A History of Innovation in Medicine
May 17, 2010
Health 2.0 has pushed innovation in health care from its inception. From social networks for patients and providers to vertical search and mobile health tools, innovation continues. The Quantified Self represents the latest level of innovation for healthcare. The letters to the NY Times Sunday Magazine in response to the feature on The Data Driven Live, has this choice quote by Patricia Flatley Brennet of Project HealthDesign “Doctors are experts in clinical care; patients are experts in their daily experiences and how they make them feel. Both need to share more with each other.”
But some healthcare organizations have been innovative from the beginning. See the video on the Cleveland Clinic Model of Medicine and then read their latest Annual Report with President Obama on the cover. What a great place to work.
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The Quantified Self in Healthcare – Part 2
May 10, 2010
More evidence of this movement continues to emerge. For instance, I came across the Philips DirectLife device today which can record a number of activity parameters to quantify one’s life. In an article in the Linux Journal, of all places, there is an article title, Now Data Gets. Personal. The author cites Alexandra Carmichael of CureTogether and the Quantified Self Community as a prime example. The article points back to an earlier one in the same journal called The Patient as the Platform. The author proposes that through the use of PHRs controlled by patients, such as, Google Health, the patient could be center of health information rather than the provider or payer. This article from 2008 essentially proposes a solution for health information exchange without costly state or national initiatives.
The combination of the quantified self and the patient as the platform can potentially create a future where rich information is controlled by the patient and shared with providers to enhance personal wellness and treat conditions. Adding social networking with like patients creates a powerful trio of technology for the e-patient.
Share this:Trends in Social Media in Health Care
May 7, 2010
Yesterday I had two content successes. My article Social Media in Health Care: Barriers and Future Trends was published in the Perspectives section of this online newsletter. In it I propose 3 trends to watch for:
- Managing a conversation;
- Engaging e-patients;
- Convergence with personal health records; and
- Social media for providers
I will be interested in your comments on this blog or via Twitter (@JohnSharp).
Yesterday I also spoke at the J. Boye Conference in Philadelphia on Social Media in Health Care: Humble Beginnings to Patient Engagement. This conference is more intimate and interactive than most with specific tracks for each day. I spent the first day in the Higher Education track and found many similarities with the struggles we in health care experience. The second day had an eHealth track that included Jane Sarasohn-Kahn who had just returned from a Senate Hearing on Mobile Health.
Check out my slides below.
The Quantified Self in Healthcare
May 3, 2010
In the New York Times Sunday Magazine, an article by a Wired editor, talks about the growing trend of the Quantified Self, or the data driven life. Why is this becoming a real trend? “Four things changed.
- electronic sensors got smaller and better.
- people started carrying powerful computing devices, typically disguised as mobile phones.
- social media made it seem normal to share everything.
- we began to get an inkling of the rise of a global superintelligence known as the cloud.”
While more people are creating catalogs of various aspects of their lives, some specific healthcare examples are cited including Medhelp.org “where more than 30,000 new personal tracking projects are started by users every month” and CureTogether.
Also, in FastCompany, an article title Our Bodies, Our Quantified Selves, they note that “there may actually be some meaningful upsides to this radical transparency.” Particularly the opportunity for medical research on this exponentially growing volume of data.
To me, this is the obvious next big thing in health care. The only question is how to channel the energy of this new trend into meaningful information for the individual and society.
Share this:Social Media for Canadian Health Care
May 2, 2010
On Friday, April 30, I had the opportunity to speak at the Toronto Academic Health Sciences Network Education Day for Healthcare Communicators or TAHSN. This well organized meeting provided some great interaction with health care communicators from Toronto hospitals and got me thinking about the use of social media in a country with socialized medicine. While the focus of much of US hospitals in social media is to attract new patients, in Canada, the purposes would be different. However, one common interest is fund raising. Canadian hospitals have Foundations as a fund raising arm of the hospital and social media provides a useful outreach to potential donors. Following the success of fund raising via text messaging and social media for Haiti, there may be an opportunity for Canadian hospitals to focus their energies here. As with US hospitals, there are opportunities for using social media, such as blogs and private social networks with personal profiles to enhance service and productivity. Engaging with patients, such as, the example of the Bloom Blog from Bloorview Children’s Rehab Hospital in Toronto is a great example engaging parents of children with disabilities.
