China is fast emerging as a pioneer of data-centric healthcare. IBM’s collaboration with Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, featured in this video, was one of the examples called out in a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal about advances in healthcare in China. The Guangdong solution is being designed to help doctors identify treatment plans combining Western and traditional Chinese medicine from statistics drawn from patient records. IBM’s Healthcare Solutions Lab, which is working with Guangdong Hospital,  is one of 12 finalists in the newspaper’s annual Asian Innovation Awards contest.

But Guangdong isn’t the only place where IBM is pushing the technology envelope in Chinese healthcare. IBM Research is working with Peking University People’s Hospital to build an evidence-based patient care system that will consolidate patient records and make it easier for clinicians to discover and share best practices in diagnosis and treatment. It’s one of those First-of-a-Kind projects that Research engages in with clients. The hospital expects to roll out the system to selected hospital and community clinics starting early next year.

Technorati Tags: Guangdong Hospital, healthcare, IBM

At IBM, the secure-by-design concept extends to encompass our Smarter Planet agenda. These days, its not enough to secure the traditional computing infrastructure. You’ve got to protect all of the devices and networks that are now being used to monitor, manage, and analyze everything from smart electrical grids to health care systems. “All of the physical assets of the world are becoming digitized, instrumented, interconnected and intelligent,” says Kristin Lovejoy, head of IBM security strategy. “But the sad reality is that as people develop and design these new technologies they’re not thinking enough about the issue of security. These devices are so critical that if they’re unavailable or if they’re tampered with, it could have a significant negative impact on an individual or a large population.”

When security is an afterthought, it tends to be expensive and not that effective. Plus, organizations typically find out about a vulnerability after it has already been exploited by malicious software programs.

We believe that only by designing products to be secure can organizations gain the protection they need at a reasonable price. With that principle in mind, IBM has established what we call a secure engineering framework. It’s a set of specifications that we are beginning to use in all of our design processes, for hardware and software alike.

Now that the world’s critical infrastructure is being wired and networked, security is becoming more important than ever before. Business-as-usual in the tech industry isn’t good enough any more.

Technorati Tags: IBM, security, Smarter Planet

Credit here goes to our colleague Chris Luongo, the storyteller behind the “The Tale of…” videos, among many other creations.

That’s the backdrop for a significant new service announcement today by IBM and ActiveHealth Management, a subsidiary of Aetna. Collaborative Care, a new cloud service,  gives physicians and patients access to the information they need to improve the quality of care without requiring healthcare organizations to invest in owning new technology. Using Collaborative Care, hospitals and physicians can access, share, and analyze a wide range of clinical and administrative information; automate the measurement and reporting of treatment outcomes; and improve  patient care by using Aetna’s decision-support system. In addition, patients can be more actively involved in their care through a Web portal.   “This partnership puts in place a new  model that can drastically improve the way care is delivered,” says Robert Merkel, vice president and healthcare industry leader, IBM Global Business Services.

Think of the service as a virtual healthcare system located in the computing cloud.

Click here to view the embedded video.

IBM and ActiveHealth Management are co-investing in the business. While other companies offer piece-parts of the service, nobody else offers such a comprehensive solution. Sharp Community Medical Group, an association of primary care physicians and specialists in San Diego, Calif., is testing the service.

Challenges remain. Many independent physicians and smaller healthcare organizations don’t yet have electronic medical records systems, and even some of the larger healthcare organizations don’t yet have full interconnectivity within their own departments. But, starting next year, the US government’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health program provides strong incentives for going digital.

At last, Jim Clark’s vision seems to be coming to fruition. But, these days, he has left his aspirations to transform healthcare behind and is a real estate developer in Florida, so these advances aren’t doing him any good–financially, anyway. Still, they could end his frustrations with the splintering of his own health information.

Technorati Tags: ActiveHealth Management, Collaborative Care, IBM

Drs. Kavita Patel and Paul Grundy

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 pledged almost $20 billion in government funding to assist with and incentivize the “meaningful use” of health information technology. Earlier this week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced that money to encourage providers to purchase electronic health record systems may be available as early as May 2011. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has loosened its “meaningful use standards,” offering physicians more realistic implementation benchmarks.

EHR incentive programs will provide eligible providers a financial reward for the meaningful use of qualified EHR systems. The adoption of electronic health records supports the goal of achieving an efficient, patient-centered, high quality and safe health care system. I believe that the notion of “meaningful use” in healthcare echoes the promise of a smarter planet; an IT system that is designed to solve the right problems can turn information into insights – resulting in better quality of life.

