The Power of Patient Stories
March 28, 2008
Two examples of the power of patient stories came across my email and feeds. A government website, the Utah Department of Health, is sponsoring the Story Bank. They are very transparent about their reason for soliciting health stories,
- To meet the request from reporters working on health-related stories who need real people to interview.
- To show the Utah Legislature the importance of health as they prepare Utah’s state budget.
- among others.
Another is a personal blog by a cancer survivor aptly titled, I’m Too Young for This by Matthew Zachary. I love the subtitle: Stupid Cancer, Survivors Rule. With topics like “the sticker shock of chemotherapy” and “The other face of cancer” about the Young Survivors group, this one is worth checking out.
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Web 2.0 – A Revolution or Not So Much?
March 26, 2008
From a Harvard Business Review blog comes a response to an earlier post by Tom Davenport on Enterprise 2.0 and Knowledge Management. How different are the two. Is Web 2.0 within the enterprise a revolution or is it overhyped as he suggests?
I am not sure that Web 2.0 has had a chance in the enterprise environment enough to see what it can do. Opportunities to use RSS for secure data feeds, open blogging and social networks are limited to some tech companies, IBM being a good example. And how about within conservative health care organizations? Have more than small initiatives take root? Is it realistic for nurses or physicians working long hours utilizing these tools to improve medical practice while they are challenged by learning EMRs and other clinical systems?
Perhaps educational environments such as medical and nursing schools should be the place to experiment so that the graduates can bring Web 2.0 to the health care enterprise in the next few years.
Share this:CDC Explores Social Networking to Promote PHRs
March 25, 2008
What is the CDC up to and why does it want you to have a PHR? According to an article in HealthcareIT News, they are considering “methods of social health campaigning through such venues as newsgroups, newsboards, instant messaging, blogs, podcasts, Wikis, eGames, social networking, sharing services, mashups, mobile messaging and avatars.” This creative approach brings some privacy concerns but its good to see a government agency looking beyond traditional media for solutions to reaching out on health issues.
Share this:Health 2.0 featured in NY Times Sunday Magazine
March 24, 2008
In the NY Times today, there is a nice article on PatientsLikeMe. The article does a fair job of showing how it goes beyond a traditional social network to an effective learning tool for patients with serious neurologic diseases. One patient’s story is indicative: “He expected the sort of online community he’d tried and abandoned several times before — one abundant in sympathy and stories but thin on practical information. But he found something altogether different:
data.” There is a uniqueness here: “The members of PatientsLikeMe don’t just share their experiences anecdotally; they quantify them, breaking down their symptoms and treatments into hard data. They note what hurts, where and for how
long.”
These quotes indicate the challenge for Health 2.0 – to go beyond adapting Web 2.0 tools to healthcare and create useful sites which can actually modify how patients approach their health and disease.
Share this:Cloud Computing – Many definitions
March 21, 2008
In this post, titled “Cloud Computing: Watch Out IT, It’s Raining Jargon“, the author explores the range of definitions depending on who’s talking – Google, Amazon or others.
But generally, the cloud is out there an growing.
Eric Schmidt referred to the cloud in his announcement about Google Health – storing his xrays in the cloud – let’s hope its a secure one.
Share this:Dossia will go into use this year
March 19, 2008
The Dossia electronic health records consortium has announced that it will begin to roll out the PHR to its corporate sponsors this year. After some well-publicized struggles, it plans to publish an API for the system as a way to invite health care providers to interface with the product. Part of the plan is to allow users to compare costs and medical-outcome histories at different hospitals based on its members medical history thus reducing medical costs. It is a bold plan and in light of recent announcements from Google and Microsoft, perhaps overshadowed before it gets off the ground.
Share this:Google CEO on Google Health at HIMSS – video
March 18, 2008
Eric Schmidt’s keynote address at HIMSS in Orlando last month is now available on the HIMSS website. His argument to have your medical records available from “the cloud” (maybe he should have said a secure place within the cloud) is worth the time. The demo by Roni Zeiger is also included.
This announcement continues to get attention from all quarters even with some predicting that Google will dominate this space in spite of Microsoft’s earlier entry.
Share this:Inside the Black Box: Technological Innovation at Google
March 17, 2008
A presentation by Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP of Product Management at Google, Inc. at Claremont McKenna College begins to open the black box of how Google thinks. He brings in concepts from Wikinomics and The Long Tail in addition to other sources to illustrate his points. Here are some of them.
- work in small teams of 3 – avoid work from home
- Argue everything with data, don’t present a new product by saying “I think” or using external data
- don’t write a product plan – just do it, try it out
- Think big -created a process to underachieve on very big goals but reward workers for them
- understand the technology base case – Moore’s Law, Kreider’s law of storage
- focus on the customer
- Accept a small piece of the pie
My question is how can these be translated to other companies and especially health care? Maybe start small in development environments as entrepreneurial opportunities.
Share this:Health 2.0 Sites with Prospects
March 12, 2008
From a venture capitalist viewpoint six firms are featured that can potentially “reinvent the doctor-patient” relationship. While more than 30 were featured at the Health 2.0 conference in San Diego earlier this month, this blog, Venture Beat, looks at these six:
- Myca has re-envisioned the display of medical records for the digital age using for one thing, a cloud of tags displaying medical information, See the Doctor 2.0 video
- Carol- the care market place which I have reviewed before
- Organized Wisdom, which utilizes wisdom cards and online chats with physicians (for a small fee)
- American Well which gives you the opportunity to talk to a doctor live – Web 2.0 telemedicine
- Pharmasurveyor which helps you understand your drug regimen and potential interactions (web 2.0 patient safety goals)
- Phreesia – an online patient clipboard. A competitor of NoMoreClipboard.com?
An good mix of Web 2.0 offerings in healthcare which may have significant uses in the clinical setting or home. As the Doctor 2.0 video says, healthcare is stuck in 1974. But the real potential of these single-purpose sites would be in a mashup of several into a comprehensive tool for managing medical conditions.
Share this:Medicine 2.0 Conference in September
March 9, 2008
The call for abstracts for Medicine 2.0 Conference in Toronto is now open. Conference abstracts are due May 2.
The conference includes a broad range of themes including everything from PHRs to new avenues for research and collaboration to Web 3.0 – semantic web applications. Organized by Gunther Eysenbach and the Journal of Medical Internet Research. This unique conference is limited to 200 attendees. What distinguishes this conference from Health 2.0 is that this effort focuses on web 2.0 in the practice of medicine and medical research while Health 2.0 is more consumer focused. See the map of Medicine 2.0.
Is this preliferation of conferences around Web 2.0 in health care the best approach to using these tools to enhance health care or should they be integrated into mainline conferences? Since we are early in the adoption cycle of these technologies in health care, these kind of meetings can help build a base for developing the trend. There may come a point where these will gain respect in mainline health IT.
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