CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner addressing Care Innovations Summit attendees. Image courtesy of Kaiser Health News.

“I think we would all agree that these are not ordinary times, that this is not an ordinary conference, nor is it an ordinary time in health care,” commented Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, in her address at the first ever Care Innovations Summit Thursday. In saying so, Tavenner captured not only the essence of the problems facing our nation’s health care system and the reason that over a thousand national thought leaders, senior government officials and industry experts had gathered, but also inspiring attendees with the idea that, by being there, they had the opportunity to be a part of the solution.

Driving the day at the Care Innovations Summit, which was hosted by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), Health Affairs and the West Wireless Health Institute, was the notion that American innovation could solve any problem, and the thousand-plus attendees were the innovators to solve this one. Emphasizing CMMI’s founding mission of better health, better care and lower costs, speakers across sectors, industries and areas of expertise continued to echo each other’s cries that it was all possible, if people began collaborating and innovating across fields.

Even before HHS Chief Technology Officer Todd Park compared data to rocket fuel, the Summit was beginning to sound like President Kennedy’s speech to Congress announcing the Space Race. In fact, the addresses and panels were broken up by “Ignite Talks” — wherein private-sector stakeholders presented problems and issued challenges to attendees and to entrepreneurs across the country, offering not only prizes, but implementation funding for the best solutions (you can see a list with links to descriptions of the various challenges issued here).

Park best captured the sentiment of the Summit, saying, “There is no problem that Americans can’t invent themselves out of…Transformation driven by a tide of grassroots innovation mojo has already begun.”

While this sentiment and attitude towards repairing and revitalizing our nation’s health care system certainly drove the day, it is not new, nor is it exclusive to CMMI. In fact, it echoes many of the themes that motivated us to launch the Health in Place™ (HIP) initiative last month. The concept of HIP is built around the idea that, thanks to wireless communications and emerging technologies, our homes are more than ju

st houses, our offices are more than just workplaces, our schools are more than just places of learning and our cars are more than just modes of transportation — and that, for this facet of 21st century health care to achieve its full potential, a number of public policy issues are involved, cutting across multiple disciplines from health care regulations and benefit structures to tax policy and technology incentives. HIP aims to connect the dots between industries, inspire innovation and drive policy changes that accomplish CMMI’s goals of better health, better care and lower costs while simplifying things in the process.

With all of this collaboration and innovative thinking, there is no doubt that this is an exciting time in health care, but as Don Casey expressed in his closing remarks at the Summit, there are some significant obstacles to overcome to get the rockets to the moon. “I think a lot of people are skeptical about two things,” Casey said, “the American economy and do we have the ingenuity to get this stuff done, and can we actually engineer a jailbreak for health care.”

Are you planning to take part in any of the innovation challenges issued? Do you think cross-industry collaboration is really possible? And, what do you think we need to do in order to break down the barriers Casey and others at the Summit alluded to?

Millions of Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act without understanding what the act aims to accomplish or how it works.  Dr. Jonathan Gruber’s book “Health Care Reform:  What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works” breaks down the individual components of the act in order to give Americans a greater understanding of what all it includes and how its provisions will affect their daily lives.  Gruber discussed the book, ACA and the future of health care reform in the United States with an audience at Disruptive Women in Washington, DC last night.

Continue reading here…

For more information on the event click here. We have reached capacity, but will be tweeting from the event so follow disruptivewomen for all the latest. Also, check back tomorrow for a post summarizing the night’s event.

The event will feature his new book: Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works.

By Michelle Andrews. Health care reform is no laughing matter, but MIT economist Jonathan Gruber’s new comic book on the subject aims to communicate some pretty complicated policy details in a way that, if not exactly side-splitting, is at least engaging.

In Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works, Gruber steps into the pages of a comic book to guide readers through many of the major elements of the law, including the individual mandate to buy insurance, the health insurance exchanges where people will be able to buy coverage starting in 2014 and how the law tackles controlling health care costs.

He ought to know. Gruber helped develop the Massachusetts health overhaul law and advised the Obama administration on the federal version.

Gruber says he was eager to write a book on the federal law because he believes people don’t like the concept of the overhaul because they don’t understand what’s in it. He points to polling that shows the public endorsing individual aspects of the law.

But the decision to do this in a comic-book style was his publisher’s. “At first, I wasn’t enthusiastic,” Gruber says. “I didn’t think it would be that effective. But the publisher said they had done a graphic novel about the 9/11 report. My son likes graphic novels, he’s 17. He said it’s a great opportunity, it’s a great medium. When you’re on a plane and they want to teach you what to do in case of accident, they hand you a graphic. I think it was the right call.”

