Dave Chase's blog

With the proliferation of mHealth apps, it was only a matter of time before healthcare providers would start prescribing apps as soon as apps proved to be as or more effective than prescription drugs. Happtique, a mobile health application store and app management solution startup will launch a trial of mRx™, the first program to enable physicians to prescribe mHealth apps to patients. You could call it an "app formulary" that complements (and competes) with a traditional drug formulary.
 
 
Pharma Looking Like a Cross Between Railroads and Newspapers

Avado was featured in the Wall Street Journal along with Mint and other hugely successful consumer applications. The article just focused on the consumer-facing side of Avado. Naturally, Avado's focus on the clinician and how they communicate with their patients is what enables this capability.
 

Dashboard Your Life

Tame the tangle of bills, finances and frequent-flier miles by visiting only a few websites instead of 20
 

 
The New York Times featured Avado among a select group of startups focused on improving health outcomes by enhancing communication between doctors and patients.
Vital Signs by Phone, Then, With a Click, a Doctor’s Appointment

If ever an industry were ready for disruption, it is the American health care industry. Entrepreneurs have responded by starting health care technology companies that are changing the way we interact with the entire system.
HOW IT WORKS: A doctor subscribes to Avado and gets a suite of tools that enable the easy creation of a Web site where patients can fill out intake forms, schedule appointments, ask for weekly medication reminders and track symptoms for chronic conditions.

 
A year ago, the Arab Spring rocked the world. Stateside, a less visible revolution is underway. The revolution could be called the Primary Care Spring. As social media played a role in the Arab Spring, there is a large group of primary care physicians who have rallied around the #FMRevolution hashtag. Perhaps as unlikely as a street vendor catalyzing the Arab Spring, a catalyst for the Primary Care Spring was IBM.
 
Like any revolution, there are many factors at play (not all of them can be addressed in one article). As a doctor would take a medical history, make a diagnosis and then layout a prescription with accompanying risk factors, I will use this same format for what I believe is fueling the revolution.

Matthew Herper‘s May 7th Forbes cover story reports on the billionaires at Cerner and Epic created by the HITECH Act. This was the $19 billion portion of the stimulus bill that is providing billions of subsidies for the adoption of electronic health records. When this kind of money is being spent, it begs the question whether health systems are making the best use of that investment in modernizing the U.S. healthcare system.
 
On the one hand, it’s hard to argue with modernizing the record-keeping in healthcare that isn’t far beyond how medicine was recorded in the time of Hippocrates. Many thousands of lives are saved as a result of this modernization (e.g., avoiding deadly prescription errors) and it is why there is strong support from the current and past administrations to modernize systems. On the other hand, the companies benefiting most from the stimulus are running on 30-year-old technology architectures that have two significant shortcomings.

 
In an earlier piece, I spoke about how the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) at Health & Human Services should ignore calls to water down the Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements they have proposed. The health (and budget) of the country depends on them sticking to their guns. As predicted, they would receive pushback from some folks who think the patient engagement requirements are too tough. In particular, they have focused on the requirement to have a mere 10% of patients engage. 

The federal government is on the cusp of leveling the playing field for healthtech startups. Health 2.0 events have shown an unprecedented wave of innovative healthtech startups have developed over the last few years. You can also see them at  demo day events that Blueprint Health, Healthbox, Rock Health and StartUp Health host. However, the health sector may be the single most challenging arena for startups.
I would argue nothing would result in population health improvement (while decreasing healthcare costs) more than having greater engagement by patients in the healthcare process. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) could catalyze an unprecedented wave of innovation with a stroke of a pen by strong inclusion of patient engagement requirements in the Meaningful Use requirements.

There is a great new podcast called the mHealth Zone hosted by Happtique's CEO (Ben Chodor) and President (Corey Ackerman). I have listened to all of their episodes and Ben and Corey do a great job. Recent episodes include my friend Milena Adamian, MD, Founder and Executive Director of Life Sciences Angel Network on "mHealth as an Investment Thesis: The Need, Promise & Mystery" and Dr.

Employers fed up with the annual "get less for more" health story when they get annual plan updates have taken matters into their own hands.  This has created one of the hottest sectors of the economy — onsite clinic providers. Also published on TechCrunch.

Wither health insurance? A former medical advisor to the Obama Administration who also is the brother of former Presidential Chief of Staff predicted in the New York Times that by 2020 health insurance companies will be extinct. Nearly two years ago, I penned a piece entitled Health Insurance's Bunker Buster. It outlined two key reasons that health insurance -- as we have known it the last couple decades -- will cease to exist.