Diet and Nutrition. Natural Health, and Healthy Living

Kibbe & Klepper are back with an update to their pre-Christmas piece on EHRs and the forthcoming Obama Administration's investment policy towards them. Lest you think that this is just a small group here on THCB and fellow traveler blogs shouting to each other, I'd point you towards the Boston Globe article about their previous "Open Letter," which shows that this discussion (and a similar piece on THCB from Rick Peters) appears to be being taken very seriously. As it should--Matthew Holt

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Patient advocacy groups, most of them drug industry-funded, have asked President-elect Barack Obama to appoint a Food and Drug Administration commissioner who won't cave in to pressure from lawmakers or the news media, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It is news to me that the news media has much say about decisions at FDA. There are reporters who highlight problems, especially safety problems, in the nation's food and drug supply. And there are reporters who highlight every study suggesting the next miracle cure is just around the corner. Large news organizations like the New York Times have both. For every Gardiner Harris, there is a Gina Kolata. The news media are megaphones. They are not, to use someone else's phrase, the decider.

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In my experience, social networking applications gain marketshare by being first to innovate and then spreading virally.

I was an early adopter of Facebook but delayed joining Twitter, a microblog that enables me to post instant blog entries via SMS from my Blackberry.

Over the past 60 days, I have seen an incredible rise in Twitter use among my colleagues and have now joined the ranks of folks who "Tweet" their blogs. You'll find me at http://twitter.com/jhalamka

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It seems like everyone in the Pharma Blogosphere and the press is recommending who president-elect Barack Obama should nominate as the new FDA Commissioner to replace Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach.

A few weeks ago, I created the “Who Should Obama Nominate for FDA Commissioner?” online survey to determine who readers of Pharma Marketing News think should be the next FDA Commissioner. I received many interesting comments and decided to open the survey up to as many stakeholders as possible, including consumers, healthcare professionals, former FDA and other government officials, pharmaceutical employees, and others.

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Here’s the CBS News clip that ran about PatientsLikeMe last week

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The New York Times published a story this month about one of the biggest medical trials ever organized by the federal government, a study that showed that the newest, most expensive drugs used to treat high blood pressure (a.k.a. hypertension) work no better than inexpensive diuretics—water pills that flush excess fluid and salt from the body. Moreover, the research revealed that the pricier drugs increase the risk of heart failure and stroke.

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Americans spend more money on health care than any other nation, but get far less in return, say multiple health care executives in Sunday's Washington Post.

That's not news to readers of this blog, but probably is not yet common knowledge among the general American taxpayer. That might change. The news media seems to be writing about this "value gap" more frequently, particularly in citing the growing momentum behind creating a center for comparative effectiveness research to evaluate drugs, devices and treatments to find out what works best.

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Health care costs in the U.S. are approaching 17 percent of the GDP and may be as high as 20 percent in the next few years.

What is causing the US to have the highest cost and lowest value for the healthcare dollar? Simple - it's overtreatment.

Overtreatment takes many forms - from over ordering expensive diagnostic tests to the prescribing of expensive and sometimes unneeded therapeutics.

There are many reasons for this. Here are just a few:

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Having returned from Seattle, the persistent itching from the sand-fly bites of Roatan has awakened me at 5 a.m. So I’m commenting on three pieces of news, which I've commented on before here and at Spot-On.

First, United HealthGroup has introduced two new things this week. One is is a consumer portal/WebMD competitor called myOptumHealth, which gave a sneak preview (and was a sponsor) at the Health 2.0 Conference in October.

At first blush I like the look of what they’ve pulled together, although the about us section doesn’t exactly tell you much about who owns Optum! But the really interesting product United launched this week was aimed right at me. It’s an option to repurchase your individual health insurance without being re-underwritten and rejected.

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We're in a recession; actually, we've been in one for the past year, but no official agency decided to tell us. Perhaps "they" wanted to wait until after the November '08 Presidential election?

The declaration of recession is the official news from The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), whose mind-numbingly-titled press release, Determination of the December 2007 Peak in Economic Activity, provides the following important details:

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