Although the book is chockablock with optimistic predictions about what will happen under the new law, the chapter on cost control takes a decidedly more cautious tone. Noting that it was politically impossible for the new law to include provisions that could be guaranteed to “bend the cost curve” and control health care costs, Gruber’s character says the law took the best ideas out there about what might work and wrote them all into the bill.

He’s referring, for example, to provisions under which pricey health insurance plans, often called Cadillac health plans, will begin to be taxed in 2018, and to comparative effectiveness research to evaluate whether expensive health care treatments are actually more effective than cheaper ones.

As the title of his book suggests, Gruber is clearly an advocate for the law. But, he says, “I wanted to be intellectually honest. I believe that cost control is too hard for us to know what to do right now.” He cites two hurdles that must be overcome related to cost control: scientific, meaning we don’t know what works, and political, meaning we can’t always predict what will fly.

“I want to explain to that set of voters and readers who are really critical of this bill because it doesn’t do enough on cost contol that that is really an unfair criticism,” says Gruber. “We’re not really at a place where we could address that problem.”

The Disruptive Women in Health Care Blog
Proudly Presents

A Health Reform Discussion
By
MIT Health Economist Dr. Jonathan Gruber

Featuring his new book:
Health Care Reform:
What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works

Please join us for a discussion, Q&A session, and book signing

There is no cost to attend.  All guests will receive a copy of Dr. Gruber’s book

RSVP by Friday, January 13, 2012

Hosted by

RSVP details and more information coming in early January.

The Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) E.D.G.E. in Leadership study revealed intriguing differences of opinion about the path to promotion, both between top managers and middle managers and between men and women. Middle managers, and women in particular, believe that personal drive, openness to change, and comfort with politics are the ingredients to getting ahead. However, senior manager experience shows that performance-related factors are mere qualifiers and that interpersonal skills make the real difference.

The Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association, in collaboration with Disruptive Women, is kicking off a new E.D.G.E.neer Your Career Program, with an assessment tool and related resources to prepare your career advancement plan for 2012.  Choose a New Year’s Resolution that can help you to advance your career.  Prepare to leverage the 2012 E.D.G.E.neer Your Career Webinar Series. The assessment tool and the upcoming webinar series are based on E.D.G.E., the Empowerment, Diversity, Growth, and Excellence in Leadership Study and what has worked to advance the careers of more than 200 leading life science executives.

Video Preview (1 min, 40 sec)

Register for today’s free informational webinar, December 1^st at noon, to learn more. 

My personal favorites were two simple things that I gave to my 3-year old niece – a plushy blue and pink lung pillow and coloring book. She loved it and her mother wanted to learn more about what I was working on. Pneumonia has been a problem for so long that many seem to forget about it. In the US, it is rare that you hear about a baby dying of pneumonia. Mainly because they generally are not malnourished (although this is still a problem in some areas), get their immunizations against the major causes of pneumonia including pertussis, measles, Hib and pneumococcus. And even if they do fall ill, they generally have good access to care.

This, unfortunately, is not the case in the developing world where the vast majority of the 1.5 million pneumonia-related deaths are seen every year. New reports on clean cookstoves, the impact of lady health workers and the adoption of pneumococcal vaccines in developing countries show that cost-effective solutions can be promising, but as IVAC’s new Pneumonia Progress Report points out, there is still a way to go. Adoption of pneumococcal vaccines is increasing rapidly, but children in the largest countries including India, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan are still not there. Access to care is still a concern, as is nutrition, in nearly all developing countries.

There is much that we can do and it starts with talking about those simple, compelling facts. Having these conversations and all of the fun events help to elevate awareness to a new level. We need to let our political leaders know that global childhood pneumonia is a concern. Visit the World Pneumonia Day website today and find what you can do and tell your friends, family and colleagues. We have the solutions. There is no reason why we can’t beat this disease.

This got me thinking about the Disruptive Women in Health Care – past and present and how their vision of the future has also enlightened our world.  Here is a snapshot of my list. Who is on your list?

• Marie Curie—a contemporary of Lady Liberty, the original poster-child for STEM having discovered radioactivity, winner of not one but two Nobel prizes (for physics and chemistry) and, in her spare time, she became the first woman professor at the Sorbonne.
• Hillary Clinton—architect of health reform 1.0, and oh yes, a Senator and Secretary of State, who continues to champion the rights of women and girls, and
• Florence Nightingale—the original health services researcher who laid the foundation for today’s field of nursing; not only do new nurses take the Nightingale Pledge but International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday. And, oh yes, she too is known as the Lady with the Lamp.
• My Mother. Enough said.

