David Cutler, professor of economics at Harvard University’s
Economics Department and the Kennedy School of Government, will deliver
the annual Howard T. McMyler Lecture. He will discuss the U.S. health
care system in a lecture, entitled “Your Money or Your Life� and
co-hosted by the Economics Department of Case’s Weatherhead School
of Management and by the Center for Health Care Research and Policy.
The talk will take place on Thursday April 14, 2005, 3:30 p.m. in the
Clark Room at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. It is free and open to
the public

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All parents should read the following article found on the Organic Consumers Association website. The FDA and the American Cancer Society have largely failed to protect babies and children who are much more vulnerable to carcinogens than adults by pressuring the cosmetics industry to use readily available alternatives to the toxic ingredients they now use. Parents must be vigilant because the FDA and the American Cancer Society have long preferred to protect the interests of the powerful cosmetic industry rather than our children. After a quick survey of the skin and hair care products and makeup that I use regularly – many which I considered high quality, natural and healthy – I found most of them to contain one or more of the toxins listed in the article.

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You are invited to attend an air quality
workshop at the offices of the Northeast Ohio Areawide
Coordinating Agency (NOACA) to begin the public participation process for the
Ozone and Particulate Matter State Implementation Plans (SIPs).

As you
may already know, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA)
designated the counties of Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina,
Portage, and Summit as in nonattainment for the new 8-hour ozone standard. The
USEPA designated Ashtabula (partial), Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage,
and Summit as in nonattainment for the new fine particulate (PM2.5) standard.
These designations require that the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, with
local input, submit SIPs to USEPA that would bring Northeast Ohio into
attainment for both of these pollutants.

Please join us for a free,
public informational event that will include presentations on the air quality
issues that Northeast Ohio faces, talks by affected industries, discussion of
the Ohio EPA SIP development process, and an overview of potential attainment
strategies. Continental breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
9:00
a.m. until 2:30 p.m.
NOACA Board Room
1299 Superior Avenue
Cleveland,
Ohio 44114

Please RSVP by e-mail
to Pam Davis at pdavis [at] mpo [dot] noaca [dot] org
or by calling (216) 241-2414, Extension 284. Your participation is appreciated.
We look forward to talking with you. 

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Anne Mulcahy, chairman and CEO, Xerox Corp., began her career selling
copiers in Boston, and over the last three years, has led the company
through a massive transformation--reinventing Xerox into an innovative

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If you are interested in developing the brainpower of our next generation of northeast Ohio residents and workers, please come read about the Northeast Ohio Breastfeeding Education and Advocacy Network!

Case's Weatherhead School of Management Center for Regional Economic Issues (REI) and other community leaders support an initiative to distribute used computers and ease access to free or low cost Internet access for area residents in financial hardship. The first community being supported through this vision is East Cleveland, where REI drives ECHO - "Extending Community Home Online" - as part of an East Cleveland 2010 community redevelopment initiative. This effort is not in social service for the poor of East Cleveland but a critical initiative for economic development for this entire NEO region.

NOTES POSTED FROM SESSION. Fascinating, whirlwind two hours focused on NEO as a global center for applied cognitive learning, arts, technology and their convergence. This Tuesday@REI brought together the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Case, Mark Turner, the Chief Information Officer of Case, Tom Knab, the Chief Information Officer of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Len Steinbach, and the Director of Integrative Studies, Department of Neurology, Case, Peter Whitehouse, M.D. REI Executive Director Ed Morrison makes introductions and moderates... share in the outcomes...

The Center for Regional Economic Issues promotes the understanding economic development begins with the unborn child, and many area community leaders realize effective early childhood development improves the economy. Two recent benefits of this enlightenment are a community of interest called NEOchildhood, pursuing a wide range of childhood development related opportunities for Northeast Ohio, and NEOBEAN, creating the Northeast Ohio Breastfeeding Education and Advocacy Network - all for parents, family, employers, policymakers, educators, researchers, caregivers and ultimately children. Good work!.Â

HIPAA & BEYOND: Business Opportunities at the Intersection of Privacy, Technology, & Healthcare

NEOSA & BioEnterprise
Thursday, February 17, 2005, 5:30pm to 7:30pm

FREE (everyone welcome)Venue: HealthSpace

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Participants at the 02.14.05 session 2 of the forum on The Economics of Early Childhood Development were asked to connect the dots from early childhood development to regional economic development. The goal of this interactive session was to broaden the discussion on early care in three ways... visit the NEO Childhood COIL for a wealth of insight on this initiative and next steps!

