This is really kind of sad to see the same toll we face over here with problems with money and banks hitting the NHS too. One industry destroying another one pretty much and all suffer. London has become it’s own island of
sorts to where portions are where only the rich and wealthy go and the rest, well I guess is where their 99% live. The English are not taking this lightly and are protesting as well, and why wouldn’t they. Many jobs will be lost and rational of care will be more widespread. The country is counting on the “haves” to buy insurance to leave what is left of the outsourced services to the poor and the article states it will be a 3rd class service. You can read in the comments below they are not too hot on United Healthcare and their efforts in the UK as a private provider. They say also that due to contracts being given out that the care is not improving either and nobody knows how many hospitals will be closed.
They expect private providers to cherry pick patients and leave the worst to the care of the NHS, sound familiar, just what we have in the US when they can get away with it. Israel said a few years ago that their big mistake was letting private insurers into the country and apologized to their citizens, so hopefully they don’t end up with the same mess we have here in the US as it is cold, calculating business with many working on flawed formulas and data just to make money anymore. This is not the people who work there but rather those who run such companies. BD
The act comes into effect on Monday. Very few people understand its implications but it will affect each of us arguably more than any other legislation passed in our lifetimes. It is the final stage in the systematic dismantling of the NHS – a process that began about 25 years ago – carried out by stealth.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 is virtually impenetrable but the main thrust of it is: primary care trusts and strategic health authorities will be disbanded. In their place, clinical commissioning groups – also known as GP consortia – will control about £60bn of the NHS budget and commission local services. Commissioning will take place through competitive tendering. NHS contracts will be opened to the voluntary and private sectors. Already, £250m of NHS services have been forced open, with 105 private firms granted contracts. This year, a further £750m of services will be tendered. The NHS annual budget is more than £100bn – there are huge profits to be made for private healthcare companies.
The NHS, as we know it, will effectively be abolished just short of its 65th birthday. The marketisation of the NHS has driven up costs and produced worse results. The track records of some private providers now entering the NHS, such as UnitedHealth Group, are not impressive.
We now know that more than 20 NHS trusts, comprising about 60 hospitals, are at risk of going bust. This is, in large part, due to the financing of extortionate PFI debts projected to rise above £79bn despite the original cost of the hospitals being around £11bn. The rapid restructuring of South London Healthcare Trust, with the downgrading of neighbouring, solvent Lewisham hospital, is a template that can be used across the country. No hospital is safe from closure.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/30/health-act-means-death-of-nhs
The data selling business has reached an all time frenzy and for lack of better words has become an epidemic in the US and maybe the world for that matter. When I say epidemic I mean just that. Value is NOT created with every SQL statement or query that someone creates with data bases, learn that fact early and be aware. If you read the web we are now seeing articles talking about “fake data scientists”. Would there be articles about this topic if there were not fake ones running around out there, of course not. There are. As a side point here I made a satire post about 3 years ago about data selling and I’ll be darned if it is not almost true about needing a 12 step program of it’s own. I guess you could call this yet one more example of satire becoming reality. This post was a hit around Forbes and a few other major publications:) 
makes errors as the social networks all want your “real names” so they can make sure they are selling data about you and not someone else. See my Google Plus story, they told me or rather their algorithm told me my “real” name was not Google compliant. It was Chapter 52 of my series called “The Attack of the Killer Algorithms”. 
in the data business too and they sell data and that’s partially how they stay alive as Humedica might be buying data from them too or vice versa. Humedica also has a banker in there too with Leerink Swann so this is posed to make money and now they have United analytics and data if they want to add more, as subdiaries of big corporations certainly share an sell tons of data. 
how much of this is in fact a waste of money but we pay for this with insurance premiums and services we receive.. Some Australian bankers made the comment that half of the analytics bought will be a total waste of investment and I agree with them on that point for sure, especially in light of what I am seeing with corporate USA behavior in thinking that every model and formula has value, they are absolutely behind the 8 ball and furthermore, why should any consumer trust any of the devices and software that sells data?
We end up just swapping spit if you will as some of these hospitals will end up finding that CMS perhaps shorted them in some kind of reimbursement too. I report on all this stuff and it goes on and on and on. We can sit around and capture and analyze stats forever and that’s what’s happening today and luckily some of the “human” efforts are working with educating patients. One doctor in this article made the comment about “dead patients not returning” and when you read all the formulas and numbers tossed out there, it does make you wonder. 
Again some hospitals have higher mortality rates and see sicker patients…it’s the old HHS digital illiteracy in thinking the mathematical algorithms can solve all. I still could never figure this one out before the election with the letter sent out with even sucking in Holder from DOJ as one month showed higher Medicare expenditures…not understanding algorithms is what I say…and still stuck on “witch hunt” methodologies with bringing nothing to the table and comments like mine were not unique, it was all over the web as it just stuck out like a soar thumb with lack of knowledge and more like someone scared of their job? 
can malfunction with an extremely high reading. LifeScan is the company that makes the product. The machine still works for lower readings. Be aware if you are uploading information to your PHR via the unit as you might get a warning that your glucose levels are very high. Again the low readings seem to be ok but the high readings is where the malfunction comes in. Getting a new unit looks to be pretty easy with using the serial number on the back of the unit. BD 
few months ago on how it differs from current products on the market. It’s not cheap though as anything new goes for more money and at almost $9 a tablet, it will be interesting to see how it sells.
