Health IT leaders see challenges, opportunities

With billions in Stimulus funding in the pipeline for Health IT upgrades nationally, Thursday's NHCC gathering of informatics eagles in Nashville seemed to signal both local players' resolve to play pivotal roles in development and adoption of health IT, as well as the sizeable risk we run that all that spending won't change healthcare...enough. VU Medical Center's informatics guru, Bill Stead, M.D., insisted that the needed innovation won't materialize if executives throughout the healthcare system don't "stop playing defense around a model that's not sustainable." David Brailer, M.D., the like-minded former national Health IT coordinator for the latter Bush Administration, warned that would-be HIT providers must employ deeper understanding of how healthcare actually works, if they're to justify their share of the pie. Addressing the Nashville Health Care Council event, Bredesen F&A Commissioner Dave Goetz said the State of Tennessee should, according to NHCC's post-event release (pdf), 'build the infrastructure and the information sources necessary for the private sector to then use to drive value and innovation'. Stead, Goetz and others put all this in even stronger terms during an event last fall, as reported then by VNC. Brailer said he believes Nashville is one of the nation's few cities prepared to be a leader in HIT. NHCC President Caroline Young agreed, and stressed that NHCC's goal is to "help position our members" for such leadership. A related summit report by NashvillePost.com covered inadequate patient engagement in HIT diffusion, the need for standardization and the importance of demonstrating dramatic improvement in health care outcomes, flowing from IT investment. Further VNC coverage of informatics and related.

VU spin-out venture promotes Med Center ties

Informatics Corporation of America (ICA), the venture formed by Vanderbilt University three years ago, has been moving ahead with the ease only a well-capitalized company enjoys, picking up a couple of prominent customers as early proof of the value of healthcare informatics products initially developed at VU Medical Center. Enviably, ICA has exclusive right for "all aspects of marketing the products, future releases of new products, access to VMC resources and use of VMC as a reference site." Now, ICA CEO Gary Zegiestowsky (at left) is stepping-up promotion of the company's ties to Vanderbilt -- in the process, illuminating a board of directors that includes entrepreneur, investor and VUMC Vice Chancellor Harry Jacobson; VUMC Informatics Center Director and Associate Vice Chancellor Bill Stead; and, among others, Voyent Partners founder and former ENVOY CEO Fred Goad. In a release published yesterday in the wake of U.S. News & World Report's latest hospital "Honor Roll," in which VUMC ranked 15th overall, Jacobson says, “Our [VUMC's] performance in all categories—most importantly in our efficiency of operation and our ability to drive out variability of practice—has been heavily dependent on leveraging the tools ICA provides.” In a recent review of VUMC strategic priorities, Jacobson cited ICA's strategic role. ICA. originally named Star Technologies, is considered one of Nashville's best hopes for becoming "The Silicon Valley of Healthcare."

Informatics alliance for ICA

ICA, or Informatics Corporation of America, announced yesterday it has formalized and branded its process for integrating its technology with its growing number of partners, by establishing an integration-certification process. First to take on certified partner status is Ulrich Medical Concepts, a health IT company based in Paducah. Other ICA coverage here.

Memphis RHIO imperiled

Vanderbilt informatics professor Mark Frisse is a key source in the Kaiser Health News report on the uncertainty facing the MidSouth e-Health Alliance, the RHIO centered on Memphis, which has the past three-plus years had strong support from Gov. Phil Bredesen and deep involvement by Vanderbilt informatics experts.

Lipscomb U. informatics

Lipscomb University has unveiled a new informatics degree, details here. This complements their recently announced information security degree.

Informatics ranking

Middle Tennessee healthcare tech and tech-enabled companies Spheris, Healthcare Management Systems, Passport Health Communications, Healthstream and Cumberland Consulting Group all made it into the 2009 Top 100 ranking by Healthcare Informatics.

ICA Informatics

Nashville-based Informatics Corporation of America (ICA), the Vanderbilt spinout, today announced another tech alliance, this time with Mark Logic, which ICA says is the leading XML server provider, which is supposed to advantage ICA CareLogic data analytics, beginning in December. Related earlier coverage here.

Informatics Corp strengthens VU ties, aligns team

Informatics Corporation of America (ICA), the VU spinoff led by CEO Gary Zgiestowsky, today announced adding several board members and realigning executive staff. While former VU Medical Center vice chancellor Harry Jacobson was an advisor to the company, there were no VU members on the board, apparently. The VU additions to the board include Brett Sweet, CFO at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; John F. Manning, VUMC chief administration officer and senior associate dean for Operations and Administration; and Gordon R. Bernard, M.D., associate vice-chancellor for research and senior associate dean for clinical sciences, VUMC School of Medicine. Sandra H. Lillie, formerly vice president in sales with TeraMedica Healthcare Technology (HQ:Milwaukee), has joined as VP sales and development. Brian Higdon joined from Affinion Group (Stanford, Conn., direct marketing) and now heads ICA client services. John Tempesco becomes chief marketing officer.

