Comments for Popper and Co.

Comment on Welcoming Head of Digital Health Strategy Paul Sonnier as Newest Team Member by Malcolm Bohm

Malcolm Bohm — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 05:10:12 +0000

Congrats! Paul will be a great asset at your company. Well connected, well respected and has gained a tremendous appreciation of the opportunity Digital Health will bring.

Comment on Welcoming Head of Digital Health Strategy Paul Sonnier as Newest Team Member by joan justice

joan justice — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:23:13 +0000

Hello Caroline,
I would love to have an article from Paul on digital health – will he be contributing soon? We just started a series on Mobile Health Around the Globe and I am very interested to hear Paul’s take on the mHealth Explosion!
Thanks,
Joan Justice

Comment on In the Battle of Doctor’s Orders Versus Patient Power, the Patient is Winning by rhoffman, md

rhoffman, md — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:00:22 +0000

Hard to know which trends will most strongly influence adoption of the necessary changes in health care. While patients have a voice and can drive the changes, my sense is that many patients are intimidated or have difficulty engaging in their self care. Thus, we need policy makers, payors and providers to help lead health care toward a re-engineered system.

There may be pockets of the market where patients, or rather, their families, will have high adoption rates of innovative tools which help drive the transformation. Thank you for promoting this important discussion.

Comment on Telehealth Saves Lives, Reduces Costs: A Physician’s Perspective by Dale C. Alverson, M.D. (guest blogger)

Dale C. Alverson, M.D. (guest blogger) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:55:46 +0000

Thank you for your comment. Reimbursement is certainly an important consideration with regard to most health care options. Payment options are likely to shift from a “fee for service model” to a “pay for performance model” base upon preventive care and keeping your patients as healthy as possible, avoiding costly complications, use of emergency services and hospitalizations whenever possible and appropriate. The return on investment should come through improved access to appropriate care, improved health outcomes and lower overall costs. This will constitute the ROI for adopting HIT and Telehealth and should be the basis for making the business case. In the meantime, we need to demonstrate the value to the payers, including CMS, that care can be improved and costs reduced when using these technologies effectively. With that data, the payers should be willing to reimburse for telemedicine services as they would for physical face-to-face encounters and healthcare provider organizations should be interested in bundling HIT/Telemedicine into their overall operations.

Comment on Telehealth Saves Lives, Reduces Costs: A Physician’s Perspective by Wanda Kjar-Hunt

Wanda Kjar-Hunt — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:07:10 +0000

Thanks Dale this is nice information to have. Evan posted that reimbursement is still an issue. In Nebraska most consults are being reimbursed by insurance companies, Medicare & Medicaid.

Comment on Telehealth Saves Lives, Reduces Costs: A Physician’s Perspective by evan

evan — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:49:59 +0000

Telemedicine is GREAT for those in rural areas. Gives more access to specialty doctors they otherwise would not have simply by finding a doctor online. I think the main limitation of telehealth and telemedicine is reimbursement. And I hope it will be adopted soon enough into employer benefits and even with health insurance companies.

Comment on Roche’s Proposed Takeover of Illumina—Game On for Universal DNA Sequencing? by Mark

Mark — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:04:46 +0000

Hi Shane. Great article. I am not very versed in this topic so I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a question. How would you characterize the main difference between illumina and Life Sciences? Their long term prospects, difference in business model, etc? Any insight would be much appreciated.

Comment on Meditate Your Way to Longer Telomeres; Keep Aging at Bay? by Katherine

Katherine — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:13:29 +0000

Although an interesting theoretical application of cell biology, this article fails to address the role telomeres play in restricting irregular cell growth. It is great to be thinking creatively about extending life expectancy and delaying aging by examining the body at a molecular level, but it is imperative to remember that every process in the body exists for a reason and simply altering the machinery of one little process (i.e. telomere degradation) can have drastic, unintended implications. Telomeres shorten to single cells into senescence. Cells failing to exhibit senescence at the proper time are called cancerous.

Comment on Digital Meets Health by Kathleen Malaspina

Kathleen Malaspina — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:57:46 +0000

Like you I am always interested to hear John Moore’s perspective on the topic of mHealth and since I didn’t attend this year’s Summit I was interested to read his comments. But I agree with your comments above, it’s a matter of perspective. There are lots of small mHealth companies that have either very recently formed or are on an early-stage growth path with an uncertain future. We haven’t yet seen any level of market consolidation that would lead me to believe mHealth is in high gear. In your recent poll I rated it in 1st gear, closing in on 2nd gear.

Perhaps with all the hype around mHealth some entrants have overlooked some of the basics and have entered the space prematurely, but I expect those to make just as quick an exit as entry. With any successful product or service clearly identifying the unmet need, the customer benefit and establishing a solid reason to believe is just good marketing.

Comment on Digital Meets Health by Jeannie Capone, RN

Jeannie Capone, RN — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 23:29:09 +0000

I am an NP student and also attended the #mHealth Summit. I appreciated this article. For an NP-student’s perspective, I wrote here: http://jeannieologist.tumblr.com/post/13997080103/a-thorough-retrospective-on-the-mhealth-summit-

I can tell you that I am pumped up about using apps as motivational tools and data trackers, but when it comes down to specific recommendations, I agree with Chilmark in saying that we are “stalled” at the provider level because there are no true guidelines leveraged towards providers.

Besides, where will I find time to review the patient-data in the 15 minute patient visit? I am hoping to dig up CPT codes that reimburse for more preventable/promotional visits. Yet, at end of day, those visits are not quite as financially rewarding as a “good old 9914″.

Thanks for reading,
Jeannie
@jeannieologist

PS. Rewarding HP and disease prevention at the Primary Care level will be the sea change in promoting mHealth apps and patient-report in the future.