for the drug including a cardiovascular outcomes trial, an enhanced pharmacovigilance program, a bone safety study and two pediatric studies, the agency said in a statement on its website.
well as VistA working with other commercial medical record systems. Now, scrapping ALTHA and getting another system before integrating or aggregating with the VA yet adds more to the challenge. If ALTHA was that bad, why were they not discussing canning it sooner one might ask? I think that’s a good question. Now we come back to the original question about moving medical records from AHLTA into the VistA system, that is if the DOD will “choose” VistA as their medical records system. Both systems are written in MUMPS as the back end which is a big plus without having to do data base work conversions with tables, etc. Some of the front end is done in dot net, just as some of the commercial versions of VistA have been converted. 
so again adding yet another commercial program to replace AHLTA is a huge cost. 
correct and no doubt I’m sure all will be in compliance when another inspection is conducted. The one item that stands out more so than others is allowing the anesthesiologists the option of using their own intubation equipment and the inspection found that it has not been sterilized properly. Five charts were also deemed illegible. Hoag and the Hoag Orthopedic Institute have always been top rated by patients so I’m sure the matters found by the inspection have been addressed and as the article states Medicare funding was threatened but that is the case with all inspection violations. BD 
Shoot I even wrote to the NIH, FDA, and AdvaMed (the lobby group for devices) suggesting they at least entertain this methodology. In today’s world if you don’t have a suggestion up your sleeve, it’s hard to make progress. I sent the idea off to Elizabeth Warren too so I don’t think I missed anyone and included the FTC as well. They all don’t get it, and that’s a pretty big crowd of bliss that’s forming here. It’s amazing that the data selling in the US continues to go largely unmonitored and that fiction and error factors continue to erode accuracy in some areas for the sake of making money. 
, but it’s over cooked and you can hide formulas in code and in models to make money and others will never see it unless the government takes on the task of getting smarter and hiring some anti Quants to decipher it for them and really prosecute a white collar crime like it should be. In the meantime you just get a lot of talk and garbage from those who have no clue on how all this was built and what to do to remedy. Scares the daylights out of me and it’s gets worse every day. 
of this, keeping humans in here too. I don’t care what anyone says with technology being able to do it all you still need that human touch in here combined with technologies. Just think of it yourself if you were in the position of being discharged, would you like 100% machine communications? Again it’s a balance of making it work correctly and not being impersonal. You only get one if you are a patient at high risk of being admitted. 
EHRs that has already signed a license agreement with MMR Global back in December of 2012 as I posted (link below) relative to the protected company patents, so it appears there’s no apparent issues to stop the exchange of any medical data and the company has worked with MMR to bring this interchange to light. 4Medica is the first to work with MMR, however the HL7 exchange format will be available to any medical records system that uses HL7 so that should be about all of them. 
will be directly deposited into the MyMedicalRecords PHR. At the option of the patient, the system will also be able to push PDFs and other personally managed health information from the patient's confidentially maintained files directly into an EMR or EHR. The April 15th deployment is part of a joint development effort with a 
is close to making over a billion a year just selling your data. See how this all grows and makes profits for the big companies? We won’t notice much as far as what we pay though as new distribution patterns are set up and the best for the consumer out of this deal is the availability of a few more drugs. Walgreens will be able to take stock as well and own up to 23% of AmerisourceBergen. 
telling all to “hurry up” with Health IT…you can clearly see where the technology and political disconnect lies here without having someone at the top who has some technology in their background, but that’s what we have. I said back in 2009 that to have someone in charge of HHS without some substantial IT in their background would simply eat that person up and that’s what we have, nothing personal, just the way the world and technology works today. 
West Wireless Institute and now the Chief Academic Officer of Scripps Health. I first started covering some of his presentations dating back to 2008 and 2010 with TED and agreed with him back then that wireless was somewhat forgotten along the line and perhaps everyone was just not ready yet. He was also involved with the Scripps personalized medicine program that began back in 2008. 
a heart attack ring tone to give advance warning and Colbert says, “oh yes insurance companies will give a discount to those wearing devices”…and then again we return to the “casket ad”…pretty good IF kept in context with allowing people to use technology with living a normal life as one thing we all have to be aware of is that alerts and monitors activate a sense of urgency and how many can we really live with before one goes nuts? 
eradicating polio and other vaccine efforts. Somebody cancelled a meeting with Gates to see Obama and there’s a little laugh. Nobody says who it was. This was recorded at POLITICO’s Playbook Cocktails first annual event. He talks about models being needed. He says government is dysfunctional where people don’t know what their budgets are. “We might have money or we might not” is what he says is part of where the problems lie and he’s referencing the sequester. 
If you happened to watch the PBS special called “The Untouchables, Too Big to Jail” from what is shown here not only was the obvious not touched by there was no mention anywhere of the DOJ even looking at the “models” used to create the sub prime loans. It’s not the guy who wrote the software that all the banks purchased, it’s what they did with it. 
wants one to “work the numbers” for the models. Again this is all over and in healthcare too, and Quants get paid a lot of money for writing models and when things come crashing down, who do they go to, the Quants. Now there’s a point in time too where the Quants say “no” and that’s what this is all about, refusing to write models and code for money with no concern about ethics and the impact on the general consumer. Here’s the