The healthcare sector lags behind other industries that are innovating for a smarter planet. There are several barriers that have prevented the healthcare system from becoming a quick and early adopter of information technology. Patients are concerned about privacy issues. There is a lack of standardization among EHRs. And for most healthcare organizations, cost and time pose significant barriers. Overburdened primary care physicians will not champion this new medium if it takes them nearly three times as long to enter data on a screen than it does to scribble on paper. As a practicing physician, I can attest to these challenges first hand.

But the promise of electronic health records can’t be overlooked: fewer adverse drug events, lower morbidity and mortality rates, improved continuity of patient care, greater operational efficiencies and lower costs.

I recently spoke with several members of the DC healthcare press alongside Dr. Paul Grundy, Director of Healthcare Transformation at IBM. Dr. Grundy discussed IBM’s dual role as both a buyer of healthcare for its nearly 400,000 employees and as a deliverer of healthcare technology and services. I shared my thoughts regarding the implementation of healthcare reform and explained the challenge of ensuring it lives up to its promise. The conversation was marked by lively debate on wide-ranging topics including two that are close to my heart: putting patients at the center of healthcare and moving toward the vision of patient-centered medical homes. Together with several former colleagues from the White House, I recently looked at seven innovative medical home models and identified the four elements that lead to improved quality and/or lower costs. One was data-driven analytical tools. In other words, patient-centered primary care will benefit greatly from the meaningful use of data – not only for individual patients but for patient populations as well.

As the government, the private sector and communities work together to improve the quality of our healthcare system and implement federal reform, it may help to think of “meaningful use” in a broader way. As we get closer to achieving the ideals of the patient-centered medical home, perhaps the ultimate proof of success will be outcomes that are immediately recognized as meaningful by the most important stakeholders in the mix – our patients.

Today IBM announced a three year Research investment to help medical practitioners and insurance companies provide high-quality, evidence-based care to patients and reduce costs.  As part of this initiative, IBM is hiring medical doctors to work alongside its researchers to develop new technologies, scientific advancements, and business processes for healthcare and insurance providers.

Robert Sorrentino, M.D., is one of our new physicians, who has joined IBM Research to bring new insight to how technology can make healthcare smarter. Following is a guest post from Dr. Sorrentino:

A career ER physician, Chief Medical Officer, and healthcare executive in a hospital and HMO, I recently joined IBM as part of its healthcare transformation research group at IBM Research – Watson in New York. While this may seem an unusual move to some, I see it as the culmination of a number of factors finally coming together to improve the quality of patient care on a grand scale. The possibilities are thrilling — and the reason I’m here.

Originally, I didn’t plan to become a physician. While studying physics at MIT, I helped lead a research effort to develop software tools and databases for physicians, psychologists and other healthcare workers to conduct clinical research. That helped revitalize my interest in medicine and I ended up at medical school. Now, the winding road of my medical career has serendipitously brought me to IBM Research, which I didn’t anticipate either.

During my residency training, I worked in a clinical practice environment that was a forerunner of today’s Patient-centered Medical Home. Teams of family physicians were responsible for coordinating care, but we never worked alone. We had an internist, a pediatrician, an in-hospital physician, a pharmacist, a psychologist, nurse practitioners and health coaches, all of whom collaborated with the PCPs, but most of all, they supported the patients and ensured that their care needs were met in a multi-disciplinary way. It made a lasting impression on me as the way medicine should be practiced.

The other thing that made a permanent impression on me was the immense amount of paperwork that was required to provide this care. The manual systems for coordinating care; the forms to be filed to obtain authorization for medical services and get claims paid; ever-present patient questions and frustrations with this system. When I thought about it, it seemed clear that some sort of computer automation had to be possible to simplify these tasks. My medical informatics experience was begging to be used to develop a solution, but at that time, we used a slow, inflexible hospital information system to service these functions.

I began to see that there was a bigger picture – a way to apply my clinical experience with individual patients to becoming a physician overseeing the care of tens or hundreds of thousands of patients — and years later here I am. Having worked across the spectrum of healthcare, I have a unique perspective on not only how technology can be useful in the field with patients but also for how it can improve the delivery of healthcare services.

At IBM Research, I will be working on the design and implementation of novel payment models to improve the way healthcare is paid for and better align financial incentives so that physicians and other providers are paid for delivering better outcomes and quality of care, rather than for higher volume of medical services. I will also be applying my experience as a physician, along with my medical informatics knowledge, to help develop clinical decision intelligence tools that can better inform clinicians about clinical diagnostic and treatment choices and make it more accessible at the point-of-care. I will be closely collaborating with experts in areas like machine learning, data mining, simulation and deep analytics along with our clients and partners in healthcare.

