AMA Connects Doctors With Health IT Ventures

Maybe I’m wrong, but the following strikes me as coming straight from the Redundancy Department of Redundancy…but let’s see. Maybe I’m just being mean. Or maybe it’s because I just couldn’t taste The Rainbow in my last package of Skittles.

Anyway, recently AMA announced the launch of an online platform, the Physician Innovation Network (PIN), designed to connect physicians together with health tech firms.

The PIN will give HIT companies will have a straightforward channel for collecting physician input on the products and services they’re developing. The health IT ventures will also be able to search for physicians who have the expertise they need and are willing to exchange information with them. Meanwhile, the platform will help physicians to find paid and volunteer opportunities to work with health tech companies to work with the health take ventures that suit them.

In recent years, the AMA has taken several steps to bring the world of health IT and physicians closer together. Most recently, the trade group announced that it had created a data standardization organization known as the Integrated Health Model Initiative. The physician group and its partners say the new data model will include clinically-validated data elements designed to speed up the development of improved data organization, management, and analytics.

Its other HIT initiatives include:

  • Co-founding Health2047, a company designed (like PIN) to bring together physicians with established healthcare companies and help them launch useful services and products
  • Serving as one of four founding organizations behind Xcertia, an organization intended to foster knowledge about clinical content, usability, privacy, security and evidence of efficacy for mHealth apps
  • Managing a student-run biotechnology incubator in collaboration with Sling Health,

But what is there to say about PIN that distinguishes it from all of these efforts? It resembles Health2047, mais non? And what benefit does it add over LinkedIn? Specialty interest groups within the MGMA and HIMSS? AngelList? A giant digital corkboard and some virtual Post-It notes?

Don’t get me wrong, I know I’ve come down hard on the AMA’s product launch announcements rather often, perhaps too often. Depending on how it actually works, PIN may actually offer some incremental value over all of these other options. And hey, if the trade group wants to throw its money around, whom am I to say that they shouldn’t have at it.

The thing is, though, the AMA doesn’t work in a vacuum.

Look, as we all know, we’re absolutely drowning in initiatives and proposals and great new ideas for interoperability and the collection of consumer-generated health data. And don’t forget scoping out the best architecture for deploying two tin cans with a piece of string between them, getting budget approval from a Magic 8 Ball (signs point to no), and repurposing some BASIC code from a  Commodore 64 to develop your next mobile health app. (Yes, it tired me out to write that sentence but it was worth it.)

Silliness aside, when you have the kind of resources the AMA does, you want to the profession to say something meaningful when you open your mouth, professionally speaking. Other than that, you’re just sucking air out of the room that could be used for people with a differentiated idea in real value to deliver.  Hey, but other than that, the PIN announcement is just fine.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

Categories