Archive for 2009
Managing an Online Reputation
February 25, 2009
Bertalan Meskó of Webicina.com has long recommended building an online reputation. It is worth evaluating one’s online reputation from time to time. Recently I discovered a few more places worthy of note:
- Quoted as endorsing Health 2.0 Advisors, which I do
- Listed in Twitter Doctors, Medical Students and Medicine related under Health Research and Health 2.0
- Approach 300 connections on LinkedIn
- HIMSS 2009 Payer Symposium presentation on the Digital Consumer
- Soon to be listed on the Healthcare New Media Marketing Conference
- Slide Share with two slide shows – 1700 and 2600 views (will be adding more soon)
- 7th on Google search for eHealth
- HIMSS award
- Twitter Account – only 107 followers – I am selective
- My department website
There are probably others I am not recalling right now but I will continue to build on this foundation. I encourage others to assess their online reputation or get help with it from someone like Bertalan.
Share this:
Medpedia – a New Entry in Health Information
February 19, 2009
Medpedia is a new health information website based on a wiki platform. It allows contributions by qualified medical professionals only and with some major medical centers as contributors, is looking to become a leader in online medical reference. Does it hold advantages over the leaders in this space – MayoClinic.com, Revolution Health and WebMD? No doubt web searchers will continue to go to Wikipedia for medical content despite an uneven record. Overall the combination of quality content and good visuals will make the site attractive to some. Will need to check back in a few months to see how successful this new venture is.
Share this:Interview of Matthew Holt by Missy Krasner – Great Combination
February 12, 2009
On the Disruptive Women in Health Care blog, Missy interviews Matthew on, what else, Health 2.0 – defining it, discussing the long tail, and what this means in health care. How is Health 2.0 disruptive? Search, social network and tools – he gives some examples of each.
Share this:HIMSS eHealth SIG to present on PHRs
February 11, 2009
The Webex will occur on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 3pm EST. They made a good choice of presenters:
- Wes Rishel, VP and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner, Inc.
- Matt Guldin, Product Manager, HealthNet, former Industry Analyst with Frost & Sullivan
I’ve known Matt for some time now – he brings a broad perspective on this and, of course, Gartner always has its hands on the pulse of things.
If you are interested in attending, contact Ben Dillion at ben.dillon@geonetric.com.
The HIMSS eHealth Special Interest Group will also meet in person at the Annual HIMSS conference in Chicago. The meeting will be Monday, April 6, 2009 from 1:00 – 2:30pm at the Hyatt Conference Center in room 12AB. The topic is “Health 2.0.” Watch this blog for more info. I will be there.
Share this:The State of Physician Social Networks
February 9, 2009
In a new report from Manhattan Research discusses the adoption of social networks by physicians. Clearly there is growth in the number of these networks available which potentially dilutes their impact. The survey showed about 60% of physicians were interested in social networks and 40% not. Sermo and Medscape Physician Connect have 100,000 each but it is unclear how many of these are duplicates or active users. With any social network, the effectiveness can be measured by the activity rather than shear numbers of members.
Participating members were more likely to be:
- primary care physicians;
- female;
- Own a PDA or smartphone;
- Go online during or between patient consultations; and
- slightly younger than the average physician.
To me, the most unique finding is that the participation of female physicians. I haven’t heard any previous report focusing on female physician participation on social networks. This topic is worth more research.
Share this:PHRs going way of online banking?
February 8, 2009
According to Roni Zeiger of Google Health, PHRs may follow the pattern of online banking. Speaking at the Towards an Electronic Patient Record conference, he predicted that like the early suspicions about online banking and now general acceptance, a similar adoption of PHRs will occur as consumers find utility in the tools which are available. He rejected the idea that stronger privacy laws will bring wider adoption. He also notes the concerns of physicians interacting with PHRs – if they are going to view patient data from these, it needs to be simple and fit into their current workflow of information.
While we’re not there yet, the is some progress in adoption and he emphasized Google’s long term commitment to this initiative.
Health Care Summit Conversations
January 28, 2009
A major summit begins tomorrow in Florida on health care reform. With Donna Shalala moderating, this summit. There will be a dedicated topic on Health Information Technology with one of the key speakers C. Martin Harris of the Cleveland Clinic. The conference website notes the recent Rand Corporation study stating,
“that properly implemented and widely adopted, HIT would save money and significantly improve health care quality. Annual savings from efficiency alone could be $77 billion or more, and health and safety benefits could double savings while reducing illness and prolonging life.”
Will this conference result in a general consensus on health care reform which can be implemented by the new administration?
A webcast will be available at 630pm EST.
Share this:Twitter for Healthcare
January 18, 2009
Phil Baumann has posted 140 uses of Twitter for healthcare. He does preface the list with challenges including privacy and the oath to do no harm. Yet his main point is the true potential for innovation using microblogging in healthcare.
It reminded me that my hospital has used text paging actively for years through the phone directory lookup, anyone can send a text page. But with the growing pervalence of smart phones, email and twitter are becoming more prevalent.
Two-way paging never caught on. The transition to smart phones has mostly meant a greater dependence on email. How to make the shift to Twitter’s possibilities in an organization that blocks YouTube and Facebook? As with blogs, the innovation will need to be outside of the official channels with individuals as champions on new technology by demonstrating its usefulness.
Perhaps I’m as optimistic as Phil. The outcome remains to be seen.
Share this:Web 2.0 as a Disruptive Technology
January 8, 2009
Imitation as a form of flattery – on SlideShare, Len Starnes has picked up on one of my slides on Web 2.0 in Health Care on disruptive technology. See the embedded slide show, slide #8 showing some of the similarities between healthcare organizations and pharma in terms of being risk adverse, requiring long lead times and intellectual property being closely guarded vs. Web 2.0 values.
Later in the presentation, there is a discussion of Wiks, “Doctors like wikis” and “Wikis can streamline project management.”
I am glad that pharma is adopting Web 2.0 strategies and I hope it will lead to listening to consumers and providers rather then just marketing to them.
Share this:Hospital Social Networking
January 8, 2009
Ed Bennett of the University of Maryland has put together a very comprehensive list of social networking sites hosted by hospitals including their use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. YouTube looks like the most common but many are moving forward with Twitter. Some have clearer strategies with Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools than others. Most are using Twitter for health advice, others as an abbreviated version of press releases. It remains to be seen where this will go in the future – how it might be used in emergency communication (MD Anderson during the hurricane) or employee communication.
Once hospitals begin to really exploit smart phones, the possibilities are endless except for the limitation of paying attention to patients first.
Share this: