The Laszlo Letter

Electronic Health Records (EHR) coverage at HIMSS

The annual meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) took place last week in Chicago. While there are many publications out there covering this meeting, ChannelWeb had an especially good series of articles on it.

Those of you who are not yet familiar with ChannelWeb, it is a web site focusing on companies that sell computer and communication based solutions (i.e. hardware and software.) In other words, the sellers ARE the channel.

As you will see from these articles, the most popular topic at HIMSS was the Obama stimulus package and its implications for health care. As you can imagine, vendors had a Pavlovian reaction about the potential to make a lot of money.

How well the money will be spent remains an open item. Once thing is certain. A lot of it will be wasted.

Read on...

HIMSS: Moving From Stimulus Hope To Real Health-Care IT Projects
ChannelWeb , April 10, 2009
At HIMSS, VARs, CIOs and vendors look past the initial round of stimulus excitement to gauge what's coming next.

20 Scenes From HIMSS 2009
ChannelWeb , April 09, 2009
The annual HIMSS conference brought more than 27,000 attendees to McCormick Place in Chicago, to hear from each other and from the likes of Dennis Quaid and Alan Greenspan as they place their bets on the future of health care IT. A strong pulse? You bet--and Channelweb was there to check it.

HIMSS: Greenspan Says Economy 'Will Turn, But Not Yet'
ChannelWeb , April 08, 2009
At HIMSS, Alan Greenspan addresses technology's role in health care and the broader economy.

HIMSS: Dell, Perot Systems Unleash Health Care IT Salvo
ChannelWeb , April 06, 2009
Dell announces partnerships with Perot Systems and others and virtualization and social networking solutions for health care

HIMSS: Dennis Quaid Calls On Health-Care Modernization To Eliminate Errors
ChannelWeb , April 05, 2009
Actor Dennis Quaid said at HIMSS keynote that health-care IT technology is the only way to reduce medical errors.

HIMSS Preview: Health Care Tech Revs Up As Stimulus Begins
ChannelWeb , April 03, 2009
Electronic medical records and health care IT funding from the federal stimulus package are on everyone's minds as HIMSS gets under way in Chicago.

Health Care IT: 25 Solutions To Check Out At HIMSS
ChannelWeb , April 02, 2009
A sampling of products and solutions to see at the 2009 HIMSS Conference in Chicago.

Obama, Healthcare IT and the FDA

Today is day 2 of Obama's presidency.

While I do not expect him to even think about the FDA just yet, his inauguration led me to speculate about the possible changes that may come about for Healthcare IT in general and the FDA in particular. Somewhat coincidentally, these thoughts came out on inauguration day in the now weekly magazine Pharmaceutical Executive Europe. If you don't yet subscribe to this wholly electronic publication, consider doing so.

Click here to read the article which begins on Page 8. Your own thoughts on these topics are welcome.

Obama's Healthcare Team

Next week the USA gets a new President!

Anyone who is interested in what Obama will do with Healthcare should be interested in the colorful cast of characters that he has (and will) assembled to tackle this monster. One of them is Peter Orszag who will now be his budget director.

An Economist by training, Mr. Orszag already knows a thing or two about healthcare. He's got the facts on the spending front and has a few ideas about putting healthcare on a diet.

If you want to know more, there is plenty of that on the Internet. Here is one pretty good review (The Number Cruncher in Chief) about Mr. Orszag. Skim it first and then decide what parts you want to read.

Quotations from FDA CDER Head Janet Woodcock

Notes from the 23^rd DIA CDM conference

In the next few posts, it is my intention to share with you some of the information presented at the 23^rd DIA Clinical Data Management (CDM) conference. It is also my intention to give you some of my own thoughts about what I saw and heard.

The title of the conference was “Data Management in Transition: Putting the “e” in Data Management.” I am happy to report that the conference organizers did a great job keeping the majority of speakers focused on this topic. So, kudos are in order for Sue Dubman (Theravance), Kristin Neff (Boston Scientific), Paul Bleicher (Phase Forward), Shahla Farr (FDA), Rebecca Kush (CDISC), Denise DeRenzo Lacey (Waife & Associates), Johann Prove (Bayer Schering Pharma), Don Rosen (Rosen Consulting) and Steve Wilson (FDA.)

I could not think of a better approach to get things rolling than to simply convey several quotations from the talk given by the conference keynote speaker, Janet Woodcock MD, of FDA. As you may know, Dr. Woodcock was recently put in charge of CDER and she wasted no time telling us what she thought her division, and indeed all of FDA, should be doing.

These quotes nicely reinforce the tone of the CDM conference, one that was palpable if not always directly stated, namely that The time for change has arrived.

While I was initially tempted to put these quotes in context, I resisted that urge since they are as applicable to what we do in general as to the specific issues being discussed by Dr. Woodcock.

So, mull these over at your leisure and stay tuned for more about the meeting in future posts.

Quotations from Janet Woodcock

“current methods are not sustainable”

[there is] “almost a crisis in the United States to get clinical trials done”

“there is too much data being collected”

[we] “need to link EHR to clinical trials”

“we need to get out of the way we are doing things now”

DIA Euromeeting: Impressions and Recommendations

I’m writing this on the plane to New York from Barcelona having just attended the 2008 DIA Euromeeting. As a veteran of many DIA annual meetings in the USA, I must admit that this year’s Euromeeting was like a breath of fresh air. A key reason for this may be the calculated risk that the meeting planners took by redesigning the program around themes and sessions.

Suggestion: Click here to see a phenomenal set of Barcelona photos!

First, let's BILL all the lawyers!

OK, I couldn't help it. I just had to edit that famous quote from Shakespeare. Why? Because this post is all about software that can help lawyers bill other lawyers for the services they provide.

In particular, I wanted to highlight two case studies (J&J and Merck) discussing how in-house counsel can make use of software for processing invoices received from outside counsel. Both of these come from the software vendor DataCert based in Houston, Texas and London, England.

The product highlighted is called Advanced Invoice Management System (AIMS) and was implemented by J&J and Merck in the past four years.