Informatics Corp allies with CMS vendor

Nashville-based Informatics Corporation of America (ICA), a Vanderbilt University Medical Center spinout, announced today it will partner with Columbia, S.C.-based Companion Data Services to offer a unified electronic health record. Companion is a major vendor for the Federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and provides secure hosting and related services, while ICA provides a large suite of services for integration of clinical data by healthcare networks, health information exchanges and regional health information organizations.

Informatics stimulus

Informatics and genome sequencing get a boost as DOE stimulus funding flows to Oak Ridge NL and other agencies. GenomeWeb Daily News reports.

BCBSTN performance exec

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee announced that Tom Lundquist, M.D., at left, (Penn State, Johns Hopkins), formerly chief medical officer with Wexford Health Services (Pittsburgh, Pa.), is now in charge of monitoring healthcare providers performance and improving healthcare delivery. He'll rely heavily on informatics. Chattanoogan.com reports.

Governor's e-Health unit gets leader

VNC's report on the appointment of Will Rice, previously with Vanderbilt University regional health-information exchange and informatics initiatives, is now leading the e-Health office created by Gov. Phil Bredesen. The story's here.

C3 adds Estrin

Brentwood-based C3 Consulting LLC, the Nashville-based IT consulting and services firm, announced that Vicki Estrin has joined the firm as a "healthcare managing consultant," reporting to healthcare practice leader Helen Lane. During more than five years as a program manager at the VU Center for Better Health, Estrin was deeply involved in the Memphis-centered MidSouth eHealth Alliance project launched with Gov. Phil Bredesen and allies. In her VU role, Estrin worked closely with health IT and informatics influentials Bill Stead, M.D., and Mark Frisse, among others. Earlier in her career, Estrin worked for Healthcare Management Directions (once known as the "Smart Hospital Company") and Quorum Health Resources, among others.

ICA's 'meaningful use' seminar, March 31

Informatics Corporation of America -- profiled in a VNC article today -- is offering a seminar on benefits that can be extracted from adhering to "meaningful use" requirements for Health IT implementation. Details here.

HCA appoints first CHIO

In what seems a pretty clear signal that HCA, a key actor in the nation's healthcare delivery system, 'gets' the importance of data, privacy, transparency, outcomes, informatics and much more, the company today announced the appointment of its first chief health information officer. The fellow is Richard Tayrien, M.D., (at left), age 56, who was previously VP-CIS for Catholic Healthcare West. Here's the HCA release.

Informatics Corporation of America

Our recent story on ICA makes clear that there's at least one Health technology firm with an eye on the IPO market, over the horizon. Read about it here.

Vanderbilt Health Information Privacy Lab director honored

VU HIPL Director Bradley Malin (Steelers fan) was named among 85 researchers honored with a with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He's an assistant professor of biomedical informatics in the School of Medicine at VU. The White House release.

Venture Notes

A couple days ago, Brentwood-based Digital Reasoning CEO Tim Estes told the NTC Innovation Conference that Nashville needs some 'big boys' to overcome their risk aversion and step up to fund disruptive technologies. That's Music City's only hope of seizing the lead in healthcare informatics and e-discovery, he argued. He said Nashville's concentration of healthcare information and publishing and entertainment content represents a deep reserve of data analogous to petroleum reserves. Move aggressively now, he warned, or risk the "refinery" being located somewhere else. He spoke in generalities about a planned DRS spin-off and signalled he'd probably raise the money outside Nashville. Note: A 2001 Petra Capital report suggested momentum in key industries like IT, but said most deals are financed outside Nashville.

AT&T, which has a huge and growing footprint in Tennessee, announced earlier this month it has joined a Web 3.0 investment fund focusing on So. Cal. deals. AT&T and State government are in league on broadband, video franchise reform, telehealth and many other initiatives (for hire, of course). Maybe AT&T could be persuaded to bring a little Web 3.0 money and acumen to Middle Tennessee?

Nashville juice flowing in Health IT

Eighteen Nashville healthcare and technology executives share their ideas for seizing Nashville's momentum in the Health IT and informatics arena. Our first story deals with Nashville's rising level of pro-Health IT activity, including tantalizing comments about a start-up that one VC (who is associated with one of the new TNInvestco funds) says is definitely bound for Nashville. Our second story provides C-suite executives' views on what Nashville should do, to seize the moment.

Nashville Health IT garners awards

We had to chuckle, reading the headline on a Nov. 25 release from VU spinoff portfolio company Informatics Corporation of America (ICA), in which the company announced it had taken the Gartner-linked "2008 Healthcare IT Summit by Storm, Winning Two of Five Award Categories." You gotta love such unbridled enthusiasm, which, these days, could only arise where there's plenty of cash on-tap. It's not just still-small startups that are bragging about their tech expertise. A few weeks ago, it was venture-backed Emdeon blowing its horn about winning SAP/Business Object's Business Intelligence Excellence Awards. Emdeon is owned by private-equity players General Atlantic LLC and Hellman & Friedman LLC.