At HIMSS 2011 there was much insight to be gained… for those able to see past the multicolored booths, neon lights, walking golden suits of armor, contortionists, magic shows, free beer, luminaries gathered behind closed doors to forecast the future. Just after dawn on Monday morning, several of these luminaries gathered in the Peabody Orlando Hotel for a panel hosted by Intel Corporation to address the future of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Among these experts were Eric Dishman, Intel Fellow and Global Director of Health Innovation & Policy, Michael Young, President & CEO of Grady Health System, Dr. Steven Waldren, Director of the Center for Health IT for the American Academy of Family Physicians, and Aneesh Chopra, CTO of the United States. Read more

Much ado has been made about Accountable Care Organizations lately, between the comments from AHIP, the AMA, CHIME, not to mention pundits criticizing the programs as ‘fiascos’. History may judge this turmoil as baby steps towards progress, but among the debate around patient centered medical homes, retrospective attribution, performance reporting and shared risk, is a connection that is under-discussed: The underlying criticality of reliable health information exchanges as a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of effective ACOs. Certainly, other causes of reluctant initial enrollment in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, such as reimbursement risk and consumer engagement, must be addressed to successfully transform care delivery. But even among ACO pilots with commercial payers, a connectivity arms race is amassing between providers and payers maneuvering to control a key lynchpin of accountable care: information. Read more

Last week, four UC Berkeley MBAs flew 8,700 miles to Bangalore, India, to innovate mHealth business models for the country’s remote hinterland. As part of a course in international business development, the Berkeley team is consulting with Foundation Research on Health Systems (FRHS), a not-for-profit NGO operating in Dehli, Ahmedabad and Bangalore. In operation since 1989, FRHS has been developing surveillance programs leveraging health information systems to monitor and care for women and children in rural India, focusing on strengthening the existing health system across the country. It seems intuitive that mHealth could augment the effectiveness of India’s healthcare given the rapid penetration of mobile devices and infrastructure disparities between densely populated cities and the rural countryside. Equally salient are the significant opportunities for business and social change if mobile app developers can meet the needs of hundreds of millions of rural inhabitants. Thus, it is in this promise for better patient access to care that the developing world holds valuable lessons about bringing health innovations to new markets. Read more

Health reform offers a significant step forward for preventative care, as long as the system can meet increased capacity demands. With higher reimbursement and subsidized primary care coverage for patients, the government is actively incentivizing patients to seek preventative health measures and medical students to consider family medicine over higher-paying specialty practices. However, physician shortages and capacity-constrained infrastructure pose a risk to expansive primary care in the US. Read more

At the recent Health 2.0 Code-a-thon in Mountain View, CA, developers and healthcare futurists from across Silicon Valley gathered to conjure meaning from new oceans of data. Held on the Google campus, the San Francisco Bay Area Code-a-thon is only the first in a series of events aiming to mine resources freed as part of the White House’s Open Government Initiative. With mountains of new datasets from data.gov come new opportunities for new applications to bring information transparency to healthcare. And the need to extract meaning from these data is greater than ever. Again and again, the theme arose over the course of the Code-a-thon that better tools are needed for interpreting this healthcare data glut if information is to be relied upon by providers, policy makers and patients to make healthcare in America work. Read more