May 2011
Memorial Day weekend marks the official beginning of summer—meaning the 3 B’s for many people: BBQs, the beach and bathing suits! For the one in three Americans who are obese and even those who are struggling to lose five pounds, this often means a renewed focus on dieting. Either we experience it firsthand or we know someone who has struggled unsuccessfully to lose weight, trying all the latest fads and exercises.
Tara Parker-Pope recently reported in the popular Well column in the New York Times that a study found that the decline in physical activity in the workplace over the past five decades has greatly contributed to the nation’s weight gain. According to the article, the shift in the types of jobs we perform has led to a decline of about 120 to 140 calories a day in physical activity, which tracks closely to the nation’s weight gain. The report was published in the journal PLoS One.
While sitting in front of computers has definitely contributed to the obesity epidemic, we shouldn’t overlook the role that diet, exercise and interestingly, genetics plays in weight loss. Many people unknowingly diet incorrectly by selecting an approach that is not compatible with their metabolism. My client Interleukin Genetics has developed a scientifically-proven genetic test that identifies genes (via a quick and painless cheek swab) that are known to impact fact and carb metabolism. The test details whether an individual will respond best to a low fat, low carb or balanced diet and based on these results, outlines the best exercise regimen and suggests the most appropriate foods to eat.
Last year, Stanford University presented clinical data at a major medical meeting which demonstrated that individuals who used this test and followed diets based on their gene type lost up to three times more weight than those who followed a diet inappropriate for their genotype.
So bottom line takeaway: while sitting in front of a computer all day may have contributed to the obesity epidemic, we should think of it as only one piece of the puzzle and not overlook the role of exercise, diet and genetics.
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend!
Tags:
Interleukin Genetics,
medical public relations,
New York Times,
PLoS One,
public relations
Posted by Lauren Arnold on May 31, 2011 at 9:37 AM
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Please join us in congratulating our Agency's very own COO/CFO Ari Milstein on landing a top spot in the Boston Business Journal 2011 CFO of the Year Program.
Ari is among 17 finalists in five categories to earn this prestigious distinction. Fellow finalists include financial executives at Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Hologic, YMCA, Partners Healthcare and Atlas Venture. Ari has made innumerable contributions to the financial and operational performance at Schwartz in his six year tenure at our PR Agency.
Winners will be announced on July 19 at an event featuring a keynote address by Massachusetts State Treasurer Steven Grossman.
We'll be rooting you on, Ari. Congratulations!
Posted by Risa Goldman Burgess on May 25, 2011 at 1:13 PM
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By Shweta Agarwal (@shwettaa)
During a recent visit to my doctor’s office, I was asked to fill out medical and personal information that would then be entered into the healthcare system electronically. You might think this is a routine exercise to gather patient information so any doctor’s office I visit within my hospital network will have the information, right? Not really. What seems like an easy process of entering information into a database can often be a nightmare for the IT staff responsible for integrating that information across disparate databases. For example, while one doctor’s office might format a phone number in the system as 1234567890, another might store it as (877) 456-7890, requiring software engineers to write custom code--costing time and money.
Integrating varied healthcare systems is a huge issue these days as healthcare organizations typically rely on multiple computer systems for everything from billing records to patient tracking. The ability to communicate and share clinical data when one system receives new data is critical.
Although most of us working with healthcare vendors are familiar with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA, not many of us are as aware of healthcare integration standards like Health Level 7 (HL7), which find a quick solution to healthcare integration woes and are the most widely deployed standards across the healthcare industry. These standards have successfully eliminated the headache of custom designing and programming on the part of both the sending and receiving application vendors. And they have made it easier for a doctor’s office to gather and process information.
While there are many vendors with products that ease the integration pain, Schwartz is working with two experts in this space. iNTERFACEWARE simplifies HL7 integration and helps organizations integrate disparate systems and applications. As a result, hospitals and healthcare vendors are able to manage the exchange of electronic health data without needing to replace existing systems.
Boston Software Systems offers an automated solution that allows healthcare organizations to quickly respond to changing business requirements, to integrate applications and bridge the gaps in functionality no matter what system is used. Automating time consuming and error-prone processes and tasks that involve the integration of devices, applications and systems lays the foundation for larger technology demands.
As our clients can attest, integration is a foundation for health reform. Although many of the core systems at hospitals were built more than a decade ago, they are in place because they meet the operational needs of healthcare providers. Thanks to standards like HL7, these systems can become more efficient, the industry can benefit from advances such as electronic medical records, and your information will go where it’s supposed to go.
