News & Updates

January 25, 2023 - By Deb Linton

- Register for this Saturday’s Free Health 2.0 Code-a-thon on the Google Campus in Mountain View, CA. Speakers include Roni Zeiger of Google, Sastry Nanduri of HealthTap,  Matthew Douglass of Practice Fusion, Alex Tam of frog design, and Andy Krackov of the Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. The Packard Foundation will also use the event to issue their challenge to develop an online platform for families with special needs children.

- The ONC for Health Information Technology announced Lygeia Ricciardi its new Senior Advisor for Consumer e-Health. She will be responsible for developing and managing ONC’s national consumer e-health program. Check out Ted Eyten’s blog to learn more about this new appointment.

- The Hot Spotters is a great New Yorker piece by Atul Gawande about reducing health cost by giving the neediest patients better care. The report features the work of Jeffrey Brenner, a physician who has used data mining and statistical analysis to map health-care use and expenses. Calculations revealed that just 1% of the hundred thousand people who made use of his medical facilities accounted for 30% of its costs. The article also features Rushika Fernandopulle who will be on the “Making Health Care Cheaper” panel at Health 2.0’s Spring Fling.

- Digital Assent secured $2 million in Series A equity financing for PatientPad, a self-service check-in and patient education tool. Similar to Phreesia, PatientPad facilitates the collection of patient information such as insurance verification, payment, and consent form signatures. Their full press release can be found here.

- We’re big Deven McGraw fans at Health 2.0 and the Center for Democracy & Technology‘s (CDT) health IT privacy maven is looking for your feedback. Deven’s blog post goes into greater detail but the CDT is encouraging people to ask the toughest Health 2.0 and HIPAA-related questions they can come up with. You can submit questions here.

- Ben Heywood of PatientsLikeMe was named the Huffington Post’s Greatest Person last week, drawing important attention to the empowered patient movement. Health 2.0 has been a supporter of PatientsLikeMe from our earliest days. While you could read about Ben’s story in the Huffington Post, we highly recommend Netflix-ing the amazing documentary, So Much So Fast, which follows the Heywood family over 5 years of their brother’s ALS diagnosis.

- Practice Fusion has been named the No. 1 EHR vendor in customer satisfaction for primary care specialties by Brown-Wilson’s annual Black Book Rankings. It’s quite the accomplishment considering they are approximately 10 years younger and $50,000 cheaper than their competition.

- Last week, The New York Times ran an interesting feature examining consumer DNA testing. Heavy Doses of DNA Data, With Few Side Effects by John Tierney, captures some provocative highlights from the recent New England Journal of Medicine study examining the behavioral effects of consumer genomic profiling used to asses disease risk. While some states have banned the sales of these tests, others view access to such technology as a patient right. The article draws attention to individualize medical technology policy and how shortsighted regulations are working against patient-consumer preferences.

- MAKE’s blog featured the Health 2.0 Feb 19^th Boston Code-a-thon on its front page today! MAKE Magazine is co-sponsoring the event at the Microsoft NERD Center by bringing some open source hardware and maybe a Kinect or two for the teams participating in the Veterans Health Wireless Innovation Challenge. The challenge is to design a wireless device or application targeting a problem specific to the Veteran’s care, such as movement disorders, PTSD, and hearing or vision loss.

- ThyrodHub Health Record was launched last week by MyMedLab, Inc. and thyroid patient advocate and bestselling author Mary Shomon for Thyroid Awareness Month. ThyroidHub Health Record is a specialized panel of lab tests that can help pinpoint hard-to-diagnose thyroid conditions. According to their latest press release the entire testing process, from buying the test to receiving the confidential results, can be completed in 24 hours. Test results are saved and graphed in the secure ThyroidHub Health Record online and can be updated with future test results. This release also coupled with a strong social component. David Clymer, CEO of MyMedLab (featured at Health 2.0 back in 2008) let us know that they are already building three more communities (hubs) in hormone health, autism and genetics that will be rolling out over the next 30 days. This is a great example of innovators using technology to provide real solutions to problems beyond who should pay for care.