For her birthday, Lady Liberty is getting  a high-tech uplift: Internet-connected cameras on her torch that will let viewers gaze out at New York Harbor or see visitors on the grounds below. For more information on the birthday celebration or the webcams click here.

Recently, I interviewed Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, about the recent launch of Health eVillages. This initiative aims to bring mobile medical reference and decision support technology to clinicians fighting to save lives in underserved regions worldwide.

Kennedy is the author of The New York Times best seller “Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans talk about Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning,” published by Crown Books/Random House in September 2008, and “Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World,” (Random House, 2000). Ms. Kennedy started working in the field of human rights in 1981, when she investigated abuses committed by U.S. immigration officials against refugees from El Salvador. Since then, her life has been devoted to the pursuit of justice, to the promotion and protection of basic rights, and to the preservation of the rule of law. She established the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights in 1988. She has led over 50 human rights delegations around the globe.

Rahim Kanani: What is Health eVillages?

Kerry Kennedy: Health eVillages is an amazing new coalition of healthcare and human rights advocacy groups that’s dedicated to bringing adequate healthcare to poor, remote and underserved areas around the globe through the latest mobile device technology.

Through contributions, we secure new and refurbished mobile phone and handheld devices, load them with the latest in clinical decision support technology, and get these devices to healthcare professionals who are on the ground providing public health services where it’s most desperately needed. These devices allow them to quickly access the latest information on every disease in common medical texts, for example, to assist in diagnosing and treating patients in even in the most remote regions.

The Health eVillages consortium is made up of leading international healthcare advocacy organizations, mobile healthcare solutions providers, health information technology companies, communications providers, and public health foundations. The RFK Center is part of this contsortium because our organization has been working for four decades on the cutting-edge of social change with human rights activists around the world, and the Health eVillages initiative brings the latest technology to our efforts to ensure that the neediest people around the globe have access to adequate healthcare, a fundamental human right.

Rahim Kanani: In which areas of the world has this initiative been piloted, and what kind of impact has it had?

Kerry Kennedy: To date, the organization has conducted pilot programs in several regions, including in Haiti, Uganda, the Greater Gulf Coast, and Lwala, Kenya. Because Health eVillages is a new program, very much in the pilot phase, we’re still in the process of collecting detailed feedback and data on the outcomes of these devices; however, the initial feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.  We know we will need to alter the program in some cases – in the case of Uganda, we plan on adding solar charging skins to the devices so they can be used during medical outreach trips in rural areas – but we believe the model works well in many cases.

Rahim Kanani: When did you first test this technology?

Kerry Kennedy: The first time we really tested this technology was soon after the earthquake in Haiti.  I traveled to Haiti on a human rights mission, and Donato Tramuto, the CEO and vice chairman of Physicians Interactive Holdings, provided me with several of these phones. Donato also sent a half-dozen of the devices to Haiti with physicians and nurses. The response was extremely encouraging – and this is really how the idea for Health eVillages was formed.

Rahim Kanani: What are some of the limitations of this approach?

Kerry Kennedy: Language is a major limitation, of course.  We are currently in discussions with an organization that has developed incredible new technology that has the ability to translate software into a number of different languages.  This would allow for greater use of our software, which is currently available in only a few languages. We also recognize that smart phones with medical reference software are not the best solution in every setting. Much progress has been made using standard mobile phones and texting technology.  Organizations like Partners in Health have also made great strides at developing software for community health workers – workers who do not have the clinical background necessary to use our software.  However, we have identified a clear and certain need for our solution in a vast number of scenarios, and we hope to bring this program to as many practitioners as we can over the coming years.

Rahim Kanani: Where do we go from here?

Kerry Kennedy: We are in discussions with hardware partners to grow this program.  We are also looking into partnership opportunities with large, international aid groups to deploy these devices to their participating medical practitioners.  For now, we are very focused on refining the program and collecting strong, detailed feedback on what is working and what is not.

Rahim Kanani: How would you connect this initiative to the realization of fundamental human rights?

Kerry Kennedy: Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right to healthcare for every man, woman and child.  We believe that this program will allow for greater access to quality healthcare for people who need it most.

