Archive | April, 2011

Are health innovation and cost-reduction mutually exclusive? Insights from West Wireless’s Health Care Innovation Day DC

Representatives from eight U.S. Federal government agencies, including the FDA and Veterans Administration, among others; health financiers (VCs, angels); health tech start-ups; providers, life science companies, and analysts, attended the Health Care Innovation Day DC sponsored by West Wireless Health Institute on April 28, 2011. The meeting had the tagline, A Discussion with the FDA, setting [...]

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Bye-bye, Ward & June Cleaver; Hello, multi-cultural, digital-happy family

“Ward and June Cleaver have left the building,” observe analysts at Nielsen. “The white, two-parent, ‘Leave it to Beaver’ family unit of the 1950s has evolved into a multi-layered, multi-cultural construct dominated by older, childless households,” starts a report from The Nielsen Company, The New Digital American Family. Whatever ethnic flavor this Digital Family may represent, [...]

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Consumer engagement with health IT isn’t about technology

Today’s kickoff of the National eHealth Collaborative‘s Consumer Consortium on eHealth convened the most diverse workgroup of over 70 stakeholders with various lenses on consumers and health, rarely seen at similar meetings, as Lygeia Ricciardi (@lygeia) of the Office of the National Coordiantor for Health IT (ONC) in the Department of Health and Human Services, observed. However, [...]

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American health consumers still health rationing in 2011

The top 4 personal consumer worries are incomes not keeping up with rising prices; having to pay more for health care and health insurance; not having enough money for retirement; and. not being able to afford health care services we think we need. The April 2011 Kaiser Public Opinion poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation [...]

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Retail health options expand with American Well and Activ Doctors going direct

The traditional venues for retail health are found in pharmacies, grocery chains, and on the ground floor storefronts in hospitals. Joining these bricks-based models are digital, online health ventures that are expanding the definition and space of retail health. This week, two announcements illustrate this phenomenon, from American Well and Active Doctors. American Well, which launched in 2008, [...]

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