GE Healthcare Launches Blogs
With little fanfare, GE Healthcare has launched a suite of blogs as part of a new campaign called PeerVision. Initially targeting the diagnostic imaging market, PeerVision could easily be expanded to include other health care market segments. Included in the site are a few blogs, a discussion forum, and the usual marketing materials.
Most medical device vendors are pretty old school, and consider things like blogs or discussion forums with distrust. The usual excuse is that as an FDA regulated vendor, everything on their web site is considered “labeling.” This is not really true, but it makes a good excuse. GE has overcome this objection with a pretty comprehensive disclaimer acknowledgment that users must accept before accessing the rest of the site. The disclaimer is pretty reasonable, but one part struck me:
consultant or have any other financial interests in the information you
provide to this site including, but not limited to the promotion of
“off-label” product uses or the disclosure of confidential or
proprietary information.
I'm a consultant and clients pay me, so does this mean I can't access the site? My interpretation of this is that if another vendor can't pay a consultant to leave forum posts or blog post comments that represent that vendor's interests. Of course the wording bars the consultant from doing this rather than trying to bar another vendor.
Time will tell whether GE's blogging and forum efforts are successful. There are many things GE can do to ensure adoption and it will be interesting to see if they do any of them and how well they work. The guest bloggers have only written a few posts, and the only posts in the forum are by the moderator. I don't recognize any of the bloggers from other sites, so they may be newbies.
From the Government Health IT story on blogs:
like the first wave of Web sites,” said David Ritter, chairman of the
Labor and Employment Practice Group of the Chicago-based law firm Neal
Gerber Eisenberg, which advises companies on social media practices.
“The health care industry will catch up. But it has to stop being
hesitant about dipping a toe into the social media area.”
As an aside, the folks at Windover Information have a nice blog called In Vivo. Check it out.
UPDATE: Blogger Steve Severance offers his view on PeerVision here. I have to agree with Steve, it is unclear how much mind share PeerVision will actually garner. What is news worthy is that the first medical device vendor has launched Web 2.0 social media (that's geek-speak for the forum and blogs) focused around regulated medical devices.
If you would like help formulating and executing your own blog or Web 2.0 marketing strategy, let me know.
Blogs Are Here to Stay
Government Health IT ran a story on the growing impact of blogs on the health care industry. “Estimates differ on the number of people using
such tools to find health information. But if blogs are any indicator,
the health care industry — often accused of lagging behind the rest of
the business world — may now be in the forefront in the use of
information technology.” In addition to blogs written by patients and physicians on health and medicine, numerous sites have sprung up that focus on the business and technology sides of health care. (Emphasis mine below.)
professional interests. Not surprisingly, some of the earliest health
care blogs meld IT with health care content. Examples include the
Healthcare IT Guy, HIStalk, Medical Connectivity Consulting and
HITSphere, an aggregator of other health IT blogs.
You can find all of the blogs mentioned above in the Blogroll in the left hand column of this web page. A common feature on blogs, a blogroll is a listing of recommended blogs.
Blogs are proving to be important marketing vehicles in the business of health care:
written by skilled consultants whose viewpoints were not accessible
before,” said Matthew Holt, a researcher who worked with health care
companies before launching his own consulting practice and the Health
Care Blog.
“Health care is a major political issue, and the
informed commentary of blogs will ultimately impact mainstream
thinking,” Holt said. “Blogs create a bridge between academics and
health services and spill marketplace knowledge back into the health
care community.”
For a good sampling of health care blogs, check out the Healthcare 100 listing of the world's top blogs on health care and medicine. General health related blogs are over represented on this list because of their broad appeal. There are many excellent blogs that are more narrow in scope that may never reach “top 100″ status. You can find some of those blogs in my Blogroll on the right.
Blogs Are Here to Stay
Government Health IT ran a story on the growing impact of blogs on the health care industry. “Estimates differ on the number of people using
such tools to find health information. But if blogs are any indicator,
the health care industry — often accused of lagging behind the rest of
the business world — may now be in the forefront in the use of
information technology.” In addition to blogs written by patients and physicians on health and medicine, numerous sites have sprung up that focus on the business and technology sides of health care. (Emphasis mine below.)
professional interests. Not surprisingly, some of the earliest health
care blogs meld IT with health care content. Examples include the
Healthcare IT Guy, HIStalk, Medical Connectivity Consulting and
HITSphere, an aggregator of other health IT blogs.
You can find all of the blogs mentioned above in the Blogroll in the left hand column of this web page. A common feature on blogs, a blogroll is a listing of recommended blogs.
Blogs are proving to be important marketing vehicles in the business of health care:
written by skilled consultants whose viewpoints were not accessible
before,” said Matthew Holt, a researcher who worked with health care
companies before launching his own consulting practice and the Health
Care Blog.
