eHealth » Web 2.0

What am I working on? Check my Bookmarks

John Sharp — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 04:22:25 +0000

I am glad that Delicious is still around and being enhanced. I have used it for years to organize and tag my bookmarks. Now with almost 1200 bookmarks and several hundred tags, I often search my links to find a resource for a presentation or article. Recent links include:

West Wireless Health Institute which has a good handle on new care delivery models
Secondary Uses Service, description and and access. | The NHS Information Centre - glad to see the National Health Services is utilizing EMR data for quality and research
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences or NCATS - the new NIH center replacing the NCRR which inlcudes the Clinical and Translational Science Awards which I am now a part of
A post on O’Reilly Radar - Epatients: The hackers of the healthcare world
Eye on FDA - the new FDA blog
CIRD – Partners HealthCare Clinical Informatics R & D

So while links may be low on the priority list in social media with many more dynamic and “sexy” like Twitter and Facebook, Delicious has its place and does allow followers, RSS feeds and other social media features.

So if you are interested in what I am working on, my Delicious may give you a clue.

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Book Review – Tweeting LINUX

John Sharp — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:24:13 +0000

This 300 page book offers a fun approach to what’s more than a reference book on LINUX command lines. Subtitled “140 Linux configuration commands explained in 140 characters or less”, the book provides an alphabetical approach to these commands. In addition to the 140 character summaries, each page provides screen shots and more detailed documentation on the commands. Included in the dictionary are some familiar commands like chmod (change or modify directory permissions) and more esoteric ones like testpharm (checks the smb.conf file for correctness).
So if you want a Linux reference that has a fun approach, pick up a copy.

Other books by Don R. Crawley include Linux administration and IT customer service.

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The Healthcare Social Media Landscape

John Sharp — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 02:33:37 +0000

Here is a slide show I created reflecting on the different communities developing in this space. Although each emerged on its own, there is certainly collaborative projects and people across these communities and a sense of mutual support. I myself attended the first Health 2.0 conference, then Medicine 2.0 and also part of the e-Patient community. More conferences occur each year both in the US and Europe; two recent examples are TEDx Maastricht which had a health focus and Doctors 2.0 taking place later this month in Paris. Also, the Quantified Self movement is coming to health care as well.

I’d be interested in other’s opinions on this.

Health care social media communities

View more presentations from John Sharp

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Book Review: Data Source Handbook

John Sharp — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:53:02 +0000

This new book from O’Reilly Media, written by a former Apple engineer, Pete Warden, is a catalog of code for connecting to publicly available APIs for all kinds of sites. It shows data sources by websites (whois, delicious), people by email (Amazon, FriendFeed), people by name (white pages, LinkedIn), search terms (Bing, Google), location (Google geocoding, US census), companies, IP addresses, books, films, music, products.

The brief reviews and code for each source includes those which use REST/JSON, YQL and other languages.

Overall the book is a very practical guide for programmers wanting to integrate public data into their websites or creating mashups. However, the book lacks any data sources related to health although many existing on the web from PubMed to ClinicalTrials.gov.

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First Day at HIMSS 11

John Sharp — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 03:10:52 +0000

The two highlights of my day were the HIT X.O track and the Social Media Center.

HIT X.O: Beyond the Edge is a new track to predict and discuss the future of Health IT. Beginning with a presentation of the dozens of statistics and predictions on the future of wireless and ended with the Geeks Got Talent brief demos and judges going at it. The multimedia experience was unique as was the live tweets at the bottom of the dual screens. The next stage of the competition continues tomorrow.

The social media center is expanded this year, with an afternoon of presentations. I was glad to be on a panel with Rich Elmore, David Kibbe and John Marzano this afternoon. John’s Orlando Health Facebook page and complimentary YouTube channel are a great example of what hospitals can do with social media. We fielded questions from the audience via twitter – a good range of queries about everything from participatory medicine to risks and opportunities in health care social media. I enjoyed the Social Media Center as a welcoming environment with an opportunity to meet many I follow on Twitter. Thanks to Ceasar Torres and other HIMSS staff in making it a welcoming place.

Tomorrow I speak about my experience with using Twitter to connect with Health 2.0 and health IT colleagues.

The twitter stream at HIMSS was very active today demonstrating a greater adoption by both attendees and vendors.

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A year in Review Perspective from Higher Education

John Sharp — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 03:18:50 +0000

Lev Gonick, CIO of Case Western Reserve University, has written 2011: The Year Ahead in IT, a fresh perspective looking forward instead of back. There are many parallels to healthcare.

1. The Big Picture: The State of the Global Economy and What It Means for IT on U.S. College Campuses (or, globalization and localization). He says that universities are tied to the cities they live in and community partnerships are crucial for global competitiveness. The same could be said for urban and academic medical centers.

2. How do you spell opportunity? A-U-S-T-E-R-I-T-Y (shared services and entrepreneurship). With greater austerity in health care, shared services and making IT a profit center through entrepreneurship are key to IT survival in healthcare as well.

3. Operational Excellence Is Good Enough (leveraging the cloud for strategic reengagement). Instead of a focus on operational excellence, moving toward cloud-based services and software/platform as a service. Healthcare continues to be skittish about the cloud but with the appropriate SLAs and security, may provide appropriate solutions.

4. We Go to University to Learn (mobility, simulations, gaming, and unified communications). Best quote: “While the rhetorical debates will continue, blended learning models based on hybrid pedagogies of face-to-face interactions with online exploration, discovery, reflection and mentoring are emergent realities.” This is emerging in education of health professionals and more experimentation should be welcomed.

