By Matthew Holt Over the weekend I caught up with Dan Palestrant, the CEO of Sermo--still the largest US based physician online community. Sermo opted not to raise new VC recently (unlike say Phreesia and ZocDoc) and actually reduced headcount...

By Matthew Holt On June 7, 2010 senior advisor at the Office of the National Coordinator, Farzad Mosashari, gave an interview at the Health 2.0 Goes to Washington conference. These are his thoughts on the conference, meaningful use and the...

HIE, SHARP, RECs, and now… Beacons? What does it all mean? With the passage of HITECH in 2009, we’ve seen a series of coordinated grant programs from HHS – and if you’re not confused with all of the acronyms, you’re...

By Matthew Holt It's been a little while since I checked in with the folks at BenefitFocus. They essentially create a system that allows employees to sign up for benefits all at once. They market it via a lead health...

By Matthew Holt SUBTEXTAt Health 2.0 Goes to Washington on June 7, 2010, Kenneth Buetow, Associate Director of BioInformatics for the National Cancer Institute and Founder of caBIG, talked about the launching of a large scale effort called Cancer Biomedical...

By DAVID E. WILLIAMS I’m quoted in the Boston Globe today (A new practice: The doctor will see you today) on open access scheduling. (I’m all the way down at the bottom of the article.) Open access is one of...

By MAGGIE MAHAR This week, the Cato Institute released a 52-page report on health care reform titled: Bad Medicine: A Guide to the Real Costs and Consequences of the New Health Care Law. The tract was written by Michael Tanner,...

By Matthew Holt So last month the nice people from KTVU (the local Fox affiliate in SF) came by to interview me and last night it aired. They’d been over at web-based EMR vendor Practice Fusion and had found out...

By JOHN C. GOODMAN Suppose you were in a triage situation and you had to choose between two patients, deciding who lives and who dies. Are there any principles you could rely on to make your choice? Alex Tabarrok had...

By Matthew Holt Josh Seidman has written from ONC telling us about a fantastic job opportunity. You get to work with the brilliant folks at ONC on fun stuff regarding consumer e-Health. What does that mean? From the posting. Forge...

By DON KEMPER Everyone was expecting the new meaningful use rules to include some important, but relatively basic advances for the consumer—and it did. However few of us expected meaningful use would include a real consumer gift: the requirement that...

By ROB LAMBERTS OK, I am an EMR fan-boy, I will admit it. I seem real “rah rah” in my approach to computers in the exam room, and to many I seem to have my head in the clouds; I...

The fifth challenge for the Health 2.0 Developer Challenge has just been announced. Keas, the health and wellness data-driven platform, has opened up their API and a development environment to anyone who wants to author a "social Care Plan." In...

By Matthew Holt Subtext: In the DC panel debate on the Role of "Data Liberacion" Executive Chairman of Abraxis Health, Patrick Soon-Shiong, commented on how coordination and exchange of health data can improve healthcare and have a direct impact on...

By DAVID HARTZBAND Today was a big day in health care information technology (HIT). There are so many acronyms in HIT that I probably should publish a list, not today though. The Office of the National Coordinator of HIT (ONC)...

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE The long anticipated final rule on Meaningful Use was unveiled yesterday with much pomp and circumstance in a rather unusual ceremony which, interestingly, also marked the first public appearance of Dr. Berwick as CMS Administrator. The Final...

By Matthew Holt In this part of the panel debate on the Role in a World of "Data Liberacion" founder of Chordoma Foundation Josh Sommer tells the story about how he was diagnosed with Chordoma and how he funded the...

By Matthew Holt Absolutely hot off the recorder, here's my interview with David Blumenthal, the Obama administration's National Coordinator for Health IT. David and I discuss patient communication, why the percentages of certain criteria were reduced, and how to get...

By Matthew Holt More than a year or so of squabbling is (sort of) over and today HHS announced its criteria for the first phase of meaningful use. Essentially the 25 criteria for qualifying for “meaningful use” (in other words...

By PAUL LEVY What is the important thing Don Berwick could do as head of CMS to improve quality and reduce the cost of health care? Let's face it, as head of a humongous agency, it is hard to make...