“Health care is a major political issue, and the
informed commentary of blogs will ultimately impact mainstream
thinking,” Holt said. “Blogs create a bridge between academics and
health services and spill marketplace knowledge back into the health
care community.”
For a good sampling of health care blogs, check out the Healthcare 100 listing of the world's top blogs on health care and medicine. General health related blogs are over represented on this list because of their broad appeal. There are many excellent blogs that are more narrow in scope that may never reach “top 100″ status. You can find some of those blogs in my Blogroll on the right.
Medical Device User Interface Design Issues
Robert North, PhD, chief scientist of Human Centered Strategies, and participant in the AAMI committee that is updating the human
interaction standards, highlights the impact of user interface design on medical device safety. In speaking for the FDA (?), he notes correctly that the, “FDA views errors during human interaction with a device as seriously as
any mechanical, electrical, software, or chemical errors that may make
a device cause patient harm.” From the MD&DI story:
To understand the effect of regulation on the design-research and
early concept-testing phases, the overall process that FDA requires
must first be understood. This process is succinctly described on FDA’s
Web site [here]. It cites AAMI/ANSI HE74-2001, “Human Factors Design Process for Medical Devices.” It further states the following:
This standard serves as a guideline for integrating human factors
engineering into the product design and development process necessary
to satisfy the FDA Quality Systems—Design Control requirement to ensure
that the needs of the user are appropriately defined, verified and
validated. Any declaration of conformance to this standard with respect
to establishing a manufacturer’s standard design and development
process adequate to meet the needs of the user should be accompanied by
the following documentation at a minimum:
- Description of the process to be followed in defining the user needs to establish the device-user interface design input.
- Description
of the process to be followed in verifying that the user needs as
defined by the design input is addressed by the design output. - Description
of the process to be followed in validating that the final design
functions in a way as to met the intended users needs. - Description
of the risk analysis process to be followed in identifying and
assessing reasonably foreseeable risks associated with intended use.
All of these FDA requirements affect how a medical manufacturer
would structure and document design research and early concept work.
After the Improving Patient Safety through Medical Device Interoperability and High Confidence Software workshop last week in Boston, it was clear that the importance of this area grows considerably as connectivity and interoperability is added to medical devices. This, combined with the rather sorry state of embedded system software development – in both requirements gathering and product development processes – I suspect the FDA will be increasing their scrutiny in this area.
The Medical Device Interop Conference Kicks-Off (How Did We Get Here?)
I really couldn’t fit the actual title of this event into the title field of my blog software, so I had to wing it. The actual name is:
The Improving Patient Safety through Medical Device Interoperability and High Confidence Software joint workshop on High Confidence Medical Devices, Software, and Systems (HCMDSS) and Medical Device Plug and Plan (MD PnP) Interoperability.
The meeting started this morning at the Cambridge Hyatt hotel. There are a total of 130 attendees at this meeting, with an interesting mix of vendors, providers, academics and regulators.
John Parrish MD, Director of CIMIT, welcomed everyone, noting the importance of interoperability on improving patient safety. “The attendees at this event are ‘make it happen’ folks, so this could be a turning point in our mission.”
Insup Lee PhD, U of Penn and co-chair was next up. Lee noted that this is the first medical device connectivity event to provide a forum to exchange new research and development results by the emerging community of researchers, developers, regulators, users and manufacturers involved in HCMDSS and MD PnP.
Any event like this has a history. Previous meetings – 2 HCMDSS meetings, Nov 2004; 59 attendees; goal: identify crucial medical device software and systems issues and stake holders that will help shape research needs agenda for a larger workshop in 2005.
Past activities of HCMDSS has been based on 3 observations:
- The Federal government recognizes that the rapidly increasing software complexity of medical devices makes the development of high integrity medical device software and systems a crucial issue in public health.
- Software for future medical devices cannot be developed using existing design and productivity technologies.
- The increasingly heterogeneous nature of medical device design requires the need to identify emerging technical and scientific issues in
medical devices and to identify obstacles to the development and certification of medical device software and systems.
The meeting in 2004 targeted 8 topics:
- Enabling Technologies for Future Medical Devices
- Implantable regulatory devices, networked biosensors, telesurgery, robotic surgery
- Foundations for Integration of Medical Device Systems/Models
- Component-based foundations for accelerated design and verifiable system integration
- System of systems (including models, medical devices, care-givers, patients)
- Distributed Control & Sensing of Networked Medical Device Systems
- Robust, verifiable, fault-tolerant control of uncertain, multi-modal systems
- Patient Modeling & Simulation
- Large scale, high fidelity organ and patient models for design and testing
- Embedded, Real-Time, Networked System Infrastructures for MDSS
- Architecture, platform, middleware, resource management, QoS (Quality of Service), PnP (Plug-and-Play) of MDSS
- High Confidence Medical Device Software Development & Assurance
- Care-giver requirements solicitation and capture, design and implementation V&V (Verification and Validation)
- Heterogeneity in environment, architecture, platform in medical devices
- Medical Practice-driven Models and Requirements
- User-centered design, risk understanding, and use/misuse modeling in medical practice
- Certification of MDSS
- Quantifiable incremental certification of MDSS, role of design tools
- COTS, non-determinisitic and self-adaptive medical device systems
The next milestone was a meeting in June 2005, which had 99 attendees. There was an open call for contributions, and 40 papers were accepted. The motivation for this meeting was to improve the development, certification and operation of medical device software and systems that will result in better and more cost effective medical care.
