Healthcare social media (Photo credit: Dee Speed)

Noticing that your posts on your Facebook, Twitter, or other social media outlets sometimes don't do as well as they normally do? When exactly are the best times and days for you to publish your healthcare posts so the most patients and new leads will see them?[read more]

Psychiatric disorder / shutterstock

In a July 2011 editorial entitled “Vanishing clinical psychopharmacology” in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, authors Gerven and Cohen point out that, in 2010, only two medications “with a broadly defined psychiatric or neurological indication” were approved by the FDA. Now there's worse to come.[read more]

At a time when mobile health initiatives and mobile apps are flooding the market, the Federal Communications Commission has shown enough interest to appoint Matthew Quinn as Director of Healthcare Initiatives. Mr. Quinn will have expanding responsibilities at his new position.[read more]

Patient experience / shutterstock

There’s a huge gap “between hospital management and frontline clinicians with respect to improving patient satisfaction,” according to a study out of Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). It seems as if “patient satisfaction” is everyone’s destination, but few hospitals have a map to get from here to there.[read more]

Singapore

William Haseltine, chairman and president of ACCESS Health International and author of Affordable Excellence: The Singapore Health Care System, attributes Singapore’s ability to control health care costs to balancing a highly regulated market and managing a successful social wellness program.[read more]

On this trip I met with clinicians, healthcare executives, EMR developers and IT staff from some of the finest institutions in the country (including the world famous Karolinska Institute). I heard the same stories I hear almost everywhere I go in the developed world—stories of healthcare systems with perverse incentives that make sick care preferable to prevention; that inhibit innovation while maintaining the status quo; that fail to meet the needs of a growing population of patients who have increasing expectations and an ever higher incidence of chronic disease.[read more]

Health Start-Ups!

The movement toward price transparency that’s sweeping various parts of the healthcare system has now reached medical device sales via a new e-commerce startup that connects medical device companies with health systems looking to purchase stable implant technologies.[read more]

Recently I ran across a great presentation by the folks at Pathfinder Software entitled “Agile Development for FDA Regulated Medical Software.” Pathfinder’s engineers help explain why the FDA doesn’t know or really care about what software methodology you use as long as you ensure that the output of your development approach results in high quality, safe, reliable software.[read more]

Health Start-Ups!

Next Wave serves as a strategic adviser or investor to a few companies already, including Ohio-based Health Care DataWorks and cloud-based search and booking solution provider HealthPost. “I would say most of the investments are under $5 million,” Nelson said. “If partners are needed, then we have access to those relationships as well.”[read more]

Mobile Health Around the Globe

Apple is showing off its marketing chops, and tugging at our heartstrings, in a new video posted to its YouTube channel. Called “Making a difference. One app at a time,” the 10-minute video depicts some of the ways the company’s devices and various iOS apps are solving problems across the world, starting with rural access to healthcare.[read more]

And, aside from the cost of bringing the drugs to market, and aside from their. . .well. . . seeming uselessness. . .the third reason companies are gun-shy about psychotropic medications is something major: we just don’t understand the brain well enough.[read more]

I lost my phone!

This morning, I was halfway to work when I felt for the phone in the inside pocket of my jacket. Not there. I palpated other pockets none of which contained the desired item. The car seat was bare. I did not fear the most dreaded explanation, that being that the phone was mistakenly left in Starbucks and purloined by a Frappuccino felon.[read more]