Archive for January, 2008
MyPHR Relaunch
January 30, 2008
AHIMA is promoting their consumer outreach on PHRs through a redesign of their website, MyPHR.com. The site walks the consumer through the usefulness of PHRs through videos, what is, where to begin, etc. They are even offering requests for free presentations. It will be interesting to see how they will promote PHRs beyond the online offering and what the consumer acceptance will be.
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The Empowered (and Imperiled) Health Care Consumer in the Age of Internet Medicine
January 29, 2008
This new report by Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, raises a strong alarm for consumers and health care websites on the lack of attention to detail by consumers. The report labels these consumers “Insta-Americans” with short attention spans and poor attention to the source of the medical information they are reading.
In one sense, the web has encouraged quick scanning of information which may be fine if you are scanning on eBay or a social networking site. But when it comes to life and death or even health and wellness, different rules should apply.
The 34 page report details four specific case studies of mis-information: Crestor, Avandia, teen suicide and SSRIs and autism and vaccines. The bottom line is that through websites promoting drugs, anti-phamacuetical activist, class-action or litigation sites and spam blogs, misinformation gains a hold which is difficult to counter.
The conclusion is worth noting: “This practice of ?do-it-yourself online medical diagnosis can help arm patients and healthcare consumers with valuable research. But if this research is gathered in a vacuum, without the benefit of input from a credible physician, or certification of the information from an official organization….”
This valuable report needs to produce consumer education beyond “buyer beware” to “buyer, read more carefully.”
Share this:Impact of Web Searching and Social Feedback on Consumer Decision Making
January 27, 2008
This article from the Journal of Medical Internet Research is also a commentary on how internet search, which is the first step for most health consumers, aids in decision making. Although the study uses a convenience sample of college students, it has some interesting conclusions:
So while it appeared to increase knowledge, it did not guarantee correct answers. I would like to see this repeated in the real world with the chronically ill, for instance. It reinforces the point form yesterdays post – the need for consumers to filter information which they find on the web and know what to ignore.
Share this:One of the Best Interviews on Consumers and online Health
January 26, 2008
From iHealthbeat, there is an interview on “ Consumer Demand Fueling Online Health Care Market” which is an interview with Val Jones of Revolution Health. It is noted that on their site, the only generation gap is on medical topics but not on the level of interaction or use of tools. This is significant and debunks myths about the older generation’s lower participation in the web.
Also, the Time article by Dr. Haig is cited and his quote that, “the role of the expert is to know what to ignore” contrasted with the consumer who may not know what health information to ignore. How would we go about educating consumers on what to ignore, other than the usual buyer beware from snake oil salesman?
They also note that regarding physician blogs, “Very few medical bloggers write specifically for consumers.”
Retainer medicine (aka, boutique medicine?) is mentioned at the end of the article and the fact that these practices are likely to adopt ehealth tools at a faster rate.
Worth the read.
Share this:More News on Google Health
January 25, 2008
According to Googling Google, there is now a login screen for Google Health, unfortunately, it is not working yet. Potential features sound useful:
- health profiles
- download medical records
- personalized health search and news (already available to some extent)
- find doctors
- share info with family members.
No launch date yet but Eric Schmitt is speaking at HIMSS at the end of February – an opportunity for an announcement?
Share this:Patients Allow to Vent Online – Good or Bad?
January 24, 2008
On the theHealthCareScoop.com patients are encouraged to post their reactions to their physicians, providers and clinics. But what if health plans (Minnesota Blues and WellPoint) encourage these type of comments? Some physicians cry foul. In an article in the AMA News, a balanced reports looks at the pros and cons including the promise that comments will not affect reimbursement rates. However, it could be that it would affect business volume. Reading some of the comments on the site, there is good and bad. Some having very ugly experiences which lawyers would love to get their hands on, and others which love their doctors or clinics and strongly recommend them to others.
Except for the liability issues, I think this is a good thing. One questions – are these types of sites more likely to attract complainers?
Share this:Webinar on Web 2.0 in Health Care
January 22, 2008
I’ll be speaking on a webinar titled “ Emerging Trends” on February 13th sponsored by the Healthcare Intelligence Network. The other presenters are: Susan Reid, Internet marketing manager with UAB Health System and Dave Bennett, director of web resources services with Medical University of South Carolina. The preparation itself has been interesting. Will be a good opportunity to rethink my previous presentations in light of the Health 2.0 conference and more recent opportunities at work.
Share this:NIH Biomedical Research on Google Tech Talk
January 21, 2008
Posted on YouTube there is a presentation by Michael Marron, Ph.D. of the NIH Division of Biomedical Technology discussing NIH support for informatics research. He specifically notes cloud computing as a key area of interested. He outlines the strategy for making investments. Topics include: computational evolutionary biology, prediction of protein structure, metagenomics, etc. The video is about 45 minutes. Fascinating to see the latest fields in which high capacity computing is being used in medical research. He notes that today new science is data-centric science – a data tsunami.
Note: embedding is disabled for this video
Share this:Call for Papers – Web 2.0 and Web 3.0
January 17, 2008
Recently I came across two calls for papers. The first from the Journal of Medical Internet Research for a special issue on Medicine 2.0 with the lofty title, “How social networking and Web 2.0 technologies revolutionize health care, wellness, clinical medicine and biomedical research.” Some examples they are looking for include:
- Collaborative Filtering and recommender technologies
- Consumer empowerment
- Personal health records and Web 2.0
- New models of academic / scholarly publishing and peer review, e.g. what is the role of blogs and wikis?
- New models of e-learning.
Second is a Web 3.0 conference, “ 2008 International Conference on Semantic Web and Web Services.” This is sponsored by a European/International group, HoIP (Healthcare over the Internet Protocol). More about this group in a future post. This conference will include topics such as:
- Semantic interoperability
- Machine learning approaches for semantic web
- Semantic web for e-Business and e-Learning
- Trust networks on semantic web
- Database technologies for semantic web
- Semantic knowledge portals
- Semantic web mining
Both opportunities reflect the growth interest in Web 2.0 and the Semantic web in health care. Everyone is encouraged to participate – isn’t that what Web 2-3 are all about?
Share this:3-D visualization tool for electronic health records
January 16, 2008
Another announcement about IBM innovation, this time in a 3-D image of the body to be integrated into EMRs. It is called the Anatomic and Symbolic Mapper Engine. How it works:
“A doctor first clicks the computer mouse on a particular part of the image, which triggers a search of the patient’s eHR to retrieve the relevant information. The patient’s information corresponding to that part of the image is then displayed, including text entries, lab results, and medical images, such as magnetic resource imaging. The doctor can zoom in on the image to retrieve selective information or narrow the search parameters by time or other factors.”
Can’t wait to see a demo.
A fascinating concept. Why not make it available to PHRs as well?
