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Hospitals and Providers Using NHIN (Nationwide Health Information Network) To Connect and Share Medical Records With the VA and DOD And Even With Each Other

3/10/2012 08:44:00 PM  , ,  

If this is the first you have read about the NHIN and the CONNECT project here’s a little background information below.image

Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN): Background & Scope

“The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) is being developed to provide a secure, nationwide, interoperable health information infrastructure that will connect providers, consumers, and others involved in supporting health and healthcare. This critical part of the national health IT agenda will enable health information to follow the consumer, be available for clinical decision making, and support appropriate use of healthcare information beyond direct patient care so as to improve health.”

CONNECT is an interface to reach the NHIN.  Back about the middle of last year, the project was renamed but myself I still think of the CONNECT name too. The government's plan was that a private sector organization would eventually take control of the initiative. That didn't happen, so two former CONNECT staff members in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology recently formed the Alembic Foundation to continue development work and promote Aurion.

Government CONNECT Project Gets Rebranded–Two Former ONC Staff Members Formed Alembic Foundation To Continue Development Now Named Aurion

You do not need the CONNECT protocol to connect to the NHIN and many have developed their own interfaces.  As you can read from the clip below some providers are already sharing information between themselves.  Bon Secours Hospital system is using the system to transmit and receive information from Social Security for disability claims and to get benefit information from Medicaid and Medicare so there’s a lot of potential here. 

With all the expense of imagebuilding HIEs, which is a lot of money, it seems that the NHIN is both cost effective and can also work with HIE protocols so it works all the way around and I think it lacks awareness as you also have retail HIE folks owned by insurance companies who “sell” their services for connectivity.  The key here is to have the interface to connect working properly and then you are on your way to sharing information.

“Some community and state health information exchanges have also connected with the NwHIN exchange, the FHA chief pointed out. These HIEs, like other providers on the NwHIN exchange, can communicate with any other provider that has exchange privileges, not just federal agencies. Thompson said some private-sector providers are trading information with each other through.”

The Virtual Electronic Lifetime Record (VLER) program of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs have their pilot going with 11 VA medical centers up and and running with exchanging records.  It’s been a little quiet as everyone is working on interfaces to get there. Again when you look at the cost of the HIEs and have one big network that could do all the connectivity with just other members being able to connect…this makes sense to me.  BD   

$91 Million Prime Contract Awarded to Support Medical Record Sharing Veterans Affairs Beneficiaries–VLER-Lifetime Virtual Electronic Record Program– VA and DOD

Joint Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) Work in Progress from DOD and VA

More than 500 hospitals and 4,000 physician practices and clinics are participating in the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) exchange, according to Lauren Thompson, program director of the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) program in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).

Some community and state health information exchanges have also connected with the NwHIN exchange, the FHA chief pointed out. These HIEs, like other providers on the NwHIN exchange, can communicate with any other provider that has exchange privileges, not just federal agencies. Thompson said some private-sector providers are trading information with each other through the NwHIN.

Just as many electronic health record vendors have embedded the Direct secure messaging protocol into their applications, some have also added the ability to connect to the NwHIN. "We have 16 or 18 technology partners participating in the exchange," Thompson said.

However, not all of these use the FHA's CONNECT gateway to link to the NwHIN exchange; some have developed their own interfaces. FHA created the CONNECT gateway in 2008-2009 and is continuing to refine it through a private contractor. But Thompson noted that her office would like to encourage more participation by the open-source community in upgrading the CONNECT code. There has been discussion at FHA about appointing a custodial agent to take charge of making the code available to the community.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/interoperability/232602308

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Doctor And Patient Privacy–Was Asked By A Pharmacy to Send 6 Months of Medical Records So Patient Could Refill Prescription for Glucose Testing Strips–Data for Sale?

3/10/2012 07:43:00 PM  , , ,  

My first question is why?  I have never heard of this for glucose testing strips to fill a prescription and we don’t the name of the pharmacy, but first thing that pops into my mind, who are they selling it to?  There’s many wellness companies that work with pharmacies could be one, could be data sold for research, could be going to an insurance company.  Glucose strips are very common today and I could maybe understand if it were an actual “drug” maybe…but again this is the data selling business here and perhaps it could have been sold back to the companies who make the strips so they could analyze their sales and supply.  image

No wonder this doctor questioned HIPAA and what was going on here.  Where is the privacy here and of course I don’t know if these were paper records or electronic. I am guessing there’s a good chance it was electronic as now you have data for sale.  I’ll sound like a broken record again but the Walgreens 2010 SEC statement said they made short of $800 million selling data.  Make one wonder if filling prescriptions is just a side line business to capture data.  Come to think of it in some areas United Healthcare pays pay for performance to pharmacists to gather information and enroll consumers in certain programs such as the YMCA, so in the future as this expands you might see a very sales oriented pharmacist if the money is big enough for him/her. 

United Healthcare Expanding Diabetes Prevention & Predictive Algorithm Program With Walgreens And Pay for Performance Incentives In Atlanta

“The prevention arm will use UnitedHealth claims data and other demographic information to flag people at risk of developing diabetes and invite them to a free, 16-session exercise and nutrition class at a local YMCA. They’ll have monthly follow-up after the class is over, and instructors will be paid bonuses if participants meet certain modest weight-loss goals.”

My mother recently had her own experience as a senior with some of the marketing and sales efforts between her Part D carrier (which is not United) and Walgreens.  Doctor said checking her glucose twice a day was fine but the other, the drug store said no, you need to do that 3 times a day.  She’s been checking her glucose for 20 years now and was told by the drug store it’s not often enough.  It has to do with selling strips here, as 3 times a day will yield a bigger sale and thus so she is informed by the retail pharmacist that she’s doing it wrong, nice huh?   If you are not a diabetic yet, we also have United with their analytics trying to predict if you will need them some day.  All of this is ok as long as you don’t “bomb” the consumer and use the data to make profits but they do sell a ton load of data. 

UnitedHealthCare To Use Data Mining Algorithms On Claim Data To Look For Those At “Risk” of Developing Diabetes – Walgreens and the YMCA Benefit With Pay for Performance Dollars to Promote and Supply The Tools

These folks suing Walgreens (link below) and CVS were actually the ones who uncovered the information from the SEC about Walgreens.  “As a measure of the information's value, the suit cites Walgreen's 2010 annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which lists "purchased prescription files" as intangible assets worth $749 million.”  Ask any quant they watch the analytics on intangibles, just read an article last week about Lilly’s ratio.