Rahim Kanani is a writer, interviewer, advocate, strategist and entrepreneur for global social change. His articles, opinions, and interviews with global leaders can be found at www.rahimkanani.com. In addition, you can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

I know, I know it’s October…but hey, we are disruptive so celebrating on the exact day seems so well, ordinary.  And the past three years have been anything but ordinary.  We all had something to say about the new health reform debate and ultimate passage.  We still have much to say about the new law, as well as a multitude of other topics.

One area that I have been thinking a lot about is the exploding area of mhealth (mobile health), remote monitoring, and telehealth.  Technology alone is not the answer of course.  But technology, coupled with innovative care delivery models (think health reform), and patients, caregivers and clinicians more comfortable with smartphones, apps, data sharing and online connectivity have all contributed to a new framework of health and wellness.  Aging in Place, staying connected, eICUs, PHRs and EHRs.  Exciting stuff.

But, like most solutions in health care, success must look beyond the health sector.  Here’s what I mean by that: staying healthy can’t just take place in a health setting or even in your home.  Maintaining your health and wellness or managing your chronic disease or disability requires a connection where ever you are — in other words, Health In Place.  Young people with epilepsy and diabetes still attend school, go on vacation and use public transportation.  Elderly individuals aging in place still travel to visit gradnchildren. And, adults maintaining exercise and nutrition regimens who travel for work need to stay connected to maintain wellness.  The Health In Place concept takes this broad view and will be bringing together thought leaders from not only the health field, but the telecom, travel, automobile and real estate sectors as well. 

The organizers of the 2011 mHealth Summit were so taken with this idea that they invited Disruptive Women to launch the Health In Place or HIP initiative with a reception on December 6th–we couldn’t be more thrilled or more flattered. So SAVE THE DATE:

Health In Place (HIP)™ — Disruptive Women in Health Care is Launching a New Initiative

Tuesday, December 6, 2011, 5:00–7:00 PM
Location: Pose Ultra Lounge & Nightclub–at the Gaylord Hotel in National Harbor (Washington DC)

Overview: The concept of Health In Place™ is built around the idea that our homes are more than just homes, our offices are more than just workplaces, our schools are more than just places of learning, and even our cars are more than just modes of transportation. Thanks to wireless communications and emerging technologies, each of these venues has become potential health and wellness centers or HIP. No matter where we are or what we’re doing, we can be protecting and enhancing our well-being. For this facet of 21st century health care to achieve its full potential — for more Americans to have the tools to link to their caregivers, to protect against and manage illness, while monitoring their well-being — a number of public policy issues are involved, cutting across multiple disciplines from health care regulations and benefit structures to tax policy to technology incentives. That’s why Amplify Public Affairs and the Disruptive Women in Health Care® blog (along with our media partenr, The Hill) have formed the Health In Place™ Initiative — to bring together policymakers and change agents from multiple industries.

 Please join us as we unveil this new initiative.

 Speakers:

• Robin Strongin, President & CEO, Amplify Public Affairs & Creator, Disruptive Women in Health Care — Moderator
• John Marttila, President, Marttila Strategies (a national polling expert)
• John C. (Jack) Lewin, MD, Chief Executive Officer, American College of Cardiology
• Pamela Cipriano, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, Professor, University of Virginia School of Nursing, Editor-in-Chief, American Nurse Today, 2010-11 Institute of Medicine Nurse Scholar-In-Residence (and a Disruptive Woman blogger)
• Halle Tecco, Founder & Managing Director of Rock Health (and a Disruptive Woman blogger)

Stay tuned for more information.  And by all means, please come out on December 6th and celebrate with us.

At three years of age, we are not only Disruptive, we are also HIP.

But there was another line in the blockbuster movie that moved me even more. I heard it and the heavens seemed to open. The light bulb came on.

Hilly Holbrook’s new maid is $75 short on one of the college tuitions for her twin sons and asks Hilly and her husband for a loan so she doesn’t have to choose which son should go to college. Doing the ‘Christian thing,’ Hilly refuses, “God does not give charity to those who are well and able.”

Twelve simple words from a fictional 1960’s character summed up our nation’s current political will regarding the poor. And allow me to condense this into just one word: selfishness.

We movie-goers were quick to see the bigotry in Hilly’s statement. The maid and her husband had been saving money from their meager wages for a long time and she wasn’t seeking a hand-out, but a loan she would pay off with her thankless labor. But I was also quick to see the hipocracy in those of us who identify ourselves as Christians regarding the poor–many like this maid are in temporarily tight spots by no fault of their own. I was convicted by the thought that a selfish Christian is just as much of an oxymoron as a Christian murderer.

