Medivo has raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. It also got venture capital financing from Safeguard Scientifics and Mentor Tech Ventures. It’s using the investment not only to expand the number of chronic condition its platform covers, but it’s also developing more services for users.

In a phone interview with MedCity News, Medivo CEO and co-founder Sundeep Bhan said it wants to deepen its analytics services by hiring 20-30 people including analytics specialists who can help it look at additional health care gaps and conditions. It also wants to add technology staff like programmers and developers to provide enhanced products and services and increase the functionality of its mobile apps.It currently employs about 60.

In a nod to the consumerization of health care, it is building a direct channel on its platform for consumers to access lab tests that will go live in the second half of the year but could not elaborate on details.

A couple of years ago three divisions of the Department of Health and Human Services proposed a rule that would allow direct consumer access to their clinical lab results. In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid said a final rule was expected later this year. “Acquiring a mobile health platform [WellApps] gave us a running start to establishing additional connectivity to patients. We have launched additional services on WellApps since we acquired it,” said Bhan.

He added: “We are becoming more widely known as lab data company and as people learn more about what we do, we’re getting more companies contacting us and partnering with us.”

The company is in the process of expanding its network of laboratories and health monitoring modules, across obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, hepatitis B, HIV, colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, myelofibrosis, multiple myeloma, growth hormone deficiency, osteoporosis, hypothyroidism, and multiple sclerosis.

As of June, Bhan estimated that its users span 15,000 providers and more than 2 million patients. He said it wants to enhance its connectivity with 500 labs. Its growth in the past year has been helped by increased engagements with life sciences companies and a formalized partnership with the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists to deliver Medivo services to its AACE members.

Medivo has doubled its growth year-over-year, according to a company statement. Today marks the close of its second major financing round. In 2011 it raised $7 million.

[Photo credit: People Connect Across Gap from BigStock Photos]

It's one of those unhappy holiday surprises -- a visiting family member gets sick. That happened to Dr. Farzad Mostashari last Thanksgiving. 

"My dad comes downstairs and he has acute pain in his eye where he had cataract surgery. And I said, 'What's the matter, what's the story?'" recalled Mostashari, who lives in Bethesda, Md. "And he said, 'Well, I think they put the wrong lens in my eye, I'd gone back to the doctor and...'" His father didn't remember exactly what had happened at his last doctor's appointment and the office was closed anyway.

How could a local doctor in Maryland access his dad's medical record in Boston? Through Medicare Blue Button, a computer program that allows patients to download their medical history into a simple text file on their smartphones and personal computers. Then third-party applications that you download help organize this information.

Mostashari certainly knew how to handle his dad's problem. After all, he's the coordinator for health information technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and it's his passion and profession to promote electronic health records.

And, he had signed his dad up for Blue Button, which downloads three years of a patient's medical history, as well as the Humetrix iBlueButton, a smartphone app that translates and displays the information in a simple-to-understand way. The file includes names, phone numbers and addresses of physicians as well as diagnoses, lab tests, imaging studies, and medications.

So when Mostashari took his father to a local doctor, his dad was able to hand over his iPhone and say, "Here's my history."

Mostashari predicts that soon everyone will have that kind of information at their fingertips: "Within the next 12 months if people want to, they will be able to get the same data that your doctors would send to each other to have it come to you."

The Blue Button service is available from the federal government for veterans as well as Medicare beneficiaries.

Before a patient can download medical information to a computer or a smartphone, the files must first be stored electronically. And while electronic health record advocates note that there has been a sharp increase in the number of hospitals and doctors using EHRs, they acknowledge that a complete electronic system is a long way off. According to a 2012 CDC survey, while 72 percent of office-based physicians are using some sort of electronic system in their practice, only 40 percent of practices meet the definition of a “basic” system.

Power In The Hands Of The Patients?

The federal health law is designed to encourage patients to be more involved in managing their own health. Making medical records and test results accessible to smartphones is in line with those policy goals.

The floodgates have opened for patients to use technology to manage their own care particularly those that have chronic, and expensive, diseases, said Jennifer Lundblad, CEO of Stratis Health, a nonprofit organization based in Minnesota, which aims to improve health care by translating research into practice.

Lundblad said smartphones and health-related applications can become powerful tools to help people monitor and improve their health.

"Some parts of health care are so complex that we need complex solutions," she said. "But some parts of health care can be simplified and with the prevalence of smartphones, let's use the smartphone tool that that patient already has."

But there are also risks that Lundblad and others worry about, among them the possibility that a company storing the health data could go out of business or that some patients may lose smartphones containing their medical information.

Protecting Your Data

To address privacy concerns, in February the Federal Trade Commission released recommendations to companies that build and sell mobile apps, not just those related to health care. Those recommendations followed a major report the FTC released about best practices for consumer privacy in 2012.

But even its most recent report noted that "many questions remain" about the applications. Among them: What information should be included in application developer's privacy policies? What might a model short privacy notice look like? Can a single system of icons be developed to avoid consumer confusion?

Deven McGraw, director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, notes that when doctors and health plans store electronic medical information, that information is covered by federal privacy and security rules. But those rules don't extend to medical information on a smartphone.

"When you take possession of it and share it, stick it in an app, share it on the web, a social networking site, it's not going to be protected beyond what's in the privacy policy for the app or what's the privacy policy for the social networking site. And you need to read that," McGraw said. "Be aware before you share."

McGraw provides some tips for consumers who want to protect themselves:

• Determine if cellphone app makers claim rights to patients' data for marketing purposes.

• Look for very clear statements about how the data is used. Language such as "from time to time we will use your data...in order to improve the services we provide for you" may warrant further investigation.

• Look for who owns the data, if the company will disclose it. Do you own your data? Or do you merely have the right to use the service, but that is the extent of your rights?

• Look for commitments on security of the data. Is the data stored on your phone or on a server?

• What are your rights to retrieve data if they cancel service? Are you permitted to have a copy of the data? What is the app provider's right to use the data after service is canceled? Ideally, McGraw said, companies should return all your data and not have the right to subsequently use it.

• You should use unusual passwords that employ varied symbols and numbers.

• If possible, you should be able to remotely delete data from the device if it is stolen.

And Medicare Blue Button has these security recommendations:

• Download your data to a secure location. You may want to download your information to a CD or flash drive. Consider purchasing an encrypted flash drive for your information. You may also encrypt or require a password to access a CD.

• If you want to send your information via email, you should encrypt the message.

• Keep paper copies in a safe and secure place that you can control.

Another problem with smartphone medical records - not related to security - is that some physicians may not know whether the records stored there are complete, said Scott Edelstein, co-chair of Squire Sanders' Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry Group in Washington, D.C.