These projects are challenging, but gratifying for the potential longer-term improvements in healthcare delivery that may result. I really feel like we are at an inflection point and the story of healthcare transformation is just beginning. I hope to share new developments here from time to time.

I am excited to now be joining IBM to use that knowledge to build technologies and services from the ground up with some of the world’s foremost experts in science and technology.

Today, IBM is announcing it has been tapped by another major health plan organization, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA), to revamp its entire information technology (IT) infrastructure, encompassing everything from data center management to overseeing the applications portfolio. Central to the project is the primary member Web site, bluecrossma.com that is designed to provide BCBSMA’s nearly 3 million members fast and secure online access to claims and general healthcare information. The new agreement is expected to generate approximately $16 million annually in savings for BCBSMA.

“The big driver for choosing IBM was the breadth and depth of capabilities IBM brings to the table,” said Bill Fandrich, chief information officer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. “The IBM team proved over and over again their ability to bring different products and integrate them onto one platform. IBM provides a lot of flexibility for us to leverage IBM’s partners, whether it’s for development or whether it’s for other product capabilities. It’s very important in this day and age when we’re trying to bring solutions to the market that we have an IT provider that’s looking at things from the lens of what we need, not just at what they can sell us.”

BCBSMA is among several major health plan organizations that have recently turned to IBM. Kaiser Permanente last year tapped IBM to deploy smart systems and activate its highly sophisticated global delivery network to provide patients, members and physicians real-time access to medical data and tools whenever and wherever they need it. Similarly, IBM is working with National Account Service Company LLC (NASCO) to manage its entire IT system as well as work with IBM Research to modernize its claim processing system. IBM is working with CIGNA in a multi-year strategy to place an entirely new focus on improving customers’ experience, including tapping customer information to make interactions with the company more personalized. More recently, IBM signed a deal with athenahealth Inc., a leading provider of Internet-based business services for physician practices. IBM will enable athenahealth to focus its resources on simplifying and improving administrative and reimbursement processes while reducing staff workload, allowing physicians to focus on delivering higher quality care to their patients.

The work that IBM is doing is hardly limited to the healthcare in the US. For example, in China, by integrating data from health records that combine Eastern and Western medicine and applying sophisticated analytics, doctors and nurses at Guang Dong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine can figure out which treatment plans and techniques from each approach work best for specific diseases and medical conditions. In Italy, the Rizzoli Institute is transforming treatment of hereditary bone disease by using analytics while Europe’s non-profit research alliance EuResist Network GEIE, is working with IBM to improve treatment for HIV patients using a prediction engine that simulates the intervention of HIV treatment drugs within the human body.

While other companies are making claims about helping shape the future of healthcare, IBM is actually doing it. IBM is making systems “smarter” for healthcare payers and providers as they are faced with new pressures to improve efficiency and create new business models to serve their clients while holding the line on costs. IBM is helping companies transition from outdated IT environments to more modernized systems capable of analyzing data and predicting errors, as well as integrating data so doctors, patients and insurers can share information seamlessly, securely and efficiently. IBM is creating a smarter, more connected healthcare system that delivers better care for everyone involved.

Technorati Tags: healthcare, Smarter Healthcare, Smarter Planet

I’m a sucker for efforts that bridge the gaps between different cultures and systems, and a collaboration between IBM and the Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine is particularly intriguing. We’re helping to integrate the best features of Western and traditional Chinese medicine.

The 77-year-old hospital was founded at a time when Western medicine was making major inroads in China, and a group of physicians in Guangdong province organized the institution to preserve the practice of traditional Chinese medicine. TCM consists of using herbal medicines, acupuncture, massage, healthy diet, and talk therapy. There’s a focus on prevention, and on treating the body and mind together.  There’s no surgery. But, while the hospital concentrates on traditional medicine, mixes it with Western medicine. That’s a winning combination. The hospital has thrived. It now has five branches and serves more than 5.4 million patients per year.

But its leaders aren’t satisfied with the status quo. They’re determined to improve the effectiveness of traditional medicine, the integration of Chinese medicine with Western medicine, and training of physicians in TCM. So they’re working with IBM to improve their electronic medical records, their knowledge management system, and their research into treatment outcomes.

