Diet and Nutrition. Natural Health, and Healthy Living

Ryan Phelan started DNADirect to expand the power of genetic testing to everyone, using the Web. She’s been ploughing a tough furrow but been making some real progress in the last few years, including getting an investment from Lemhi Ventures and working with Humana to provide genetic testing to its members (and the utilization management going along with it), to go along with their initialDTC approach.

Late last week DNADirect was purchased by Medco. I spoke with Ryan and Robert Epstein, Chief Medical Officer of Medco to get just a taste of what this will mean for the future of DNA testing within Medco.

(more...)

Practice Fusion has been making a fair bit of noise recently with its investment from Salesforce and its trumpeting of 18,000 + physician users. If that number is true it probably makes it the most used EMR outside of EPIC or VISTA—bear in mind that AthenaClinicals only claims around 2,000 users. I’m inclined to take that number with a large grain or two of salt, and suspect that the number they’re reporting is “registered” users rather than “active” users.However, either way you slice it their “free SaaS-based” EMR model has put the cat amongst the pigeons (FD PracticeFusion was a sponsor of the recent Health 2.0 conference which I co-founded).

(more...)

There's a consumer health fair called Health Etc in San Francisco on Sat 9/26 at 9AM-5PM. This event is being presented by the California Pacific Medical Center in conjunction with KCBS Radio.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is the keynote speaker and there are plethora of panels, seminars, and interactive exhibits happening throughout the day ranging from nutrition to environmental sustainability. Other expert speakers are Cheryl Forberg, RD (Nutrition), Dr. Brian Feely (Orthopedic), Dr. David Larson (Oncology), Steve Demos (Digestion), Meg Soper (Menopause), Jeff Bell and Christine Carter (Mental Health), Great Macaire and Jane Clark (Nutrition), Dr. Christopher Clark (Orthopedic).

(more...)

In light of all the discussion about the Economic Recovery Plan and the privacy provisions in the HIT Title, I thought it might be helpful to provide a consumer advocate’s view. The National Partnership for Women & Families leads a coalition of consumer, patient, and labor groups, the Consumer Partnership for eHealth (CPeH). The organizations in this coalition are working to advance HIT adoption, because we know that achieving better coordinated, higher quality health care demands the integration of new technologies into the health care delivery system.

(more...)

I have been following health care consumerism for several years now. Particularly, the “Direct Access” or “Direct To Consumer” laboratory testing market. While analytic lab testing has led out in this area, genetic testing has received all the regulatory attention, national press, and policy efforts (GINA).

So it is no surprise that consumer genetic movement would be the first legal test of the Health 2.0 movement. As reported by Matthew Holt here on THCB, and a host of national outlets (Wired has had extensive coverage here,here, and here), there seems to be quite a hornets nest unleashed by our friends at the California and New York Departments of Health who are attempting to prevent consumers from accessing their own genetic information.

(more...)

It seems that everyone is chasing after doctor and hospital ratings. From Revolution Health to Yelp, consumers are encouraged to rate hospitals and physicians in their communities. Hospitals and physicians are the two obvious providers to rate in our health care system. However, I think we have left out, the largest and, arguably the most important members of the health care profession --- nurses, certified caregivers and home health aides.

(more...)