Bill Stead appointed to prestigious Council

Bill Stead, M.D., Vanderbilt University vice chancellor for health affairs and chief strategy and information officer within VU Medical Center, was recently appointed to a full term on the Council of the Institute of Medicine. VU has it.

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.

Make it Stop: Sci-tech news here and there

UT Pres. John Petersen says companies are lining-up to take residence in new Cherokee Farms sci-tech park and credits ORNL alliance with elevating UT's stature, KNS.

Don't let anyone tell you there's no interest in LifeSci here in NV: strong response to our story yesterday on KleinerPerkins-based Nodality establishing lab here. Story with Stanford ties does leave one wondering about similar cytometry work that might be underway at VU.

Speakin' of which, Frank Munger says Stanford Ph.D. George Farr will head the new UT-ORNL materials institute.

Great story in the CA this morn about Memphis entrepreneur Dick Gadomski founder of 35-year-old Process Solutions Inc. (PSI).

Resonant Vibes (Louisville) recruited nearly $900K to support RV's downloads service, drawing on KY Science & Technology Corp.'s KY Enterprise Fund, the Commonwealth Seed Capital Fund and private investors in Louisville, Lexington and NYC.

Health IT shouldn't be used to automate bad business processes, but to improve healthcare outcomes. Getahn Ward quotes VUMC's Bill Stead, co-author of widely noted National Research Council study.

Sorry, but this is just gettin' weird: WSJ's Mossberg today on using Google's new feature to track Friends.

Medtronic engineers are giving the time and the company's given the cash to help Memphis public-schools' teams build a robot for the FIRST competition. CA.

MDN reports GTx Inc. got a vote of confidence Jan. 22 when Medtronic board member and former Abbott Labs CEO Jack Schuler bought 8.3 percent of GTx stock. A pharma analyst gave the company high marks, partly because of its drug-apps pipeline, as projected to 2011.

AT&T Kentucky announced that Mary Pat Regan, who previously headed-up regulatory affairs in Illinois, has been named president of AT&T Kentucky.

TVA urged to convert flyash-spill area into long-term research and education center to study enviro-impact, KNS. Gov. Bredesen has asked TVA to find ways to recycle coal ash.