The healthcare industry is facing a shakeup in the way it uses information technology, and this is creating all sorts of opportunities for entrepreneurs in New England. This was the take-home message from some of the top minds in the Health 2.0 field, who we gathered together last week for a jam-packed panel discussion at the XSITE event at Boston University.
We heard from expert panelists on the front lines of this transformation in healthcare—such as John Halamka, chief information officer of both CareGroup Health System/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, and Joseph Kvedar, the director of Partners HeathCare’s Center for Connected Health—about how their respective organizations are changing the way they use the Web and other technologies to improve the delivery of medical treatment, among other aspects of healthcare. And IBM’s Bruno Nardone, the company’s national segment leader for state and local healthcare, filled us in on how Big Blue is working in the Boston area on such initiatives as a virtual radiology theater to enable new ways for radiologists and their colleagues to interact online.
It’s no mistake that there was a big crowd of more than 100 people for the Health 2.0 panel; there’s a lot doing at the crossroads of IT and healthcare these days. For one, President Obama is calling for nationwide adoption of electronic health records to help control the rising costs of healthcare in the U.S., and his administration tucked $19 billion into the historic $787 billion stimulus package this year to cover some of the costs of the major undertaking. That’s a potential boon for Boston-area companies that provide electronic health records such as Athenahealth (NASDAQ:[[ticker:ATHN]]). Locally, we’ve seen a recent surge in startup activity in the Health 2.0 arena, including the launches of young firms like Connected Health and Life Image. (For details on more startups in this field, Wade delineated Boston’s growing Health 2.0 cluster about a year ago.)
Here are some of the bigger themes covered during the Health 2.0 discussion:
—Leveraging technology to reach patients wherever they need care. At Partners’ Center for Connected Health, Kvedar says, his team of doctors and innovators are searching for ways to