We use the word Christian so loosely nowadays, especially in politics. Calling ourselves Christians is not just the politically sexy thing to do. It is bearing the responsibility to personify the totality of God’s word and value every stage of every life, even the poor. Perhaps our selfishness is rooted in fear, more specifically, fear of shortage. We are so afraid that assistance to the poor robs us, but the Bible is clear that it is better to give than to receive (Acts 20:35) and we will never lack giving to the poor (Proverbs 28:27). Now I’m not suggesting that Christians are obligated to give to any and everybody. We must be good stewards over what we’ve been blessed with and use wisdom, but we must never forget we have been blessed with what we are stewards over. None of it truly belongs to us.

What makes giving complicated is when the poor is undeserving for reasons we determine in our own minds. With the issue of Medicaid, for example, we are quick to point to the rare cases of system defrauders. But for every story of fraud, there are at least nine stories of genuine need.

The Institute of Medicine, the trusted, non-political council advising the nation on ways to improve health, recently released “The Healthcare Imperative Report” on how to lower health care costs and improve outcomes. The Institute thoroughly studied excess costs in our health care system and identified six domains of excess spending: unnecessary services, inefficiently delivered services, excess administrative costs, prices that are too high, missed prevention opportunities and fraud. Want to guess how much waste is due to fraud? Less than you think. Only 10 percent. And that figure includes fraud at the hands of payers, clinicians and patients, so patient fraud represents only a fraction of health care waste.

I got ticked off… Oh, pardon me… I was greatly disturbed this week while speaking with a cousin who attends one of Columbia, SC’s most prominent churches. After the August 5-6, SC Mission 2011: Midlands event that served more than 2,000 uninsured from around and outside the state, a water cooler conversation at the church included appalling accounts of some people in line for services using iPhones. The nerve of those beggars!

Thankfully, my cousin was quick and correct to point out that many of those in line were among the working poor. SC Mission 2010 in Greenville, SC, for example, drew 1,200 of the state’s underserved to the Carolina First Center. Forty-four percent were employed, tax-paying citizens. My co-worker even received a call from an area city councilman inquiring if his uninsured family of four (wife, two teenagers and himself) could come for services at the Midlands event at the Carolina Coliseum.

These are realities, but we citizens have made it too easy for our elected officials to turn a blind eye and deaf ear. In an attempt to heighten awareness of these realities to policy-makers, the South Carolina Hospital Association sent personal invitations to Mission 2011 to more than 400 elected officials in federal, state and local government. Guess how many showed up? Two. Republican SC House Representative Todd Atwater who also serves as President of the South Carolina Medical Association and volunteered at Mission, and Democratic SC House Representative Leon Howard. Two, I said! One Republican. One Democrat. Zero from the Tea Party. Zero Independents. Zero from local government. Zero from the federal government. Raise your index finger, then your middle finger. Two. They could have at least followed the lead of Columbia, SC Mayor Steve Benjamin who knew he’d be out of town. Mayor Benjamin marketed the event through e-mail and social media.

Maybe if more of our officials had seen the lines of men, women and children forming as early as 10 am the day before the Midlands event began, those camping on the concrete outside the Carolina Coliseum, and the countless people who were turned away due to maxed capacity, these and other social ills would not plague our community as much because policy-makers would be more prone to do the true ‘Christian thing’ and care.

On the Quality Front: New Approaches in Improving Patient Safety

Thursday, July 28, 2011
1:30 – 2:45 pm ET

A key part of improving quality is in reducing medical errors and improving patient safety. Providers and payers are redoubling their efforts to address such problems, ranging from hospital acquired infections and preventable injuries to avoidable complications and adverse drug reactions.

The need is clear. A recent study published in the journal Health Affairs found that, on average, one third of hospital inpatients suffer an adverse event or medical error. That is nearly 10 times greater than shown by previous studies. As for Medicare, about 1 in 7 beneficiaries experience adverse events, costing the government some $4.4 billion each year.

Join Philips on July 28th, when their latest “Reimbursement Simplified” webinar explores some of the new approaches to improve patient safety including:

• A program by a Chicago hospital to remotely monitor ICU patients
• A JCAHO initiative with top health systems to design and disseminate new safety solutions
• A private payer’s perspective on identifying and managing serious adverse events

Speakers:

• Carolyn S. Langer, MD, JD, MPH
  Medical Director, Medical Management and Quality, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
• Klaus Nether
  Black Belt, Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare
• Becky Rufo, DNSc, RN, CCRN
  Resurrection Health Care eICU® Program Operations Director, Resurrection Health Care
• Laurel Sweeney (moderator)
  Senior Director Global Reimbursement Policy, Philips Healthcare

To Register: Go to www.philips.com/reimbursement or call 202-263-2900. There is no fee to participate.

