News From Around the Web
> Minneapolis-based mobile health and remote monitoring developer Preventice has teamed with New Jersey-based, procedure-specific mobile developer Vox Telehealth on mHealth solutions designed to improve surgical experience and outcomes for patients. As part of this partnership, Preventice will provide the mobile platform, data monitoring capabilities, and analytics for targeted surgical programs and patient education content developed by Vox Telehealth. Announcement
> Smartphones that serve as portable X-ray machines soon could be available thanks to computer chips that operate in the terahertz range of the radio spectrum, Discovery News reports. A California Institute of Technology research team has built a microchip that can both transmit and receive terahertz radiation, with the potential for the mobile equivalent of an x-ray. Article
> New York-based mobile health and fitness startup Noom has secured $2.6 Million in pre-Series A funding. Noom's flagship product, Noom Weight Loss Coach, has been the top weight loss app on the Android platform since its launch, and now is the top grossing app in the Health & Fitness category since the launch of version 3.0 in mid-September. Announcement
Health Finance News
> The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services may be duplicating its activities and wasting money in its testing of new payment and delivery-of-care models. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office suggested CMS better coordinate the programs to save money and effort. Article
Health Provider News
> Nearly eight in 10 healthcare businesses admitted to making bad hiring decisions in 2012, according to a new survey from CareerBuilder. "Bad hires," as defined by the survey, included employees who produced low-quality work, didn't work well with others or had immediate attendance problems. Article
Health Technology News
> The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, prodded by Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) finally addressed recommendations from an Institute of Medicine report, issued in November 2011. The IOM report cited an "urgent need" for a research agenda for safety issues related to electronic medical records technology and urged that such a plan be in place within 12 months. The new report addresses the IOM recommendations individually, pointing, for instance, to Hazard Manager, a software tool developed to alert users to potential health IT-related problems as among the tools and interventions its supports. Article
And Finally... And he did it without the help of apps. Article