Health Care Strategist

From Dr. Westby G. Fisher, writing at MedCity News:  "Patient illustrates how the iPhone and $1.99 could disrupt the medical device industry." "Today in my clinic, a patient brought me her atrial fibrillation burden history on her iPhone and it cost her less than a $10 co-pay. For $1.99 US, she downloaded the iPhone app Cardiograph to her iPhone. [...] "I got a relative picture of how often she was having afib and she got the opportunity to help me with her care. "Was this a medical device? No, it was an iPhone app. Was it perfect? No it wasn’t. I certainly couldn’t differentiate frequent PAC’s or PVC’s from atrial fibrillation reliably. It was NOT an EKG after all. But we were past that point in her evaluation. I just needed to know how often she was having her known paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and she wanted to keep a convenient record of her episodes. "Was it helpful in this case? Absolutely. "More importantly, she just saved hers...

...too much money.  Wait.  What? Interesting opinion yesterday from the blogosphere, that healthcare's biggest problem is too much money.  Too many resources, leading to too many people, too much time spent deliberating and too few imperatives toward action. That's why, in our best leisurely fashion, we approve capital budgets just once a year.  Miss the cycle and it's 'wait 'til next year.'  And that's OK; it's not like it's life & death or anything. Making the cycle, especially in IT, means launching RFP processes lasting another year and pilot projects lasting one more.  And system-wide rollouts lasting two more...assuming everything goes as planned, which it seldom does.  (Can you count to five?) That's why off-the-shelf solutions costing 'a little' are rejected in favor of customized (yet corporate-approved) offerings costing twice as much and taking thrice as long. That's why $8.99 iPhone apps are pooh-poohed as...