Archive for June, 2011
Google Health Ending – Not Having Broad Impact Expected
June 24, 2011
Google announced today on its official blog that it is retiring or phasing out Google Health. Stating that it’s original goal was to “our goal was to create a service that would give people access to their personal health and wellness information” using their focus on the consumer, they found a lack of the broad adoption they expected. I was there at HIMSS in 2008 when Google Health was announced by Eric Schmit and Roni Zeiger doing a demo.
They admit that “There has been adoption among certain groups of users like tech-savvy patients and their caregivers, and more recently fitness and wellness enthusiasts.” But not enough adoption to make it worthwhile to keep the shop open. They are provide means for users to export their data by January 1, 2012.
Already bloggers are busy speculating on why Google Health failed to gain traction.
- Not understanding the healthcare market, especially the challenges of working with payers
- Lack of partnerships with physicians
- Not partnering with device companies as early as Microsoft did
- Lack of incentives to use it
- Lack of a means to securely communicate with providers
- Not being tethered to EMRs with a few exceptions like Cleveland Clinic.
The reasons can go on and on. But overall, how widely have PHRs been adopted. Seen initially as a disruptive technology, but lack of trust and understand of its value by consumers has led to sluggish adoption overall. How successful is Microsoft HealthVault, Dossia and others? How about PHRs sponsored by payers? It appears that healthcare consumers are stronger adopters of social media and wellness tools and not PHRs.
So where do we go from here? Even the ePatient movement and Quantified Self are not generally strong adopters. If Google Health is worth saving, how about asking Google to hand it over to an open source community to maintain and enhance. In some cases, open source projects can gain more traction that productions by large Silicon Valley companies.
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Can Social Media Save Lives?
June 23, 2011
This provocative title of a webinar to be held next week is part of the growing optimism about the potential for social media in the process of health care. Some recent examples come to mind:
- Report from the Change Foundation in Toronto on Using social media to improve the quality of patient experience (I was on the advisory board for this report)
- An App that Looks for Signs of Sickness – Mobile-phone activity can provide a warning of disease flare-ups.
- Community Health Data Initiative – more on this later
- Case Study: Radboud Hospital Supports Young Cancer Patients With An Online Community
We are witnessing a shift from social media for pure marketing toward engagement and beyond, to changing the care process.
Share this:Innovation Opportunities Abound
June 16, 2011
A new conference has been announced by the NIH: Crowdsourcing: The Art and Science of Open Innovation. Speakers incude Tim O’Reilly and ” will focus on the key aspects of this new approach that include: how to identify problems that can be solved through open innovation; how to communicate a scientific problem across disciplines.”
Another open innovation opportunity has been recently announced called Merit Awards which is offering $50,000 on the topics of citizen engagement, defense, emergency response, entitlement reform, work force management and motivation, back office operations, results achievement and waste.
Another opportunity is a developer community called TopCoder “revolutionizing the software design and development process by tapping in to our unlimited global community.”
Will open innovation become the primary source for new ideas and products/apps in the future?
Share this:The Healthcare Social Media Landscape
June 2, 2011
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.