Walgreens And CVS Accused of Selling Customer Prescription Data in 2 Separate Law Suits-Sales for Marketing Data Continues and the Data Bases Gets Larger with Technology

To require 6 months of medical records for a refill on glucose strips…who are they selling the data to? 

Wake up time folks…we need to license and tax the data sellers real soon and such a tax would fix a ton of federal budgets, it’s a goldmine with corporations making billions selling taxpayer data.  Smaller independent pharmacies are going out of business as they don’t have enough data to sell…how the big guys do it.  BD

Independent Pharmacies Not Able to Compete with Big Chains and Fear Going Out of Business–They Don’t Have Same High Levels of Data To Sell to Profit- Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 23

Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US

Are your medical records are private as you think? A Biloxi physician said, probably not. Family practitioner Dr. Paul Matherne said the issues surrounding patient confidentiality concern him so much that he recently wrote a letter to editor about what is making him ill at ease.

Dr. Matherne said last week a pharmacy called his office asking for six months worth of medical records just so a patient could fill a prescription for blood glucose testing strips.

"My concern is where does this privacy law, HIPPA law, get divided?" said Dr. Matherne. "That history might include something psychological about them. It might be something about belly pains. Maybe there is some stress in their life or heart problems. Why does all of that have to be given in their chart to be reviewed by the drug store. In this case, it is actually reviewed by Medicare, to justify just giving them something that deals with Diabetes."

"I feel as if down the road they are going to question us," said Dr. Matherne. "How do you take care of your blood sugar? How do you take care of your blood pressure? How do you take care of your cholesterol? They're going to want to see how I perform and how you may perform. If we aren't performing right, they may come back and say, 'Let's make you pay higher premiums or maybe we don't let you have this insurance at all.'"

http://www.wlox.com/story/17125062/biloxi-doctor-concerned-about-medical-privacy-laws

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Affluent Chinese Parents Travel to the US To Give Birth to Skirt One Child Policy-Los Angeles Is Destination One

3/10/2012 05:25:00 PM  ,  

Hong Kong used to be the destination favored but they have since tightened up their laws on how many can travel there to give birth.  The number traveling to the US annually is around 5000 and is growing.  They come here as they have money to afford it and say the facilities here in the US are better than Chinese hospitals.  For Los Angeles hospitals looking to drum up a little more business I guess this would be right up there with bringing in a few more patients.  image

There’s even a service that works with US families to be their hosts.  The entire family can come and get a nice vacation at the same time.  Birth tourism in America is legal, Professor Kevin Johnson, an expert in immigration law at the University of California, so now we have birthing tourism.  There’s also a small island out in the Pacific, Saipan, a US territory as another alternative parents are choosing but services don’t compare to the US.  Of course being born here also give them US citizenship and once they turn 21 they can petition the government for permanent residence status.  This kind of makes one wonder how long the one child policy will remain in effect and how does China enforce it fairly? 

Zhang Xuemei is just three-months pregnant but has already decided not to have her baby in her native China. Instead, the housewife and her husband, Wei Zhonghai, a wealthy mining boss, are paying tens of thousands of dollars to give birth to their third child in the United States.

Ms Zhang and Mr Wei, both 40, are just one of a growing number of anxious Chinese couples willing to spend from 100,000 to 250,000 Chinese renminbi (£10,000 to £25,000) to give birth abroad, paying 20 times more than the average cost of delivering a child at home. They have turned to a Beijing-based agency that offers services for "birth tourists" keen to travel to the US.

"We want to provide our children with more choices. If they are born in the US they will have more choices," says Mr Wei, who lives with his family in Hebei province. "And in the hospital we will get a better service than if the baby is born in China." The couple is currently weighing up two destinations, California and Saipan, a US island territory in the Pacific Ocean which is a cheaper option. "Los Angeles is better," Mr Wei says. "Better shopping, right?"

It is not just about economics – it is about the environment." He says China's one-child policy and a superior education system in the US provide the primary motivation.

Jia Mei was co-founded by Zhou Hongxia, who gave birth to twins in California last July. Ms Zhou, a piano teacher from Guangzhou, whose husband works for Hewlett-Packard, tells The Independent she settled on the US to "provide my kids with more choices and opportunities in the future – plus, the medical standards are superior".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/chinas-new-export-to-america-a-baby-boom-7547400.html

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Bio Similar Drugs Are Not the Same as Generic Molecular Drugs And May Not End Up Being Cheaper For Consumers As Making Copies of Another Company’s Protein Without the Research Data Is Costly

3/10/2012 03:43:00 PM  ,  

We all want cheaper drugs whether they are the standard molecular drugs we have known for years and if one is diagnosed with cancer of course anyone would want the latest and best treatments, that kind of goes unsaid.image

Bio similar drugs are much more complex to create and it takes a lot more time as if each drug delivered the same punch with immunotherapies for example we would have it made but all drugs are not for the masses and of course this is where personalized medicine and genomics jump in.  Unlike molecular drugs, the biosimilars are just that, similar as they do not have access to the proteins, which the company who created the drug can keep under locks forever. 

Biosimilar Drugs – Approval and Process Appears Cloudy On the Biologic License Applications With HealthCare Reform Law and The New “Pathway”

Biotech companies thus so have a hard time getting financing as well as those who invest are in it for the long run and some flat out don’t make it.  With that being said, can you see why our lawmakers are having such a tough time with this, as it is complex to create laws that will be fair and equitable all the way around.  Some major pharma companies are already in the biosimilar market such as Merck and Pfizer each with their announcements over the last couple of years.  The point here is well made in the fact that by the time it takes to simulate the protein in the biotech drug, where does the line draw on how much time and money a company will invest and then again we have the end result of whether or not it will be cheaper after money and time is calculated.  BD

It has been a long time coming, but stakeholders in the US are now seriously debating a route to market for cheaper copies of biopharmaceutical drugs. The European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) has led the way on this issue by publishing clear guidelines on what companies must do to get their versions of drugs such as erythropoietin (EPO), an advanced treatment for anaemia, and similar products approved.

