From the May 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Welcome to your May issue of HealthCare Business News! This month we’re delivering our annual “health technology management” issue — as a result of last year’s acknowledgment that this new title has officially replaced the term “biomed” to describe these essential health care professionals. We again interviewed a number of professionals in the sector to find out what their pain points are today, as well as the big opportunities they either currently are seeing or anticipate they’ll see in the coming months. As always, their viewpoints proved enlightening and they’re well worth checking out in our piece that starts on page 50.
Another viewpoint I personally found very interesting was that of Richard Kimball Jr. in this month’s Cost Containment Corner (p. 33). Kimball spoke with HCBN about value-based care and made a good and clear case for it. I know the discussion on value-based care is far from over and the challenges to incorporate it are many, but to me at least, it’s clear that it’s really the direction we need to head if we intend to deliver on the real promise of health care and the investments we’ve made as a country in the technology and research.
In reference to investments in research, this month’s IT Matters deviates a little bit from our standard offerings. This month we take a look at some of the upcoming events that should be of great interest to the IT crowd (see p. 34).
Delving further into the issue, we get into some of the modalities that biomeds/htms might interact with regularly. We have industry sector reports on no fewer than five different equipment subsets. Patient monitors (p. 58) may offer the most radical deviation from the standard established with the equipment. Our story takes an expanded look at the wearables market and how that may turn the sector on its head.
Our infusion pumps ISR (p. 78) explores the pros of smart pump integration and the potential drawbacks of having systems connected to EHRs and potentially providing access to hackers. While it wouldn’t offer the wealth of information or numerous records that the recent high-profile medical record hacks scored, it could deliver a new set of problems. We have reports on testing equipment, ventilators/respirators and defibrillators to round out the rest of the list, with the stories starting on pages 44, 66 and 72 respectively. So get your annual check-up on those modalities and more. And as always, we welcome your feedback, ideas and questions!
Until next issue!
Sean Ruck
Editor-in-Chief
sruck@dotmed.com
DOTmed HealthCare Business News
