John Sharp is an IT Manager for a major medical center in Northeast Ohio. Areas of expertise include: ehealth, personal health records, Web 2.0 technologies, social media and project management. He is active in the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society and the American Medical Informatics Association. The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author.
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Posts Tagged ‘Health 2.0’
Health 2.0 – a Double Dutch Treat
June 30, 2010
Lucien Engelen of Radboud University, Nijmegen, NL, and his team (Tom Van De Belt is the first author) have struck two goals in the world cup of Health 2.0. In the Journal of Medical Internet Research, they have published “Definition of Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0: A Systematic Review.” This broad review of published literature and blogs included a post by me and many others. They note no consensus on these definitions but some recurring themes:
- Web 2.0/technology
- patients
- professionals
- social networking
- health information/content
- collaboration
- health care change.
The second publication is “A Little Booklet About Health 2.0“, originally available in Dutch, now in English for the Kindle, soon to have an English paper edition. This modest title provides a good introduction to Health 2.0 for beginners and those who may have concerns about venturing into this growing field. It is a quick read and dives right into the key topics, using the example of MyCareNet, an innovative interactive platform for IVF patients and providers and leads us to the concept of participatory healthcare and bringing in the patient’s perspective on service design.
These two publications demonstrate some of the growing Dutch leadership in Health 2.0 which will culminate in the Medicine 2.0 conference in Maastricht this November and the TEDxMaastricht program.
Partnerships with Online Communities – The Long Tail
June 4, 2010
Chris Anderson in writing Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, popularized this concept particularly in viewing markets in the wired world. How does it apply to health care? Probably in many ways. But specifically it came to mind in thinking about the relationship of provider organizations like hospitals and online communities. While many online communities may attract large numbers, for instance, in diabetes and breast cancer, many more condition specific communities are relatively small even though they may have a national or international scope. Gilles Frydman of ACOR recognized this early by encouraging the proliferation of online communities through his listserv.
Provider organizations are moving into social media but struggling to identify meaningful ways to connect with their patients through Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps the struggle has to do with a broad stroke strategy of trying to appeal to all comers. The real opportunity is in the Long Tail of small online communities who know the best hospitals, information sources, physicians for their disease or condition and talk to each other about it all the time. Certainly PatientsLikeMe.com has found this in the specialize community of ALS and others like it have found the value in the long tail. What about groups like Marfan Syndrome or others that fall under the umbrella of the National Organization of Rare Diseases (NORD). Specialist who treat these diseases in the long tail of healthcare have a unique opportunity to become online partners potentially contributing to blogs, social networks or listservs and inviting patients to post blogs about their experiences on the hospital’s blog or Facebook page. There are many possibilities to explore – meetups, suggestions for improving care – hope to see some take up this challenge.
Technology and the Future of Chronic Care
May 24, 2010
Accenture has published a report on “Connected How Technology Will Transform the Future of Chronic Care.” From the Accenture Innovation Center for Health, a good source for research white papers. The paper reports that “a broad range of consumer health electronics at home, a two-way, direct-to-consumer infrastructure” and smart devices which set the stage for health care connectivity. Analytics and predictive modeling provide a second layer and visualization, decision support and collaboration provide the third. Connect health examples include the HealthVault and Cleveland Clinic home monitoring pilot and a remote monitoring trial by the VA system.
There is no doubt that the convergence of technologies have the potential for revolutionizing chronic care, however, we must go past the pilot stage and initial startups to broader change. Partnerships between consumer electronics, startups, providers and insurers need to come together with government support. Perhaps after the first wave of meaningful use EHRs, this new level of innovation can flourish.
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.
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.
Social Media in Health Care – Engagement
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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.
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.
Social Media in Health Care, Toronto 2010
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New Profiles and Blog Exposure
March 26, 2010
Some new exposure for my blog is on MedicExchange.com which puts me in good company withJane Sarasohn-Kahn and others. The site has a broad range of information including blogs, news, white papers, webinars, etc.
Also, my profile is now on the J. Boye Conference in Philadelphia. This includes some introduction to my presentation and my twitter feed.
My profile is now up as an advisor for Within3.com, the social networking app for physicians and advisory boards.
As you may know, my blog is also fed to Medpedia in the health technology section.
Social Media at HIMSS 2010
March 5, 2010
Social Media at the Annual Conference of the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society has come a long way. A few years ago, the bloggers meetup was a dozen or so of us meeting in a bar near the conference site. This year, for the second time, there was a social media center and three panels of Meet the Bloggers. I was glad to be a part of it. Participatory Medicine was represented by ePatientDave discussing his new involvement with Kaiser. A busy twitter stream kept many informed of the concurrent activities. My round table with Deborah Kohn on Social Networking: Are You Listening, was well received. Another version of the slides are below. Some of the recommendations out of the session include:
- be prepared for dealing with complaints via social media by monitoring and having a plan on how to respond
- listen – monitor what people are saying about you
- consider social media in job recruitment
- support for launching social media in health care organizations must be endorsed from the top
- educating employees about social media can prevent abuse of the tools at work
Social Media Use Cases for Health Care
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Social Media and Search in Health Care
January 12, 2010
Several new stories popped up today:
- Microsoft’s secret weapon against Google: Health search – although this reviewer sees a some temporary advantage over Google Health search, he notes that even more important is a search within a simple-to-use electronic medical records system for consumers and does not see either as doing a good job of this yet
- Oncologists Using Twitter to Advance Cancer Knowledge: about physicians using twitter for “Disseminating, correcting, and expanding information in conversation with professional colleagues”
- Boundary Erosion in Information Technology: John Glaser points out how social media and other consumer-oriented technologies as risk to Healthcare IT but also sees “Boundary erosion is an underlying, unalterable trend in information technology. It will not reverse itself.” He encourages a balance between unbridled enthusiasm and blocking these technologies.