Biotech drugs such as Herceptin and Avastin — monoclonal antibodies approved for treating breast and colorectal cancer — are valued because they have an innovative mode of action. But this value is reflected in the price tag: a biopharmaceutical medicine can cost up to 30 times more than a conventional small molecule drug. Put simply, if everyone who could benefit from a recombinant protein or monoclonal actually received them, it would sink healthcare budgets everywhere. So, of course, there is pressure to produce cheaper copies as patents begin to expire on drugs such as EPO, the interferons (used to treat multiple sclerosis and hepatitis B and C), growth hormone and the clot buster tissue plasminogen activator.

A pharmaceutical manufacturer hoping to enter the biosimilars market would actually face a double challenge. First, it is harder to make biotech drugs than small molecules because of their increased complexity. "There is a quantum leap between making chemicals and making proteins," warns Fox. Additionally, making a biosimilar involves making a copy of someone else's protein without their experience and know-how (which the innovator can keep secret indefinitely).

Hence, the biosimilar manufacturer will have to come up with plenty of data to show the regulatory authorities that their product does not have a glycosylation profile that is going to compromise efficacy or, more seriously, patient safety. Companies such as Teva (which markets biosimilars in developing countries), Sandoz and BioPartners are meeting these challenges. Sandoz' Omnitrop, a growth hormone, was the first biosimilar to be approved in Europe (after extended legal wrangles in the European court). But the drug was not without teething troubles — the presence of host cell protein (often an issue in biotech manufacturing) led to antibody generation among some clinical trial participants. Sandoz fixed the problem, but it illustrates the inherent unpredictability of biosimilar production.

Valtropin, another growth hormone, from BioPartners, was the second product to be approved by EMEA and biosimilar versions of EPO and G-CSF may soon follow. The costs of biosimilars may turn out to be higher, compared with the original drug, than conventional generics because of manufacturing and regulatory issues. And, of course, biosimilars are versions of relatively old drugs. Biotech companies have hardly been standing still while the drugs now up for copying progressed through their patent lives. Their latest products, and those in the pipeline, are likely to be safer and more effective than the earlier versions — such as Amgen's darbepoetin alfa (Aranesp, an advanced treatment for anaemia, which could be used instead of EPO). Will the patient offered a biosimilar be getting an inferior medicine? That's a debate still to come.

http://www.pharmtech.com/pharmtech/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=435320&sk=&date=&&pageID=1

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Todd Park Named as US CTO–An Ending of the Figure Heads- Now Some Serious Hands On Folks - Hybrids in Executive Positions In US Government….What the Doctor Ordered..

3/09/2012 05:03:00 PM  , , ,  

I’m sure I’m not alone in my opinion here with being happy finally having what is called a “hybrid” in a responsible position.  We are tired of the executives that have to “ask” for all their technical help and Mr. Park is certainly one who has a bit of imagecode time under his belt with his former ventures.  Once you have experienced that side of technology you view things differently as you can see the “mechanics” of how things will work to a huge degree, something that those who are not in technology can’t do.  No offense at all here but when I learned to write code and wrote software, I became logical and logical is certainly what we need.  He wrote software like I did but he was much more successful and was after my time. 

We also have a good US CIO in house with some “hands on” experience and believe me these are the folks you want in office that know algorithms, code and their power, no 2 ways about it as it’s all about that today in the business world and VanRoekel, our CIO came from Microsoft.  Again time for figureheads and those without some hands on experience to step aside so the heavy weights can walk in. 

US CIO Office VanRoekel To Address Mobile Apps and Inter-Agency Leverage-Finally Apps That Do More Than One Thing For More Than One Agency

Being logical with a coding background, coupled with my 25 years of outside sales make me a hybrid and why this blog so different than any others you read out there because again having that tech background you can “visualize” the mechanics and with hands on background in tech, you are miles ahead.  You want to see what I said about figureheads back in 2009…link below will tell you and again predictions are easier too, so here you end up with a Geek that can walk and chew code with my background and these 2 folks are way above my knowledge. 

Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas Governor for HHS – Please not! Put the “Smart” People in these key positions

I was getting tired of Aneesh and the “innovation” word anyway but he fit the bill for the time.  Again my comments below were nothing personal but back in 2009, with this coding background thing and the fact I love to talk from my sales background I saw this entire technology move coming before most.  There’s a lot of smarter folks than me that saw it too, but I just don’t think they talked about it:)  It’ tech war fair with banks and big business. 

Meanwhile back at the ranch over on the hill we have this…a challenge for the White House as I’m sure they would like to see smarter and more digitally literate members over at the House and Senate too.  They get their butts kicked every day over this topic and revert to their old “abortion and women’s health” issues when they don’t comprehend and I guess feel this is about as far as it gets with trying to control something. The link below has a couple great videos worth watching that will educate you on formulas, math and algorithms. 

IBM Watson Going to Work At Citigroup on Wall Street–Congress Didn’t See Big Data As A Tool (Hadoop Framework) When They Had Their Chance…For Consumers The Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Chapter 22

This is why, (Congress digital illiteracy) I started my series called the Attack of the Killer Algorithms to help inform and explain to the layman how some of this stuff works.  I’m up to Chapter 23 now.  Citibank using this for risk analysis will buckle down those parameters even more and one day we are going to run out of folks that fit the “perfect parameters” here and nobody will get any money but the algos will make billions for the banks as they move it from consumers to their walls. 

Let’s see what Todd Parks does here and of course he will be interacting with Richard Cordray I would imagine who I said I hoped he has knowledge of math and algorithms from the consumer protection side of things. If he gets stumped, send Mr. Parks over to talk algorithms and formulas for profit and get the math right.

President Appoints Richard Cordray as New Consumer Financial Protection Chief - Hope He Knows And Understands Correcting Flawed Math and Formulas To Battle the “Financial Attack of Killer Algorithms” On Consumers With Banks and Corporate USA

That’s all we really want is accurate data that is not spun and skewed beyond belief for the sake of corporate profits.  Nothing happens until the code that runs on servers is changed and/or fixed as flawed data is emerging everywhere today.

One more from the archives at the link below…again from 2009..at the Medical Quack…a prediction….and/or request….

“Department of Algorithms – Do We Need One of These to Regulate Upcoming Laws?

Who said “hybrids” were valuable?  None other than Bill Gates at his Berkeley graduation address a couple years ago and this link below from  his talk in 2011 at TED…, a much better and bigger code and one who has that visualization talent that we all benefit from.

