Fragmented Experience on eHealth Websites
January 16, 2007
Geocentric posted an editorial by Ben Dillon titled, “The Fragmented Consumer Experience”. In addition to giving some examples of frustration with a health care provider website, he lists his expectations of consumer websites from Google and Amazon, for instance,
- I want you to remember who I am
- I want you to get smarter about addressing my needs the more time that I spend working with you
- I want my experience to be personalized around the tasks and concerns that I have right now
- I want you to provide easy access to the information and tools that I need to make decisions
- I want to interact with you through your website. Don’t send me off to other random sites, I can do that with Google. This includes passing me to some health system parent organization website. I came to you, not to them
- I want to be able to complete with you online any interaction that does not require physician examination or phlebotomy
- I want to be able to email with my physician or her office/clinic securely
- I want to be able to see my bill online, I want to get explanations of my bill online, I want to be able to ask questions about my bill online and I want to be able to pay my bill online
All of these are reasonable expectations, but few providers/health systems have these features. Why – little incentive, costs, lack of vision? If the value of a patient portal with broad features can show some return on investment, even if it is simply a competitive advantage in a local or national market, more providers might join in providing a richer experience.
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Meeting with editor from the Lancet
January 16, 2007
On Friday, I had the pleasant opportunity to meet with Faith McLellan, Ph. D., North American Senior Editor of The Lancet. Her interest was in Web 2.0 in medicine and also how it might be utilized in medical journals such as her own. To their credit, The Lancet has been experimenting with their own blog, but only have a rare article on Web 2.0 or Healthcare IT in general. I hope we will see a change in that.
Also attend a presentation by the senior editor, Richard Horton, on fraud in medical research and how journals have to deal with it when discovered.
Share this:AHIC Consumer Empowerment Workgroup meeting January 10, 2007
January 16, 2007
The workgroup heard testimony on security and PHRs. According to HITS, “While personal health records are still very much in the infancy stage, PHR vendor privacy and security policies are embryonic at best, at least according to a review of 30 publicly available policies presented Jan. 10 to the consumer empowerment work group of the American Health Information Community HHS advisory panel.” According to a powerpoint by Altarum,
- Policies are highly variable and not particularly broad in scope
- None had more than 18 of the 31 criteria
- Remaining 29 (97%) covered less than half of criteria
- Many emphasized security procedures or Internet privacy policies of the vendor’s web site, rather than protections of PHR data.
I am glad that AHIC is shining a light on security in PHRs. As I have said repeatedly, unless the consumer can trust that their data is secure, adoption will continue to lag, no matter what other benefits are promoted.
Share this:Patrick Kennedy Supports PHRs
January 13, 2007
In an article on the Most Wired website, Congressman Patrick Kennedy supports incentives for consumers to adopt PHRs. Specifically he sees web -based PHRs which are controlled by the consumer as potentially reducing medical errors and enhancing medical decision making. The Personalized Health Information Act he proposes promotes PHRs which are free of advertising and are secure. He promotes the idea of online communication with provides through the PHR as well.
My only concern is that such a bill could be too prescriptive about PHR features while the technology is still young and being sorted out in the market place. However, the encouragement toward adoption is welcome.
Share this:Editorial by New Gingrich on Health IT Adoption
January 12, 2007
Newt Gingrich wrote an editorial for the Philadelpha Inquirer this week title: “Getting health-care field wired:
Few U.S. hospitals and doctors use information technology in delivery of care. This must change.” Some quotes are informative:
- The technological gulf in health care isn’t just inefficient and costly; it may also be involved in costly inefficiency and the persistence of a high error rate in medicine.
- Only a quarter of all hospitals and less than 15 percent of all physicians use information technology in the delivery of care.
- Payment models should not be changed for the sake of technology itself, but for the better-quality care it would help deliver.
