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One Year of Health-Care Reform: Fixing the Core Problems or Symptoms?
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Posted by Peter Neupert
Corporate Vice President, Health Solutions Group
(Cross-posted from The Washington Post Health Care Rx blog, which periodically asks Peter Neupert and a panel of other experts to weigh-in on efforts to reform the nation’s health care system.)
Will all of this year's activity actually improve our health delivery system? I'm optimistic, but I'm also skeptical that the kind of comprehensive change we need to truly reform the system will happen.
My optimism stems from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which included $36 billion in funding to encourage the use of technology by health-care providers. For the first time, the "meaningful use" rule-making describes technology as a means to improving health outcomes by using real-time data and quality reporting.
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Using Mobile Technology to Extend Health Care’s Reach
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Posted by Kristin Tolle
Director, External Research and Programs 
At Microsoft Research we believe there are abundant opportunities for mobile technologies to improve public health, particularly in underserved communities. In areas short on health care facilities or medical staff, mobile phones have the reach to help diagnose and treat illness. We believe so strongly in this idea, in the fall of 2007 we solicited proposals from academic researchers who shared our vision and began funding projects in early 2008.
Our call for proposals caught the attention of the National Institutes of Health, which shares our interest in the potential health care applications of mobile devices. We decided to work together to organize an event that would build on the momentum created by successful implementations of cellular-based solutions to accelerate improvements in global public health using mobile devices.
Out of those discussions was born the mHealth Summit, which takes place in Washington, D.C., this Thursday and Friday.
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The Road to Successful Health Reform
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Posted by Peter Neupert
Corporate Vice President, Health Solutions Group
From time to time over the last few months, the Washington Post has asked me to reply to questions posed by the Post’s Health Care Rx blog, which is tracking developments in the health care reform debate on Capitol Hill.
This week’s question was a natural: “The Senate Finance Committee passed a bill containing its version of the health care overhaul. Are you satisfied with this bill? What does it miss?”
My short answer, as the Post’s headline put it, is “Personal Accountability.” We can’t forget the role all of us play in the care of our health and that of our families. My longer answer is on the Health Care Rx blog, but I wanted to share my thoughts here as well:
There's a long road ahead for health care reform -- five bills to be merged and countless hours of debate still to come. A lot could change over the course of the next few months, and the content of the final reform bill is likely to vary from any of these individual bills. The question we need to keep asking ourselves is whether reform will drive the kind of wholesale transformation needed for the industry and consumers -- the kind we've seen in banking, travel and other service industries. Ten years ago, we wouldn't have imagined that people would do so many things themselves. Technology and business model innovation enabled new types of services -- putting consumers in charge, dramatically changing engagement and economics. Imagine the possibilities for new services in health.
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Moving a National Broadband Plan Forward
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Posted by Anoop Gupta
Corporate Vice President -- Technology Policy & Strategy
Steve Ballmer joined CEOs John Chambers of Cisco, Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group, and Jeffrey Immelt of GE in a videoconference with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski earlier this week. The topic: how the national broadband plan being developed by the FCC can provide benefits throughout America in all the critical areas of our economy, such as healthcare, energy and education. Broadband is equally vital to most all nations.
Steve emphasized that our economic growth can no longer be fueled by debt and that we must return to the traditional stimuli for economic growth: innovation and productivity. Today, broadband is foundational for driving innovation and productivity across all economic sectors, including energy, education, healthcare, and e-government.
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Health Care Needs New Rules to Enable Innovation and Reward Experimentation
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Posted by Peter Neupert
Corporate Vice President, Health Solutions Group
Technology is playing a major role in helping bring healthcare into the 21st century. Many of us have seen it first hand in treatment from our doctors, from MRI scans to laser surgery.