Bill Gates–TED-Talks About States Budgets (Where Are You Getting Those Algorithms) and Educational Needs (Update)(Video)

I am done now and hope Mr. Parks swings into action soon.  BD 

DG News Service - President Barack Obama has appointed Todd Park, chief technology officer at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as the new CTO for the U.S. government.

Park, who has served as CTO at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since August 2009, cofounded health IT company Athenahealth in 1997. Before Athenahealth, he was a management consultant, focusing on health care and technology, with Booz Allen & Hamilton, and volunteered as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focused on health IT and health reform policy.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225061/White_House_names_Park_as_new_CTO

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Forget Robots As Venture Capitalists Are Moving in Another Direction in Healthcare- Analytics and Algorithms for Profit–A Dangerous Shift in the US Economy With Intangibles Overtaking Tangible Investing

3/09/2012 02:32:00 PM  , ,  

This is a good article and if you read around the Medical Quack often enough I have been echoing this for about 3 years now but it’s becoming visible now to others as well.  If you have read any of my articles on “The Attack of the Killer Algorithms” imagethen you know.  All of this is not bad; however there’s always that “other” side with math and analytics and the financial world could not exist as it does today without those algorithms for profit, ask any Quant you might meet. 

The concept of code and it’s capabilities is spoken a lot here and this article is right in tune to what I have been saying and relative again to a lot of my other posts and we are talking big data and machine learning.  It’s been creeping around in the background for a while now and those that don’t like math have no clue for the most part.  It’s math and algorithms.

In here mentioned Caslight health, which is…a bunch of queries and algorithms for healthcare decisions…all the same stuff folks.  Now this is where the the VC money comes in as they want to make money, like all of use but have the money to invest to make more money, unlike all of use.  In addition, this also makes more data available for sale and this is huge today and an uncapped resource for taxing.  Think of it when Walgreens made just under $800 million selling data according to imagetheir 2010 SEC forms submitted and just think what everyone else is making out there.  Certainly some of the intelligence is used today to make better devices and yes that still gets attention, but not like mining and selling data as you grab a few geeks, get a cloud server and off you go making money for very little overhead.

What this says is where the money’s going and with basing too much of the economy on “algorithms” we don’t much manufacturing done in the US anymore and we need balance.  Just in a couple other areas, Hedge Funds and High Frequency traders are growing at a pace faster than Facebook for mining and selling data.  As consumers we get this very difficult to read privacy disclosure that says nothing but clouds issues at times and that can allow you to give full access to your data.  Speaking of machine learning, see what’s going on with Citicorp and Wall Street below at the link.  Does that shake you up?  It should. 

IBM Watson Going to Work At Citigroup on Wall Street–Congress Didn’t See Big Data As A Tool (Hadoop Framework) When They Had Their Chance…For Consumers The Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Chapter 22

Efforts in the financial areas like outlined above serves to actually continue the rate of inequality in the United States, it’s a tech war with information and we are getting more flawed data out there today too and like the banks a few years ago, nobody’s being held accountable for it.  This is why I said Richard Cordray better know a lot of math and algorithms.  If he doesn’t fix this, we are screwed as consumers.  Go back and read the above link about IBM Watson going to Citibank if you didn’t read it and all of this might become a little clearer. 

President Appoints Richard Cordray as New Consumer Financial Protection Chief - Hope He Knows And Understands Correcting Flawed Math and Formulas To Battle the “Financial Attack of Killer Algorithms” On Consumers With Banks and Corporate USA

Welcome to the world of discrimination by the algorithm….

Answer…license, tax and disclosure…

Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US

Again to balance out some of this, why should corporate America make billions in profits with mining and selling data without giving some back and providing a “real” disclosure page on a federal site on what is sold and mined.  They do it for everything else like insurance, hospital comparisons, you name it but can we find out who sells our data to who and in what format..nope..no transparency there as it would get in the way of corporate profits and give some real information that consumers want. 

So there you have it, VC money going into more analytical algorithms that again roll over and create more data for sale in some areas.  I don’t know about you and if you understand math or not but it’s as day to me how this profit structure runs and to a lot of VCs too, so wake up here or sit in denial, your choice as this functionality allows inequality to continue to grow at a pretty rapid pace without some kind of regulation, again I see taxing and licensing as good thing as it would solve a lot Federal Budget problems and all those companies who say they want to give back will be able to, and anyone selling data would be on the list, run it just like a sales tax.

By the way, that federal excise tax I pay to put a tire on my care can go away at any time <hint>.  Here’s a great talk about numbers and analytics and how this all needs to be down to earth and accurate or you just may get soaked and shoot some VCs may not know about what types of algorithms they invest in, they just want money.  BD

“Numbers Don’t Lie, But People Do”–Radio Interview from Charles Siefe–Journalists Take Note, He Addresses How Marketing And Bogus Statistics Are Sources of Problems That Mislead the Public & Government

It wasn’t that long ago that money flowed steadily to entrepreneurs who dreamt up whiz-bang medical devices.

Hospitals souped up their surgical suites with robots or high-tech radiation machines for cancer treatment. Cost wasn’t an issue: They just got passed along to insurance companies, who passed them on to employers and patients.

The share of venture dollars flowing to seed and early-stage investments in biotechnology and medical devices has plummeted since 2007, when investors pumped $3.6 billion into 332 deals in which a price was disclosed, according to data compiled for Kaiser Health News by FactSet Research Systems. Overall venture investing declined by nearly one-third as the economic recession set in.

Their solution? Drop the manual coding and create “a software system that learns as it codes and keeps getting better and better. And all of a sudden you can say to the hospital, Look, we’ll charge you 50 or 70 percent of what you’re paying now. You guys save 30 percent. But by the way, we can make great margins and make a terrific business because our costs are so much lower, because we’ve actually used technology rather than just people to attack the problem,” Roberts gushes.

