This is David Williams, co-founder of MedPharma Partners and author of the Health Business Blog.  I’m speaking today with Chuck Parker,  Executive Director of the Continua Health Alliance. This is the transcript of my recent podcast interview with Continua Health Alliance Executive Director Chuck Parker. Continua Health Alliance is a non-profit, open industry alliance of more than 200 of the world’s finest healthcare and technology companies joining together in collaboration to improve the quality of personal healthcare.

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On Mar. 18, 2011, the Harper government in Canada announced its “Open Government” strategy. Although it appears to have been borrowed from President Barack Obama’s 'Open Government' directive, the piecemeal and toothless approach adopted in Canada falls short of the openness that has become the default position of all government departments in the United States. To follow the US example, openness in health information would require directing Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada first to be part of the approach and then to develop and report on how they will concretely achieve more “open government.”

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In the first part of this article, the author detailed how pharma and biotech companies, along with the federal government, provide the majority of funding for biomedical research in the U.S.  In this second part, he turns his attention to a number of other sources, both for-profit and nonprofit, that also provide the capital that drives drug discovery and development work. Read More »

The Veterans Affairs Department has tried agile development for the first time and pronounced it good despite what it might consider hissing from the Government Accountability Office, which says the department could have done it better. Read More »

Todd Park, CTO of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), joined an enthusiastic audience at SXSW to talk about the power of open data and innovation to improve health. His role is not to run technology for HHS, but he serves an an entrepreneur in resident to start "virtual startups" within HHS to improve the health of Americans. HHS wants to create an environment that helps markets and the public transform healthcare. As part of the Recovery Act, HHS is implementing Medicare/Medicaid incentive payments to physicians and hospitals for meaningful use of electronic health records. To get the money, you can't just use EHRs. You have to use them to actually improve care.

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Thirty years ago, when clinicians at VA first started building the software components for a “high tech” electronic health record, they stood at the vanguard of patient-centered care. At that time folks weren’t thinking much about plug-and-play modularization, market-based communities of interest, sleek development environments, or interoperable systems. Thanks to their persistence, creativity, and dedication, today Veterans enjoy among the highest standards of health care, and the VA has become a model and benchmark for safety, accessibility, and therapeutic outcomes. This is especially true of their VistA electronic health record (EHR).

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Open Medicine has provided an opportunity to acquire experience in peer review for a group of graduate students in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. This particular department within the Faculty of Medicine cuts across the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) research categories of Pillar 3 (health services) and Pillar 4 (population health) and involves students with undergraduate science degrees (researchers in training) and medical school graduates in residency programs (clinician-scientists in training). 

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