"There may be some data that the patient doesn't want to keep on their smartphone," said Edelstein, who specializes in mobile health applications. "Maybe there's very sensitive health information. Maybe there's information that they don't want other providers to know but it could be very important information for a provider to know, for example, in the event of an emergency."

Edelstein said errors or omissions could be disastrous.

But in the case of Dr. Farzad Mostashari's father, the records on the phone had pointed to the problem: "He had dry eye; that was the diagnosis."

Then, it was an easy treatment that salvaged the Thanksgiving weekend.

This story is part of a collaboration that includes MPR News, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

A group of angel investors who are also health care industry veterans have used their connections with integrated delivery networks to screen early stage startups before presenting the best ones to hospital groups. If the health systems like them they’ll test their effectiveness in pilot programs.

“Our strategy is focused on true cost reduction, better clinical outcomes and patient and provider safety,” said Joe Mayernik, in a phone interview with MedCity News. He’s one of four partners at Alliance Healthcare Partners. The partners raised $6 million last year and work with angel investors across the country. So far they have built a portfolio of seven companies. Among them are:

• Vestagen: Medical uniforms, scrubs and patient clothing with innovative technology that’s fluid repellant and is designed to prevent reduce and eliminate contaminants using medical textile technology.
• InRange Systems: remote medication management system used to manage a patient’s drug therapy in their home.
• Physician Referral Network: a telemedicine platform solution taking high-­resolution retinal photography that’s initially focused on proactive treatment of diabetic patients.
• Intelliblast Health: a targeted, instant communications system to simplify shift changes for a hospital’s or health system’s staff that sends messages and captures real-­time responses.
• Patient Conversation Media: Its cloud-­based platform creates new content, co-­branded, and syndicated text and video content for networks of healthcare providers.
• Flower Orthopedics (@FOthopedics): The Horsham, Pennsylvania-based company develops  implants for orthopedic surgery.
• PrivIt: Its software helps people involved with organized sports to collect, protect, and distribute personal health information.

Here’s how it approaches investments. Once it sees a company that ticks at least of the three criteria — true cost reduction, better clinical outcomes and patient and provider safety — it circulates them around its angel investor community to get their feedback. If they pass that test, Mayernik will take them to a health system or integrated delivery network.

Mayernik says it helps companies grow by adding their C-suite expertise to the company’s management teams. Some entrepreneurs it has worked with in their 30s and are interested in seeing their dream move on. Others have been drawn to the healthcare path and have come up with a better technology and want to see their company acquired by a larger corp.

“We kind of individualize our strategy to the founder of the business and see if it fits in our timeframe. We are not interested in a seven to 10-year horizon or two to three year program either because it’s either too much or not enough time to penetrate the market or build up value.” Its goal is to make a return in five-year timeframe.

Mayernik says hospitals believe there are a lot of good ideas out there but they don’t have the experience to take these ideas to market. “A lot of great ideas have gone nowhere because they can’t be implemented.

Each of the partners has a background in healthcare. Richard Ferreira and Tim Einwechter founded Intralign last fall to help hospitals improve efficiencies in total joint replacement procedures. They also built Ascent Healthcare Solutions, a medical device reprocessing and remanufacturing company that was sold to Stryker in 2009.  Goodrich was a vice president in marketing at Stryker Sustainability Solutions and its predecessor companies — SRS Inc., Alliance Medical Corp. and Ascent Healthcare Solutions. Mayernick was the founder and CEO of Healthcare Waste Solutions for 10 years until it was sold to Stericycle in for $245 million in 2010. He also led an organizational restructuring firm specializing in the healthcare and waste industry called Human Resource Services.

Search and mobile superpower Google is working on new technology that would effectively purge all images of child pornography and abuse from most of the web.

Google disclosed new efforts to fight online child exploitation in a blog post yesterday. The company committed $5 million to “eradicate child abuse imagery online” and started a $2 million Child Protection Technology Fund to encourage the development of better tools to destroy child porn.

While money being allocated to the cause is important, the technology Google is building to combat child porn is even more so. Google is working on a new database of flagged images of child porn and abuse that can be shared with other search engines and child protection organizations. The database will help create systems that automatically eliminate that sort of content.

“Recently, we’ve started working to incorporate encrypted ‘fingerprints’ of child sexual abuse images into a cross-industry database,” Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google Giving, wrote in the blog post. “This will enable companies, law enforcement, and charities to better collaborate on detecting and removing these images, and to take action against the criminals.”

If the database is used effectively, any flagged image in the database would not be searchable through participating search engines or web hosting providers. And maybe best of all, computers will automatically flag and remove these images without any human needing to see them.

Google hopes the new database is operational in less than a year, according to The Telegraph.

“This announcement is inspiring for those who are at the forefront of tackling child sexual abuse content,” Susie Hargreaves, chief executive officer of the Internet Watch Foundation, told The Telegraph. “We know that the best way to tackle what is some of the most horrific content online is by working with others from all over the world to combat this on a global platform.”

Google logo photo via John Koetsier/VentureBeat

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

Yesterday the search giant published a blog post detailing Project Loon. The project emerged out of Google[x], Google’s secret lab that works on “moonshot ideas,”, or projects that are a little farther afield.

Internet connectivity is spreading around the world at a rapid pace, and yet two out of every three people on earth still don’t have access to a fast and affordable Internet connection. Mike Cassidy who is leading the project said in the post that for most countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month’s income. The Google[x] team set out to discover innovative new ways of making Internet more accessible, and they came up with centuries old technology — the hot air balloon.

“We believe that it might actually be possible to build a ring of balloons, flying around the globe on the stratospheric winds, that provides Internet access to the earth below,” Cassidy said. “It’s very early days, but we’ve built a system that uses balloons, carried by the wind at altitudes twice as high as commercial planes, to beam Internet access to the ground at speeds similar to today’s 3G networks or faster. As a result, we hope balloons could become an option for connecting rural, remote, and underserved areas, and for helping with communications after natural disasters. The idea may sound a bit crazy—and that’s part of the reason we’re calling it Project Loon—but there’s solid science behind it.”

The vision is that the balloons shall sail freely around the world with “effortless elegance” delivering Internet access to the people who need it most. However balloons, like the wind, are not easily governable by man, nature, or Google. But Google will certainly try. The Loonies (as I have dubbed them) will use “complex algorithms and lots of computing power” to control their path through the sky and manage the fleet so each balloon ends up in the right spot at the right time. This sounds like an awesome idea for a video game.

