Monthly Archives: November 2010

Molecular animation at its finest from the PBS program “DNA The Secret of Life.”  With our ability to view even the smallest phenomena, communicating the complexity of a mechanism of action can be as simple as a combination of a sound bite explanation and a biological visualization.

A recently released book entitled “Talking Science to the People: A Communication Primer for Scientists and Engineers” collects insight from a diverse group of authors to offer a rationale for effectively communicating complex science to non-experts.

In it, the editor Carolyn Johnsen has assembled essays by various scientific communicators that offer strategies for providing “timely, accessible information” to the public and policy-makers from experts in controversial areas such as biological research and healthcare.

The essays are each written by an accomplished author, including a PR professional with a PhD in science and a  former assistant director in the Executive Office of the President, who argue for the need for scientists to go beyond the media to “translate” scientific messages themselves.

Particularly for companies with an audience of sophisticated consumers, video sound bites are an effective way to reinforce a message in an engaging and authoritative manner.  Corporate videos used to be five to 10 minute segments that were professionally filmed, edited and formatted.  Today, professionals are still your best bet for capturing high quality footage, but quite a bit has changed.

With the invention of YouTube and video advertisements, the public is accustomed to shorter segments of 30 seconds to a minute and a half.  The production of these sound bites require fewer takes, they can be done on-site at a company or conference and the production time can be a fast as a few days.  In addition, the cost of this type of production is lower that it ever has been and is easily distributed online via YouTube, Facebook and the company Web site.

Press releases can hyperlink to videos that support new data.  Video interviews with researchers, executives and KOLs add credence and validation to the public relations message.

In the example below, executives from a company called Stem Cells, Inc., were interviewed and captured in brief segments for their Web site.  Their goal was to give a quick idea of what the company is doing in the world of spinal cord injury and other CNS disorders and to offer context for the clinical significance of their therapeutic programs.   Please visit their video library to see more:

http://www.stemcellsinc.com/News-Events/Video-Library.htm

The Promise of Stem Cells

Below you will find an example of a client’s video used to educate the public and drive traffic to their Web site.  Please visit MedAssurant’s  YouTube channel to view additional videos like this one.

The Transformation of Healthcare Data

Comprehensive healthcare data analysis offers actionable insight into care improvement and cost reduction. In this video, Keith Dunleavy, M.D., CEO of MedAssurant, discusses how the HITECH Act and Medicare propel the US healthcare system towards a data-centric view of care delivery and higher quality outcomes.

Coming next week…

…a deeper dive into the video production process.

On November 3, the Cleveland Clinic unveiled what their hospital experts see as the top ten medical innovations that will shape healthcare in 2011.

Selected during the clinic’s 2010 Medical Innovation Summit, each innovation had to satisfy four specific criteria.  Because this list is specific to 2011, technology had to have significant potential for short-term clinical impact defined by either a major improvement in patient benefit or an improved function that enhances healthcare delivery.  The new technology must also have a high probability of success, be on the market or close to being introduced and have sufficient data available to support its nomination.

The trends seemed to follow those technologies that offered less invasive and more tailored approaches to treating patients with severe diseases and disorders.  Several of of the innovations also focused on the early-diagnosis or prevention of disease.

From the press release, the Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2011 are:

10. Capsule endoscopy for diagnosis of pediatric GI disorders: A pill-sized camera captures 50,000 high-resolution images during its painless six- to eight-hour journey through the digestive tract, proving better than x-ray at detecting small bowel ulcerations, polyps and areas of bleeding.

9. Oral disease-modifying treatment for multiple sclerosis: Before fingolimid was approved by the FDA this year, MS drugs had to be injected or infused on a regular basis. This oral medication effectively stops T-cells from attacking the myelin sheaths that cover nerve fibers.

8. Exhaled nitric oxide (NO) breath analysis for diagnosing asthma: A new hand-held diagnostic testing device measures a patient’s level of exhaled NO, which is a biomarker for asthma. Monitoring NO levels allows doctors to more accurately tailor treatment strategies.