More soon the the exiting New York Times magazine article on the Quantified Self which is the next trend in health and social media.
Below are my slides from the presentation. I follow Lee Aase from Mayo Clinic who joined the conference via webex.
Time to Revamp Clinical Trials
April 25, 2010
In an editorial today in the New York Times, the editors call for major changes in how cancer clinical trials should be run. Just two facts are enough to document the problem:
- The average time between developing the concept for a study and getting it started is about 2.5 years.
- about 40 percent of all advanced clinical trials sponsored by the Cancer Institute are never completed
One of the recommendations is to reduce the number of cooperative groups and the levels of approval required.
In a related post on The Medical Quack, there is discussion of the clinical trial experience for the patient with an excellent video below.
In both cases what I hope we all come to realize soon is the lethal lag time – a articulate by e-patient White Paper – these long lead time for studies can prove lethal for those waiting for new treatments.
Share this:Robotic Pancreas – Beyond Home Monitoring and the Quantified Self
April 19, 2010
Just as home monitoring using medical devices is beginning to gain traction and be reimbursed, e-visits as well and the movement toward the Quantified Self, implanted devices are now added to the mix. In a new article in Wired Magazine, The Robotic Pancreas, One man’s quest to put millions of diabetics on autopilot, implanted devices move into the popular press. After a successful trial of 17 teens at Yale, the next step is FDA approval. Medtronic is supporting the effort. There is already approval in some European countries and the devices does have an low glucose suspend feature to protect the patient. The FDA is accelerating the availability of an artificial pancreas; will it really take the predicted 5 years for approval and broadened use? What will be the next device which combines the quantified self with a medical device?
Share this:New PHR Report from California Healthcare Foundation
April 13, 2010
Titled “Consumers and Health Information Technology: A National Survey“, the survey shows some promising progress:
- users cite taking steps to improve their own health, knowing more about their health care, and asking their doctors questions
- lower-income adults, those with chronic conditions, and those without a college degree are more likely to experience positive effects of having their information accessible online
- Two-thirds remain concerned about the privacy and security
- should not let privacy concerns stop us from learning how health IT can improve health care
- almost half are interested in medical devices that can be connected to the Internet.
- Of those who do not have a PHR, 40% express interest in using one.
Also just released is a major report from Price Waterhouse Coopers, The customization of diagnosis, care and cure. A key part of this report is patient touchpoints inlcuding:
- coordinated care teams
- fluent navigators
- patient experience benchmarks
- medical proving grounds
- care anywhere networks (aka, mHealth).
The common theme here is participatory medicine, which as it turns out, appeared in a post by Roni Zeiger of Google Health in Huffinton Post. His key quote is, “Data on its own is useless. It’s all about conversations.” Health data whether in personal health records or social networking sites or other tools is essential in creating a conversation about how to improve and maintain health.
Share this:Group on Information Resources (GIR) Leadership Institute
April 6, 2010
I have been invited to attend this leadership institute of the American Association of Medical Colleges. This “provides IT leaders the information and tools to understand how to excel at the nexus of academic, research, and clinical systems to support organizations as they move to more integrated and data driven models.” The five day institute in July is limited to 30 through a competitive process; I was nominated by my department chairman. I am looking forward to this interactive program. If anyone has participated or will be attending this summer, I’d like to hear from you.
Share this:Hospital as Software Service Providers
April 3, 2010
In an article on HealthLeaders, how health systems can provide an EMR via Software as a Service (SaaS) is presented. Five requirements are noted:
Cleveland Clinic is noted as an example. Dr. C. Martin Harris says, “”Success to me is that we are not just installing technology in an office to replace paper, but we are putting in technology that enables interoperability,”
Of course, Cleveland Clinic provides other software to help hospitals and providers:
- explorys to utilize EMRs for research and discovery
- Intellis - business intelligence
- A PHR which connects to Google Health
- Home Monitoring which utilizes Microsoft HealthVault to connect with the PHR and EMR
- Risk calculators for Prostate Cancer and heart surgery
What are other hospitals doing? How about an award program for the hospital or health system which produces the most useful software?
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