Pilot testing is currently going on in Canterbury, New Zealand where 50 people are trying to connect to the Internet using the balloons. As the system gets refined Google will set up additional pilots in countries at the same latitude and search for partners.

Internet connectivity has shown time and time again to be a significant driver of economic growth, developmental progress, and local empowerment. With the Internet, people can access information, educate themselves, community and set up a business. Many of the African entrepreneurs I speak with name unreliable Internet as their greatest challenge. A report issued by Ericsson recently found that mobile penetration is around 71 percent in Africa while global penetration exceeds 90 percent, but smartphones are only as useful as their Internet connection.

Balloons could be the solution, and they would be a whimsical and delightful solution at that. But for now, we just have loons and their balloons.

[Photo courtesy of Eric Lim Photography]

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

I recently posted about my upcoming  Healthcare Unbound presentation on why healthcare disruption is happening too slowly and requested some thoughts from my readers. This morning I woke up to receive these terrific remarks from Jeroen Bouwens which I’m sharing with permission:

My theory as to what is holding back certain types of innovation in healthcare is the idea of distributing liability. As long as the ultimate responsibility, and therefore liability, lies with the Medical practitioner, they are extremely reluctant to accept automated systems making medical decisions.

At the same time, medical device manufacturers are extremely reluctant to accept liability, because a single system error replicated over many devices can easily result in a company-destroying avalanche of lawsuits.

The result is medical devices that, for all the fancy user interfaces, soothing colors and sexy design enclosures, are still nothing more than dumb terminals that do whatever the doctor tells them to do

Ok, maybe that is not entirely fair to modern devices, which are, in some ways, much more advanced than in the past, but it also not that far from the truth.

I mentioned to Jeroen that I agree with his assessment. I do think that a lack of clarity of what happens with liability within an ecosystem of trusted partners and how that liability is appropriately and fairly distributed is probably a great impediment to innovation in healthcare.

My specific experience in the medical device development community leads me to believe that the lack of connectivity between devices can, indeed, partly be blamed on no single vendor wanting to take on additional liability for another vendor’s errors or data.

What do you think about liability distribution? Are there are other things you think are specifically holding back innovation in healthcare? Drop me a comment here or send me a private email if you’d like to discuss it further.

Apple is showing off its marketing chops, and tugging at our heartstrings, in a new video posted to its YouTube channel.

Called “Making a difference. One app at a time,” the 10-minute video depicts some of the ways the company’s devices and various iOS apps are solving problems across the world, starting with rural access to healthcare.

The video opens with a community health nurse visiting a new mother in rural Kenya. He uses a Skyscape app to show the mother how to breastfeed properly and to look up information that he says helps diagnose and prevent complications.

On the other side of the world, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a Paralympic rower uses Orthocare Innovations’ app, Galileo, to configure settings for her prosthetic legs. The app, she says, allows her to control the angle of her feet for rowing and wearing heels without having to visit her prosthetist.

Then there’s Enrique, a non-verbal 10-year-old who uses AssistiveWare’s Proloquo2Go to communicate with his mother.

It’s a smart use of emotional appeal for Apple, but it’s just scratching the surface in terms of mobile health apps. For a look at more examples that are changing healthcare, check out MedCity News’ Sweet 16 of mobile apps.

But what is really going on in their practices? In two studies generated from a survey by AmericanEHRPartners of 1,400 with responses from about 696 physicians and 150 allied health professionals has uncovered some interesting information. AmericanEHRPartners was formed in 2010 by formed by Cientis Technologies and the American College of Physicians to help physicians compare and implement electronic health records.

In a clinical work setting, doctors who have electronic health records said they use their smartphones in clinical settings every day to:

1. Send and receive emails (65 percent);
2. Use apps (51 percent);
3. Instant messaging (50 percent);
4. Researching information about medications (35 percent);
5. Communicating with other physicians (32 percent).

But switch “smartphones” to “tablets” and you get this response:

1. Send and receive e-mails (52.4 percent);
2. Accessing electronic health records (50.6 percent);
3. Accessing diagnostic information (41.7 percent);
4. Research information about medication (33.3 percent);
5. Staying up to date with medical journals and papers (29.8 percent).

The findings in part confirm what we already knew, particularly abut physicians’ interest in sending and receiving emails. And it’s maybe not so surprising that physicians would prefer to access EHRs on a wider screen than what a smartphone can offer. But those companies focused on messaging between physicians and other healthcare professionals get some more validation with the finding that half of physicians use their smartphne every day for instant messaging.

Among the other findings were

• A little more than 60 percent access electronic medical records through their device’s browser rather than thru the vendor’s app.
•  One-third of EHR users and one-quarter of non-EHR users use a tablet device in their medical practice.

• More than 70 percent of tablet users who access EHR through them have a password.
• About 32 percent have a device tracker app installed on their tablet and the ability to remotely wipe all data on their tablet if lost or stolen (31 percent).
• EHR users spend 25 hours on their tablet each week, with a greater amount of time spent
  on business (59%) than for personal reasons (41 percent).

Every survey has its Achilles heel and this one is do different. In a question that could have been assembled by the Colbert report writers or just the tablet manufacturing lobby in general, survey respondents were asked if they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with using their tablet in their medical practice. Maybe it’s just a pet peeve and I don’t appreciate the value of those questions but it misses a good opportunity to get some specifics.

“Big data” company GoodData has raised $22 million from Latin America’s largest enterprise software company.

TOTVS Ventures is the investment arm of TOTVS S.A., which provides enterprise resource planning (ERP), business analytics, customer relationship management (CRM), human capital management, and collaboration software across multiple sectors. Its venture arm began making investments in January, looking for companies where there are “potential synergies.”

GoodData is one of Silicon Valleys “enterprise cool kids.” It is a business-intelligence service provider, meaning businesses use its cloud-based technology to make data-driven decisions. The platform includes operational dashboards, metrics and performance reports, data storage, analytics, and collaboration tools. Founder Roman Stanek said GoodData stands out from the crowd because it emphasizes heavily on user experience to make the tick technical elements of big data comprehensible to people outside of IT.

With this agreement, TOTVS will have exclusive access to GoodData’s platform in Latin America.

Big data is trendy right now, and the market is competitive, but GoodData stands out for its growth and traction. It recently boasted that its first-quarter revenues in 2013 were three times bigger than the same period a year before, and it works with 20,000 customers.

GoodData has focused its operations on the U.S., and this partnership will bring its services to the emerging Latin American market. This fourth round of funding brings GoodData’s total capital raised to $75.5 million. Previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Generaly Catalyst Partners, Next World Capital, and Tenaya Capital also participated in this round.

