Negative Take on Health 2.0 Conference Contrasts with Attendee Enthusiasm
September 22, 2007
According to iHealthBeat, the San Jose Mercury News took away from the conference the concern about the lack of solid business models for many of the products presented at the conference. While it is true that AdSense cannot be the only income source for these startups, some have more diverse business models. However, the confernce did not intend to focus on the business models, it was presenting the state of the art in this new business sector.
Perhaps the next conference on Health 2.0 being planned for March 2008, should have some sessions on successful business models including raising venture capital and longer term plans.
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Health 2.0 Conference – Social Netwoks
September 20, 2007
In a session on social networking for health care, one of the conclusions was that physicians and pharma should monitor these sites as a way of understanding the patient experience including how they react to treatments. They should not necessarily participate, unless the site includes physician participation, such as, medhelp.org, but just monitor these sites. Of course this applies to all medical professionals.
The sites presented were:
- sophiasgarden.org
- PatientsLikeMe.com
- DailyStrength.org
- OrganizedWisdom.com
- Inspire.com
- MedHelp.org
- Diabetesmine.com
Health 2.0 – First Session – Are Physicians Marginalized in Health 2.0?
September 20, 2007
I am writing from the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco. In the first session, a panel of Google, Yahoo, WebMD and Microsoft, the question was asked, Are physicians marginalized in Health 2.0?
The response was that all of these products serve physicians as well as patients/consumers. Most notibly WebMD with Medscape. Yet it was acknowledged that the effect of the the Internet on the patient-provider relationship – physicians are confronted with this on a daily basis and also frequently provide websites to their patients. But medical practice with its briefer and briefer encounters and financial pressures, does not enable an interactive discussion of internet health content.
Perhaps new models enabled by Web 2.0 will provide a bridge from the exam room to the Internet health.
Share this:Return of Dossia
September 18, 2007
According to an article on iHealthbeat, Children’s Hospital Informatics Program has been hired to restart this project of a life-long medical record sponsored by major corporations. Dossia ran into problems with its first vendor as was reported extensively. ”
Among the appeal of Children’s Hospital’s Indivo to Dossia is that the open source system provides control over health record data.” Will they be able to scale it up for the more than 2.5 million U.S. employees, retirees, and dependents? Time will tell but teaming up with a system which is associated with a provider may be a wise move.
Share this:A New Spin on Social Networking for Physicians
September 17, 2007
Anyone out there using iMedExchange? It certainly has a Web 2.0 look about it. Includes not only videos, blogs and career opportunities but encourages exchanges between physicians on practice management, clinical issues and some personal issues, such as, vacations. It designed and supported by a team of Seattle-based technology, business and healthcare experts and is advertising for regional network physicians to promote online meetings.
Looks like an inviting concept. It joins a growing field of sites similar to Sermo.
Share this:Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival
September 17, 2007
Constructive Medicine has posted the blog carnival for this week. Cites this blog as well as some interesting postings on others. Next carnival will be by Clincial Cases and Images.
One note on the thinking about Medicine 2.0: “In next generation of medicine management, diagnosis and treatment of
diseases could be based on the spirit of collaboration and sharing of patient related knowledge.”
New PHR – MyHealthArchive
September 16, 2007
This PHR is a product from PatientCentral Technologies, LLC, of Dallas. It is part of the PatientCentral Suite of products. They are described as: “First-order analysis of the database derives information about the movements of people and things. Second order analysis utilizes deduction, testing, modeling, and root cause analysis to yield insight about the clinical and business processes in play.”
The PHR tries to keep the process simple. There is a good explanation about why a PHR is important. They emphasize that theirs is NOT controlled by insurance companies, a telling statement in itself.
They state that one unique feature is “calendaring and preventive health functions” and promise security through a mechanism which is not detailed. Perhaps more detail on how they secure the data would encourage consumers to sign up.
Share this:Health 2.0 in the Economist
September 15, 2007
Tipped off by a new comment, this article on Health 2.0 is one of the first in the public media to use the term. It discusses primarily patient-facing applications like discussion boards and quotes Gilles Frydman, the founder of the Association of Online Cancer Resources (ACOR), a group which has sponsored listservs for cancer survivors since the early days of the Internet.
It also quotes a study from a few years ago show in the inaccuracies on some patient discussion boards of 8% and the problem of anonymous postings.
While these problems remain, it is helpful to see more attention to Web 2.0 in health care, especially on the eve of the first Health 2.0 conference next Thursday in San Francisco. I will be one of 400 attendees. More on that later.
Share this:Helpful Article on Choosing a PHR
September 14, 2007
In U.S. News and World Report, a brief article on selecting a PHR provides a good introduction to PHRs.
Examples are giving of desktop programs, internet-based and flash drives. Teathered PHRs which connnect to EMRs are also mentioned. The articles touts some benefits as well: “the payoff …is that patients become more knowledgeable about and more accountable for their health and their treatment.”
Missing in the article is information about security and long-term storage of records. But for this abbreviated view, the publication provides a good overview.
Also, I stumbled upon a new blog worthy of note: EHR PHR and Patient Portals by Electronic Health Record Consultants.
Share this:Joint Commission Launches a Wiki
September 13, 2007
The quality monitoring Joint Commission has launched the WikiHealthCare – an initiative to “to foster collaboration among tens of thousands of health care professionals” on topics like patient safety and other health quality issues. This is a sea-change for the Joint Commission which traditionally acted as a regulatory agency to monitor hospital quality. Now it invites healthcare professionals to share best practices, define quality and patient safety through the interactive format of a Wiki. Initial topics include smoking cessation and the smoke-free hospital initiative. They have a helpful set of policies and guidelines to follow as well.
I can only congratulate their efforts and wait to see how these will take off.
When mainstream organizations in healthcare begin to adopt Web 2.0, then we know that Health 2.0 has arrived.
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