But these clinical advancements represent only a small piece of what technology can do to transform health care. The power of technology lies in the potential to transform the rest of the health care system, enabling new ways of working and communicating, new economics and new business models. As consumers, we’ve experienced how technology impacts nearly every other area of our lives—how we manage our financials, travel, communicate, shop and so on—with more self-service, more control, more convenience and ultimately better value for what we spend.
Similar business innovation and consumer engagement has been slow to reach health care, where many physicians still opt for a pen-and-paper over a computer to maintain patient histories and chronicle treatments. Patients continue to navigate frustrating and hard-to-understand medical and insurance organizations, physicians don’t always talk to one another about care and medical errors, waste and duplication drain the system of resources.
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A Critical Time for Health Care Reform and Health IT
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Posted by Frank Torres
Director, Consumer Affairs
Washington, D.C. is always a busy place before Congress breaks for its summer recess. But even for the nation’s capital, the amount of activity currently happening around health care is extraordinary.
President Obama is expected to discuss health care in a press conference Wednesday night. Health reform legislation is moving forward in the House and Senate. And the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Health Information Technology Policy Committee is meeting to decide which technologies will qualify for approximately $20 billion in stimulus funding to spur adoption of technology by health providers (what’s being called “meaningful use”) and establish certification procedures for technologies that meet the “meaningful use” standard.
Against this backdrop, leading think-tanks – the Markle Foundation, the Center for American Progress (CAP), and the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings – held a forum July 15 to frame their vision for information-driven health care. Their primary theme: Efforts to boost health IT must be aligned with the broader health reform effort underway to achieve the goals of President Obama and Congress to expand coverage, improve outcomes and control costs. At Microsoft, we couldn’t agree more.
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President Obama Cites Microsoft for Innovative Health Benefits
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Posted by Cecily Hall
Director, U.S. Benefits
Tuesday morning, I had the distinct honor of visiting the White House along with six other business, labor and government leaders to brief President Obama on innovative ways private and public organizations are improving the health of workers while reducing costs for employers.
I was invited to today’s event along with representatives from Safeway, the Ohio Department of Health, Pitney Bowes, REI, Johnson & Johnson and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union because each of our organizations have pioneered creative and cost-effective health care solutions that President Obama believes hold promise for workplaces across the country.
President Obama asked each of us to share something unique that our organizations are doing that improves health care outcomes and bolsters our bottom line. I cited two Microsoft initiatives.
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Tear Down the Walls and Liberate the Data
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Posted by Peter Neupert
Corporate Vice President, Health Solutions Group
(Cross-posted from Neupert on Health)
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan gave one of his most well remembered speeches. Few of us could forget his words to Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”—proving to be prophetic when the German Democratic Republic announced the re-opening of the border in 1989, and the subsequent destruction of the Berlin Wall. What followed? A new flow of people, ideas, commerce, and capital—creating the groundwork for unification and a better way of life in Germany and Eastern Europe, benefiting all of us economically and politically in unanticipated ways.
A similar type of disruptive change needs to happen in the health ecosystem today. Just as the free flow of ideas and capital were the foundation for dramatic improvements in society, so should the free flow of health data be the foundation for realizing a future of secure, personalized, data driven medicine in health.
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Innovation and Economic Growth in the Americas and Beyond
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Posted by Linda Zecher
Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector
As head of Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector organization, one of the things that excites me the most is helping government customers find creative ways to address their challenges and priorities.
Right now that means the struggling global economy and that topic was front and center today when we kicked off Microsoft’s Government Leaders Forum – Americas with more than 125 top government leaders from Latin America and the Caribbean.
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Ballmer to Congress: Act Now on Stimulus Agreement
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Posted by David Bowermaster
Administrator, Microsoft on the Issues House and Senate lawmakers moved with impressive speed today to forge a final agreement on a $789 billion stimulus package designed to help revive the struggling U.S. economy. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who has been a vocal proponent of the legislation, has sent a letter to all members of Congress urging them to quickly pass the bill so President Obama can sign it into law. Click Read More to see the text of Mr. Ballmer’s letter:
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