Archive for December 13th, 2007
Barriers to Health 2.0
December 13, 2007
According to part two of the series on Health 2.0 in Modern Healthcare, barrier to Health 2.0 include: an age gap (Health 2.0 appeals to a younger demographic) and privacy according to David Brailer. Privacy is a big concern because these sites are not covered by HIPAA and contain lots of private health information although one’s identity can be hidden. Even without creating an account in sites such as, PatientsLikeMe.com, one can view detail about symptom status and drugs for individuals with ALS, MS and Parkinsons. But this appears to be a trade off many patients are willing to take.
Can these site be hacked? Have they already? To what extent are they being using for targeted advertising?
One can only hope that users read the site usage policies before plunging into revealing their disease status.
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The Future: Consumer Health Information Technology
December 13, 2007
This is the title of a conference held by the National Cancer Institute at which Bill Crounse of Microsoft and Adam Boswoth presented. Crounse gave a vision of the future including wireless, seamless medical consultation while decrying underinvestment by US healthcare in IT. Bosworth sees impeded growth of research and evidence-based medicine as a result of not leveraging health IT to its fullest potential. Unfortunately, I could not find any report of this meeting on the NCI website.
Both also spoke at the World Health Care Congress. Crounse, in his blog, cites from the editor of WIRED magazine while Bosworth preached giving consumers control of their data. Steve Case also spoke predicting more innovation in consumer health including personalization, more emphasis on healthy living and the killer app – community including IM, chat, facebook for medical conditions. (Thanks to Matthew Holt for the excellent reporting on the Congress).
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