Tales of Hoffman

Yahoo getting health conscious. As

Yahoo getting health conscious. As this article on CNet describes, Yahoo thinks one of the ways out of its ad slump is to go where the "big money" is...pharma companies. This puts them squarely in the wheelhouse of WebMD/Medscape. It will be interesting to see where they get their content, how they position it and, ultimately how they perform in this market. It's not an easy one for newcomers to tackle. Particularly in terms of experience dealing with Pharmas...

Hey Docs, would you like

Hey Docs, would you like to earn CME just for reading someone else's thoughts on a weblog? Now you can! Just head over to the UAB CME site and see how you can earn a quarter of a credit for reading db's Medrants. If you're a doc, I don't know why you wouldn't sign up for this, since you should be reading db anyway, it's a stellar example of doc blogging -- really state of the art. Kudos to UAB and Robert Centor, MD for continuing to explore how blogging can change how docs use the net.

 <shameless plug> Of course, you can always head over to Medscape, the leading provider of online CME, to earn a ton of CME credits by reading in-depth material specifically written for your specialty, as well as track all of your earned credits with an online CME Tracker. But you already knew that, right? </shamless plug>

If this paragraph from AIS

If this paragraph from AIS Health's Today in E-Business Newsletter doesn't sum up the vast deflation of expectations around what used to be called "E-Health", I don't know what does:

IDMedical.com, a provider of online access to medical records by physicians and emergency medical personnel, has changed its name to Opus Media Group Inc. to reflect its new business line. Opus Media has said that the name change reflects its two areas of business. Opus, the first part of the company's name, literally translates into 'soul work or work of the soul,' and the second part of the name, Media, represents the company's recent agreement to develop a new record label.

That makes sense, doesn't it? Hey, I'll be happy to keep track of this and let you know when they launch their combination Dry Cleaning and Tax Preparation business.

In reference to my example

In reference to my example below about legislating standards, would you like to see what can happen when government tries to push through a technical standards (even one that is beneficial to end users)? DTV's Political Stakes Run High (from Wired)

Lesgislating Standards or Standard Legislation?There's

Lesgislating Standards or Standard Legislation?
There's an old saying that reading about music is like "dancing about architecture" -- it just can't be done. Well, I've got another one to add to list of impossibilities: "Legislating technical standards to improve patient care."

A bill has been making its way through Congress to amend the Social Security Act in order to improve patient care by reducing medical errors. This bill H.R. 4889 aims to improve patient safety by outlining a process by which organizations will be able to report non-identified, aggregated data to the Secretary of Health in order to improve outcomes and reduce medical errors. A laudable goal and, in the abstract, something that everyone should be able to agree upon (a la, "I'm for the environment, education, and peace!" Yeah, who isn't?).

Unfortunately, the last part of this resolution, authored by Rep. Johnson of Connecticut reads like this: "By not later than 2 years after the date of the enactment of this part, the Secretary shall develop (and shall periodically review and update) voluntary, national standards that promote the interoperability of health care information technology systems across all health care settings."

Wow, that's a pretty sentence, isn't it? Unfortunately, the only organization that's currently capable of enforcing "voluntary national standards" is Microsoft. When will the Government learn that a technology standard occurs through market forces, not legislation. How long have we been slogging through HL7, and any number of alternatives, with no real standard in sight?

Now, I'm not totally negative on this. The relationship between healthcare technology vendors and consumers of that technology -- whether they be doctors, hospitals, HMOs or any other healthcare organization -- has been the equivalent of boys and girls at a Ninth Grade dance. They stand at opposite sides of the gym, wanting desperately to get out on the dance floor, but they're unable to choose a partner for fear of picking the wrong one.

But...leaving it up to the Federal Government to pick the prettiest girl at the dance does not give me a lot of warm fuzzies. Take a look at how well they've done with the setting of a non-voluntary standard, digital television and HDTV. The standards have been set for years. I've owned an HDTV set for about 12 months now and about 10% of my viewing is in HDTV.

With a track record like that, I'm not sure I'm going to pick my next doc or hospital based on whether they're using government approved software.

Family Medicine Notes is linking to

Family Medicine Notes is linking to an article on Medscape. It would be really interesting to see how much traffic is generated from blogs to Medscape and it's definitely something I'll be looking into.

Hey Rangel!  Get a Mac. 

Hey Rangel!  Get a Mac.  ;-)

Isidore Claims First Mexico Deaths,

Isidore Claims First Mexico Deaths, Thousands Flee
My father's name is Isidore, so every time I see another headline today, I do a double take. I mean, after all, he's not that mean a guy.

Adieu, My Magazine!. A pretty

Adieu, My Magazine!. A pretty funny op-ed piece on the whole Rosie, Oprah, Martha trend of magazines named after people.

Richard Winters, who has a

Richard Winters, who has a blog over here, has moved his other experimental Medical Education site into beta. It's called BigNeedle.com and it's got real potential. Sitting at the nexus of education and community, the site uses flash to present medical trivia questions (Daily Bolus) in an interesting and fun format. The questions are submitted by physician members and there appears to be a good community element in that you can see all the questions submitted by each member along with their CV, etc. I'll be tracking this closely....Good Luck, Richard.