7. Transoral gastroplasty, or TOGA: A new experimental weight-loss option for obese patients who want to lose weight and improve their health without undergoing major surgery. This “scar-less” procedure represents a significant improvement in minimally-invasive bariatric surgery and losses approaching 40 percent of excess body weight can be expected within a year.

6. Telehealth monitoring for heart failure patients: Miniature implantable monitors to measure pulmonary artery pressure daily and at-home devices to monitor weight, heart rate and blood pressure of heart failure patients allow doctors to adjust medication quickly, improving patient outcomes and quality of life, while reducing re-hospitalizations.

5. Hepatitis C protease-inhibiting drugs: Two drugs awaiting FDA approval treat hepatitis C using protease inhibitors, which work by blocking a key enzyme that viruses need to copy themselves and proliferate. In clinical trials, cure rates for the protease inhibitors are higher than current hepatitis C treatments, with fewer side effects.

4. JUPITER study and statins for healthy individuals: The JUPITER (Justification for the Use of Statins in Primary Prevention: an Intervention Trial Evaluating Rosuvastatin) trial pointed out for the first time that many seemingly healthy people are at higher risk for heart disease than previously thought, suggesting that statins should be prescribed even to people with low LDL (bad cholesterol), if they have high C-reactive protein levels.

3. First therapeutic cancer vaccine approved by the FDA: While not a cure for prostate cancer, sipuleucel-T is the first cancer vaccine to receive FDA approval. Prescribed to men with advanced prostate cancer, the drug coaxes their own immune systems into attacking and removing the cancer, reducing the risk of death by 24 percent compared to placebo.

2. Anti-CTLA-4 drug (ipilimumab), a targeted T-cell antibody for metastatic melanoma: The effectiveness of ipilimumab in treating melanoma confirms the role of immunotherapy as an effective treatment. In patients with advanced stage III or IV melanoma, 23 percent were still alive after two years compared to 14 percent of patients who received standard treatment.

1. New molecular imaging biomarker for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease:
Currently, positive diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is only possible upon autopsy. But a radioactive molecular imaging compound called AV-45 and a PET scan can allow doctors to “see” inside patients’ brains to detect beta-amyloid plaques, the tell-tale signature of Alzheimer’s.

The cost of healthcare in the United States is too high.  Few would dispute this.

We as taxpayers and consumers spend billions a year on an industry that keeps us alive and well – sadly the system itself seems to be suffering from a severe case of unsustainability.

If we want to look at the healthcare system as if it too is a patient, we need to do what doctors do – observe and document symptoms.

The only way to document symptoms accurately for the health system is to document its vitals.  For a human patient these might be height, weight, pulse and blood pressure – for the system this means data – hard, accurate and voluminous data.

The Wall Street Journal had an article recently called “In Medicare’s Data Trove, Clues to Curing the Cost Crisis.”  In it the authors intrioduce us to the Medicare claims database (aka Carrier Standard Analytic File) which keeps a record of the bills Medicare pays for medical treatment.  They explain:

Known as the Medicare claims database, it is a computerized record of the bills Medicare pays for medical treatment, and it is widely considered the single best source of information on the U.S. health-care system…

Federal investigators use the database to find fraud; academic researchers mine it to compare the cost and utilization of various services; and consultants make a business out of analyzing the data for a wide variety of health-care companies. In ways large and small, it offers an unparalleled look at why America’s health-care costs are spiraling.

This incredibly useful database (not as accessible as many would hope) offers a tool for diagnosing the underlying cause of unsustainability.

However, the challenge remains:  How can we treat the problem once we know what it is?

There is a fourth category that is not mentioned in the paragraph of users above: a handful of companies today, including MedAssurant, Ingenix and Thomson Reuters, are working to not only identify pathologies in the healthcare system but to address them.  Their sophisticated treatment plans involve high-quality data and a some serious creativity.

Their main goal seems to be the accuracy, precision and completeness of health data so that cost is managed, reimbursement is appropriate and patients get the care they need but not the care they don’t.  Perhaps a cure is in the future – but it’s going to be a long road to recovery.