with Cerner in tandem (our main system). It is my understanding that if our CIO would permit it, we could select whichever system we wanted and that it will connect to Cerner as well, if not better than Cerner's current product?" I have limited experience in that area, but the big boys are generally weak in their ED offerings (along with ambulatory in general, oncology, etc.) FirstNet is ranked dead last in KLAS among ED applications, so I'd certainly consider alternatives. One of my previous employers used Wellsoft and liked it. Picis (Ibex) seemed good to me then, too.

Ron from Israeli startup Rosetta Genomics sent over some background material on the company, which I mentioned back in March. It was started by the former founder of Pegasus Medical, the EMR company acquired by HBOC in 1995. With just $6 million in VC money, Rosetta is right at the forefront of what could be a gold mine (although every company their size says that.) Still, they've got some high-profile investors and a patent application that ran 500,000 pages. "Bentwich is a character that can be described as colorful. He is a physician, entrepreneur, and a yoga and meditation instructor. He is a potter and a poet, composing 'mainly love poems to my wife.' Rosetta Genomics’ workday begins with yoga exercises. Bentwich sometimes conducts the session himself. The company’s offices are decorated with his pottery, and every afternoon the company’s computer programmers and biologists meet for tea in a Bedouin-style sitting area." Cool.

Mike tipped me off that the DoD is looking for a telepharmacy system. From Newsbytes: " The Defense Department is conducting research on commercially available technology products for a telepharmacy application for its Military Health System ... The telepharmacy application should include capabilities to fill, check and dispense prescriptions at a remote site, with access to all pertinent patient information at a central pharmacy and a remote site; full documentation and auditing capabilities of the prescription fill process; and ability to print patient-specific labels. The system would provide commercial-grade video teleconferencing communications within the network among specified users using the data network components and protocols. The telepharmacy would have to interface with commercial pharmacy management systems. Responses are due Dec. 6." As Mike points out, state pharmacy laws may limit the usefulness of such a system in the private sector. Still, this is another of those "virtualization" examples that I've really got to write about when I get time.

Good reader idea: the always fearfully bright and cynical HIStalk readers should lay out some real-world goals. "A fun thing to do would be to create a group-think top 5-10 things that we would like to see get accomplished in the short term (2006) and top 5-10 in the longer term (by 2009?). This would give vendors, HC business and IT leaders, government and consultants something to use as to-do list." I like the idea and we'll need something to fall back on as an industry once RHIOs self-destruct (again) and we wake up with the same unattractive partner we had bedded before David Brailer. I'll give this some thought, so let me know if you have ideas about the list or if you want to be involved.

From Anonymous Reader II: "I recruit at many levels (including application analysts), and most with whom I have spoken HATE ProFit. Evergreen Healthcare in Washington threw it out and installed Meditech b/ar (billing/accounts receivable) instead." I've written about Evergreen and Cerner before, so feel free to use the Search function to your right to check it out (or, buy the wonderful HIStalk Yearbooks from the links at the top left of this page.)

Reminders: place your name in the spam-proof Mailing List box to your right to get instant e-mail updates when I write something new. Check out HIStalk Discussion, where you can have your say instead of just reading mine. I didn't think anyone was reading there until I noticed that Anony-Mouse's excellent Epic and Cerner good/bad lists have been read over 1300 times.

UK patient groups are overwhelmingly worried about confidentiality breaches with electronic medical records, mostly fearing discrimination toward people with chronic diseases.

The CEO of Philips says the company is looking for acquisitions, including those in healthcare IT.

A Frost and Sullivan survey says clinical systems vendors will succeed only if they involve clinicians. "Acute care information system providers need to achieve physician and nurse adoption of their solutions to obtain long-term success in the marketplace. This requires working closely with clinicians during the sales phase to get their strategic input, not just pay them lip service to see if the application is user-friendly. 'Without buy-in from physicians and nurses and other caregivers who are the primary users of an acute care information system, vendors will find themselves shut out of deals,' explains Boone." I couldn't agree less. As long as products are equally crappy (like now) and development is limited to haphazard patching and illusory integration (like now) then I don't expect the bar to be raised. Hospitals are falling all over themselves to buy some fairly tired wares, so I would question the conclusion that clinician buy-in is all that important. They're not even involved in many decisions, other than a CIO-rigged process that lets them think they are.

In the least-shocking news of the year, VISICU files for a $65 million IPO.

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