Tags:
automation,
Boston Software Systems,
healthcare IT,
HIPAA,
HL7,
integration,
iNTERFACEWARE
Posted by Davida Dinerman on May 23, 2011 at 12:26 PM
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Last week, we attended MassMEDIC’s event “Use of Social Media during Regulatory Uncertainty.” Although results from our social media survey suggest only 23 percent of respondents are actively using social media, you would never know it by the attendees in the room. Across the conference center, marketers, lawyers and regulatory professionals alike were armed with smartphones, feverishly tweeting and updating Facebook with highlights from the event.
A hot topic on the Twitter newsfeeds was how to balance legal liability with authentic interaction. With the lack of FDA guidelines, attendees questioned the panel on topics ranging from monitoring and reporting adverse events to removing off-label or inappropriate user content. The attorneys on the panel – Stephanie Philbin, Counsel in the FDA Group at Goodwin Procter LLP, and David Harlow, The Harlow Group LLC – shared examples of FDA investigations into claims of misbranding and adulteration that they became of aware of through social media channels.
Legal and regulatory’s biggest fear is losing control of the message. However, as Harlow (@healthblawg) noted in his presentation, medical device and pharma organizations can limit liability by defining roles and responsibilities in social media policies and procedures and the presenters shared several tips to help ensure there are platforms in place to safely engage in social media:
• Partner with your legal and regulatory team – Involve your legal and regulatory experts early in the planning process and make them an active member of your social media team.
• Develop your own guidelines – Don’t wait for the FDA to release official social media guidelines that could be months or years away. Develop your own clearly defined social media policy and involve key stakeholders in its planning.
• Adopt a risk management mindset – Even without formal guidance the FDA is actively monitoring social media channels like YouTube, blogs and Twitter for infractions by healthcare and medical device companies. And your competitors may be more than willing to blow the whistle on you! Be vigilant about ensuring that the information distributed through social media channels cannot be construed as misbranding or off-label promotion – just as you would with a press release or another marketing tool.
If you follow these tips you might just find you are able to work together to find that happy balance and bravely venture into social media.
By Kristin Villiotte (@kristinvill) and Krystin Hayward (@Krystin29)
Tags:
FDA,
FDA social media guidelines,
medical device PR,
Schwartz Communications,
social media
Posted by Lauren Arnold on May 20, 2011 at 10:34 AM
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In part two of our extended conference recap, we explore some of the panel themes that were up for discussion at the First Annual Health Tech 2011 conference in Boston last Friday, May 13. The emerging and converging sectors of technology, mobile, and social have begun to transform how healthcare is defined
Innovation in Wellness: Applying Game Dynamics to Healthcare
Throughout the entrepreneur panel sessions, an overarching theme emerged around the gamification of healthcare. Maintaining good health requires daily commitment and action over time but most consumers tend to have short attention spans. To combat this challenge, companies like Earndit and Shape Up are applying game dynamics to make the platform more engaging and easy to use, while adding tangible incentives and peer-to-peer support systems to encourage sustained adoption.
Innovation in Healthcare Delivery: Virtual Consults to Become Commonplace
Many of the “buzz” startups are B2C, but there is a tremendous need and opportunity for start-ups designing tools and products for healthcare providers as well. To that end, Ron Dixon director of the Virtual Practice Project at Massachusetts General Hospital is developing a kiosk-based system for automating aspects of the care delivery process to improve efficiency and better manage patient populations. In addition, we have yet to fully realize the promise of telemedicine. According to new data released by Manhattan Research, 7 percent of physicians are using video-conferencing tools to consult and follow-up with patients. American Well (Schwartz client) CEO Roy Schoenberg was represented on the panel discussing innovation in healthcare delivery and he spoke eloquently about how we can now democratize access to healthcare with a “live telehealth consult” facilitated with nothing more than your standard web browser.
Innovation in Mobile Health: Sticky Apps Build Sustainable Value
Smartphones are now ubiquitous and mobile applications can be used to ensure regular health monitoring. The beauty of mobile is that it enables continuous feedback loops to improve application functionality and provide a means for consumer-vendor collaboration. For example, RunKeeper was originally developed to track running routes, but it evolved to provide overall fitness/workout tracking at the urging of its dedicated user community. Other lifestyle-based mobile apps like Lollihop aim to be easily integrated into one’s current routine to encourage healthy decision-making.
Innovative Engagement Platforms for Behavior Change: Leveraging Rewards and Social Networks to Influence Health
The Internet has revolutionized access to medical information but patients need more tools to connect with each other and they naturally want to build online communities of like-minded health supporters. That is why sites like PatientsLikeMe and Inspire strike a chord. None of the panelists disagreed that changing consumer behavior continues to be a significant uphill battle, but there was vigorous debate about what types of carrot vs. stick methods are best at engaging consumers—offering both long-term value and sustainability. According to the many start-ups playing in this space—Health Prize and Health Month included—the key to consumer engagement is removing as many barriers as possible and incentivizing healthy choices. Borrowing a page from the Farmville playbook, if social gaming principles can make casual gaming wildly addictive, it stands to reason that it might also apply to making healthy behaviors “Stickk.”
