Dec 23, 2016 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
Researchers find shopping for medical laboratory tests increased by nearly 50%, and people are saving more than a million dollars annually by shopping for blood tests
Each year, more consumers use online healthcare price-shopping tools to find hospitals, physicians, and clinical laboratories that have the lowest prices. And medical laboratory tests is among the top services on their lists!
Researchers at Vitals of Lyndhurst, NJ, a company that publishes online physician ratings, analyzed how consumers were using its price and quality transparency tools. They confirmed that shopping for medical laboratory tests/blood work is one of the top healthcare procedures checked by consumers.
According to a recent Vitals press release, approximately 46% more people shopped for blood tests in 2015 than the year before, and they saved $1,149,682 by doing so. That’s because their health plans reward them for selecting good quality and low-price providers, as well as adopting healthy behaviors, such as losing weight, exercising more, and lowering high cholesterol scores. (more…)
Jun 20, 2016 | Instruments & Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory News, Laboratory Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
IBM’s Watson continues to seek a role as a cognitive computing tool of choice for physicians and pathologists in need of evidence-based clinical patient data
Remember IBM’s Watson? It’s been five years since Watson beat human contestants on Jeopardy. Since then, IBM has hoped Watson could be used in healthcare. To that end, some oncologists are exploring the use of Watson in cancer care. This could have implications for anatomic pathologists if oncologists developed a way to use Watson in the diagnosing cancers and identifying appropriate therapies for those cancers.
In 2011, IBM’s Watson supercomputer defeated human contestants for a charity prize during the television show Jeopardy. Just days later, Dark Daily reported on IBM’s goal for Watson to play a major role in helping physicians diagnose and treat disease. Since then, IBM has been exploring ways to commercialize Watson’s cognitive computing platform through partnerships with some of the healthcare industry’s biggest brands. (more…)
Mar 30, 2016 | Compliance, Legal, and Malpractice, Digital Pathology, Laboratory Instruments & Laboratory Equipment, Laboratory Management and Operations, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing
IBM Health’s data combined with Truven’s patient records will create an enormous big-data collection representing 300 million patient lives
If any pathologist or clinical laboratory manager still doubts the importance of healthcare big data, the multi-billion-dollar acquisition of Truven Health Analytics by IBM should put those doubts to rest.
Last month, IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM) announced an agreement to acquire Truven Health Analytics, (Truven) for $2.6 billion. Truven is a provider of cloud-based healthcare, analytics, and insights and is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (more…)