The Doctor Will See Your Prototype Now - Wired,
February 2005

The Physiome Project is assembling digital models of every system and anatomical feature of the human body - from large organs to tiny cellular and molecular functions.
The system would allows physicians to test various scenarios on your digital model - surgery, radiation, chemotherapy - and watch how your system reacts.

Below is a story about a company in LA that's doing exactly what companies and all medical service providers must do here - using open source VistA medical information management standards to transform healthcare. This is THE realization of the $125 million vision President Bush recently promoted here, and the understanding the Cleveland Clinic has embraced, and the certainty all other healthcare providers in NEO must recognize. Bottom line, if NEO's 100s of hospitals, clinics and medical centers and 1,000s of doctors get up to speed NOW, and collaborate, and turn their attention to excellence outside the operating room, and work strategically with enlightened IT professionals to embrace VistA region-wide, for the 4.4 million patients here, NEO will overnight become the global center of excellence in healthcare and the multi-billion-dollar medical information systems industry - for now, leadership, success, jobs and wealth go to some up-starts and VCs in LA. Read more...

The 02.08.04 Tuesday@REI continues an important collaboration exploring unique value in Northeast Ohio child development - today expanding focus to "Intergenerational Learning", which leverages the value of all ages learning together. Here we see notes on presentations and discussions featuring:

An entire section of the daily newspaper and about half of TV news coverage is about NEO sports, while little attention is focused on our real winners. What is more exciting and important to the people of this community: a closing pitcher's saved games or a heart surgeon's saved lives? Attendance at basketball games or patients treated per year? A 30,000 seat stadium or a million square foot heart center? Having the world's best B-ball player or world-class healthcare, adding $ billions to our economy! TIme to focus on the scoreboards that matter. Cleveland sports teams rise and fall but NEO healthcare providers are always global champions, and getting better each year. Not only are "WE" winners at home, but the team Cleveland Clinic is increasingly a winner on the road, most recently being recruited by Scripps Institute in California for an innovative program in Florida. Read recent from the Cleveland Clinic head coach's playbook and more press below on a few other big wins in the past few weeks.

From Today's Crain's, we see the Cleveland Clinic continuing to dominate local news and the world healthcare economy as they attract to this area $5 million in state funding, contributing to a $300 million development budget for a one million square foot project building the world's largest and leading heart center, resulting in 5,000 local jobs and a $1.2 billion annual impact on our economy. At the Cleveland City Club, on January 21, 2005, new Clinic CEO "Toby" Cosgrove laid out his vision for the future of the Clinic, and the Heart Center is an exciting part of their plan for NEO. Read notes from the City Club and related insight to appreciate the scope of opportunties offered ahead!

At the January 21, 2005 City Club forum, Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove ended his presentation with his vision for the Cleveland Clinic leading the inevitable "socialization" of healthcare in America - he declared the age of private and small medical practices and hospitals has ended and large, efficient world-class healthcare providers like the Clinic will create a universal umbrella of coverage. He is correct, and Cleveland is very fortunate to have a world-leader of this movement here - the Clinic is just as able to be a world-hub of socialized healthcare as any other provider, and Cosgrove is clearly capable of leading NEO to the forefront of this global transition - NEO should be center of global healthcare industry and excellence - read the notes from Cosgrove's presentation to better understand how and why!

But the socialized provider aspect of the healthcare revolution is just one opportunity now before NEO - another was surfaced a week later with President Bush's 02.28.05 visit to the Clinic to praise their use of information systems to streamline and automate patient records - featuring before the world the Clinic's successes standardizing how patient records are maintained and communicated. To highlight this transformation, mentioned by Cosgrove the prior week at the City Club, the Clinic was not only able to use excellent medical information management to be the first providers to identify health risks of the pain-killer Vioxx but was then able to notify their 11,000 patients using Vioxx that they must stop taking the medication, literally real-time. Thus, effective medical information systems reduce healthcare problems, saving money and lives.