Early Stage Investment in Healthcare
Meanwhile, it’s one thing to “do good” (purely subjective) and empower consumers to make healthy choices, but at the end of the day, investors want to see sustainable ROI on both ends—how does the product deliver value to both the end user and the investor?
Social networks, mobile technologies, consumer engagement, and game dynamics will play an increasingly meaningful role in healthcare in the years to come. Charles Huang highlighted these points in his close to the conference by mentioning a new wave of healthcare specific accelerators and incubators starting this year – Blueprint Health and Rock Health – that will help entrepreneurs develop their businesses and products more rapidly through mentorship and capital.
For additional social media insights from conference participants, check out the #CIHT11 feed on Twitter.
Tags:
conference session,
healthcare,
healthcare IT,
investors
Posted by Jenny Ng on at 10:26 AM
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More than 150 entrepreneurs, investors and industry leaders attended the first annual Health Tech 2011 conference in Boston last Friday, May 13. Sponsored by CareInnovators and chaired by Charles Huang from Spark Capital, the all-day event explored how new technologies have a huge opportunity to re-engineer how healthcare is delivered—lowering cost, improving access and increasing quality. Bottom line: the rapidly rising cost of healthcare is a global crisis and there is no clear end in sight. Total U.S. healthcare expenditure represents more than 17 percent of GDP and is projected to reach 9.3 percent by 2019. Innovation is our only hope if we are to tackle the many challenges that threaten to bankrupt even the most industrialized of nations.
Amidst the U.S. healthcare crisis, however, there are a confluence of factors that create a ripe environment for health tech investment and entrepreneurial success. According to Chris Tsai, co-founder of CareInnovators, the healthcare industry is—today, more than ever—open to technological advances. The government injection of HITECH stimulus funds has opened that door and there is no turning back. Consumers are increasingly seeking out health information online and there are a greater number of delivery platforms (mobile, tablet). From the investor point of view, consumer-facing health tech offers lower capital requirements, fewer regulatory hurdles and faster exits.
Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School professor and “godmother of consumer driven healthcare,” presented an insightful opening keynote on the many opportunities for innovation in the wake of healthcare reform. Fundamentally, solving the cost problem requires a shift in either supply or demand for healthcare. There are several key areas where entrepreneurs can help shift this dynamic.
In the realm of demand:
• Health insurance exchanges (and its IT infrastructure)
• New sources for online medical information
• Support communities for patients
In the realm of supply:
• Retail medical clinics
• Telemedicine
• Intra-US medical travel
• Bundled care (and its IT infrastructure)
The DIY Generation: Rise of Patient-Driven Healthcare
The second keynote by forward-thinking physician trailblazer Dr. Jay Parkinson re-affirmed that consumers are ready to embrace health tech if it enables them to schedule an appointment with their doctor more efficiently, receive the personalized care that they rightly deserve and connect online with other patients like themselves. They simply want to know “what’s in it for me” and “does it make my life easier?”
When Dr. Parkinson completed his residency, he started his own Internet-based practice in 2007 with $1,500 and an iPhone. Within the first three months, he had more than 300 patients. He made house calls and e-visits, accepting PayPal payments but not insurance. With an overhead of about 10 percent, he was almost instantaneously profitable and clearly benefited from early adoption of technology to forge a new model of patient-centric healthcare delivery.
After embracing early success and co-founding Hello Health—a web-based platform for patient communication, practice management and EHR—Dr. Parkinson moved onto his current third act, Future Well. Future Well aims to develop exciting applications for early adopter healthcare providers and institutions who believe in creating engaging doctor-patient experiences. From Dr. Parkinson’s point of view, most of us spend one hour a year with our doctor unless we are chronically ill, but good health happens in the other 8,759 hours. Applications that make the doctor-patient relationship more meaningful will positively impact health and the Internet is a powerful tool that can enable better health across our communities.
In part two of this extended conference recap, we’ll delve deeper into the key takeaways from the entrepreneurial panel presentations.
Are there other areas of healthcare where innovation is critical for shifting supply or demand? How can we further encourage patient engagement in healthcare?
We welcome your comments below, or tweet your thoughts to the Schwartz Healthcare IT Practice Group @SchwartzPRx.
