Volume II, Issue 2
January 12, 2015t

Health IT Drives Transformation of Industry 

WH

In a January 5 post to KevinMD entitled Health IT will radically transform medicine. Is it for the better?, author James C. Salwitz, MD paints a vivid and (mostly) uplifting picture of what healthcare might look like in the very near future according to the plan from the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), Office of the Secretary, United States Department of Health and Human Services entitled the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015 - 2020.

 

WIM

According to the author: 

 

Health IT will connect everything and everywhere, from the chip in your pacemaker, the scale in your bathroom, your smartphone health app, your first tetanus shot, all the way to the machine pumping air in the intensive care unit on your dying day. Medical records will be universally accessible. IT driven research will spot trends, respond to individual and population emergencies, and promote ideal health. We will each have improved control of our medical care with an emphasis on patient safety, quality, and cost while trying to guarantee privacy.

 

Health IT will completely change what it means to be a patient, a hospital, a health system and, above all else, what it means to be a doctor.

Do No Harm? 

WH

In a NY Times blog called TheUpshot, Austin Frakt, pens a post entitled Do No Harm? It May Be Hard to Avoid with Health Law's Medicare Cuts. Mr. Frakt, a health economist and researcher, describes how the ACA is forcing hospitals to cut costs. He warns that research shows cost cutting by health systems has, in the past, resulted in compromised quality.  

 

WIM

Despite the pessimistic title of his January 5th article, Mr. Frakt is enthusiastic about new payment models being implemented by Medicare and some insurers (e.g. Accountable Care Organizations, Bundled Payments) as well as the rapid advances in health IT. He is quite hopeful that heightened productivity will lead to improved quality and simultaneous cost reductions. He points to preliminary research indicating that we are on the right track.

FDA panel recommends first biosimilar  

approval 

WH

According to Steven Ross Johnson in a January 7 post on Modern Healthcare:

 

A federal advisory panel has recommended that the government approve a Novartis cancer drug as a biosimilar alternative to Amgen's Neupogen, which could be the first such designation in a new process intended to foster competition for some of the most expensive drugs in healthcare.

 

At a Wednesday hearing the Food and Drug Administration's Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee recommended the agency approve a drug that Novartis plans to call Zarxio.

    

WIM 

According to the author:

 

Biosimilars had no pathway for FDA approval until 2010, when the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 was enacted as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

 

Approval of biosimilars could mean greater access to biologic drugs. Neupogen can run more than $3,000 for 10 injections, and RAND Corp. researcher Andrew Mulcahy estimates Zarxio could be sold at a 35% discount.

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Florida Health Industry Week in Review is published every Monday by FHIcommunications

Each Monday morning we share the top healthcare headlines of the previous week and summarize What Happened (WH) and Why It Matters (WIM).

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