It’s a bit like not getting dessert until you’ve had your vegetables. Maybe this all sounds incredibly simplistic, but venture capitalists say one of the trickiest things about this new world of investing is that their returns, in many cases, hinge on humans changing their behavior. And that’s a lot harder than building a robot.

http://capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org/index.php/2012/03/forget-the-robots-venture-capitalists-change-their-health-care-investments/

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Texas Doctors Caught in a Funding Crisis–One Doctor Using His Own Money to Keep Family Practice Open–Lost Over $50k in 4 Weeks And Will Probably Have to Close

3/09/2012 12:40:00 AM  ,  

Not too long ago it was in the news that doctors are going broke and in many areas they are as dwindling income with contracts from insurers keep lowering and in this case the doctor is losing out on Medicare/Medicaid patient coverage and it revolves around the co-pays that are no longer covered.  California should pay attention here as there have been proposed laws to add co-pays that the patients pay as well. image

Doctors Going Broke–You Can’t Even Give a Practice Away–Only Folks Buying Them Are Hospitals and Insurance Companies As It Relates to Reimbursement and/or Profits

It all depends largely on the demographic patient make up and if there’s not a big enough mix of patients other than Medicaid and Medicare such practices will not be able to absorb the cuts and go out of business.  BD 

After Dr. Javier Saenz completed his family-medicine residency in 1985, he returned home to the Rio Grande Valley to open a practice in the impoverished town of La Joya.

Despite his success, Dr. Saenz, 56, said he feels nothing like a hero these days. His practice, he said, is hanging by a thread.

On Jan. 1, the state reduced its share of co-payments for such patients. Physicians who treat them are seeing less revenue. Many, like Dr. Saenz, are not sure they can make enough money to stay in business.

Dr. C. Bruce Malone, the president of the Texas Medical Association, warned lawmakers in November that such cuts would cause physicians to stop taking both Medicaid and Medicare patients and lead to a minimum 20 percent reduction in revenue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/us/texas-limits-are-squeezing-the-elderly-poor-and-their-doctors.html

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Coca-Cola To Adjust Their Caramel Color Formula to Avoid Cancer Warnings In California

3/09/2012 12:03:00 AM  ,  

4-methylimidazole) ahs been added by the State of California as a potential cancer imagerisk so to comply, the caramel will be reformulated so the risk of the chemical is no longer present.  I can’t say that I would look forward to a can or bottle of Coke or Diet Coke with having a cancer warning label on it myself.

There has not been any reported cases of folks developing cancer with drinking Coke and this appears to be a very small element of the soft drink.  BD

Coca-Cola, America’s most popular soda, said it will adjust the formula of its caramel color to keep from having to label the soda with a cancer warning to comply with California regulations.

“The company did make the decision to ask its caramel suppliers to make the necessary manufacturing process modifications to meet the requirement of the State of California,” Coca-Cola told NPR.

The additive in question, a compound called 4-MI or 4-MEI (long name: 4-methylimidazole), has been the target of a campaign by consumer groups to ban it, claiming it causes cancer.

http://blog.chron.com/hottopics/2012/03/coke-tweaking-ingredient-to-avoid-cancer-warning/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

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Independent Pharmacies Not Able to Compete with Big Chains and Fear Going Out of Business–They Don’t Have Same High Levels of Data To Sell to Profit- Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 23

3/08/2012 09:36:00 AM  , , ,  

Medicaid reimbursement is right in there as well but this is happening all across the US and has been for a few years now as the contracts dwindle down.  Pharmacies are not the only business affected by this sweep of contracts with volume demanding lower prices, other industries are facing the same thing.  In Texas we have a lawsuit filed as the new contracts going into effect didn’t even allow the smaller pharmacies to look at and review the new reimbursement schedules at all with changing to billing HMOs instead of billing the state directly and this was included as Chapter 18 of the Killer Algorithms in my series, in other words contracts call for new formulas and sources of reimbursement and the pharmacies have no clue or can’t even research ahead of time to see what cuts they will take.

Pharmacies File Suit Against Texas Human and Health Services Commission - Managed Care Contracts Begin Delegating Reimbursements Too Soon – Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 18

When you look at the revenues brought in by some of the big chains, with CVS being one example of having sales of nearly $100 billion in 2009…that’s a huge number.  With fully automated business systems that collect data there’s also a huge amount of income that the big chain pharmacies add to their bottom line with selling our data too.

Walgreens And CVS Accused of Selling Customer Prescription Data in 2 Separate Law Suits-Sales for Marketing Data Continues and the Data Bases Gets Larger with Technology

“As a measure of the information's value, the suit cites Walgreen's 2010 annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which lists "purchased prescription files" as intangible assets worth $749 million.”

So when you compare a small independent pharmacy to the millions the big chains make selling data, how do they compete?  The big corporate rolling pin rolls right over them and again they are not having time to even evaluate new contracts in some areas ahead of time to calculate projected income. 

Here are 2 companies that sell prescription data and profiling information and there’s more.  The data with additional sources and additional data trails is also getting a lot richer in content too as we now have devices such as the pill bottle that is wireless and so again there could be more data for sale.  Ingenix is now part of the United Healthcare Optum group which is shown below.  They have made millions of dollars over the years selling data. 

image image

“HIPAA does not give the Department of Health and Human Services the ability to directly investigate or hold accountable entities, such as pharmacy benefit managers or companies such as Ingenix and Milliman, who are not covered by HIPAA.”

Did some of this information wake you up?  I hope it did as when you look at big businesses making huge profits selling data and making billions it’s time to tax and license it.  Small to medium size businesses can’t exist and compete with an economy that is not in balance with enough tangibles and intangibles.  This is what we have in the US, banks, companies, etc. making billions selling data so you sometimes wonder is filling a prescription for the big chain pharmacies a side business to capture for sale? 

When you think about it there’s not much over head and the servers run 24/7, mining an selling and filling a prescription fills up the servers with information about you and I for sales.  We need to license and tax all big conglomerates as they get free taxpayer information, sell us and make money and we don’t get much as consumers except the opportunity to spend hours fixing their data when they get it wrong, have errors and when it is flawed.  Killer algorithms Chapter 17 below outlines a rough plan to do this…

Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US

If that isn’t enough for you, the pharmacy benefit managers and the drug chains themselves are fighting among themselves with the outcome being less access for consumers, example below with Express Scripts and Walgreens. 

Anthem Blue Cross Members Will No Longer Be Able to Fill Prescriptions at Walgreens After January 1, 2012

Walgreen Dumps Express Scripts Pharmacy Benefit Manager–Contract Dispute With Reimbursement to Retail Chain Too Low

Express Scripts is also in the analytics business using Ingenix analytics (a wholly owned subsidiary of United Healthcare) to figure out who will not be taking their medications.  The predictive initiatives are one part of a far broader category of programs by insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers and this is “data for sale” with such analytics. 

