Posts Tagged ‘Health 2.0’
More Acquisitions by Revolution Health
December 6, 2007
Revolution Health announced an acquisition and a financial investment. The purchase is HealthTalk, a Web-based vendor of chronic care information with a combination of ask our experts health content, blogs and podcasts. The second is a strategic partnership with SparkPeople, a diet and fitness site. While they continue to enhance their content with more Web 2.0 features like these two, they have now become the second (to WebMD) health care property on the Internet. Pretty impressive considering how young the site is. Is this a testament to Health 2.0 taking on the traditional Health 1.0 websites?
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Medicine 2.0 Blog Carnival
October 30, 2007
The carnival is hosted by The Health Wisdom Blog this week and includes a note about the Health 2.0 conference Spring Fling now being set for March 3-4, 2008 in San Diego. In announces the new blog by John Halamka, Chief Information Officer at Harvard Medical School called Life as a Healthcare CIO. And there is a mention for Fathom SEO, a local Cleveland SEO firm which has a new booklet on a list of the six best Web 2.0 health tools.
Share this:Medworm and RSS Email
October 25, 2007
Frankie Dolan, Devon, United Kingdom writes a blog called Frankie Speaking Frankly. She has developed an application called Medworm which searches for RSS feeds related to health. A new twist on healthcare searches and a useful one. A more interesting approach than his search page is the Medical Blog Tag Cloud which has hundreds of terms from the Medworm database which link to articles – you can email, select a feed or discuss.
In her blog he discusses the pros of viewing email via RSS for physicians. A novel concept which would allow one view of information via feeds and the indispensible email. One of the challenges today is managing information from multiple source applications – RSS aggregator, Web, Email, etc. With a single view, the world is brought to your scene in a single view. This can be done currently in a iGoogle page. How about a Medworm widget for Google?
Share this:Disconvergence in Online Communities
October 23, 2007
In an article by Thomas H. Lee M.D. on iHealthbeat, he discusses the momentum around online health communities and “Will the movement be completely disruptive to the health system and obviate the need for clinicians altogether?”
He notes that these communities “all exhibit the unexpected power of decentralizing knowledge, creativity and connectivity.” But will not likely replace the patient-physician relationship. He creates the term “Disconvergent Fluidity” by which he means the ebb and flow of online communities – here today, gone tomorrow. While these communities have a wealth of information on individual experiences in health care are they enough of a revolution to solve real problems in health care. Will the critical mass be there and sustain itself toward real change?
Health 2.0 as a Verb
October 4, 2007
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn writes in her column in iHealthbeat, that “Health 2.0:It’s Not a Noun, Its a Verb, a Movement.” It was good to meet Jane in person at the Health 2.0 conference after reading her columns regularly. She asks Why the interest now? The answer is not one single factor:
- consumers are searching online for health information
- they are building communities online
- there is a demand for transparency
- customers are comfortable with IT and embracing Web 2.0
- learning from health 1.0 (ordinary content websites) and the ability to rapidly and cheaply develop new applications.
Maybe this is something more than a passing trend with this kind of convergence going on.
Share this:Social Networking Models
October 3, 2007
The San Francisco Chronicle posted an article on health 2.0 stating that, “Online health care startup companies are modeling themselves after social networking Web sites.” The article featured:
- Dailystrength.org, which has 500 support groups
- ZocDoc.com for online physician or dentist booking
- RateMDs.com
- ICYou.com the YouTube of health care
- PatientsLikeMe – discuss and track the details of treatment options especially for neurologic illness
Read the complete article here: For these startups, patients are a virtue
Share this:More on Health 2.0 – How the Hairball Got Started
September 27, 2007
Someone early in the conference referred to the healthcare crisis as a hairball. Ethusiastic attendees are determined to find ways to get past the hairball or at least work on the edges. Modern Healthcare reports on this discussion as well as Matthew Holt’s (the conference organizer) statement that “Health 2.0 is just getting beyond the buzzword phase, The
next phase I see coming very rapidly is using tools and technology to connect people with providers.”
Another catch phrase at the conference was data liquidity, according to Neubert of Microsoft, “It’s about how do we connect those source data providers. I think that will be the first form of data liquidity.”
Others talked about how to move beyond content to personalized care.
Neil Versel notes another Matthew Holt perspective: “Holt defined a four-step continuum of health 2.0: user-generated content; users connecting to health care providers; formation of partnerships to reform delivery; and finally, data driving discovery. Most players in this segment are in one of the first two stages.”
And Google’s perspective represented by Missy Krasner: “Consumers are still having trouble sorting through what’s
trustworthy. They need a coach. They need a trusted coach.” Which led to more discussion of trust but in my opinion, not enough.
If Health 2.0 is going to affect the core of healthcare – the patient-provider relationship – trust and enbaling personalized care must be the top priorities.
Share this:More Blog Posts on the Health 2.0 Conference
September 25, 2007
- Neil Versel’s Healthcare blog has links to the vendors represented at the conference
- Esther Dyson summarizes what she said in the summary panel at the conference (one of the highlights of the conference for me was to meet Esther Dyson – by the way, she was recently on Charlie Rose)
- A Google blog search will lead you to many more postings about Health 2.0 and the conference aftermath.
Health 2.0 Conference Summary – From the Consumer Perspective
September 25, 2007
One of the most articulate summaries of the Health 2.0 conference is by Amy Tenderich, Blogger/Journalist DiabetesMine. She sees real positive outcomes of this movement, especially for diabetics. She cites Google’s Missy Krasner as saying “it’s not enough for that company to build safe place for online medical records; people have to be able to DO something with these records. The records have to be actionable, and as yet, they’re still “a long way from delivering the value that consumers want” in health.”
She also notes the importance of social networks in chronic illness and the essential role of trust.
Share this:Health 2.0 Viral Enthusiasm and Cash Value
September 25, 2007
On the HealthcareIT Blog, Jack Beaudoin reports on some of the rock and roll enthusiasm of the Health 2.0 conference which he readily compares with the dot com boom but with a caveat. The value of the products, whether social networking or search, must be associated with real value that translates into cash value.
The creative ideas on these sites have been successfully launched but must generate cash with a viable business plan to survive. They should attrach venture dollars but need longer term plans as well. I think there were people in the room who could do this and hope that they will succeed.
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