Archive for October, 2009
Thinking about the Future
October 29, 2009
What will the Web Look Like in 5 years? Gartner presented Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google to talk about the future. Some of his key points include:
- Five years from now the internet will be dominated by Chinese-language content.
- Today’s teenagers are the model of how the web will work in five years – they jump from app to app to app seamlessly.
- Five years is a factor of ten in Moore’s Law, meaning that computers will be capable of far more by that time than they are today.
He also talks about being trapped in a 1980s architecture. I heard a webinar demo of an app today which uses client-server technology. It seems to me that any application which does not use the web with AJAX and hosted on a virtual server is old technology and not something that should be supported.
Schmidt also talks about the Google business model and pricing. He notes that Google customers ask for more features for a price that is less that what they are paying for desktop applications. They are starting at the bottom with the largest customer for Google docs/email of 35,000 seats but 10s of thousands of companies (at $50 per seat).
“We are not trying to design the future, we are trying to invent it along the way.”
“We have migration tools and no one seems to migrate back.”
Is the implication that the majority of companies will move the cloud for desktop apps and enterprise apps? Are current vendor supported enterprise apps inflexible as he says. Are companies and health care missing out on mobile opportunities? Open source also adds to that flexibility.
Five years from now, will be all on powerful wireless devices, running open source, cloud-based apps, with books on netbook tablets and running a Wave-like instantaneously messaging. What will that mean for health care and especially collaboration in health care? How about collaboration so fast that medical treatment is communicated and executed faster than we can imagine either at home or at a local clinic thru virtual technology promoting health and treating symptoms to minimize side effects. Support of participatory medicine will be seamless through these mobile, real-time social networks.
Finally, thanks to Eric Schmidt for his humorous quips throughout. Check out the full 45 minutes also.
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The Experience of being an embedded Twitterer at a conference
October 22, 2009
Two weeks ago I was at the Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit as an embedded tweet. As an experiment to promote the conference and encourage twittering, I was asked to actively tweet at this important conference which included many CEOs from drug and device firms. Here are some of my experiences.
A hash tag was decided a few weeks in advance: #CCInnovation.
Initially, keeping up with presentations which included slides was manageable. Abbreviating key quotes from leaders in medical innovation is a challenge and including links to their companies required some quick searches. When the program shifted to an interview style with a panel, it became more difficult to keep up with what was being said and who said it, much less adding a link. Some followers asked for who was saying what. Including a hash tag, who is speaking, what they said and potentially a link is a trick in 140 characters.
Some of the important followers were from the press. It’s not clear how many conference registrants actually participated or followed the twitter stream.
Technical challenges: at times the wireless was not available. At one point I switched to Tiny Twitter on my Blackberry.
Overall, it helped to know the conference content being familiar with clinical trials and the pharma and device industries.
Journal of Participatory Medicine Launched
October 21, 2009
The Journal of Participatory Medicine was lauched today with a webinar by ePatient Dave. The webinar, titled “How Great EHRs can Empower Participatory Medicine” included a quote from my blog post stating that “If you hav, not read the e-Patient White Paper, you do not understand the future of medicine.”
On a related note, Roni Zeiger of Google Health posted on Huffington Post “Mission: Transform the Culture of Medicine.” He notes that ” Participatory Medicine is a new approach that encourages and expects active patient involvement in all aspects of care.
In a more surprising development, ePatient Dave notes in today’s post a quote by Marcia Angell, MD, previously of the New England Journal of Medicine, stating “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical
research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted
physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in
this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two
decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.” This bombshell is part of an article by her from earlier this year titled, “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption” Dave calls this A quote I won’t soon forget.
How is this connected with paticipatory medicine and epatients? Perhaps a shift a trust from traditional culture of medicine to one which is patient-focused and patient driven rather than driven by money.
Share this:Stakeholders in Health 2.0 Innovation
October 20, 2009
One question I received at the Health 2.0 conference in the Netherlands (Reshape 2009) was about stakeholders in Health 2.0 initiatives. Stakeholders in any project depend on the project scope and potential impact. So the potential stakeholders include:
- hospitals and healthcare providers
- insurers including HMOs
- entrepreneurs
- patients and especially ePatients
- Pharma and device companies.
Here is the slide presentation:
Share this:How is Health 2.0 Different in Europe versus the US?
October 5, 2009
In planning for the Health 2.0 conference in Nijmegen, Netherlands, I am wonder what to expect approaches to Health 2.0. Here are a few differences I expect:
- Marketing – generally less important to EU hospitals with socialized medicine. US hospitals are interested in using social media to recruit new patients, while EU hospitals are more interested in connecting to patients in their district.
- A different attitude toward entrepreneurs. I expect a growing interest in startups in the Netherlands including in mobile health.
- Google and Google health – while there has been some opposition to Google Health in the UK, and opposition to some Google initiatives in the EU, what is the attitude toward Google Health as a platform for ehealth
- What is the current thinking of integrating eHealth and Health 2.0
- Health care Reform – not an issue in the Netherlands which is rated the best healthcare system in Europe versus the ongoing debate in the US as to whether health care is a basic human right.
I am looking forward to meeting my Dutch colleagues and others to find answers to these and new ideas.
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