This is what’s happening to small and medium size pharmacies and other businesses in the US, they are being squeezed out and again I come back to the “Attack of the Killer Algorithms” and the fact that we have an economy that is way too dependent on “selling data for profit” and the tangibles business in the US suffer. 

You can read a digest below on several other examples on how this is occurring and the billions that are made with little over head with a bunch of mining algorithms that take and then formulate the information for sale.  This is why we need to license and tax this business, not only for prescriptions and pharmacies but for all businesses selling data, as it’s only fair to have banks, corporations pay a fair share of tax on the billions they make off the backs of taxpayers, and again they get most of this information for free. 

We also need disclosure on a federal site to where consumers can see what information they sell and to who as the privacy statements written by crafty attorneys are getting more difficult to interpret every day and do little for the consumer other than to confuse and enable them to mine and sell more data out of totally confusing today’s consumer.  In addition the return of a consumer or patient being given the opportunity to say yes or not as far as sharing data needs to be reinstated to protect all of us.  Here’s a great example of digital illiteracy when it comes to making laws as we have a Congress that can’t even use a tool or recognize that it is a tool used for gathering information and data.  It certainly dives down further any consumer confidence with lawmaker who can’t even keep up with getting big data sources to provide them proper intelligence to make laws to deal with the data selling business either.  

I find the levels of distraction and I’ll use the Rush Limbaugh case as a big one with it being all over the news.  Corporate USA has to love this as it keeps the eyes off of what is working in the background for profiteering.  Keep the public emotionally stirred and it’s business as usual with the Killer Algorithms that hurt consumers and small businesses. 

IBM Watson Going to Work At Citigroup on Wall Street–Congress Didn’t See Big Data As A Tool (Hadoop Framework) When They Had Their Chance…For Consumers The Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Chapter 22

I read a lot of them and I have issues and I read them all the time, so where does this leave the average consumer?  Until some act of balancing and moving money in this area takes place, consumers and small and medium size businesses will continue to suffer, as the “Attack of the Killer Algorithms” are in fact removing the ability to conduct fair trade in the US.  BD 

Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Digest & Links for All Chapters–See How the Math and Crafty Formulas Today Running on Servers 24/7 Make Life Impacting Decisions About You

PHARR — A low reimbursement rate for Medicaid patients is crippling independent pharmacies in the Rio Grande Valley to the point that most will go out of business, state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa said Wednesday while standing inside a small drugstore that closed its doors last week.

About a dozen Valley pharmacies went out of business since the Health and Human Services Commission placed 400,000-plus Medicaid beneficiaries into its managed care program March 1 in an effort to more efficiently deliver health care to the poor and to those with disabilities. But Hinojosa, D-McAllen, said the “profit-driven” companies that are now managing Medicaid dramatically cut reimbursement rates for small, independent pharmacies while paying a higher fee to the chains.

At Sam Houston Pharmacy, about one-third of the 200 prescriptions filled daily were for Medicaid beneficiaries, said Daniel Yarritu, a pharmacy co-owner who decided to shut the 15-year-old business down last week when he saw the lower reimbursement rates.

“You fill a prescription and, in some cases, you’re losing money,” he said. “Their formula is flawed.”

http://www.themonitor.com/news/hmo-59275-pharmacies-pharr.html

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MolecularHealth–Decision Making Software for Oncology–FDA Will Evaluate Software To Determine If It Will Allow the Agency to Analyze and Predict Drug Safety Issues

3/08/2012 12:22:00 AM  ,  

MASE is the name of the software that has been under development for a few years and last month the company struck an agreement with the FDA to see if they can use the analytics with the decision making software to help predict safety issues that could arise from cancer drugs. image

It is software as a service that is marketed to all types of healthcare industries such as payers hospitals and so on.  Who doesn’t want to know what is theoretically the best drug to treat specific cancers and have the ability to predict safety issues for patients.  Queries can be done either visually with statistics or use a molecular path.  MASE can also be used to evaluate the safety of current drugs on the market. 

FDA launched the Sentinel Initiative to electronically track adverse drug reactions and MolecularHealth seems to fit right into that project.  You can read more about the collaboration at the press release here.  Back in 2010 the FDA gave a grant to Harvard Pilgrim Health Care for $72 million to begin studying the efforts of 28 healthcare companies and gather data from medical records, claims data and so on.

FDA Awards a Big Grant to Health Insurance Company For Pilot Program To Monitor Safety of Drugs and Medical Devices

The key with the software is to combine the best of both clinical and molecular data with using genomic information to drill down on the best treatments and information about the cancer.  If a patient has been sequenced, that information now can be used in the software for decision making processes.  The company is financed by the CEI of SAP software  BD

When executives at medical software developer MolecularHealth were working on a new product for oncologists, they consulted with a cancer center that was grappling with an emerging trend: About 100 patients a year were paying for their own genomes to be sequenced. Jeffrey Marrazzo, chief business officer of MolecularHealth, a Swiss-founded company that recently set up its commercial office in New York, won’t name the cancer center, but he recalls the conversation vividly. “These patients were walking into their oncologists, handing them disks containing their genomic data, and saying, ‘I don’t want you to treat me how you treat every other breast cancer or lung cancer patient—I want you to treat me based on what’s on this disk,’” Marrazzo, says. “I’m not going to tell you that tomorrow every patient is going to pay for their genome to be sequenced, but with price points falling, it opens up a new world in terms of patients willing to push the system.”image

Towards that end, MolecularHealth is introducing what it calls a decision-support software platform for oncologists. Here’s how it works: A physician treating a patient who’s just been diagnosed with cancer can input everything that’s known about the case, from the exact tumor type, to the presence of disease-promoting proteins in the patient’s lab tests, to the patient’s entire genome, if he or she has it. If a patient has a specific genetic variant that may make him or her respond best to certain therapies, the software will pick up on that.

