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Category: Health

REMINDER: Accelerate Biotech and Digital Health Happy Hour, February 1

As tech becomes more pervasive, we’re seeing more and more interesting, inspiring, and innovative solutions from any number of verticals in Portland. But if I had to pick a sector that has the most momentum and potential, I’d have to say biotech. And nowhere is the potential of that community better showcased and celebrated than the monthly Accelerate Biotech and Digital Health Happy Hour.

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Wisdom (and health) of the crowd: Portland's Consano is changing the way medical research is funded with crowdfunding

The concept of crowdfunding has changed—or utterly disrupted—any number of industries. But what about healthcare? Can taking medical research funding to the crowd prove to be a viable means of changing the industry? Portland’s Consano is convinced it can be. Read More

Saving Oregon’s Health System: A prescription for Oregon Governor Elect John Kitzhaber, MD

one of his ideas highlights an opportunity for Kitzhaber to make Oregon home to a cluster that is likely to explode over the next decade – Personal Health Monitoring.

In earlier guest posts here on Silicon Florist, Dave Chase has written some thought provoking pieces that have generated quite a bit of dialog here and offline. He has shared why he chose Portland over Seattle and Silicon Valley and how Oregon’s Athletic & Outdoor, Software & Clean Tech clusters should meet. Then in the first part of a two-part series on healthcare, he put out a call to action for entrepreneurs to employ what he calls Do-it-yourself Health Reform. Read More

Calling Oregon entrepreneurs to action: Do-it-yourself healthcare reform

From friends who own small traditional businesses to my tech entrepreneur friends, most are aghast at how severely they’ve been hit by healthcare cost increases. It’s simply unsustainable. This post will outline an alternative approach to getting your healthcare needs met that may be a better route for you and your organization.

[HTML4][Editor’s Note: Dave Chase provides us with another guest post. This time, he focuses on what entrepreneurs can do to reform the US healthcare system. It’s an area near and dear to his heart and, as you’ll see, where his latest startup is focused.]

Imagine a cost in your business or personal budget that grew 3400% faster than all other costs. Would you do something about it? That is what has happened to healthcare costs over the last 50 years. While other goods have gone up 8x in the last 50 years, healthcare has gone up 274x. Read More

Kryptiq partners with Surescripts to reinvent healthcare and gets some extra cash to boot

Kryptiq and Surescripts have envisioned a way to revolutionize the secure sharing of health information.

It’s always nice to see the kids do well. Especially when they’re the great grandkid of the Portland startup scene.

You see, Kryptiq is a descendant of a long line of Portland startups. Some folks started at Tektronix and then left to join startup Mentor Graphics. And then some of those folks from Mentor Graphics left to join startup MedicaLogic. And then MedicaLogic folks wound up at Kryptiq.

And today, that startup whippersnapper had some major news: Kryptiq and Surescripts have envisioned a way to revolutionize the secure sharing of health information. Read More

SweetSpot hits the… Oh. Um. Well, it secures seed funding for diabetes data services

When it comes to technology, health care, ironically, tends to fall closer to the rusting edge than the bleeding edge. But that shortcoming is a boon for startups that can figure out how to use today’s technology to solve health care’s problems—both for providers and patients.

One such company is Portland-based SweetSpot, a startup that seeks to help diabetics and their care givers better manage health information by providing a central resource for blood glucose tracking and reporting. And today, Sweetspot is one step closer that helping fix its own corner of health care, thanks to a round of seed funding. Read More

Healthy content: MDiTV looks to bring video content about your health to the Web

Introducing Portland-based MDiTV, your new online resource for health information.

Today, with YouTube and Hulu and Netflix and thousands of other sites, we’ve grown very used to consuming our entertainment online. Because of that, the TV has become less and less of a modern necessity. But what about educational content? Content that’s actually good for us? Well, for all the promise of the Web, it seems that a great deal of that type of content still remains relegated to television and traditional broadcast.

Until now. Introducing Portland-based MDiTV, your new online resource for health information. Read More

Health care geeks flock to Portland for open source CONNECT Code-a-thon

But all that changes on November 19 and 20, when Portland, OSU Open Source Labs, and PSU play host to the CONNECT Code-a-thon, a open source hacking session for health care tech types.

With OHSU, Portland has a great deal of prominence in the world of health care. And with open source, Portland has some street cred with the techie types. But events that get the health care and open source tech types intermingling? Not so much.

But all that changes on November 19 and 20, when Portland, OSU Open Source Labs, and PSU play host to the CONNECT Code-a-thon, a open source hacking session for health care tech types. Read More

Health Information Technology: Why is it important to Portland?

I have long taken an outward-looking view and advocated that Portland could become a hub for health IT at the intersection of industry, academia, and its health care systems.

[Editor: Health Information Technology has always had a interesting spot in the Portland startup scene. And I say that, most likely, because I’ve been part of it from time to time. But I’m probably not the best person to write about it. Enter Bill Hersh, MD, Professor and Chair of the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology (DMICE) in the School of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. Here’s his perspective on HIT, its role, and its potential for the Portland tech scene.]

I appreciate the opportunity to contribute a piece to this blog about a topic of great interest to myself and many others, which is health information technology, also called health IT or HIT. Read More

JanRain OpenID could be the key to your health (vault)

myOpenIDIn June, that little software company to the north of us, Microsoft, made news by allowing OpenID logins to its Microsoft Health Vault product.

Problem was—as TechCrunch noted—only two OpenID relying parties were allowed to play:

Over 16 months after first declaring its support for the OpenID authentication platform, Microsoft has finally implemented it for the first time, allowing for OpenID logins on its Health Vault medical site. Unfortunately, Health Vault will only support authentication from two OpenID providers: Trustbearer and Verisign. Whatever happened to the Open in OpenID?

But now, Microsoft has decided to increase the number of relying parties by 50%. To three.

So who was the lucky relying party who made it through the door? Portland-based JanRain‘s myOpenID.

A number of folks—me among them—are surprised it’s taken Microsoft this long to add another relying party. And it seems like the list is still missing a few other obvious and highly secure choices.

But myOpenID is a great place to start:

JanRain’s myOpenID service, the first and most popular independent OpenID service on the Internet, provides consumers with a free, fully featured, reliable, and secure solution for managing their personal online identity. Every myOpenID user receives several choices for secure authentication beyond password. These enhanced security options include: Microsoft InfoCard, Client Certificate, or Phone-based two factor authentication.

For more information on the personal health record service, visit Microsoft Health Vault. For more on JanRain and its OpenID solutions, visit JanRain or myOpenID.