GoodData was founded in 2007 and is based in San Francisco.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

Given our addiction to smartphones and tablets, mobile consumers are already primed for the coming onslaught of wearable computing devices. Indeed, we’re so tied to our mobile gadgets today that we might as well call them wearable, according to the latest research from the mobile advertising company Flurry.

Based on random sample data from more than 15,000 iOS users in the U.S., the firm has found that we’re pretty much always connected to our mobile devices — even while we sleep (see the chart below). It’s a huge difference from the way we view television, which typically sees low usage throughout the day except for a big prime-time viewership spike.

“I’m amazed at the nighttime usage for mobile — do people not sleep?” Flurry chief executive Simon Khalaf told VentureBeat. “It kind of tells you we’re already in the wearable space; it’s [mobile] glued to consumer’s bodies.”

Khalaf presented Flurry’s latest insights at its SourceDigital13 conference in New York City today, an event aimed at bringing together some of NYC’s biggest minds in advertising to help solve the mobile ad dilemma.

“It’s not about promoting Flurry … in fact, I had to beg to get a speaking spot,” Khalaf said. “It’s more about getting people who matter together and trying to figure this out as a group. This is more of a brainstorming session.”

Among other interesting finds, Flurry found that the Millennial set (ages 25 to 34) used health- and fitness-related apps more than any other group. And when it came to games, typically the territory for the young, Flurry found that Millennials actually used them less than other age groups. (The big gamers? Middle-aged folks from the Gen X set.)

Digging deeper into its Millennial data, Flurry found that women use fitness apps 200 percent more than men. The firm also found that certain gender stereotypes held true. The second-largest app category for women was lifestyle and shopping while men focused more on media and entertainment apps.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

The SmartWatch SDK has for a while allowed devs to create apps for the 2012-launched device, but today’s Open SmartWatch update will let devs build and flash alternative firmware to the SmartWatch.

“If you create alternative firmware for SmartWatch, you can take control of SmartWatch as a hardware peripheral in new ways and create new experimental use cases and innovations,” the company writes in the documentation.

The hardware in question includes a 128 x 128-pixel screen with touch capabilities, an ARM Cortex-M3 CPU, an accelerator, a vibrator, and Bluetooth connectivity capability. With its current firmware, the Android-powered gadget has access to Google Play and its own slate of apps.

While these devices never really took the gadget world by storm (understatement — we called them “ugly and late to the party”), it will be fun to see SmartWatch hacks — if developers decide to take Sony up on the offer, that is.

All this comes on the heels of a slew of smart watch rumors swirling around such companies as Samsung, Apple, and Google.

Research Triangle Park might be North Carolina’s hotbed for biotechnology, but the neighboring Piedmont Triad region has quite a bit going on in the way of healthcare innovation, too.

An economic development group within the 12-county region, which is home to companies like Piedmont Pharmaceuticals, Targacept and regenerative medicine company Tengion Inc., has just launched a new business accelerator.

Triad StartUp Lab is a five-week program that will match startups with mentors and provide them with co-working space at Elon University School of Law’s Center for Professional Development. Run by the Piedmont Triad Partnership and supported by the Lincoln Financial Foundation, it’s an extension of the PTP Next Business Competition program, which awards seed funding grants to area entrepreneurs.

The first class of eight startups includes five mobile or digital technology companies and three in the biotech space, including Blue Atom Technologies.

Blue Atom is using predictive modeling technologies licensed from Targacept to develop a search, modeling and forecasting engine for improving drug discovery. Chairman Mauri Hodges said in a statement that the company would focus its time in the accelerator on formalizing its marketing and sales strategy, plan and systems for its two software products.

 [Photo credit: BigStock Photos]

Strumpf is an emergency physician and the CEO of Emergency Medicine Scribe Systems, a California company that hires, trains and manages medical scribes deployed across the country. He implemented a scribe system in the 30-physician medical group he’s part of more than a decade ago, and decided a few years ago to turn it into a business for outside clients.

Despite somewhat of a slow start, California-based EMSS now sees 30 percent to 40 percent growth annually, Strumpf said. It has just closed a $2.5 million Series A investment round and is hoping to up the growth rate even higher to 50 percent in the coming years.

As the majority of providers continue to push forward with EMR implementation, scribes can take some of the administrative workload off of physicians’ shoulders, allowing them to spend more quality time with patients. And as patient satisfaction is becoming an increasingly important metric for physicians, having a scribe to chart patient encounters into the EMR, generate referral letters and help with e-prescribing seems to be quite a value proposition.

“It’s kind of a crazy concept to have a highly compensated physician wasting time doing very low-compensation data entry work,” Strumpf said. “It typically takes two to three minutes to dictate a record, while these (EHR) systems take 12 to 15 minutes per patient to input all of the required data.”

EMSS is one of several companies providing scribe services, alongside ScribeAmerica,  PhysAssist Scribes and Elite Medical Scribes, but Strumpf said it’s a hard business to break into. The idea of a scribe might be great, but a company’s real value lies in the kinds of scribes it can recruit and how it can train them, and depends on how much providers are willing to pay for them. (Check out a great read on an emergency physician’s experience with a scribe here.)

Strumpf said scribes are typically pre-medical or pre-nursing students who use the position as a stepping stone for a career in healthcare. EMSS screen them for computer literacy, spelling and other skills, and they go through 80 to 100 hours of training in HIPAA privacy, medical terminology, coding procedures and EHR technology.

Strumpf said the company currently has 1,200 scribes under management in 14 states.

The movement toward price transparency that’s sweeping various parts of the healthcare system has now reached medical device sales via a new e-commerce startup that connects medical device companies with health systems looking to purchase stable implant technologies.

For the founders of MedPassage, it was a report issued by the Government Accountability Office in 2012 that really moved them to action. The report suggested that confidentiality clauses and a lack of price transparency in sales of implantable medical devices was driving up costs for providers.

Co-founders Mike Biselli and Gavin Fabian had met around the time of the financial collapse of 2008 while working together at medical device company NuVasive. “We saw the domino effect happening a year and a half later, where the dynamics were changing for everyone,” Biselli said. “From a physician’s perspective, reimbursement rates were falling off the table, operating costs went up and the cost of devices was through the roof.”

The pair wanted to create a solution that encouraged price transparency while also eliminating some of what they considered excess costs in the process – namely, eliminating costs associated with sales support for well-established medical devices used in routine procedures.

When they asked professional colleagues who worked in medical centers if they would forgo sales support in certain procedures in exchange for lower prices, the response was a resounding yes. In fact, some companies are now doing this on their own: Earlier this year, Wright Medical launched Wright Direct, a program that took sales reps out of the equation for a certain portion of its business.

