In just a 24-hour period, patients in the hospital typically see a variety of doctors, nurses, x-ray technicians and other medical professionals, and undergo a plethora of diagnostic tests—without an understanding of how all of it comes together to make them well.
The Diversity and Cultural Competency Council (DCCC) at Boston Children’s Hospital recently conducted a three-year study on patient satisfaction. It found that the main reason patients were sometimes dissatisfied was because they felt unfamiliar with the medical information they were receiving, and had difficulty understanding who was part of their care team and how best to communicate with them. And so the idea of MyPassport was born. Full story »
A new spinoff business will make large-scale genomic diagnostics a reality in medical practice (Image: Rosendahl)
Genomic sequencing and molecular diagnostics are becoming a global business. At the recent American Society of Human Genetics meeting, dazzling technologies for reading genetic code were on display—promising faster, cheaper, sleeker.
Nevertheless, it’s become clear that the ability to determine someone’s DNA or RNA sequence doesn’t automatically translate into useful diagnostics or even actionable information. In fact, the findings are often confusing and hard to interpret, even by physicians.
That’s where academic-industry partnerships can flourish—tapping the deep expertise of medical research centers to bring clinical meaning to sequencing findings. Yesterday, Boston Children’s Hospital and Life Technologies Corp. announced a new venture with a great list of ingredients: fast, accurate, scalable sequencing technology—Life’s Ion Proton® Sequencer—but also research and clinical experience in rare and genetic diseases, bioinformatics expertise to handle the big data, and the medical and counseling expertise to create meaning from the results. Full story »
Inventions need a little extra incubating to make them attractive to health care.
Jenna Rose is director of Healthbox, a platform that brings together entrepreneurs, strategic partners, industry experts and investors to accelerate innovative healthcare solutions. She spoke recently at Boston Children’s Hospital at a forum sponsored by the Innovation Acceleration Program. She welcomes inquiries from entrepreneurs and others at info@healthbox.com.
When we think about the future of health, it’s generally medical science that captures our imagination—the source of groundbreaking pharmaceuticals, medical devices and diagnostics. But what about the business of health care? With the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the widespread adoption of mobile technologies, there has never been a better time to be a health tech entrepreneur. One recent report suggests that the healthcare IT sector could receive more than $1B in venture capital in 2012.
But change won’t be easy. As they seek to disrupt this $2.7 trillion industry, health tech entrepreneurs face a unique set of challenges. Full story »
It was a chance encounter. Eugenia Chan, MD, MPH, and Eric Fleegler, MD, MPH, both worked at Boston Children’s Hospital, and had met one another once or twice, but only in passing.
Running into each other at a conference, they fell to chatting. Chan, a pediatrician in Developmental Medicine, was looking for a way to measure how well patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were responding to their medications. Fleegler, an emergency physician and health services researcher, described an online software program he developed to screen patients for health-related social problems and connect them with relevant services.
Two years later, Chan and Fleegler launched ICISS, the Integrated Clinical Information Sharing System, which monitors patients with ADHD and their changing medication responses. Full story »
It’s been more than a decade since the Human Genome Project cracked our genetic code. DNA sequencing is getting cheaper and cheaper. So why isn’t it being used every day in medicine?
The truth is that while we have the technology to blow apart a patient’s DNA and piece it back together, letter by letter, and compare it with normal “reference” DNA, doctors don’t really know what to do with this information. How much of it is really relevant or useful? Should they be giving it back to patients and their families, and how?
Handled badly, the information could do more harm than good. “We don’t want to scare patients for no reason, or for the wrong reason,” says Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD, who chairs the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program.
Seeking a set of best practices for safe, clinically useful genomic sequencing, Boston Children’s Hospital took a crowd-sourcing approach. Full story »
Telemedicine has the potential to transform healthcare and lower costs. A new Massachusetts law requires insurers to pay for it—but with a potential loophole.
The mandate for broader access to health care in Massachusetts has brought millions of newly insured patients into the system. At the same time, the cost of health care in Massachusetts has continued to rise, and care access issues have emerged.
This past August, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed a new law that attempts to lower costs by shifting providers away from fee-for-service payment to alternative payment models (APMs) in which they incur more financial risk, and encouraging the development of accountable care organizations (ACOs).
One provision of this law requires insurers to pay providers for services delivered remotely via “telemedicine.” Full story »
Hypertension is harder to diagnose in children than you think. A new app, which can work with multiple EMR systems, helps doctors interpret a child's blood pressure readings based on age, height, sex and measurement technique, and get the long-range view. (Click to enlarge)
The Affordable Care Act, now the law of the land, mandates free blood pressure screening for children as part of their health care coverage. Yet often hypertension in children is missed, while other children get evaluated and sometimes treated for high blood pressure readings that turn out to have been transient (often induced by kids’ fear of doctors). That has cardiologists like Justin Zachariah, MD, MPH, concerned.
“We’re both overdiagnosing and underdiagnosing hypertension,” says Zachariah, of the Boston Children’s Hospital Preventive Cardiology Clinic. “There must be a problem in the way we’re measuring it.”
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is being seen more and more often in kids. Its prevalence 15 years ago was about 1 percent; now it’s nearly 5 percent, according to 2011 data from the American Heart Association, likely due to unhealthy diets and lack of exercise. Full story »
It may seem like just a smartphone application, but BEAPPER, a real-time alert and communication platform, has been making waves in the Emergency Department (ED) at Boston Children’s Hospital, which sees an average of 150 patients per day.
The app sends Twitter-like alerts when beds become available, when orders have been placed and when lab results are back, reducing waiting time for families. Physicians working together can view each others’ profiles, and can quickly check on their patients’ status without having to sit down at a computer and log in. Full story »
In just a few short days, London will play host to more than 10 million sports fans from around the world. Is the city ready to keep them all healthy? (Ben Sutehrland/Flickr)
In the blockbuster Contagion, Gwyneth Paltrow travels to Hong Kong on business and returns to suburban Minneapolis with flu-like symptoms. Within days she is dead. Paltrow is the index case in a pandemic that sweeps across the world. Contagion is a dramatic example of how a series of mundane, every day activities—such as shaking hands, drinking from a glass and blowing on dice for good luck—can rapidly and effectively spread disease.
Starting Friday, this year’s summer Olympics will kick off in London, the international hub of Europe. Can you imagine the potential for disease spread in a city that will host ten million athletes and tourists from all over the world? Full story »
Boston Children's David Casavant, MD, in a mock TeleConnect drill with South Shore Hospital.
Naomi Fried, PhD, is Boston Children’s Hospital’s chief innovation officer. Shawn Farrell, MBA, Telehealth Program Manager at Boston Children’s Hospital, contributed to this post.
Imagine yourself in an emergency department taking care of a very sick child. Should he be transferred to a higher-level care setting? Can he safely go by ambulance, rather than helicopter? As a doctor, you would like to consult virtually with colleagues and experts at remote locations.
Then imagine yourself in a large room in the heart of Silicon Valley, just a stone’s throw from Cupertino and Apple headquarters. In that room are 5,000 of the biggest thinkers in health care and technology, exploring the next major paradigm shift in care delivery: telehealth. You realize that health care is on the brink of a telehealth explosion.
In just a 24-hour period, patients in the hospital typically see a variety of doctors, nurses, x-ray technicians and other medical professionals, and undergo a plethora of diagnostic tests—without an understanding of how all of it comes together to make them well.
