Feb 23, 2015 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Venture capitalists are betting $100 million that an entrepreneur can develop an inexpensive and portable imaging device that can be used by office-based physicians
There’s a serious effort, funded by venture capitalists, to create a compact medical imaging device with the capabilities to disrupt the existing radiology profession. Developers intend to create a more accurate imaging technology that also costs much less than the expensive imaging systems in common use today.
Biomedical entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg aims to create a new hand-held medical imaging device that can make MRI and ultrasounds significantly cheaper and more efficient, reported Wired magazine. Rothberg is founder of the Butterfly Network, Inc.
Rothberg’s goal is to make it possible for office-based physicians to use a point-of-care imaging tool that costs just a couple hundred dollars. It might also help patients in poor regions of the world gain access to imaging tests and better healthcare. (more…)
Feb 20, 2015 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
NPR stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles crowdsourced healthcare cost data from listeners to reveal arbitrary pricing of medical services
Over the past two years, Dark Daily has published a number of stories dealing with price transparency, or lack of it, most of which involved government agencies or nonprofits concerned about the high cost of healthcare services. This latest effort to shine a light on healthcare pricing, however, comes from National Public Radio (NPR).
San Francisco’s NPR station, KQED, initiated PriceCheck, an innovative project designed to reveal just how arbitrary medical pricing is in California, in June 2014. KQED partnered with Los Angeles’ NPR station, KPCC, and ClearHealthCosts.com, a New York City start-up that publishes a national list of low to high charges for common healthcare services, to crowdsource healthcare cost data.
The two NPR stations appealed to listeners to share the charges they paid for four medical services: mammograms, lower-back MRIs, IUDs, and diabetes testing. Hundreds of people responded to share prices they paid for these services, and thousands of people looked up prices on ClearHealthCosts.com. (more…)
Feb 18, 2015 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Management & Operations
Evidence is emerging that medical laboratories using the ‘daily management’ approach can outperform other labs, even those using Lean methods
Clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups are information-rich environments. Yet, there is irony in the fact that—in response to financial pressures and incentives to improve the quality of medical laboratory testing services—most of the nation’s clinical labs cannot tap that rich vein of information to support performance improvement goals.
Those financial pressures have shrunk lab budgets and caused price cuts to medical laboratory test prices. These two factors are behind the trend of clinical labs and pathology groups buying middleware solutions that produce real-time data feeds on all aspects of lab operations, from phlebotomy and specimen transport, to accessioning, testing, reporting, client services monitoring, and billing/collections. (more…)
Feb 13, 2015 | Laboratory Hiring & Human Resources, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Sales and Marketing, Management & Operations
Accelerating pace of hospital consolidation brings new pressure to pathologists and clinical laboratory directors to maximize the value of pathology services
Large and financially-stable multi-hospital health systems are racing to form regional mega-systems. It’s a strategy to get ahead of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) mandate to improve quality and increase efficiency through coordinated care across the entire care continuum.
This growing national trend means further consolidation of clinical laboratory testing services within the merging organizations. For pathology groups, the new super-systems may encourage the different pathology groups within the system to consolidate into a single practice entity. This would help improve how pathology services are more deeply integrated into the care continuum. It would also facilitate contract negotiations between the pathologists and the parent health system. (more…)
Feb 6, 2015 | Coding, Billing, and Collections, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Following the acquisition, Data Innovations will become a business division of Sunquest and the two companies will work to integrate their clinical laboratory information systems
There’s more change in the clinical laboratory marketplace. Yesterday it was announced that Data Innovations—a major player in medical laboratory middleware systems—had been acquired by Roper Industries, Inc. (NYSE:ROP), the owner of Sunquest Information Systems.
Executives at Roper Industries said that Data Innovations will become a business division of Sunquest. The acquisition is expected to close in February, subject to regulatory approvals. Roper also announced yesterday that it was acquiring SoftWriters, a company that sells software for long-term care pharmacies.
In its press release, Roper said that “the combined purchase price for these two acquisitions is $450 million. …The Company expects the three acquisitions to contribute approximately $100 million of annual revenue and provide over $110 million of gross cash tax benefits.” (more…)
Feb 4, 2015 | Digital Pathology, Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology
Concept is for patients to take a pill containing nanoparticles programmed to detect cancers or other disease symptoms and a wearable gadget would report their findings
Google is using the same biomarker molecules as clinical laboratories in an attempt to enable in vitro monitoring of an individual’s health status. The device is under development and represents yet one more effort by Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) to penetrate the market for consumer health services.
This futuristic project is under development by the Google X Life Sciences team. The goal is create a device that would allow patients to noninvasively self-diagnose most diseases and health conditions.
The team is led by Andrew Conrad Ph.D.. The device under development is called the NanoParticle platform. It is a tool that continuously monitors an individual’s health status from the inside and reports what it finds through a wearable, watch-like device. (more…)