So in 2012, Bisellie and Fabian created MedPassage. On the online platform, medical centers sign up for free and can explore member medical device companies’ products and prices by specialty.

On the other side of the platform, medical device companies list their products at discounted prices (which they set) that don’t include support services. Biselli, who’s now chief marketing officer, said he’d be the first one to tell you that this is not a place for cutting edge technologies. It’s for tried and true devices, like shoulder anchors, ACL screws and cervical cages, where physicians have performed the procedure many times and the chance of needing OR support is slim.

Some device companies offer sales support as a line item, Biselli added, or as an add-on for the first few cases of device use.

The device companies can also control which provider markets can view certain products. “If a device company has a sales rep in a certain market and doesn’t want to affect his business, they can turn off coverage there and turn on coverage where they don’t have any,” Biselli said. They also can’t see what other companies are using the platform or what they are charging for the similar products.

Devices are ordered, managed and tracked through a suite of tools within MedPassage’s platform, but the actual payment is issued directly between the medical center and device companies. When a purchase is made, MedPassage takes a commission from the device companies. Those companies can also pay small transaction fees if they want to bring existing customers onto the platform, to streamline their sales process and account management, said Product Manager Jake Sager.

It’s a similar idea employed by Pharmly, a startup MedCity News profiled last week that connects providers and pharmaceutical wholesalers, except that Pharmly facilitates bidding, rather than straight price transparency. And both companies are part of a bigger movement to use e-commerce to healthcare delivery.

As of now, the company has customers signed up on both sides of the platform. Biselli declined to name any of the medical device makers on board but said they range from small to large-size companies. It’s also continuing to modify the platform based on feedback from those initial customers. Meanwhile, the company is raising a bridge round and looking toward a proper Series A in early 2014.

But anyone who wants to make changes from a hospital system to a scrappy startup would do well to bend the ear of a curmudgeon, be they a nurse, provider or health care professional affected by a proposed change or innovation they want to make. They may be surprised by the results.

Why? Because curmudgeons are more likely to express their opinion about whether a new system or initiative will or won’t work and why. If a new interface would interfere with workflows, for example, they will often be the first to speak up. They are frequently the toughest critics. You may not get showered with praise from them but if you engage them early on and make it clear their opinions are valued you may end up making your app, EHR, etc. much better than it might otherwise be.

Curmudgeons also figured into the broader issue of engaging providers that was the subject of a recent regional HIMSS event at University of Pennsylvania Health System.

Dr. John McGreevey III , assistant professor of Clinical Medicine and associate CMIO at Penn Medicine praised the power of curmudgeons as part of his talk, Provider Engagement in HIT: Benefits, Barriers, and Opportunities.

“Critics and curmudgeons are essential to the process of implementing a new project, he said. “They identify problems early, they challenge the process.” Also, they offset the cheerleaders, so they can create a nice balance for feedback on projects.

Ultimately, it is the critics that help make a project or new technology successful. So instead of wishing they would go away, we should be asking ourselves how we can get them more involved and keep them engaged.

[Overweight businessman standing with arms folded from BigStock photo]

Alpharetta-based Care Logistics, a provider of hospital management software and logistics services, is suing two Ohio health care networks, claiming they have cost the company millions of dollars after backing out of several business agreements.

In a case filed this week in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, Care Logistics seeks at least $12 million in damages from the networks, Catholic Health Partners of Cincinnati and Mercy Health Systems of Toledo, plus additional compensation.

Care Logistics said in the lawsuit that the lost business has diminished the value of its business by "in excess of $50 million."

The Ohio companies said they had not seen the suit and had no immediate comment. A federal judge denied Care Logistics' motion to have its lawsuit sealed.

According to the lawsuit, Care Logistics entered into a 2008 agreement that allowed MHS to license its patient logistics software, which allows hospitals to coordinate patient care, such as bed availability, housekeeping workflow and patient transport. Eight MHS and CHP hospitals were licensed to use the software, the lawsuit says.

To accommodate the additional business, Care Logistics said it increased its payroll from 19 in early 2008 to 42 full-time associates by late 2008.

Care Logistics said it then signed a marketing agreement in 2011 with the two Ohio companies, using them as client references in exchange for a share of royalties from additional software licenses.

The Alpharetta company said it had committed more than $37 million in software research and development toward its business with the Ohio companies before the two moved to end their agreement with Care Logistics this past January.

Care Logistics also accuses the Ohio companies of interfering with current and prospective customers and making damaging comments about the Alpharetta company. ___

As life science funding slows to meagre trickle, VentureHealth is trying to speed it back up.

VentureHealth has launched its online equity crowdfunding platform for life sciences companies. It provides accredited investors with opportunities to invest in innovative medical technology that ultimately save lives and improve patient care.

“Ultimately we hope that this model could help change the landscape for biomedical financing,” said cofounder Andrew Farquharson. “Since our focus is on breakthroughs in healthcare, success translates to dramatic improvements in clinical outcomes.”

The company uses a “carried-interest” model, which means that it only sees returns if its portfolio companies  rather than a broker/dealer commission-based model. Farquharson said this approach is in line with traditional venture capital funds, and means VentureHealth has a strong incentive to only select the most promising opportunities.

The goal is to increase the supply of capital to exciting biomedical companies and make it easier for individual investors to put money into this sector, which is generally reserved for venture capitalists. Venture capitalists, however, are turning their interests elsewhere which presents an issue for startups, companies, scientists, and entrepreneurs.

Fenwick & West recently released a study on the state of the life sciences funding and found that it has fallen by more than $5 billion over the past five years.

“The life science venture financing environment remains challenging, with an increasingly short supply of capital, despite factors such as aging world populations and rising living standards in developing countries that will help support long-run demand for life science innovation,” said partner Matt Rossiter. “While funding from corporate investors, wealthy individuals and disease foundations is helping to fill some of the gap, entrepreneurs that plan to seek venture capital financing would do well to carefully consider factors, such as capital efficiency and a faster path to exit, that can increase the odds of raising scarce funding.”

VentureHealth is stepping in to address these problems. Farquharson and cofounder Mir Imran have extensive experience in medical investing. Farquharson spent two decades building, restructuign, and acquiring life sciences companies and Imran has founded more than 20 life sciences companies and holds more than 200 patents. They previously founded InCube Ventures, a life science venture capital firm focused on solving unmet clinical needs for large patient populations. As crowdfunding and online investment platforms grew in popularity and gained legitimacy, they saw an opportunity to bring investment opportunities to interested individuals.

