Focus on Security
Debate Persists Over What’s the Right Safeguard Strategy
By Neil Versel, contributing editor

Recent laptop thefts from Fallon Community Health Plan in Worcester, Mass., and from Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey have focused attention anew on the issue of data security in health care.

In this age of identity theft, “I’ve actually heard health care systems referred to as one-stop shopping,�? says John Carmichael, a security trainer at Security Innovation, Wilmington, Mass. Health records often contain individuals’ names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, and payment information — exactly the kinds of data criminals want. More...

Executive Q&A
Pay-For-Performance Yields Incremental Results and Outcomes-Based ROI
By Cindy Atoji

On the eve of the annual national P4P conference, Feb. 27-29, Tom Williams, a major pay-for-performance backer, admits that results for physician incentive programs have been mixed. Williams, CEO of Integrated Healthcare Association (IHA), runs California’s P4P program, the largest in the country. The non-profit group is backed by all the state’s major health plans and involves over 40,000 physicians. Digital HealthCare & Productivity spoke with Williams about the challenges of implementing P4P and the use of information technology, a key performance measurement.

DHP: In your opinion, is P4P working?
WILLIAMS: The results have been mixed. On the positive side, we’ve had significant engagement from the physicians and they’ve worked hard to improve the results. We’ve had a number of successes, including the collaboration of plans around a uniform measure set and the use of aggregated data, which has been very powerful. When physicians know an entire patient population is being measured, they’re much more confident in the validity and reliability of the results, so that has been a big plus. We’ve been able to publish, through state of California, a single report card using aggregated results.

We’ve had good reimbursement in terms of incentive bonuses, including over $55 million a year in payments. More...

Deals, Deployments, and Short News
By Allison Proffitt, Digital HealthCare & Productivity staff

CCHIT announces open survey, MIT scientists take cues from geckos, Misys releases open source health-IT, South Dakota website chooses Microsoft solution. More…

LIFE SCIENCE JOBS

Unilever - Mathematical Modeller (Research Scientist)
The ability to work in multidisciplinary teams alongside biologists, chemists and statisticians plus enthusiasm for learning new science is critical for the role. For a complete job description and to apply, please visit: https://unilever.recruitmax.com/

Intrexon Corporation - Software Developer
The software developer will work in a close-knit team to build, develop and deploy advanced bioinformatics systems in concurrence with advancements in our gene-based technologies. For a full description and application, please visit http://www.dna.com/intrexon/careers.aspx.

GNS Biotech - Software Engineer, User Interfaces and Visualization
The successful candidate will work closely with the internal applications team and external customers to design and develop novel visualization approaches for ensembles of biological networks and to integrate GNS solutions with existing visualization tools. For more information please visit http://www.gnsbiotech.com/careers/openings/

GNS Biotech - Software Engineer, Platform Development
The successful candidate will work closely with the algorithm development team to add newly developed algorithms into the production platform and the biological applications team to define and implement new functional requirements for the platform. For more information please visit http://www.gnsbiotech.com/careers/openings/

GNS Biotech - Computational Scientist, Discovery Biology
The successful candidate will reverse engineer models from large coherent data sets. In addition, the candidate will complete genome-wide association analysis of disease and drug-response and develop methods to deal with population genetic structure, pedigrees, missing data and computational scaling. For more information please visit http://www.gnsbiotech.com/careers/openings/

GNS Biotech - Computational Scientist, Biological Applications Candidates must have a combination of experience in the following areas: bioinformatics, microarray data analysis, algorithm development, statistics, machine learning, and network inference or reverse engineering methods. For more information please visit http://www.gnsbiotech.com/careers/openings/

Software Engineer, Bioinformatician - ISB - Job #07-052
The Institute for Systems Biology’s (ISB) Computational Core seeks qualified candidates to join its growing bioinformatics team. For a full description and application instructions, please visit http://www.systemsbiology.org/careers. ISB is an M/F/D/EOE.

Bio-Informatics Scientist -Van Andel Institute -
opening at Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Position supports collaborators using XB Bio-Integration Suite Software. Qualified candidates will have Ph.D. in molecular biology or related discipline. Two years post-doctoral training and experience in bioinformatics analysis of high throughput biological datasets. http://www.vai.org/employment/opportunities/881.

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