The meeting’s objective was to identify short term and long term technology challenges faced by medical device manufacturers and regulators. Specific goals were to identify research challenges and emerging issues. A comprehensive report on research needs and recommended roadmap were completed.
Six 6 working groups were created:
1. Foundations for Integration of MDSS (Medical Devices Software and Systems)
2. Distributed Control and Sensing in Networked Medical Device Systems
3. Patient Modeling and Simulation
4. Real-Time, Embedded, Networked System Infrastructures for MDSS
5. High-Confidence Medical Device Software Development & Assurance and Medical Practice-driven Models
6. Validation and Certification of MDSS
This meeting brings together the HCMDSS and MD PnP communities of medical device specialists from the clinical environment, industry, research labs, academia, and government.
The other co-chair, Julian Goldman MD is the director of the Medical Device Plug and Play program at CIMIT. Goldman noted that at a previous meeting in 2004 they asked the question, “is this the right time to re-consider medical device interoperability? And, if so, what can be learned from prior mis-steps?”
Pictured right is a representation of the social network of the attendees at the 2004 meeting, as created by June Holley.
Here’s what they learned when pursuing interoperability:
- Must be clinical-requirements based
- Regulatory obstacles were perceived
- Legal concerns were deal-breakers
- What is the business case?
- No widely adopted standards
- In summary: Interoperability requires more than standards
They learned at the meeting that key needs must be addressed, like:
- Must be clinical requirements based
- Regulatory obstacles were perceived
- Legal concerns on the part of providers and vendors
- What is the business case?
- No widely adopted standards
- In summary, interoperability requires a lot more than standards
So, why are we here today? Is it the abilithy to plug any device into any other and transfer data? Standardization on USB and WiFi? Remote control of medical devices?
Ultimately interoperability is about empowerment of the user/customer. Look at consumer electronics world, especially digital photography, PC peripherals, and USB – all examples of consumer electronics interoperability. Health care providers need similar empowerment. It will allow clinicians and biomedical engineers to leverage medical devices and IT systems to solve clinical problems, improve patient safety, and improve efficiency.
The role of medical device devices in health care automation efforts is undeniable. Diagnosis and treatment are usually performed with medical devices – they are the “sharp end” of patient care. Medical devices are responsible for the integrity of data, and are the actuators that deliver energy and IV medications.
Comprehensive integration of devices and data from clinical and environmental systems, using the latest computer-science methodologies, will prevent errors and inefficiencies across the continuum of care. Medical device connectivity is critical for complete and accurate EMRS. What also remains is the ability to “close the loop” in many medical device use scenarios. What is needed are smart alarms that include event awareness, decision support to guide diagnosis and therapy, and workflow support to improve productivity and patient satisfaction.
The adopt of medical device interoperability will support:
- Clinical decision support systems
- Smart clinical alarms
- Medical device safety interlocks
- Closed-loop control of ventilation, medication and fluid delivery
- Support of remote health care delivery (home, battlefield, e-ICU)
- Automated system readiness assessment (prior to starting invasive clinical procedures)
- Complete, accurate electronic medical records
- Increased quality and completeness of national research databases
- Facilitation of disaster preparedness: real-time inventory of hospital equipment in-use and national stockpiles, and rapid deployment of devices in makeshift emergency care settings
- Understanding key issues at the heart of Biomedical Engineering (BME)-IT “convergence”
Goldman closed with the rhetorical question, “If not now, when?”
You can read subsequent posts about the conference here:
- Rob Kolodner Presents Keynote Address
- MD PnP Update
- Panel Discussion: Clinical Need for Interoperability
- Technical Session 1: Interoperability Challenges
- Technical Session 2: High Confidence Medical Devices, Software, and Systems
- Day 2 Keynote: John Rushby on Accidental Systems
Top Blogs in Healthcare and Medicine
Jon Speer at the Creo Quality blog, sent me a note yesterday about eDrugSearch.com's Healthcare 100, a ranking of the world's top English language blogs in health care and medicine. Jon noted that this site was ranked at 69.
The ranking is based on a quantitative algorithm that looks at Google page rank, Bloglines subscribers, Technorati authority ranking, and eDrugSearch.com ranking.
Thanks to my readers for the success of this blog.