Channel Medsystems, a startup developing “next generation cyroablation technologies” raised $875,000 on VentureHealth as part of its $9.7 million Series B round.

Healthfundr is another recently launched equity-based crowdfunding platform for health startups, although it focuses on opportunities in health IT, digital health, and diagnostic and medical devices. In contrast to the life sciences sector, digital health is taking off and funding is actually on the rise. There is a lot of buzz surrounding digital health right now as changes in national policy effect care providers and mobile technology opens up a whole new world of possibilities. These areas are new and exciting, but life sciences and biomedical tech are crucial parts of the healthcare ecosystem, and they aren’t (and can’t) go anywhere. If funding slows, chances are medical innovation will to, and that’s a pretty scary thought.

VentureHealth is based in San Jose, California.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

Next Wave Health’s mantra is that it wants to grow the next big idea in healthcare, even if it only exists on a whiteboard.

The newly formed Huntsville, Texas, venture launched Tuesday to provide capital and business wisdom to companies that need assistance turning a big idea into a profitable product or service.

“There’s a lot of change going on in the healthcare industry, and a lot of it is fueled by regulatory and legislative change,” said Ivo Nelson, the brains behind the venture. “I’m focused on companies that are getting started to help the industry through that.”

If that sounds vague, it’s because Nelson doesn’t want to limit anyone’s creativity. He’s a man of big ideas himself: He helped start the healthcare division of Perot Systems (acquired by Dell in 2009) in the late 1980s and later founded Healthlink, a healthcare consulting firm that was acquired by IBM in 2005. Consequently, he served as the leader of IBM’s Global Healthcare Provider business before co-founding another consulting business, Encore Health Resources, in 2009.

He told MedCity News he’ll invest in startups anywhere in the world, in any kind of health technology as long as the idea is big and he feels the team has the ability to turn it into something.

Next Wave serves as a strategic adviser or investor to a few companies already, including Ohio-based Health Care DataWorks and cloud-based search and booking solution provider HealthPost.

“I would say most of the investments are under $5 million,” Nelson said. “If partners are needed, then we have access to those relationships as well.”

By “we,” Nelson is referring to three other team members who are also resources for startups: Mike Davis, who’s got an impressive resume as a health IT professional, marketing guru Wendy Horn and Emily Evans, who handles administrative, financial and operational needs.

He’s not necessarily calling it an incubator — although it could be, if that’s what the company needs. “Every company is at a different stage,” Nelson said. “In some cases, they just need a strategy and some capital. But if they need to be propped up in some way, we’ve got the resources to be able to do that.”

Companies can apply for funding and assistance here.

[Photo credit: Flickr user jblyberg]

A Simi Valley pharmaceutical printing company is challenging language in a congressional bill that would eliminate paper drug inserts for health care professionals and cut into its business.

Tacked onto a bipartisan House bill focused on protecting America's pharmaceutical distribution chain from counterfeits is a section that would limit the availability of printed prescription drug information for health care professionals.

That section is a problem for Simi Valley-based Pharmaceutic Litho & Label Co., which prints pharmaceutical inserts and drug labels and has about 110 long-term employees trained in the highly specialized printing of prescribing literature. Pharmaceutic Litho, which moved from Chatsworth to Simi Valley in 2010, is a 50-year-old private business that counts Thousand Oaks-based biotechnology company Amgen as a customer.

Beyond the economic toll, Pharmaceutic Litho President Jason Laurence worries that separating drug labeling information from the product would put patients at risk because health care professionals do not always have access to the Internet. He said printed literature decreases the risk of prescribing errors, poor patient compliance and adverse events during power outages and natural disasters, in remote regions and when armed forces medical personnel are deployed.

The inserts targeted by the bill are those distributed to health care professionals, not those going to patients, but Laurence said the bill sets up a "slippery slope."

"We just believe as an organization that they'll get the physicians to go paperless and then it will be that much easier to go to patients," he said.

Big pharmaceutical companies and generic drugmakers are pushing to digitize the inserts to save money, say opponents of the move.

Robert Brooks, executive director of the Pharmaceutical Printed Literature Association, said the leaflets are inexpensive and would only save pharmaceutical manufacturers pennies. His organization is making extensive efforts to raise awareness, however, in what he calls a David-and-Goliath battle.

"We're a very small organization compared to (big) pharma," he said.

Brooks has toured Pharmaceutic Litho's Simi Valley facility and estimates 50 to 80 such printing businesses in the country would be wiped out if the bill were enacted.

"It would be, 'Poof, you're gone,' " he said.

The ripple effect would be felt from ink companies to transportation companies and equipment manufacturers all the way down to the people who clean uniforms, Laurence said.

Opponents say it is premature to require paperless prescribing literature because Congress is funding a Government Accountability Office study into the issue that is due out this summer.

Legislators who have raised concerns include Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Beverly Hills. During a June 3 House session, he said the language allowing electronic inserts in lieu of paper wasn't brought to a House committee's attention when it was reviewing the bill and he urged review.

At the same session, Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., argued in support of the bill and said the pharmaceutical industry and Food and Drug Administration have for years been in talks about eliminating paper.

"This is not an efficient way to distribute critical information about prescription drugs," he said. "Eliminating this wad of paper would save the consumers millions of dollars in printing and shipping costs."

Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, said eliminating paper would be problematic for rural states like his, where Internet access can often be intermittent at best. He also said it would jeopardize more than 1,000 jobs in Maine and he urged a no vote on the bill.

The House of Representatives passed the bill June 3. A similar bill pending in the Senate does not contain the requirement that drug inserts be paperless. If that bill passes, Brooks said, the measures will move into conference committee to discuss merging the two before voting to make the merged bill law.

The Generic Pharmaceutical Association issued a statement commending the bill's passage and its author, Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, saying it supports electronic prescribing literature because it "increases patient safety by modernizing the information exchange between pharmacies and manufacturers."

Latta's office did not return messages seeking comment.

In Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Laurence met with Latta.

"It was a good meeting," Laurence said afterward. "I think there were probably things he hadn't considered before, but it was kind of an informative thing. We made our case."

On Monday night, the Simi Valley City Council unanimously approved a resolution opposing efforts by Congress to eliminate the availability of professionally printed drug information for health care professionals. ___

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A one-hour educational session followed by personalized feedback helped pediatricians more closely align their antibiotic prescribing habits with national guidelines, in a new study.

Researchers found fewer doctors in the program prescribed a drug that could increase the risk of antibiotic resistance for children with pneumonia or a sinus infection, compared to those who received no extra guidance.