The Economics of Early Child Development initiative for Northeast Ohio kicked off February 01, 2005, with a fantastic forum at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where 11 important community leaders representing organizations ranging from the Gund and Cleveland Foundations, Treu-Mart Fund, CCC, Cleveland Public Schools and Hanna Perkins, were moderated by REI leaders Ed Morrison and Roberta Waxman-Lenz in insightful presentations and Q&A on what NEO will look like in 2010, when we are the world-leaders in Early Child Development - join the over 160 attendees as we plan next steps at a special NEO Childhood Community of Interest Link here!

Notes from the first Early Child Development Forum:

What will NEO look like in 2010 if we focus on Early Childhood Development (ECD) supporting pregnant women, babies and children - for them and for economic development

Forum 02/01 is part of a process leading to regional action plan. Roberta Waxman-Lenz at REI, Joe Gauntner (sp?) Dir. Cuyahoga County Center for Family and Children and Joyce Bressler (sp?) at Starting Point.

On 01/21/05 Cleveland Clinic CEO Delos Cosgrove made a presentation at the Cleveland City Club stressing the value of the Clinic to our regional economy, and the value of the healthcare industries to human quality of life. While Dr. Cosgrove highlighted some nice local programs the Clinic sponsors for education, and new billing systems, and other unique values in their planning, the big news was the revolution he sees occuing in the industry, and that the Clinic is poised to grow its world-class leadership in many important ways, like growing largely federally funded research in excess of the $110 million raised last year. Considering the importance of federal government funding for big developments in healthcare, it is amazing to see President Bush making his first post election stop in Ohio right here at the Cleveland Clinic, Thursday, 01/27/05 - this is a powerful sign of good developments to come.

There is no experience to compare to hearing a genius present the future of the world's most complex situation, realizing that genius is leading NEO's most important institution, and is a leader of the world's most important industry, and will save our local economy.

Cleveland Clinic's incoming CEO Delos Cosgrove M.D. presented a full house at the Cleveland City Club with a clear vision on the current and future state of the healthcare industry that is critical to understanding global quality of life, economic development, and our region's national and global potentials - there will be no more important discussions initiated in this region this year.

Bottom line, while it is awesome the Clinic represents over 5% of our area economy, what is remarkable is they are a global leader in the largest and fastest growing industry in the world, and positioned to play a dramatically greater and changing role in our economy and their global industry. They offer much more than their $2.5 billion contribution to the 2004 regional economy, their 29,000 NEO jobs (65,000, with trickle-down), their $310 million in NEO taxes paid, and their $250 million in uncompensated services for area residents in need - the Clinic is our world-class leader in the industry most responsible for improving people's quality of life, and global productivity, at the time when the potentials of the greatest breakthroughs and innovations in the history of healthcare are just becoming apparent, and while more centralized and socialized policy is inevitable. While the fact is the Clinic is a world-class hospital, the true excitement today is not that the Clinic saves lives but that the Clinic is positioned to save the region's life, making Cleveland one of very few true healthcare capitals of the world.

No big surprise NYNY Major Bloomberg is a master of ICE -
Information Community Effectiveness - as that has made him untold $ millions.
But I am always surprised how well he and NYC.gov use the WWW to serve the
diverse needs of citizens - through his virtual outreach he makes clear he is
an ingenious and caring statesman very deserving to lead one of the world's
most remarkable and complex cities. For example, today I received the following
"Health and Mental Hygiene News" on "How to Find a Doctor",
which "tells
you how to find the doctor you want regardless if you have insurance or not,
lists many free or low-cost health insurance programs, and explains how having
a regular doctor can greatly improve your health." How many 100,000s of
people in NEO need this knowledge, from an eGov taking care of citizen needs?

In a recent REALNEO posting I reflected on the relationship
of optimal ICE - Information Communications Effectiveness - to political
sustainability, thus challenging the survivability of IT-ineffective public office
holders. It then occurred to me I've never seen used the term "political
sustainability" and so googled that and found a fascinating analysis of the
relationship of effective Environmental Management and political sustainability,
thus challenging the survivability of eco-insensitive public and private office holders.

Speakers
> Delos M. Cosgrove, M.D.

Friday, January 21, 2005 12:00 PM

Location