MolecularHealth has been fine-tuning its decision-support software with the help of the prestigious MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. The hospital is using the platform in its newly formed Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy, which has a mission of incorporating genetic data from individual patients into its treatment plans. “Physicians who work in oncology are beginning to understand that the ability to pull data from multiple sources and build alternative treatments from that is the wave of the future,” says Dan Fontaine, senior vice president for business affairs at MD Anderson. “We’re all enthusiastic about the idea that the next great breakthrough will be driven by the capabilities of computational science.”image

MolecularHealth’s second software platform is called MASE, which stands for Molecular Analysis of Side Effects. MASE was designed to help drug developers and others who are concerned with drug safety to predict and ultimately avoid potential problems, such as dangerous drug interactions. The technology scans the biomedical literature and then pulls together information such as what targets a particular drug hits in the body, and which genes are involved in metabolizing it. On February 14, MolecularHealth announced it had struck a five-year agreement with the FDA to evaluate and refine MASE.

Marrazzo says MolecularHealth has started marketing MASE to pharmaceutical companies, insurers, and others who work in the field of drug-safety science.

http://www.xconomy.com/new-york/2012/03/07/molecular-health-sets-up-in-nyc-with-personalized-med-tools/?single_page=true

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4 California Cardiologists File Harassment Lawsuit Against Santa Clara Medical Center For Being Forced Out of Their Jobs For Exposing Inadequate Patient Care

3/07/2012 12:11:00 AM  ,  

This new lawsuit comes right on the heels of the big award for a physician’s assistant who won a large settlement by jury with her discrimination lawsuit and again patient safety is the common denominator here as well.  image

California Physician Assistant Awarded $168M - Sexual Harassment Suit In Sacramento Against Dignity Healthcare–Formerly Catholic Healthcare West

The complaints from the female doctor here are similar in content in the fact that she had filed them and they had not responded other than to shift her to an outpatient clinic.  One other common factor here too is that is again revolves around the cardiology department.  BD 

A lawsuit filed by California cardiologists against a county hospital, claiming that they were persecuted and forced out of their jobs after exposing inadequate patient care, is likely headed to trial after a mediation attempt failed.

A lawsuit filed by 4 California cardiologists against Santa Clara Valley Medical Center is likely headed to trial after a mediation attempt failed, according to heartwire.

The plaintiffs, led by echocardiographer Dr. Geeta Singh and cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Kai Ihnken, allege that they were harassed out of their jobs after they complained about a pattern of compromised patient safety at the hospital.

Singh and Ihnken say they filed complaints for years regarding patient safety issues that were never addressed by hospital officials, and were discriminated against when they took their concerns to county executives.

http://www.massdevice.com/news/heart-docs-headed-trial-harassment-case

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FDA Approves “NoTouch” BreastScan Device Using Infrared Imaging And Required No Manual Interpretation of Thermal Data

3/06/2012 11:16:00 PM  , ,  

New York and New Jersey are the first 2 target clinic areas for distribution by LifeSciences for the NoTouch BreastScan device. and the company is also working on a hand held sensor to detect early breast cancer.  This looks to be very well designed and no woman going in for a mammogram is going to miss the smashed pancake routine that we all go through now.  One other real benefit is not having to worry about radiation exposure as the site says it can be done as many times as needed. 

NoTouch Breast Exam

Now the site also says that the exam is complimentary to mammograms and ultrasounds, so being new we don’t know what the comparison rate is for accuracy and they are not pushing as a replacement, at least not yet which is probably ok as there’s more information needed which takes time to compile of course.  BD 

From the website:

“NoTouch BreastScan™ is an FDA cleared, adjunctive screening exam for the detection of breast cancer. As the name suggests, it does not require physical contact and does not make use of radiation. This quick, 10 minute exam, without pain or discomfort, creates a thermographic map of the breasts and looks for signs of developing breast cancer.image

It can be offered to all women (starting at age 18) to manage their breast health on a regular basis without any pain/discomfort or concern of radiation exposure.

NoTouch BreastScan™ is the most advanced breast thermography solution. It incorporates computer software that is able to analyze very small changes (at pixel level) in heat patterns of the breasts and report these findings on a software generated report. In other words, no manual interpretation of data is necessary by a thermographer/thermologist.”

PHILADELPHIA--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--UE LifeSciences Inc. (UELS), a medical device manufacturer focused on providing novel breast cancer screening solutions, announced today that it has received market clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its NoTouch BreastScan™ device. NoTouch BreastScan™ is a contactless breast-imaging tool cleared by the FDA specifically for adjunctive diagnostic screening for the detection of breast cancer. image

“NoTouch BreastScan™ does not discriminate dense breast tissue, which is good news for tens of millions of women in America”

NoTouch BreastScan™ is the first fully computerized functional infrared imaging system that incorporates patent pending dual-infrared detector design. Unlike most breast thermography solutions, NoTouch BreastScan™ does not require manual interpretation of thermal data; instead, it dynamically analyzes temperature pixels from various infrared frames to create a real-time objective report for the doctor.

http://eon.businesswire.com/news/eon/20120305005253/en/Breast-Cancer/early-detection/screening

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Israel Judge Issues Court Order For Doctors To Punch A Time Clock

3/06/2012 10:47:00 PM  ,  

It was just a few months ago that officials from Israel blamed themselves for allowing private care in to mess up their system and well from the looks of what is happening in the last few months here in the US, we may be headed down some of the same paths here.  With the new contract after the series of doctor strikes that took place, new rules require punching a time clock and many were not following the rules.  I’m sure MDs reading this post here in the US sure hope it doesn’t come to this as the reimbursement wagon right now is bad enough. 

Officials In Israel Blame Themselves for Allowing Private Care and the Selling Supplementary Insurance For Degrading Their Public Healthcare System

image

The country has 4 HMOs and all are required to join one of the four and there’s always the option to pay for private care.  Some of the same doctors working in the government facilities have referred patients to their private practice or those of other doctors.  The government pays $59% of the cost for the citizens, the lowest compensation percentage for a country with socialized medicine.  If you read further, the doctors are threatened with losing 20% of their pay checks. 

On Monday, the Tel Aviv Labor Court ordered all doctors working in Clalit-owned hospitals to punch a time clock, as required by the collective agreement signed last summer.

The order was issued at the request of the Clalit health maintenance organization, because hundreds of doctors employed at the hospitals it owns have refused to punch a time clock since the beginning of February, when the new rule took effect.

A new medical union called Arbel, which seeks to supplant the IMA, on Monday urged its members to hold protest meetings at all Clalit hospitals in response to the HMO's decision to deduct 20 percent from the February paychecks of doctors who refused to punch a clock.