"We tried to keep it relatively simple," said Dr. Jeffery Gerber, who led the new study at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Our hope is that any practice with an electronic health record would be able to adopt this strategy."

The potential for antibiotic resistance - when bacteria no longer respond to certain drugs - exists any time an antibiotic is used. Researchers have focused on limiting overuse or misuse of those drugs, in hopes they will continue to work when needed.

One strategy for preventing resistance is to prescribe the antibiotic most specifically targeted to a particular infection, rather than a "broad-spectrum" antibiotic that can kill many types of bacteria.

For their new study, Gerber and his colleagues tracked how often pediatricians prescribed a broad-spectrum drug versus "narrow-spectrum" options such as penicillin and amoxicillin, which are recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics for conditions like pneumonia and sinus infections.

Their data came from 162 doctors at 18 pediatric primary care practices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, nine of which received the year-long education and electronic feedback intervention.

In the 20 months before the initial education session, doctors prescribed broad-spectrum antibiotics to 27 percent of kids with common respiratory infections. During the program, that fell to 14 percent.

In comparison, the decline in antibiotic misuse was much smaller at practices where doctors didn't receive education or feedback: from 28 percent to 23 percent, Gerber's team reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers did not see a reduction in how often antibiotics were inappropriately prescribed for viral conditions - but those numbers were low to begin with, they said.

Dr. Adam Hersh, who studies pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, said doctors in general are getting better at not prescribing antibiotics when they won't help, such as for the common cold. But concerns about increasing resistance continue.

"Despite the success in the decline in overall antibiotic use that we've seen over the last decade, at the same time there's still an ongoing problem and even increasing problem of overuse of unnecessarily broad-spectrum antibiotics," he told Reuters Health.

Narrow-spectrum drugs "will limit the collateral damage that goes along with antibiotic prescribing," said Hersh, who didn't participate in the new study. And they're often cheaper than broad-spectrum versions.

He said the program used in the new study has the advantage of being relatively cheap and non-intrusive, so it's likely to work for other types of practices.

Still, it's unclear from these findings whether the rate of broad-spectrum prescribing would stay down after doctors stopped getting regular antibiotic-related feedback, Gerber and his colleagues noted.

Hersh said parents can do their part by asking if an antibiotic is really necessary when the doctor prescribes one, as well as if it's the most appropriate version.

"The number one thing is to make sure the kid gets the best medication that cures their infection," Gerber told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/MvXYT6 Journal of the American Medical Association, online June 11, 2013.

Big data is transforming the health IT sector, but still out of reach for regular people. eHealthMe is a startup trying to make healthcare big data accessible to the mainstream population.

Today, it announced a new Q&A service where patients can anonymously post health questions and get answers from people with comparable medical histories. According to founder Johnson Chen, this type of information is otherwise unavailable.

“Healthcare big data holds the answers to many questions, but individuals and patients do not have the means to use it,” he said in an email. “eHealthMe removes these barriers so ordinary people can get health information that is personalized to their needs and allows them to securely connect with people of the same age and gender who are taking the same medication.”

While other medical sites like WebMD, HealthTap, Quora, and Ask.com have information and health forums, eHealthMe uses data to connect people who have similar backgrounds to make the exchanges more relevant and personal. The system automatically forwards questions to people who match to the questioner and only invited people can answer questions. Chen said hundreds of questions and answers were posted during early testing of his feature.

Earlier this year, eHealthMe released a new subscription-based drug monitoring service for patients who suffer from chronic conditions and taking multiple medications. New users enter their age, gender, drug regimen, and existing conditions. eHealthMe’s database contains information about 16,000 conditions 45,000 drugs, vitamins, and supplements and over 40 million drug outcomes. The engine analyzes all that information and sends out notifications on serious drug reactions.

Chen said that 133 million Americans live with a chronic condition and  this service provides them with unprecedented awareness of potential complications. The site also has a drug comparison engine that lets users compare common side effects for similar drugs, drawing distinctions between short and long-term effects and including studies on overall effectiveness, effectiveness by condition, and alternative drugs. Each search produces an original study using continuously updated data.

One of the company’s goals is to protect against drugs like Vioxx, an arthritis medication that was linked to thousands of deaths and pulled from the market in 2004 despite being an FDA approved drug. eHealthMe uses available data to study treatments on a large scale and make this information available to individuals.

Chen founded eHealthMe in 2008 after working as a senior healthcare consultant at Deloitte. He initially set out to make it easy for ordinary people to study large amounts of FDA data. Since then eHealthMe has worked with the Mayo Clinic, Northwestern University, IBM, Yahoo!, and the London Health Science Center. Its original studies have been referenced in medical publications including the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, European Association of Neurooncology, and the Annals of Pharmacotherapy.

The company is self-funded and based in Mountain View, California.

FundersClub is bringing direct access to Y Combinator startups out from behind closed doors.

The online venture capital firm has raised a $1.1 million fund as part of its new “Accelerate Series” that will support startups from Y Combinator’s Winter 2013 batch.

FundersClub is an investing platform that presents accredited investors with a curated selection of investment opportunities. Featured startups have a profile on the site with a fundraising goal. Members of the community — individuals with an annual salary of over $200,000 or net worth of over $1 million — can make investments in the companies that appeal to them. FundersClub then bundles the money together into one fund and gives it to the startup as one entity on the cap table, under the FundersClub name.

Now, with one “check,” members can invest in 11 promising companies.

Y Combinator is generally considered to be the most elite accelerator program in Silicon Valley. Its demo day is an invite-only event that gives selected investors direct access to startups in its portfolio. FundersClub itself participated in Y Combinator and its first round of featured startups were all fellow YC companies. With the Accelerate Series, FundersClub is taking more of a Start Fund style approach.

StartFund was formed by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and SV Angel legend Ron Conway in 2011 to put $150,000 into all Y Combinator companies. Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst were also contributors and this money was one of the perks of the program. However as the program grew and valuations shot up, the money was difficult to manage and YC decided to do a little reshuffling. It created its own fund called YC VC where startups receive $80,000, and later announced that it would cut down class size from 84 in Summer 2012 to less than 50 in Winter 2013.

While it won’t invest in every startup in the class, the Accelerate Series funds will give any investor the chance to invest in a good portion of the YC portfolio, rather than just billionaires and hallowed VCs. It is the latest step in FundersClub’s goal to democratize venture capital.

“We are dedicated to evening the VC playing field which is traditionally insider’s only for certain investors and certain companies,” said cofounder and CEO Alex Mittal in an interview with VentureBeat. “Funders club is opening access to quality startups to any accredited investor, even those without connections. It is online, more inclusive, and more democratic.”

