The Second Annual eHealth Conference - June 5, 2001
"The Changing Paradigm: What a Difference a Year
Makes"
Hosted at the Skirball Cultural Center
The annual eHealth Conference is organized by the Healthcare
Collaborative
at UCLA. This group is a collaborative of students, alumni,
faculty and
staff of the UCLA School of Public Health and The Anderson
School at UCLA. It
also includes members of the Southern California healthcare
community.
The purpose of the seminar was to: a) focus on changes in
the industry over
the past year and assess the reactions of the business
community to the changes,
and b) instruct attendees adequately on the use of new
technologies. That way, they
can ask the right questions about eHealth and learn how it
will affect
operations in their workplace.
Seminar topics included:
a. The new business
realities confronting healthcare
b. The eHealth
revolution - where is was in 2000 and where it is going
c. The potential of
eHealth - quality improvement and cost reduction
d. Strategies for
eHealth - a blueprint for action
e. Infrastructure
development - a roadmap for planning and implementation
f. Better medicine -
is eHealth promoting better treatment opportunities?
It was a real treat for me to attend the conference this
year. I was able to
soak up the great intellect and information presented by the
speakers
thanks to Terry Laughlin. Terry is one of the Health
Collaborative's
committee members and also the Assistant to the Director of
Public Health &
Health Services. She introduced me to a slew of people; I
truly I appreciated her kind attention.
Before the conference began, I met Dr. Paul Torrens, a
professor at UCLA and
co-director at the UCLA Center for Health Services
Management. He said
important advancements are taking place in the industry:
proper information
handling, communication methodologies and the analyzation of
information are
going to be paramount in the future of healthcare. In fact,
they will reshape the entire
industry. Torrens said he hoped that the conference would
help answer questions
prompted by the impending changes. Next I met Gail Grant,
the executive
committee chair for the Collaborative. She explained how the
seminar got
started: collaborative members had volunteered much time and
effort
to participate on committees that chose relevant topics and
procured
speakers and sponsors. (The collaborative started out as a
physician's
group, but had attracted a wide spectrum of people in the
healthcare, business
and legal industries – even students.) I cut my inquiries
off at that point
because Gail had to go up to the podium and welcome
attendees.
The seminar featured several session hosts and eight session
speakers in all. I
couldn't figure out why there were so many hosts introducing
and
interjecting questions to the speakers. Perhaps the hosts
had participated
so much in putting the event together that this was some
sort of
payback -- to be noticed at the podium. I won't list all of
the host names,
but you can read event details on their site.
1st half - conference speakers: Peter Boland, Chas Klivans
and David Goodman
The keynote speaker was the enthusiastic Peter Boland,
Ph.D., president of
Boland Healthcare. His topic was "The New Business
Reality Confronting
EHealth." For me, it was the most powerful and
informative presentation. Boland
defined eHealth as the integration of digital technology
into the core clinical and
business processes, and proclaimed that we need to redefine
and reframe the delivery
of healthcare and rise to the same level of use and
understanding that other business
industries have achieved. The activity, spurred by the
trends and technologies of the digital
revolution, has not affected healthcare enough. In order to
meet consumers needs,
it must catch up or even surpass other industries to
effectively serve its
customer base - which honestly could encompass every person
on the planet!
Boland made several good points about the industry's lack of
technical
evolution, including the guiltless lack of profitability.
But he said that
healthcare will become profitable, and the improvements will
come from companies coming INTO the industry. These will be
companies
that understand business, management and turning a profit.
Standardization of the
industry's tools is also essential, and due to the
Internet's capability of using open-system
architecture, vendors will see the potential – and the
profitability – of developing such tools.
Boland says that healthcare must move to a CRM model to
capture and properly serve the
customer base. Without becoming tech-enabled, the industry
won’t be able to grow quickly
and adequately. From Boland’s session, I came away with the
notion that soon all companies
will be Internet companies, and healthcare companies are no
exception. So, we must all learn to
integrate net-related technologies into our infrastructure
and day-to-day service delivery.
The next speaker, Chas Klivans, vice president of Global
Business for Edwards
Lifesciences, presented his survey of 200 healthcare and IT
executives for
his topic entitled "The E-Health Evolution: Where It
Was Last Year - Where
It Will Go." I was initially floored by his
presentation at first because it was done
on an overhead projector! At first I couldn't even remember
what the
contraption was called because it had been so long since I'd
seen one. But
later I found out that some extemporaneous circumstances had
disrupted
Klivans' life, and I understood how such a net-savvy
presenter could have
been reduced to such a state. Here is a summary of his
survey findings: There is a
larger, industry-wide perspective about integrating digital
technology into
all clinical and business core processes. That’s a far cry
from the 'bolting your
business to the Internet' path to improved care and a
healthier
bottom line.