The decision means hundreds of doctors would get a reduced paycheck, including 80 percent of those at Schneider, 70 percent of those at Beilinson and 60 percent of those at Meir and Hasharon.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-labor-court-orders-doctors-to-punch-time-clocks-1.416726

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IBM Watson Going to Work At Citigroup on Wall Street–Congress Didn’t See Big Data As A Tool (Hadoop Framework) When They Had Their Chance…For Consumers The Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Chapter 22

3/06/2012 06:24:00 PM  , ,  

I have written about this many times to have a smarter Congress to use speech recognition and to have all sit down together and query so at least they all have the same starting place, but the folks on the hill must be really more digitally illiterate than I thought initially. In April of 2011 I said they should look into this. 

The Quiet Rise of Machine Learning-Like IBM Watson Offers With Speed and Learned Analytics-Congress Needs Technology This To Make Better Laws & Collaborate

After having made their initial investment with IBM, Wellpoint is looking for areas to use the new “big data” capabilities for processing information.  I should clarify that I do like technology and used to write code but I also know how queries and reports get spun and how data is flawed and that is my purpose here to wake up the gullible and naïve folks as it happens all around us every day.  The folks in Congress seem to think “everything is for those guys over there”. 

Wellpoint to Bankroll Use of IBM Watson at Cedar Sinai Medical Center to Research Cancer Data/Information To Provide Guidance for Physicians

Also, in April of 2011 IBM Watson was pitched to Wall Street and someone has now bought…

IBM Watson Capabilities Being Pitched to Financial Industry-Congress Must Not Have Felt They Needed This So Further Behind We Fall With Effective Intelligent Lawmaking

Now all formulas and algorithms are not bad but there are those that create “accurate” results and those that have a crafty design to create “desired” results and sadly the two are not the same, although they should be but again we have nobody in Congress is appears to recognize this.  Would you not love to see a joint session of intelligent lawmakers querying with big data?  Well with the group we have that lives in denial it may never happen. 

The Apache Hadoop data processing framework is used for preprocessing the vast amounts of unstructured data collected.  So when it comes to flawed data though, we need to be careful as it is the same old garbage in and garbage out if the wrong information is fed in. 

How about some quote stuffing use…hmmmm….again we get left out and thanks again to the digital illiteracy of our Congress the consumers are at the mercy of the the Attack of the Algorithms as they will be for desired results…and you might translate this loosely into another word…money.  Guess where the first said applications will be…risk management.  Have you not heard enough on that topic of late…everyone does it and over does it too with marketing spun to justify one report after another. 

Attack of the Killer Algorithms–Digest & Links for All Chapters–See How the Math and Crafty Formulas Today Running on Servers 24/7 Make Life Impacting Decisions About You

We want to create jobs but let’s take a look at the technology used by companies, banks and traders today.  Why would a company go out and set up a factory, hire employees and so forth when they can grab a few geeks who program, get a cloud service or two and start mining data for sale?  Obviously we need balance but have too many companies doing this, so where’s the incentives to create jobs when they can just mine and sell data?  Look at Walgreens who in 2010 made just under $800 million in selling data? Now give that some thought and put a finger on the billions that are made mining free taxpayer data, as the geeks will write the algos to mine and format for sale.

Now you wonder why the US has a problem getting more companies to manufacture tangibles?  This looks like a pretty simple explanation to me here with running some algorithms and mining data for sale, as there’s little overhead and millions and billions of dollars worth of data at their fingertips to sell.  This an attack on consumers as we can’t get ahead this way and everything we either do or do not put out on the web is for sale just about. 

Answer…license, tax and disclosure…

Start Licensing and Taxing the Data Sellers of the Internet Making Billions of Profit Dollars Mining “Free Taxpayer Data”–Attack of the Killer Algorithms Chapter 17 - “Occupy Algorithms”– Help Stop Inequality in the US

With IBMWatson at work at Citibank consumers will get further behind the 8 ball here as nobody’s checking the math! 

“The amount of market data high frequency traders are using as trading indicators continues to grow more rapidly than Facebook can add users or change its privacy policies, and vendors are scrambling to offer new technology that can help firms - and algos - find the data, sort it and leverage it. “

Those Algorithms have big teeth when used for financial gain and nobody knows where the money is…think about it and hopefully IBMWatson will put some audit trails in place too at Citibank.  So before you get to excited about “big data” at Citibank…watch this video about context and content and we want to make sure we are not in the world of the “unreadable” to where the banks even gain further advantages over consumers with Killer Algorithms…

Context is everything…

Come to think of it, the SEC and FINRA would be a very good place for IBM Watson on the government side, that is if our folks in Congress could ever pulls their heads out of the mud to see that is is real tool that government needs to keep up, as consumers get buried alive with Killer Algos from banks and corporations.  We have to fix and fetch all the “flawed data” they dump out there and on our time too.  Here’s another good video I have used several times before but it fits here for sure on on the money power and teeth of the algorithms used in financial and other markets and how they go rogue.  BD

Algorithms Shaping our World….

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)’s Watson computer, which beat champions of the quiz show “Jeopardy!” a year ago, will soon be advising Wall Street on risks, portfolios and clients.

Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-largest U.S. lender, is Watson’s first financial services client, IBM said yesterday. It will help analyze customer needs and process financial, economic and client data to advance and personalize digital banking.

IBM expects to generate billions in new revenue by 2015 by putting Watson to work. The technology giant has already sold Watson to health-care clients, helping WellPoint Inc. (WLP) and Seton Health Family analyze data to improve care. IBM executives say Watson’s skills -- understanding and processing natural language, consulting vast volumes of unstructured information, and accurately answering questions with humanlike cognition -- are also well suited for the finance industry.

Watson “can give an edge” in finance, said Stephen Baker, author of books The Numerati and Final Jeopardy, a Watson biography. “It can go through newspaper articles, documents, SEC filings, and try to make some sense out of them, put them into a context banks are interested in, like risk.”

In addition to Citigroup, Armonk, New York-based IBM has been working with financial institutions teaching Watson the language of Wall Street, and adding content including regulatory announcements, news and social media feeds. IBM won’t say which other institutions Watson is already working with.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-05/ibm-s-watson-computer-gets-wall-street-job-one-year-after-jeopardy-win.html

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