- He cites the Stark reforms but states, “From Medicaid regulations to antiquated statutes from decades ago, all
of them should be broken down to expedite the adoption of IT.” - he encourages the use of Health IT in medical schools as a long term strategy
- and finally contrast the high use of the web by physicians as a reference and education tool while still using paper to manage clinical care.
It’s good to have a political savvy advocate like Gingrich on the site of Health IT. Let’s hope more people listen to him.
Share this:Healthcare 2015 – IBM White Paper
January 10, 2007
The full title of this report is: “Healthcare 2015: Win-win or lose-lose? A portrait and a path to successful transformation” from the IBM Institute for Business Value. While the report begins with the usual saga of crisis in healthcare, it summarizes some action steps better than most by focusing on action and accountability. Specifically, the authors talk about Focus on Value, Develop Better Consumers, Create better options for promoting health and providing care. It is interesting that while discussing value, they don’t cite Michael Porter’s Redefining Health Care. But then this is the executive summary and citations are slim but do have an international perspective. The chart Summary of Healthcare 2015 recommendations by stakeholder is worth some examination.
Share this:The Future of Health Savings Accounts – 2007
January 9, 2007
Will HSAs grow or wither in 2007? According to a new study by Vimo, there are some black clouds on the horizon (sorry for the mixed metaphors). “The report also shows that funds on deposit in the average HSA are roughly half
of what is required to cover the typical health plan deductible for these consumers. Both findings hint at disturbing trends that may jeopardize the “Consumer-Driven Health” movement.” Park of the issue may be employee awareness that HSAs could actually decrease their total compensation. This is a trend to watch.
Social Networking in Healthcare 2007
January 5, 2007
Will social networking expand with patient blogs and MySpace-type websites for disease and conditions. Social networking has been common in some disease groups for years – for instance the cancer listservs from ACOR.org. The American Cancer Society has sponsored personal websites, blogs and discussions for the past few years with some success and now has introduced a Relay for Life website. Newer Web 2.0-style social networking for health is now coming to the fore with sites like DailyStrength.org. Will these have enough momentum to maintain a business model on subscriptions and ads? 2007 will be the year to tell.
Share this:2007 – The Year of the Consumer in Health IT
January 4, 2007
In an article by Joseph Conn in Modern Healthcare, “In health IT, consumer’s role on the rise“, he quotes the president of HIMSS saying “I think you’re going to see more and more development around tools for the consumers, especially from employers, trying to use the consumer to be the vehicle to bring about change in healthcare.” Citing the Dossia project and other employer-sponsored PHR and eHealth initiatives, the question remains as to whether the consumer will trust their employer or insurance company to deliver their health information. Also, the push for quality data from consumers will drive new developments in comparison tools for hospitals and providers. Patient-focused treatments driven by advances in genomics will begin to bring pay-as-you-go treatments back to medicine. He concludes the article with a quote on privacy and the need for trusted entitites (physicians and hospitals) as being the brokers of these services.
Share this:Disruptive Technologies 2007
January 3, 2007
In an article from Information week titled, 5 Disruptive Technologies To Watch In 2007, the authors pick Web Services as one of those technologies. Broadly defined, the author site Software as a Service (SaaS) as well as Web 2.0 technologies as fitting this category and “a solid application platform.” Everything from enterprise email hosting to AJAX applications to expense and travel applications are now available as web services for the enterprise. How fast will organizations, particularly those in health care, move essential functions to web services rather than hosting multiple operating systems in house. It comes down to a question of what the business of healthcare is (patient care) and how essential it is to have internal services. Web Services can be internally hosted as well and part of a broader Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Quotes from the article: “The good news is that we finally we have a software architecture and business model that can meet our growing need for agility” and “Web makeovers, go slowly on deploying these technologies, start with some basic skills on CSS or RSS before moving any deeper, understand what expertise you have in-house versus what you need to purchase, and examine whether your existing portfolio of Web applications needs to be updated with more modern and dynamic content tools.”
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