As with April’s narrowly-avoided government shutdown, pundits are all atwitter (figuratively and literally, as many seem to get special joy in posting their doomsday provocations in 140 characters or less) posting increasingly ugly “what if” scenarios and rumors. No doubt one day, a researcher will be reading the tweets of July 2011 (since all tweets are part of the official public record and documented in the Library of Congress) and come to the not-completely-unsubstantiated conclusion that mankind only narrowly averted total annihilation at the hands of some sort of Armageddon-like natural disaster (only to be corrected by a wiser researcher that there was a far greater threat to mankind in 2011 than natural disasters and that was Congress).

All joking aside, all the chatter led me to wonder – how would the various outcomes of the debt ceiling debate (yes, including defaulting) impact health care? Amongst all the speculating and posturing, despite the usual inclination of political reporters to relate everything back to the Affordable Care Act, I could find nary a mention of how a debt ceiling deal or even defaulting might impact health care [and the yet-to-be-implemented ACA provisions]. Until yesterday, that is, when Kaiser Health News first reported a document summarizing areas discussed by House and Senate negotiators at a debt ceiling meeting with Vice President Biden Monday had been leaked. As it turned out, this document was a spreadsheet identifying potential Medicare and Medicaid savings that could be included in a debt ceiling deal. In total, the list adds up to between $334 billion and $353 billion in savings over the next decade – including $100 billion in Medicaid cuts.

Want all the details? A PDF of the leaked spreadsheet can be viewed here: http://capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org/index.php/2011/07/list-of-potential-medicare-and-medicaid-cuts-stirs-washington/

 

mHealth Summit to Highlight Groundbreaking Research Abstracts and Innovative Presentations

TOPIC AREAS:

• RESEARCH: Ground-breaking health research using mobile technologies in clinical medicine and public health outcomes.
• TECHNOLOGY: Categories that examine the technologies being deployed today while also exploring new technologies currently under development. 
• BUSINESS: Focus on moving the debate forward by addressing the business models that impact mHealth with a focus on lessons learned, best practices, and the emergence of commercially viable models to scale mHealth globally.
• POLICY: Showcase of healthcare, technology and investment communities seeking regulatory clarity on wireless medical technologies to accelerate this promising engine of health care innovation

The submission deadline is this Friday, July 8th. Click here to submit an abstract or presentation. For more information on the 2011 mHealth Summit click here.

Amplify Public Affairs is proud to be a media partner for the 2011 mHealth Summit – please consider participating in this event.

National Hispanic Medical Association Invites you to

National Hispanic Medical Association Regional Discussion

“Health Care Reform Implementation”

Speaker:

Mayra Alvarez, MPH*

Director, Public Health Policy, Office of Health Care Reform

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Thursday, June 30th, 2011

6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Clyde’s of Gallery Place

707 7^th St. NW

Washington, DC

R.S.V.P. to RSVP1@nhmamd.org by June 27^th

In partnership with the DC Medical Society, Latino Medical Student Association, and NHMA Council of Residents and sponsored by AMGEN

Founded in Washington, DC in 1994, The National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA) is a nonprofit association representing Hispanic physicians in the U.S. NHMA’s mission to empower Hispanic physicians to improve the health of Hispanic populations with Hispanic medical societies, resident and medical student organizations and our public and private partners. 

*Invited

The keynote speaker is Olympic medalist Shannon Miller, who will speak about her battle with ovarian cancer. Ms. Miller was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in early 2011, and has been writing about her journey on her healthy living website.

On Sunday night, you can  rock out with N.E.D., an amazing band dedicated to fighting women’s cancer. This alternative rock band is made up of gynecologic oncologists from around the country. You can hear one of their original songs in this video about OCNA’s 2010 Advocacy Day.

The conference concludes with advocacy visits to Capitol Hill. OCNA will arrange for you to speak with your legislators and their staff about why ovarian cancer matters to you. Please note that you must register separately for Advocacy Day; the registration deadline is June 3.

One of the most poignant moments at each conference is the Remembrance Ceremony commemorating the lives of women lost to ovarian cancer. You can submit original poetry and other remembrances to be included in the ceremony.

Register here. If you have any questions contact Elizabeth White at ewhite@ovariancancer.org or (202) 331-1332.