Tags:
conference session,
healthcare,
healthcare reform,
venture capital
Posted by Jenny Ng on May 19, 2011 at 6:45 PM
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Thanks to all our great participants who took part in last week’s social media event held with the MassMEDIC. Our own Healthcare EVP Jim Weinrebe along with Carissa Caramanis O'Brien (@carissaO), president of Red Box Communications; David Saggio (@dsaggio), digital marketing strategist; David Harlow (@healthblog), attorney and author of healthblawg; and Stephanie Philbin, counsel at Goodwin Procter LLP, all provided great commentary on best practices and case studies on navigating the social media waters during this time of regulatory uncertainty. Our interim survey results on what the medical device industry is doing today in terms of social media to engage customers and prospects was also presented.
Interim results show that while only 23 percent of respondents actively use social media, 46 percent of respondents are tentatively navigating the waters. More than half of the respondents said that the absence of FDA guidelines have impacted their use of social media tools. This number could shrink though in the coming months however with 50 percent of respondents saying their companies have adopted a social media strategy.
It’s not too late to participate in the survey and we’d love to hear what your company is doing today and what it plans to do in the future as it relates to social media. As a participant in the survey, you will receive the final report on how your industry peers are leveraging social media marketing.
We had a full house at the event, underscoring that this is an important topic that the medical device industry is eager to discuss and learn more about. Stay tuned for video showcasing highlights from the event!
Tags:
FDA,
FDA social media guidelines,
MassMedic,
Schwartz Communications,
social media
Posted by Lauren Arnold on at 1:45 PM
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The event at MassMEDIC on Friday morning promises to be a lively discussion on a topic that everyone is interested in these days—the use of social media. FDA draft guidance has yet to be made public and while some device companies are engaging with stakeholders via social media to various degrees, others sit on the sidelines and wait to hear from the FDA.
We will be sharing the preliminary results of a survey on what your healthcare marketing peers are doing in terms of social media as well as hear firsthand from experts in healthcare communications regulatory guidelines and industry luminaries on what they are seeing in the marketplace.
Joining Jim Weinrebe, EVP of our healthcare PR practice, we are thrilled to have Carissa Caramanis O'Brien (@carissaO), president of Red Box Communications and VP at the ProMed Network, talk about her experiences helping companies leverage social media and promote their brands. Carissa is a regular podcaster on the ProMed Network and she also serves as the Director of Communications for the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation.
Also joining us as a speaker is David Saggio (@dsaggio), a digital marketing strategist who has been providing interactive strategy and consultation to medical device and diagnostic and pharma companies for more than 15 years. As a consultant, David focuses on the use of interactive and social marketing to brand, market and educate patients and healthcare professionals in the medical arena. David was a speaker at the FDA hearings on the Internet and social marketing, discussing how social communities help companies change the standard of care and communication with physicians, surgeons and nurses.
We hope to see you Friday for this informative and timely event! If you can’t attend, please do take our brief survey and automatically be registered to receive the final report on how your industry peers are leveraging social media marketing today.
Tags:
FDA,
FDA guidelines,
medical device communications,
medical device marketing,
medical device public relations,
social media
Posted by Lauren Arnold on May 10, 2011 at 3:58 PM
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If you ever wondered what your healthcare marketing peers are doing about social media in light of the lack of guidelines from the FDA, take part in our discussion on this very topic.
Take a brief survey on what your company is – or is not - doing in terms of social media and automatically be registered for the final report on how your industry peers are leveraging social media marketing in a period of regulatory uncertainty.
In addition, on Friday, May 13, Schwartz Healthcare Executive Vice President Jim Weinrebe will be participating in a panel discussion along with David Harlow, lawyer and author of HealthBlawg, and Jacqueline Klosek, senior counsel at Goodwin Proctor, to discuss the survey results. Hosted by MassMEDIC, the panel promises to be a lively discussion taking into account the legal, communications and regulatory sides of the healthcare social media equation.
We hope you can join us for this breakfast event to discuss this important and timely topic.
Event Details
Use of Social Media During Regulatory Uncertainty
Friday, May 13, 2011
8:00am-10:00am
Waltham Wood Corporate Center
860 Winter Street, Waltham, MA 02451
Register today!
Tags:
FDA,
healthcare public relations,
PR agency,
social media
Posted by Lauren Arnold on May 6, 2011 at 4:30 PM
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Industry is still waiting to see what the FDA is going to counsel but regardless it will still be up to healthcare marketers and their advisors on how to utilize social media effectively as a viable communications vehicle.
Participate in a survey on social media usage sponsored by the Massachusetts Medical Device Industry Council (MassMEDIC), the voluntary grassroots association of medical device manufacturers and associated companies in the Commonwealth. Weigh in today before it's too late! http://tinyurl.com/3pkcvvw
Jim Weinrebe, an EVP and co-leader of our healthcare PR practice at Schwartz, will be sharing the survey results at a panel discussion on the "Use of Social Media During Regulatory Uncertainty" on Friday, May 13. Hope to see you there!
Posted by Risa Goldman Burgess on May 2, 2011 at 10:06 AM
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