Healthcare IT News - December 2008 - (Page 40)

40 Healthcare IT News December 2008 ■ vendors www.HealthcareITNews.com VeriChip’s former CEO regains control By ErIC WICkluNd, Managing Editor sCHools Continued from page 38 The former CEO of the VeriChip Corporation has regained control of the company in a stock purchase. Scott R. Silverman purchased 5.4 million shares of common stock in VeriChip in November through his own company, R&R Consulting Partners, LLC, from the Digital Angel Corporation. The purchase gives Silverman control of 6.2 million shares, or 53 percent of the company, and returns him to the role of chairman of the company’s board of directors. Silverman, who left the company in May 2008, said he made the move because he didn’t like the company’s current outlook. “The prior controlling stockholder of the company preferred a different path for the company, which would have jeopardized the value of our FDA-cleared, first-of-a-kind medical device for patient identification,” he said in a press release. “I couldn’t let that happen.” VeriChip, based in Delray Beach, Fla., was created by Digital Angel to market and sell radio frequency identification (RFID) chips for healthcare. The company went public in February of 2007. Silverman, a former CEO of Applied Digital Solutions, was appointed CEO of VeriChip in December of 2006. VeriChip and Digital Angel secured a DELRAY BEACH, FL – patent for the embedded bio-sensor chip in October 2006 and forged an agreement in September 2007 to develop, with RECEPTORS LLC, a prototype renewable glucose sensor to use in conjunction with VeriChip’s RFID microchips. Both companies recently announced the completion of phase one testing of the In Vivo Glucose Sensing RFID Microchip. “We are not only focused on current opportunities for patient identification within our VeriMed Health Link business, but also on the future applications of RFID in healthcare,” Silverman said. “The glucose sensor is a promising example, combining a unique application of the technology and an extremely valuable market. While there is much more to do, development of the binding environment was a big step towards reaching that future.” In a separate transaction related to Silverman’s wresting control of the company, VeriChip has purchased from Digital Angel all patents related to an embedded biosensor system for use in humans, as well as the assignment of any of Digital Angel’s rights under a development agreement related to an implantable glucose-sensing microchip. VeriChip also acquired covenants from Digital Angel and a subsidiary to use Digital and forced providers to figure those payments more prominently in revenues. Morrison says the new RCM network will enable providers to figure out up front how much of the cost of services is the responsibility of the patient, then reconcile patient and payer payments through the company’s NaviNet platform. “This … is a critical piece of the equation to enable real-time adjudication in today’s complex healthcare payment infrastructure,” said Tim Hargarten, NaviMedix’s CEO. “It will accurately estimate patient financial responsibility and will easily reconcile payments from all sources.” VeriChip, which develops RFID microchips, is developing an implantable glucose-sensing chip. Angel’s intellectual property in developing the VeriMed Health Link business without payment of ongoing royalties. ■ MOrE at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: CHip 1208 ● plaTform Continued from page 38 of marketing and product development at NaviMedix, is a system that allows health plans to take part no matter how far along they are on the IT curve. “Different plans are at different levels of providing payment estimates,” he says. “Those payers need to evolve along their own lines and still be supported.” The evolution of consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) has given patients more responsibility for paying healthcare costs – The company’s new platform, according to NaviMedix officials, will enable providers to determine, capture, process and reconcile patient responsibility for service; support reconciliation of all payments through a health plan’s transaction system; and allow for real-time claims adjudication. “As an industry, we’ve always jumped to the end-stage – without looking at the process in between,” said Morrison. “This enables everyone to get sort of reduced to the lowest common denominator of capability.” ■ MOrE at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: platfOrM 1208 ● download training versions of SpringCharts for educational use. “We’re finding that doctors are still leery of EMRs,” says Smyth, pointing out that the typical journey for a physician these days is to come out of school and join a hospital or large physician organization that still Jack Smyth depends on paper-based solutions. “A lot of them coming out of school now at least have e-mail addresses and are computer-literate, but (EMR adoption) is not going to be as fast as people think it should be.” Art Papier, of Rochester, N.Y.-based Logical Images, sees a more profound change taking place in the new generation of physicians. Whereas the last generation of doctors based its clinical decisions on memory and practice-based learning, this next generation has access to clinical support technology and evidence-based medicine. “Medicine is in flux. They need to have an immediate understanding that you can’t memorize everything,” he says. “They can’t be shooting from the hip, in other words. They can’t be seeing a patient and relying on memory.” Logical Images’ VisualDx system allows physicians – and medical students, for that matter – to call up images from the company’s extensive database to support clinical diagnoses. Papier says the system is in use in 10 major academic medical centers, and the company’s online tutorials, offered over the past four years to more than 125 medical schools and 400 residencies, have reportedly helped improve skill levels from 60 percent to 90 percent. “This is bridging the gap between the curriculum of today and where the educators want to go tomorrow,” he says. “It’s a big universe out there, and you need to do a lot better (in healthcare) than flip through and atlas or search Google Images.” ■ MOrE at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: sCHOOls 1208 ● Join HIMSS – We can transform healthcare…together. >>> The word is out: ToxIC Continued from page 38 Stay on top of the latest trends, best practices and lessons learned in a collaborative environment that can fuel your success Participate Fast-track your career with certification, networking and education Be an industry advocate The Power of Membership—Join HIMSS Today! Join today! Visit himss.org or e-mail membership@himss.org. at Children’s Hospital in Boston and a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. “A clinician attempting to treat a 70-yearold man with an aspirin level of 85 wants reasonable step-by-step guidance on what to do, not an unwieldy treatise on everything that could possibly happen to a patient.” ToxED is divided into three sections, focused on emergency management principles, specific agents and treatments and environmental and occupational toxicology. Its features include a database of plants and mushrooms, including pictures of each variety; a drug identifier tool that identifies tablets and capsules based on image, color and shape; and links to MD Consult, First Consult and Gold Standard’s Clinical Pharmacology electronic drug information and medication management reference. Other features include data sheets and information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and guidance on how to treat poisonings and drug overdoses, especially in pediatric patients, how to deal with therapeutic drugs and antidotes and how to handle hazardous materials. ■ MOrE at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: tOxiC 1208 ● http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10515 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10512 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10511 http://www.himss.org http://www.himss.org http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=10513

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Healthcare IT News - December 2008

Healthcare IT News - December 2008 Contents AHIC 2.0 Debuts See How It Works Monitored to Health Right Decisions Neurologist Needed HiMSS Insider: Four to the Board Heartened Generation Next Clinical Toolkit: Inpatient EMRs Management Solutions: Asset Tracking

Healthcare IT News - December 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.