MedPharma Partners' David E. Williams: 2011 to Bring Health Care Transparency, Mobile Apps, Patient Safety and Reform Implementation

BOSTON, Dec. 21, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- David E. Williams, co-founder of MedPharma Partners - http://www.mppllc.com - and author of the Health Business Blog - http://www.healthbusinessblog.com - predicts transparency, mobile health, patient safety and the implementation of health reform will be the big health care stories of 2011. The four predictions are based on his own insights and the views of his Twitter followers including prominent health care executives and entrepreneurs.

"The passage of the Affordable Care Act made 2010 a memorable year in health care, but 2011 is shaping up to be equally significant," said Williams. "No one can master it all so I asked my Twitter followers - http://twitter.com/#!/HealthBizBlog - including AOL co-founder Steve Case, Beth Israel CEO Paul Levy, and Castlight Health CEO Giovanni Colella to help me think through what lies ahead."

1. Transparency. The health care industry is tremendously opaque. Patients and doctors don't know the price of medical services, while pharmaceutical and medical device makers maintain secret financial arrangements with physicians. That will change next year as employers and consumers embrace online price transparency tools - http://www.healthbusinessblog.com/?p=4017, companies begin reporting payments to doctors, and WikiLeaks exposes questionable dealings in the pharmaceutical industry.

2. Information technology. Mobile health - http://www.healthbusinessblog.com - will enjoy strong growth as new apps, smartphones and tablets enable consumers to prevent and manage chronic diseases. Meanwhile, physicians, hospitals and vendors will continue to make slow, uneven strides on electronic health record implementation in the quest to meet Meaningful Use requirements that qualify them for federal stimulus funds.

3. Patient safety. http://www.mppllc.com/AdvancedPracticeStrategies.html - Hospitals will make significant progress building a culture of patient safety, spurred by strong executive and clinician leadership and enabled by eLearning tools and simulation. FDA and patient demands for drug safety will be met by advanced analytic tools that help pharmaceutical companies demonstrate safety and efficacy without driving up drug development costs.

4. Health reform implementation. http://www.mppllc.com/healthcare.html - Republicans will attempt to obstruct health reform at the federal and state level but the rollout of the Accountable Care Act will proceed, if bumpily. By year-end, a general economic recovery will take hold, giving the Obama Administration greater leverage in the health care debate and momentum heading into the 2012 elections.

The full set of health care predictions for 2011, including quotes from Case, Levy, Colella and others, is available on the Health Business Blog. http://www.healthbusinessblog.com/?p=4118

About David E. Williams

David E. Williams has over 20 years of experience as a health care strategy consultant, blogger and public speaker.

He is co-founder of health care strategy consulting firm MedPharma Partners and author of the Health Business Blog, where he has written about health care business and policy every day since early 2005. He is Chairman of Advanced Practice Strategies and the Hearts & Noses Hospital Clown Troupe and a board member of iCardiac Technologies, Candescent Healing and the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health.

He has acted as an instructor in MIT's graduate-level Dynamics of Biomedical Technologies course in the Biomedical Enterprise Program and served on the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology's Objective Review panels for Regional Health Information Technology Extension Centers and Beacon Community Programs.

Before MedPharma Partners he worked for ten years in the health care practice of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and as an independent consultant. He began his career at the LEK Partnership, where he was a strategy consultant and mergers and acquisitions advisor.

David holds a BA in Economics from Wesleyan University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, with First Year Honors.

About MedPharma Partners

MedPharma Partners LLC is a boutique strategy consulting firm serving clients in health care services, pharmaceuticals, biotech, and medical devices in North America, Europe and Asia. Clients range from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups.

The company was founded in 2003 and has offices in Boston, MA and Bridgewater, NJ. MedPharma Partners' professionals have an average of 15 years of consulting and corporate experience.

SOURCE MedPharma Partners LLC