Next up was David Goodman, MD, founder of LifeMasters
Supported SelfCare,
Inc. LifeMasters is an interactive, health-management
services company that
has survived and matured thanks to its education and
effective use of
Internet strategies. Goodman's candid discussion of the
pitfalls and peaks his
company experienced during its development was quite
enjoyable. After being
in many successful and not-so-successful start-ups myself, I
sympathized with
his presentation and was pleased that Lifemasters.com is
doing well today. You
can visit LifeMasters.com for more information about his
company.
Lunch was served at the break. It was an outstanding
three-course meal, and
I had the fortune to be seated at a table with other
healthcare consultants. I met
two independent consultants whom I fully expect to do
business with in the next few months!
2nd half - conference speakers: Leslie A. Sandberg, Mike
Smith, Bill
Halverson, Vincent Riccardi and Helga Rippen
After lunch, a panel was introduced for the next
presentation. The speakers
were Leslie A. Sandberg, chief liaison Officer at the
University of CA,
Davis Health System; Mike Smith, Director of Telemedicine;
John Muir/Mt.
Diablo Health System; and Bill Halverson, co-director &
technology advisor
for the California Telehealth and Telemedicine Center. Panel
members were
obviously well acquainted with each other by the way they
joked together
effortlessly throughout their presentations. Sandberg's
presentation focused on
the people, process and technology involved in eHealth, and
she spoke quickly,
yet effectively to help get the event timing back on track.
She began by identifying
goals and strategies of eHealth and the deconstruction of
the business problem. Then
she went through reasons for adopting eHealth by producing
quantifiable
goals, performing market analysis and changing management.
She also discussed the
critical success factors and the value propositions that
eHealth development
will offer its adopters.
Smith took the podium next, and walked us through a
four-step process
towards eHealth program development: Strategic Planning,
Risk Assessment &
Management, Program Design & Management, and Program
Implementation. He also
went over some determining factors for the usefulness of
eHealth within an
organization, including long-term strategies; care provider,
receiver,
manager and vendor participation; and a solid plan for
success that starts
small and grows over time.
Last up was Halverson, an easy-going, likable speaker who
explained high-tech
concepts in an elementary language we could all understand.
He went through
the technology and infrastructure development involved in an
eHealth endeavor,
including the right questions to ask before the endeavor
could begin. He ended up
by giving us a helpful overview of various structures that
companies already had in
place as examples.
The last presentations were given by Vincent Riccardi, MD,
founder and
President of American Medical Consumers, and Helga Rippen,
Ph.D., MD, director of
Medical Informatics for Pfizer Health Solutions. Their topic
was "Is eHealth
Promoting Better Medicine?" Riccardi started his
discussion on a
positive note, but quickly went into the negative aspects that
the new
technology brings. He stated that we must take into account
that there is no
substitute for hands-on medical care. To make that point, he
read a love
poem he'd written when he once awoke from a dream. For those
of us in the
audience who were getting tired toward day’s end, this
strange
development peaked our curiosity. But as the good doctor
went on, his points
became stranger and stranger. I believe his point was that
society must
create a way to imbue subtext into medical communications
and to develop a
culture to use eHealth technology.
Rippen's presentation was well done, but presented quickly
in order
to keep everyone's attention sharp. As a result, I feel I
missed some important
elements. She spoke about promoting better medicine and the
quantifiable
data behind the notion. Her figures proved that we don't
have enough data
yet to say that technology has improved our lives. The key
stakeholders and
providers are online, but they are not making a large enough
impact on the
consumers because they are not effectively utilizing the
tools technology
offers. But she noted that eHealth in medicine is critical
for success, and
high-tech systems integration is critical to delivering the
goods to
consumers. The challenge is providing physicians with a tool
to
revolutionize the practice of healthcare and to improve the
quality of service.
The conference ended with a brief Q&A session with all
of the speakers.
Inside our conference packet was a brilliant piece of paper
that I have not
seen at any recent conferences - an evaluation form! The
event
presenters deserve kudos for thinking about client feedback
so they can
improve next year's conference. I filled out my form in its
entirety. I
enjoyed meeting so many event producers that I filled out a
volunteer form to join one of the Health Collaborative's
committees. I
look forward to getting to know the players and helping plan
next year's event.
For more information or to volunteer, visit
www.healthcollab.org.