FundersClub carries out the due diligence process for investors and acts as an intermediary between angel investors and the companies. The SEC recognized it as the first ever online VC in March and the National Venture Capital Association admitted FundersClub into its ranks, which was validation that its approach does not violate SEC regulations. Regardless of what happens with the JOBS Act, FundersClub’s activities are above-board. To date, it has invested more than $5 million in 25 companies and has more than 6,000 accredited investor members.

The YC startups to get FundersClub investment are  CircuitLab, Goldbely, Medisas, Meldium, Padlet, Prizeo,Screenhero, Strikingly, Teespring and Thalmic Labs.

FundersClub closed a $6 million seed round last year from an impressive roster of investors. It is based in San Francisco California.

Photo Credit: FundersClub 

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

General Electric is on a mission to improve efficiency in hospitals, and is setting aside $2 billion for its health care practice.

GE says it will fund the development of software and applications over the next five years that can expedite or improve clinical processes in the U.S., and in emerging nations.

Hospitals and GE have one thing in common: they are both under pressure to adapt to the digital age.

GE’s health care arm is currently its largest software developer. Hundreds of millions of dollars is at stake as hospitals upgrade their systems and adopt new technologies in order to meet federal guidelines. According to a federal mandate, hospitals, clinics, and other health providers will receive “Meaningful Use” checks in the mail for ditching existing paper-based systems. If they don’t comply by 2015, providers stand to be penalized.

The goal for the Affordable Care Act aka “Obamacare” is to drastically reduce national health care costs. Although it is proving expensive for providers to make upgrades, new computer-based systems are expected to boost efficiency in the long-run.

GE isn’t the only firm that expects to cash in as doctors go digital. Cloud companies like Box recently delved into health care, and are building that is sufficiently secure and compliant. Likewise, venture capital firms are making bets in digital health, and investment is steadily increasingly.

GE is investing in software to help doctors securely collaborate and share information, similarly to Box. But it’s goals are more far-reaching. According to a news release, the primary areas of focus include patient care (scheduling doctor’s visits, clinical decision support), data and analytics, and using software to minimize costs by maximizing reimbursement rates.

This new investment is aligned with the company’s broader strategy to keep industrial products relevant. GE is integrating physical machinery, like hospital dropboxes, with connected sensors and software. The device spits out relevant data, which will drive a customer’s business strategy.

GE has already committed $1 billion to its “Industrial Internet” strategy, and made strategic investments in business software companies like Pivotal.

In a clinical setting, GE says it is already helping to streamline operations. When patients are discharged, their bracelets are placed in a GE box, which alerts staff to clean their rooms. This reduces the amount of time that beds stay empty.

“At the heart of it is that machines can be intelligent, connected, and that we can use software to analyze the information coming out of them,” said GE vice president Bill Ruh. “To support this next frontier requires an architectural shift in how our services are built and delivered.”

If you’re visiting this site, you’re probably pretty aware of some of the technological advances that healthcare experts think will change the industry (here’s looking at you, 3-D printing and sensors).

But there are a few technologies in particular that tech and business experts think everyone should know about, from general consumers to policymakers, to better understand how technology will shape society and the economy over the next decade. MIT Technology Review and McKinsey have (separately) put their picks forward this spring in the form of “most disruptive technologies” lists.

Both of these lists are broad and include technologies applied to other fields such as manufacturing, energy, automotive, etc., but here we’re focusing on health. MIT Technology Review’s annual list of 10 breakthrough technologies this year includes prenatal DNA sequencing and memory implants.

As a point of reference, Technology Review’s list 10 years ago included injectable tissue engineering (still a work in progress), molecular imaging (yep) and glycomics (still considered an emerging field).

Citing Illumina’s acquisition of Verinata earlier this year, Technology Review called prenatal genetic screening “the next frontier of the genome revolution.” The companies that launched tests for genetic disorders like Down syndrome and Tay-Sachs disease have now figured out how to get a fetus’s entire genome from a mother’s blood sample, which they could use to spot other chromosomal abnormalities that could indicate disease. Although it’s still too costly to be mainstream, the idea of fetal genome screening has already given way to ethical debates.

The list also includes the work of a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist at University of Southern California-Los Angeles named Theodore Berger, who has spent more than two decades creating silicon chips that mimic the signal processing of neurons in the hippocampus that are damaged in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, stroke or other brain injuries that impede long-term memory. These chips have never been tested in humans, but studies in rats and primates have suggested their potential in correcting long-term memory.

In an editorial, deputy editor Brian Bergstein referred to the similar report by the McKinsey Global Institute, which doesn’t get quite as granular, but highlights some big trends the consulting company thinks will be “disruptive” in the next decade.

McKinsey also chose next-generation genomics as a disruptive technology but stretched it a little further to include “fast, low-cost gene sequencing, advanced big data analytics and synthetic biology.” McKinsey posits that low-cost bench top sequencing machines will become part of use in routine diagnostics, and sequencing will also be used to match treatments to patients. “The next step is synthetic biology — the ability to precisely customize organisms by ‘writing’ DNA,” the report’s authors wrote.

Another disruptive technology that the firm chose that thas applications in healthcare is advanced robotics, a field that its analysts think could have a potential economic impact of $800 billion in the healthcare industry by 2025, in the form of improving quality of life through robotic surgery and robotic prosthetics.

[Photo credit: dream designs]

Jiff CEO Derek Newell said one of the goals was to do a better job of integrating employer and employee health programs without having to build one from the ground up. It’s basically hoping to do for corporate wellness programs and healthcare organizations what WordPress did for making the process of starting a blog or website easier and cheaper.

Jiff’s software-as-a-service platform provides protocols on interface design, social models and guidelines for game mechanics. There are thousands of apps and programs on the platform that are compatible with each other. Users can also pick incentive tools.

“There’s an amazing amount of innovation happening with the digital health space,” Newell said. “But there’s an amazingly long sales cycle before getting to adoption. What we’re doing with Towers is a digital application that links employers incentives with what consumers want. It hasn’t been done before.”

Asked about the market potential, Newell estimates that 100 million individuals receive coverage from employer plans at Fortune 1000 companies. Companies pay a monthly fee for the service depending on how many employees they have. Aeris Capital and Aberdare Ventures are among the investors in the Palo, Alto, California-based Jiff, which was started in 2010

The collaboration with Towers Watson has produced the Health Outcomes Marketplace — a scalable solution on Jiff’s platform that includes digital health apps. It can be used to help employers fine-tune employee incentive programs, measure employee behavior and outcomes, and connect that information to existing systems. Employers can also see real time reports and check benchmark performance.