Archive for July, 2008
Web 2.0 in Clinical Research – Slides Available
July 31, 2008
I just presented on this topic and posted the slides on SlideShare.net.
Here are links to some of the sites which were referenced:
- Tim O’Reilly on Web 2.0
- Wikipedia
- DailyStrengh.org
- PatientsLikeMe.com
- 23andme.com
- www.diabetesmine.com
- clinicalcases.blogspot.com
- ehealth.johnwsharp.com
- healia.com
- www.google.com/health
- RevolutionHealth.com
- With3.com
- Biomedexperts.com
- Oracle Wiki
- delicious.com
- mdpixx.com
- bigthink.com
- healthmap.org
- Google Reader for RSS feeds
- SlideShare.net
- LinkedIn.com
- Wikinomics
- Everything is Miscellaneous
- The World is Flat
Enterprise 2.0 – Mzinga
July 30, 2008
I was pointed to this company, Mzinga, as a company to watch in the Enterprise 2.0 space. They offer employee communities, a learning management system but also social networking for marketing purposes. Looks like a broad range of tools and an impressive list of customers. Will need to check out their webinar schedule to learn more. I like the tag line, “We are smarter than me” – the true spirit of Web 2.0. They have an impressive list of white papers and a counter on their home page for postings real time for the day, over 350,000 for today. This looks like a truely innovative approach to the enterprise use of social networking and knowledge sharing without using the traditional Web 2.0 terminology.
Share this:Washington Post Article on HealthCentral
July 29, 2008
The article in the Washington Post starts out with a nice personal story about a woman with diabetes who found assistance on the site through social networking. The good news is that this is becoming more common – with the number of Health 2.0 sites available and the number of people participating, there may be a tipping point ahead. But there is little news about any negative consequences. Is that because there are none? Or are they just not reported, or buried in some online forum?
At any rate, Healthcentral has some helpful features. What is not clear is how they will distinguish themselves from other popular sites, such as, PatientsLikeMe.com and RevolutionHealth.com. Like Revolution Health, they have content from some reliable sources – Harvard, ADAM, Thompson.
As I have said before, at some point the best business models will survive beyond first or second round funding or at least there will be some buyouts and general consolitation in the Health 2.0 space. Is that one year away or two? Anybody’s guess.
Share this:Google Launches Knol – Authoritative Knowledge
July 25, 2008
On the official Google Blog, some of the reasons for the development of Knol are explained. It looks like an opportunity to have vetted content which has a name of an authority on the topic assigned to it. This is different than a lot of the anonymous content on the web, and a different approach than Wikipedia which uses many authors who compete for defining topics. However, the tool does allow for “moderated collaboration”, meaning that someone can suggest a change to a Knol which the author(s) may accept or reject.
Many of the articles are on health care. At first, it appeared that many authors were from the San Francisco area but on further investigation, there were some from other parts of the country.
How will this fit into Google Search? Or Google Health? I think it has some real possibilities here.
Share this:Study of Medical Bloggers
July 24, 2008
A study by a fellow from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has published a study of medical bloggers. Out of 271 blogs by medical professionals, individual patients could be identified in 42% and many describe negatively. Some even showed identifiable photos of patients. The conclusions state that while blogging provides and opportunity for sharing a professional narrative, these violations of privacy need to be addressed.
One wonders if there are similar privacy and confidentiality violations within social networking sites for medical professionals. Some basic groundrules need to be established. One good model is Clinical Cases blog which takes pains to deidentify patient information including Xrays.
Share this:Best method to rate Wired Hospitals
July 22, 2008
What is the best method to rate how wired or wireless a hospital is. There has been some criticism of reports about Most Wired. Some “might mistakenly believe that the simple installation of healthcare IT would lift quality in a hospital.”While the most wired competition has some discrete standards, not all hospitals participate and some major players are missing. But is a good opportunity for some hospitals to show major improvements. HIMSS Analytics has an alternative: The EMR Adoption model which is an 8 stage model including benchmarks such as CPOE and closed loop medication administration. Neither model is perfect, each have their own value.
Share this:More Social Networking for Physicians
July 19, 2008
Ozmosis appears to be the latest in a growing number of social networks for physicians. The main features are being able to build a network through others, posting cases and Ozmarks, a kind of del.icio.us for physicians. The registration does require confirmation that the new user is a physician, similar to Within3.com. Science Roll has a good review with a follow up after the founders contacted him. Some of the comments compare Ozmosis with Sermo, the much larger network.
Peerclip is another option with a strong emphasis on social bookmarks.
At some point these Health 2.0 sites with sort out in the market.
Share this:Web 2.0 Whiteboard Videos
July 18, 2008
At the Whiteboard on ZDNet has a whole set of videos on Web 2.0 including a good intro to Enterprise 2.0 from Oracle. It provides a simple business case for Web 2.0 within an organization. I would like to see one on Web 2.0 in the health care enterprise. Other topics covered by these brief videos are SOA, security in Web 2.0, Ajax, etc.
The site allows you to download the transcript as well.
Worth visiting and searching for other topics as well.
Share this:Medical Imaging Site
July 16, 2008
MDPIXX is a website specializing in medical images – xrays, CAT scans, photos, and pathology slides – with several additional features. With most images, you can use a zoom tool to focus in on an area. There are also featured cases with discussions. The home page has one similarity to YouTube – a fading in and out of recent images. The site claims over 12,000 images and includes an atlas as well. There is the opportunity to comment on any image. They have also developed a Yahoo Widget but not one for Google yet.
Overall, it has great potential as a teaching and collaboration tool.
Two suggestions for futher enhancements – the site is multilingual which reflects its international scope but no tool for translating the cases or comments in another language. There is not guarentee that the images are posted by physicians but to sign up, you need to attest to that. The terms and conditions should be more obvious prior to signup especially for patient privacy provisions.
Share this:Annual eHealth Survey
July 15, 2008
Geonetric has opened its annual survey on eHealth. It is a worthwhile and quick survey which may give you some perspective on your own ehealth initiatives. The results will help you compare yourself with other healthcare organizations. Their blog post on the survey promotes it from the perspective of potentially creating a business case for more resources for web development. Geonetric is a web development, ehealth and strategy firm which understands the healthcare market. Check out another recent post on best practices on some new hospital websites they have designed.
There are free webinars as well.
You can order last year’s results are here.
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