Sermo's FluMonitor

Sermo, an online social networking site for physicians, is leveraging its network of 100,000 physicians in a Health 2.0 application, monitoring the outbreak of disease in the U.S. FluMonitor is an online tool that allows physicians to enter information on clinical observations and track the geographic distribution of the outbreak of infectious disease. Sermo’s first application of this technology is aimed at influenza outbreaks but the FluMonitor technology can be adapted to track other infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, staph infections, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Google has also been working on an online epidemiological tool having announced their Google Flu Trends last November. Google, together with researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have shown a correlation between queries on terms associated with common flu symptoms and the occurrence of the disease. This is yet another indication of the growing use of Web resources by consumers to gather information on disease.

Both methods greatly reduce the time lag in reporting outbreaks which has traditionally taken the CDC 10-14 days. Flu Trends is publicly available whereas FluMonitor is currently available only to members of Sermo. Flu Trends is showing a relative peak in flu activity now (late February) which is certainly consistent with past flu outbreaks. Throughout the entire U.S. the activity level is given as “Moderate.” I feel better already!

Ritter Introduces Colorado Bioscience Roadmap

Colorado’s Governor Ritter today publicly released the Colorado Bioscience Roadmap 2008; a five year plan to bolster the bioscience industry in Colorado. The Roadmap assesses a 2003 Action Plan developed by the state to grow Colorado’s Bioscience Cluster and chart out the next five years to position the state as a national and worldwide center for bioscience development.

The Roadmap comes at a time when the Governor is promoting initiatives for creating new jobs and strengthening the state’s economy. Although the development of a bioscience cluster has been a long term initiative, creating and keeping bioscience companies and talent within the state is even more crucial in the current economic environment.

The bioscience community has shown job growth of 5.5% from 2001 to 2006, outpacing total private sector growth and is poised for continued growth even at a time when many industries are contracting.

The Roadmap was prepared by the Battelle Technology Partnership Practice with support from the Colorado Bioscience Association (CBSA), the State of Colorado Economic Development Office and a number of private companies.

Genentech Seeks to Tame Molecular Diagnostics

Genentech has filed a Citizen Petition with the FDA in an effort to encourage the agency into tighter regulation of molecular diagnostic tests according to a recent article in GenomeWeb Daily News. A number of companies currently manufacturer these tests some of which test for the overexpression of the HER2 protein in breast cancer tissues, an indication that the patient would benefit from the application of Genentech’s cancer drug Herceptin.

Since the prescription of Herceptin requires that patients be tested for their HER2 expression it is understandable that Genentech be concerned about the accuracy and quality of these tests. Although some diagnostic companies, such as the Danish firm Dako have voluntarily submitted to FDA approval process, it is not yet a requirement since the tests are considered a laboratory-developed test (LDT) and therefore outside of FDA regulation. Several other manufacturers, such as Clinical Data and Genomic Health, currently market tests that have not been approved by the FDA. These manufacturers do claim to be in compliance with CLIA regulations.

Clinical Data has already replied to the Citizen Petition, opposing it and stating that the FDA approval process would impose “excessive or inappropriate regulation” which would be “a powerful disincentive to the development of innovative healthcare products.”

New molecular diagnostics companies are on the rise, riding the wave of the coming age of personalized medicine. Ultimately it is the decision of the treating physician to determine which diagnostic test to prescribe. Equally important to the adoption of the tests is the rate at which insurance companies will reimburse for the tests.

Health 2.0

Yesterday’s CCTSI Informatics Seminar was presented by Dr. Diane Skiba on Health 2.0 Tools; how the ‘wisdom of crowds’ from Web environments is influencing health care and academia. Yes, despite the resistance, Web 2.0 is penetrating health care. Dr. Skiba’s message is that, with healthcare becoming more consumer driven, Web 2.0 technologies will continue to make inroads with or without full clinical acceptance. It is therefore incumbent upon healthcare providers to adopt the technologies so that the information and knowledge requirements of patients and their families can be served more effectively.

Personal Health Records (PHR) such as Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, online patient communities such as PatientsLikeMe and health oriented Web sites such as WebMD and Revolution Health are growing rapidly, Americans are relying more on online sources for healthcare information than their physicians. The need and value of this resource is well established, it’s now a question of how the medical community intends to work with it.

Dr. Skiba also pointed out the need to meet the needs of the future nursing staff members most of whom are now in school and are submersed in social networking and online collaboration tools. These current students have developed learning and work processes are more aligned with Web 2.0 technologies than traditional methods. How will these future nurses be recruited and integrated into medical institutions unless the institutions adopt new the information technologies?

Finally, the amount of information being accumulated in PHRs, online patient communities, health wikis and blogs is increasing at an exponential rate and will continue for the foreseeable future. How can this knowledge be effectively used by clinicians to the benefit of future patients? In this respect, online health information is little different than the vast amounts of information being accumulated in other sectors. But if the potential exists for lifesaving therapies to lie hidden in the health data sources it makes these sources much more valuable.

Lijit Unplugged

A fun and, dare I say, educational event hosted by Silicon Flatirons tonight featuring Todd Vernon and Walter Knapp, the CEO and COO respectively of Lijit. This is part of the Entrepreneurs Unplugged series, a chance to introduce local Boulder entrepreneurs to CU students, faculty and community to get their entrepreneurial juices flowing.

Lijit's mission is to provide super cool services to online publishers of all sizes that help them understand their readers better and create a business around their passion. It’s featured right here on this blog. Lijit not only provides search capability for blogs, it links to the blogger's network to provide levels of authority in the search results.

This method of leveraging social networks to refine search results adds up to better targeted advertising, i.e. double the click through rate of Google Ads.

According to the two executives, Boulder still gets 80% of its venture funding from out of state. They didn’t go into any great detail on how those funds were distributed, but the upshot is that most profits flow out of state once a liquidation event occurs. Another issue they mentioned with the Boulder startup environment is that it’s easy to start, difficult to exit.

The audience was enthusiastic, perhaps cooking up new entrepreneurial efforts for the future.

Personalized Medicine at Medco

In a recent press release, Medco Health Solutions announced that it is partnering with the FDA to study the applicability of personalized medicine methodologies to prescription drug treatment. Medco is the nation’s leading pharmacy benefit manager and the announcement signals the continued mainstreaming of pharmacogenomics in healthcare.

Medco and the FDA will jointly develop research projects, programs and strategies in the area of pharmacogenomics, the science of using a patient’s genotype to predict their response to drug treatments.

Medco’s objective is to advance pharmacy care and take some of the guesswork out of the prescription process. Specifically, the objectives of the program are to address:

Safety of prescription drugs
Physician participation in pharmacogenomic testing
Usefulness of tests in prescribing
Quantifying prescription information about drugs

Central to the research studies will be Medco’s extensive database of pharmacy claims. Medco is already involved with pharmacogenomic studies including Warfarin at the Mayo Clinic and tamoxifen with LabCorp.

Adam’s Next Big Venture

Kudos to Adam Rubenstein, blogger extraordinaire, for landing a plum job at cutting edge pharmacogenomic firm ARCA biopharma. In addition to typing his fingers to the bone on seventeen blogs, Adam has been raising money for Fitzsimons BioBusiness Partners, getting MycoLogics off the ground and consulting with High Country Venture. Working at one place may seem like a vacation.

Good luck Adam!