5. Content is King… No, No, Platform Is King … No, No (learning management, publishing, and learning middleware). Another quote: “Given the maturity of the traditional course management platforms, the lethargic character of the academic publishing industry satisfied with its annuities in traditional textbooks, and the early state of e-books for learning, a new set of players in the area of student engagement, assessment, and support is likely to offer to stitch together the layers between the content and platform providers.”

6. I Used to Walk 10 Miles in Snowshoes to School (rich media and 21st-century learning). The move from text-centric learning to video conference, multimedia learning and more. The possibilities in healthcare are apparent and some are being utilized with YouTube and 3D anatomical models. Will holograms be next?

7. If We Hang In There We Will See an ROI on Our 8- and 9-Figure ERP Implementations (new models for administrative systems). Expensive enterprise systems moving to SaaS platforms changing the legacy of large implementations into short cycles of outsourced applications.

8. Consumer Sovereignty Can Be Stopped at the Gates of the Campus (governance and enterprise program management]. Sounds alot like centralized healthcare IT departments. “Frustration with the lack of agility, available resources and talents has led to a growing position that IT needs to get out of the way other than provisioning reliable network access, limited security and related regulatory and risk-mitigation roles.”

9. Overcoming the Myth of the University as Open. Global research endeavors requiring data sharing free faculty to go beyond the walls of the institution. Healthcare may be moving faster than the rest of the university community by translational research efforts and health information exchange as facilitators.

10. American Global Competitiveness and Research and Education Networks (IT and its contribution to reducing the town-gown divide).
Another quote true for healthcare: “IT and network engineering, and a commitment to supporting evaluation and at the same time catalyzing innovation, attracting investment and supporting the value of quality of life.”

With all the hype about mobile and clouds, it is refreshing to have a more thoughtful analysis of what is ahead.

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Book Review: Googled-The End of the World as We Know It

John Sharp — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:44:11 +0000

I recently completed this book by Ken Auletta who promotes his unique access to the search engine giant. The books follow the history of Google from the earliest days of the founders at Stanford, to rocketing to fame, going public and then being labeled as the evil empire. More recently, he chronicles conflicts with the government, traditional media, traditional advertising, publishers and China. He leaves with Google at a crossroads of maturing founders which he suggests may be losing focus, competitors in social media, and ongoing challenges from Microsoft and others.

The book describes each new major app and the process and culture of building new tools and keeping them free. Only two pages are devoted to Google Health, however. Generally, the books focuses much more on the advertising business which has made lead to Google’s financial success sometimes overshadows description of apps and the engineering culture. Too many pages are devoted to the failing of traditional media and, of course, Google and the competition continue to evolve since the publication of the book.

The closing question in the book is: has Google become so big and entangled in conflict that it has lost its innovative edge? Recently the excitement over Google Wave and Buzz have met there match with Apple’s iPad. Yet the dominance of cloud computing and Google’s dominance in the cloud may continue to have more of a long term impact than the devices that connect to the cloud.

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The Experience of being an embedded Twitterer at a conference

John Sharp — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 03:28:00 +0000

Two weeks ago I was at the Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit as an embedded tweet. As an experiment to promote the conference and encourage twittering, I was asked to actively tweet at this important conference which included many CEOs from drug and device firms. Here are some of my experiences.
A hash tag was decided a few weeks in advance: #CCInnovation.
Initially, keeping up with presentations which included slides was manageable. Abbreviating key quotes from leaders in medical innovation is a challenge and including links to their companies required some quick searches. When the program shifted to an interview style with a panel, it became more difficult to keep up with what was being said and who said it, much less adding a link. Some followers asked for who was saying what. Including a hash tag, who is speaking, what they said and potentially a link is a trick in 140 characters.
Some of the important followers were from the press. It’s not clear how many conference registrants actually participated or followed the twitter stream.
Technical challenges: at times the wireless was not available. At one point I switched to Tiny Twitter on my Blackberry.
Overall, it helped to know the conference content being familiar with clinical trials and the pharma and device industries.

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Hype Cycle for Web 2.0

John Sharp — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:40:00 +0000

Gartner Research has produced its latest white paper on their hype cycle for Web 2.0 technologies. The technology is moving beyond hype into maturity and real value, even transformational. Specifically they note: “we see a number of potentially transformational technologies that will hit the
mainstream in less than five years, including Web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet
TV, virtual worlds and service-oriented architecture (SOA).”
Surprisingly, they see Twitter and Microblogging have peaked in the hype and will move toward some disillusionment. ReadWriteWeb is of the opinion that “Gartner may be underestimating the impact of microblogging.”
They note on cloud computing that the hype from vendors has increased (“Deafening”) which may “cloud” the real potential benefit of this transformation. Social Software Suites are also mentioned: “The movement from point tools to integrated suites has brought broader adoption
but also high expectations” which could lead to disillusionment. I wonder if Google Wave will meet or disappoint these expectations.
Health 2.0 is not mentioned. Will Gartner produce a hype cycle for Health 2.0?

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In Defense of Writers

John Sharp — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:48:00 +0000

In the New Yorker this week, there is a review of Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price”. Anderson who is known for saying “information wants to be free” continues that theme in seeing all content, music, writing, etc. will be driven by economic forces to be free. He is reinforcing the death of newspapers and their need to find a new business model even if there is none to be had. His argument that the reduction in the cost of transistors and other technology allow for a great business opportunity to offer things for free.

While much of the Internet is free, especially content served up from newspapers to health care organizations, his proposal implying that all content should be free, devalues writers, whether medical writers, news reporters and editors and others. Granted the nature of intellectual property has changed in the Web 2.0 world but not so much as to obliterate the value of good writing and ideas. There is room today and in the future for this IP to be valued and paid for. While micropayments never took off on the web, let’s hope that some newspapers survive and find additional business models to stay alive.

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