At the SmarterCities Shanghai event, the director of the hospital, Lu Yu Bo, talked about his goals. One of his main frustrations has been the difficulty in educating new practitioners. It’s a slow process. TCM is based on the experience of the physician and their analysis of the needs of each individual patient. So Lu wants to capture the knowledge of veteran doctors, using information technology, and transfer it more quickly to medical students–at the same time creating more standardized processes and best practices. Another major goal is establishing the scientific basis of TCM. “We’re moving toward theory-based medicine,” he said.

Lu believes there’s a lot of potential now for spreading the use of Chinese medicine worldwide–bringing new treatments to bear on diseases for which there is no cure in Western medicine and, at the same time, addressing the need for better preventative medicine. “The best doctors are those who can prevent disease from arriving,” he said.

Technorati Tags: Guangdong Hospital, IBM, Traditional Chinese Medicine

Click on the image above to launch a video player of IBM CEO Sam Palmisano’s full presentation at the Smarter Cities Summit in Shanghai.

Rather than belabor the recap of the speech, I’ll let you watch and draw your own conclusions. The total video is 25 minutes.

If you missed the prior recaps see the previous few posts on other insights from today’s sessions, and be sure to watch here more tomorrow for many more. You can follow the conversations live on Twitter as well. Let us know your thoughts by adding a comment below.

We get these sorts of messages everyday with the earliest examples usually from our parents and schools. It’s a common theme throughout life that usually continues after school into work. Quite honestly, people stop listening, especially when the reason for not doing something isn’t adequately conveyed.

If we take the environment, which probably contains the largest number of groups telling people to stop doing this, that or the other, people begin to push back. People don’t like being told what not to do. Even reasonable people think that being told not to drive but use public transport when it will take them longer and will cost them more is just crazy – they want the alternative to be better.

So lets flip it. Lets ’start’ something. Today in London, IBM announced that it will be the exclusive partner for a nine day summit in September 2010 called surprisingly, START. It aims to explore what business can do for sustainability and what sustainability can do for business. In many ways it is just a start. Even though it is an event, START is also a national (UK) initiative of the The Prince’s Charities Foundation will continue way past September and a street in London coming to communities across the UK.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Over nine days, IBM summit at START will bring together a brains trust of thought leaders to come up with ideas that organisations can sign up to because it makes sense for them and their business – not just the environment. All the ideas, findings and debates will be published online. Each day will focus on a different topic, such as new skills, the future of cities, energy and transport. You can see that in all cases that no single organisation or government is responsible for everything within these topics, it requires a number of bodies to come together and work together. So the summit will try to build a community of collaboration, discuss ways we can all work together to make stuff really happen, to make the alternative better than what we have now.

At the launch in London today, Steven Leonard, Chief Exec for IBM UK said, “the challenge [is] bringing all the necessary constituents together to develop and deliver more complex solutions to make the world – literally work smarter.”

Collaboration between organisations, public and private, is essential to make this initiative work. I for one am excited about the opportunities that this could bring up, such as the need to develop new skills myself and the push it will give to widen the use of social tools within business. Is it going to be easy? No. Will it all happen in 9 days? I very much doubt it, but there needs to be a point where we say, things have to change and we mark the beginning with this event.

But before the event we have a few weeks, time in which partners and invited companies will be starting to collaborate using our collaboration tools. So that the final agenda for each day will be built on the basis of the combined expertise. Essential to begin as you intend to go on.

Caroline Taylor, VP leading Project Start in IBM raised an essential point at today’s launch about the next generation: “If sustainability is about securing the future, young people are that future, and they will be vital in ensuring we define genuinely 21st century and forward thinking solutions.” Day 4 and 5 are devoted to new skills and starting young.

It’s not all work, work, work…there will also be a 12 day public festival that apart from being great fun will also give clear, simple and positive ideas on how people can start doing things that will help them lead a sustainable future. There will be plenty of big names in attendance, including two of my favourite comedians, secret gigs, mystery artists and a host of other good stuff.

Where’s this all happening? IBM summit at START will be hosted in Lancaster House, The Mall, London, September 8th – 16th. with the START garden party happening right next door in Green Park. Hopefully we will also be able to broadcast large parts of the business event over Livestream, no doubt we will have more updates here.

Prince of Wales (centre) at the launch of the "IBM Summit at Start" which will be held over 9 day in September 2010

The Start founding partners include: IBM, B&Q, Virgin Money, M&S, Asda, EDF Energy, Addison Lee,  BT Group plc and Waitrose.  Full list of supporting organisations on the web site.

Read more about IBM Summit at Start.

Technorati Tags: environment, IBM, london, startuk, sustainability