The Wireless Health or WiHealth event kicked off in Boston yesterday with a keynote presented by Janet Marchibroda, IBM’s newly appointed Chief Healthcare Officer, and former founding CEO of the eHealth Initiative (eHI). Minutes into her keynote Marchibroda made a bold and seemingly odd statement for a keynoter at an event that is focused is wireless health:
“I’m not going to spend time on wireless health or telehealth but more so on the policy environment,” Marchibroda explained.
What followed was a lengthy discussion of ARRA, meaningful use and the federal government’s push for electronic health records. Marchibroda noted many of the various EHR-related stats that have been batted around for months including: Only about 4 percent of healthcare facilities have an electronic health system and only about 13 percent have a basic functional system. About 1.5 percent of U.S. hospitals, however, have a “comprehensive” electronic health records system.
Finally, more than three quarters of the way through her presentation, Marchibroda asked the audience: How can we make sure — how can we leverage some of these incentives to get funding for what we do in telehealth? How can it fit in with meaningful use? We do run that risk that healthcare providers might meet the requirements but then stop right there.
“Meaningful use will drive dollars in this industry for the next five to ten years,” Marchibroda concluded.
Better Health’s Vince Kuraitis, who was in the audience, commented moments later that the statement was no less than “profound.”
At that point a couple of the audience members began to get frustrated: “Are there any other goals [within the Recovery Act] outside of electronic health records that might apply to telehealth?” one audience member asked. ”You are talking about waiting five to eight years [for widespread EHR adoption] and that’s still a long way off. I can connect every individual right now for less money and faster than connecting [all the EHR] systems. So the question is: Is [the Recovery Act] all just directed at putting that $36 billion at getting electronic health records and systems? Is it all from the system side as opposed to the individual side?”
Marchibroda responded: “Meaningful use, as defined by this committee, you are right, it’s directed at providers. So providers will get the money and they use indirect incentives to facilitate some of this… For example, one of the metrics will be: What percentage of your patients have access to their medical information? [Providers] are nervous about that for a whole host of reasons but not because they don’t want to do it — but because it is hard.”
What do you think — is federal stimulus money crucial to wireless health? Is this emerging industry set to be stifled since the next five to ten years of spending in the healthcare industry will be almost entirely focused on meeting meaningful use requirement? Why or why not is stimulus money part of your company’s business plan?
July 28th, 2009 at 8:53 am
mHealth and consumer-focused health care will never fully take hold until there is a business model outside of government funding. Being from Canada, almost all of our healthcare funding comes from government, but there is a real push for consumers to take charge of their health information. The important question is will they pay for it? I believe that we, as vendors and providers, have not done a good enough job at providing value to the consumer. Once we can provide that value, consumers will pay.
Let’s focus on value to the consumer, and we will get broad buy-in.
July 28th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
[...] What’s going to have the most impact on our health in the next 5 – 10 years? Brian Dolan reports from the Wireless Health event in Boston with some quotes from the keynote prese…: [...]
July 31st, 2009 at 8:57 am
Craig, thank you for your comment about needing a business model outside of government funding. We are trying to bootstrap, but it is obvious we will have to partner. So we are working hard on that model!
I also believe, as you do there is a lot of fear from the consumer that they are not going get value for their dollar. Consumer are afraid they will be wasting their money because there are so many lousy iphone apps out there. Some apps don’t load, don’t run, don’t do anything…. We have actually talked with customers that wanted to talk about the features of our product before they were willing to put down $9.99.
We at CSI, have a wireless health product, motionPHR for the iPhone which is a full blown CCR compliant personal health record. The value is definitely there for $9.99 and now with motionPHR Lite just released to the iTunes marketplace yesterday for $3.99 it gives the consumer an opportunity to see the product for almost nothing and then upgrade in the event they like it to motionPHR.
We are going to announce what we are calling a “Gold Standard” for our iPhone motionPHR application, it’s a full money back guarantee. We haven’t done this yet, but if anyone in the media has an interest in telling this story, we will be announcing it soon.
Marie Brandt
motionPHR.com A Personal Health Record For the iPhone
bmbcsi@gmail.com
August 2nd, 2009 at 11:09 am
Janet Marchibroda is a talented executive, eminently at home in the vast bureaucracies she so confidently predicted will control – which means, make no mistake, stifle – spending on ehr over the next decade.
“led” by people whose only capacities have to do with inter- and intraorganizational political maneuvering, stimulus-fueled ehr innovation will die an ignominious death, heir to the fortunes of local/regional health IT coalition activity.
As with almost all innovation, policy/law/regulation will follow, rather than lead. Janet & her contemporaries have an important role, but that “institutionalizing” role is decidedly secondary to the role of those individuals and organizations who choose to DO something around real health innovation.