We produced this video for Diabetes Mine, an online community for people with diabetes. They wanted to show it at the annual American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions Conference and then release it online.

The idea was to show that we stand at the dawn of a new era of patient empowerment that applies “consumerism” to health and medical care in ways never seen before.

The theme was Diabetes Reloaded, which stands for redefining not only the role of technology in managing chronic diseases, but also for the newfound self-confidence and ambitions of 21st century people living with health conditions. What’s special about this new web-enabled world of healthcare? It’s proactive, technology-based, empowered, revolutionary, against all odds, and – if needed – outside the establishment.

About These Videos

Health 2.0 commissioned ScribeMedia.Org to interview doctors and patients about how they use Web 2.0 technologies to treat and manage various illnesses and conditions. These videos premiered at this week’s Health 2.0 conference in San Diego.

Future Videos

We plan on continuing this video series and explore the intersection between technology and healthcare. Please contact us if your company would like to sponsor us so we can continue to produce doctor and patient documentaries, or if you can recommend interesting doctors and patients to feature.

For the Internet and technology literate, there is Web 2.0. For all of us, there is Health. What happens when you combine the two? You get Health 2.0…naturally. Increasingly, Patients and Doctors are using Web technologies to diagnose, treat and manage diseases and conditions.

In today’s world, with healthcare being a huge issue for practically everyone, the health care industry has had to struggle to find new ways of keeping up with patients, diseases, charts, and doctor-patient communication. As for the patients, regular people like you and me, we have all become much more educated about our own health, taking matters into our own hands to make sure we get proper care and treatment. One of the ways we do this is by using technology.

Just last week I was asked to fill out an electronic questionnaire online that would be submitted to my doctor before I actually saw her. I’m sure this is as useful to her as it is to me. No more having to verbally stumble and stamper when trying to explain my symptoms. No more wasting time in a waiting room filling out paper work until my hand feels like it’s about to fall off. With a simple 20-minute online questionnaire, I was able to document and submit all of my medical history, current symptoms, and reason for my visit.

As part of the Health 2.0 Conference, held in San Diego, March 3-4, 2008, we interviewed 3 doctors and 3 patients who all use technology to diagnose, treat and manage diseases and conditions. These videos were played at the conference in front of hundreds of leaders in the Health 2.0 space and are now available to watch online.

The Line-Up

Doctor 2.0: Dr. Jay Parkinson walks us around Brooklyn and discusses his Web-centric practice.

On-Call, and Online: Dr. Jordan Schlain of San Francisco’s On Call Medical Group discusses their use of communications technology in the field.

Managing Pain, Managing Expectations: Shiri Sandler discusses how she uses the Web site Relief in Site to manage the chronic pain associated with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy.

A Second Change in Second Life: Alice Krueger discusses the Heron Sanctuary, a Second Life island she founded for for the disabled.

Patient 2.0: I’m Too Young for This founder Matthew Zachary talks about the online community he founded for young people with cancer.

Our goal is to continue to feature patients and doctors around the country (and even the world) who are using innovative tools and technologies. We view this 6 part video series as the beginning of the conversation. If you would like to help out as a sponsor of future documentaries, or if you know a doctor or patient who is using Web technologies in innovative ways, please contact us.

Heather Freudenthal is an Associate Producer at ScribeMedia.Org.

Register now for the EconHealth Conference in NYC on March 20th.

Save $50 by using the registration code “SCRIBE”.

Speakers Include:

• Raj Amin, CEO & Co-Founder, HealthiNation
• Stephanie Dolgins, VP-Women’s & Lifestyle, AOL
• Esther Dyson, EDventure
• David Kramer, CEO, Digitas Health
• John Lambros, Managing Director, Savvian
• Morris R. Levitt, Managing Director-Life Science, DeSilva+Phillips
• Marjorie Martin, GM-Health, About.com
• Daniel Palestrant, CEO, Sermo
• Chris Schroeder, CEO and president, The HealthCentral Network
• Dean Stephens, president and COO, Healthline
• Benjamin Wolin, CEO, Waterfront Media/EverydayHealth

A conversation with Mark Bard, president of New York City–based Manhattan Research, focusing on trends in patient and doctor use of the Internet and emerging health media business models.

Where do consumers go for their online health info? does it shift depending on whether they’re seeking information for lifestyles versus something acute?

Consumers rely on a combination of general search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, to start the process and major health portals, such as WebMD, EverydayHealth, and About.com to drill into the details and deep content. Use of specific health portals is often dependent on the type of information required and if the consumer has an existing relationship, or loyalty, to a specific health site. If they have a relationship they may start with that site as their entry point and then use search to round out the information they use to make decisions.

Of note is that most of the larger health portals have gotten much better at search optimization so a consumer starting with search to begin the process may actually be one page and one click away from a health portal they have been using for health information for years.

Similar to general health and wellness information access, consumers also rely on a combination of search and portals during a health information access session focused on acute or specific disease content. In other words, it’s not such much about “one or the other” as much as it is relative reliance on portals versus search. For example, if a favorite health portal is light on content for a very obscure disease then the consumer is likely to return to Google or Yahoo! to search out complementary resources online - such as highly targeted disease sites, message boards with relevant keywords, or blogs.

How does the European online health scene differ from the U.S.? Are there models there we aren’t seeing in the U.S. yet?

As an overall statement, the U.S. health market is significantly more advanced because the U.S. has morphed from the days of sites with 5 million consumers and a few key sponsors to several sites with over 25 million visitors. When you get those numbers combined with a growing roster of large global health and pharmaceutical sponsors, you have sites that continue to invest in content, tools, services, and interactive community applications for their growing user base. The benefit to the consumers visiting these sites is that as they grow in numbers the individual users experiences significant gains in value with respect to the content and services they use on the site.

Until European and international markets get significantly more support from the government, or commercial sponsors, many of these markets will remain great sites for detailed content but may be lacking in many of the next generation tools and features that U.S. adults have come to expect online.

That said, the realm of “health connectivity” is one area where markets in Europe have the potential to surpass the U.S. market and remain leaders for years to come. By that I mean using technology to connect patients with physicians. Given most markets in Europe have medical systems based on the government as the unifying stakeholder, as opposed to private insurance in the U.S, there is an opportunity to move applications through the system very quickly with mandated standards of data access and interoperability (at least at the country level).

The internet makes it easier for providers, insurers, pharmas to go directly to consumers. How much a threat is that to traditional advertising dollars for health media?

Is online a threat to historical traditional media spend? Yes. But as we have learned, the “shift to e” has taken longer than most of us focused on technology ever expected. We still live in a world where companies are allocating 10%, or maybe 15%, of their marketing budgets to interactive channels and to move the needle to 20% they are demanding metrics above and beyond anything they have in the offline media world.

One thing is certain, as consumers and physicians spend more time online and get more of their health information and health news online the budgets will follow - it just takes time for thinking at the brand and corporate level to catch up to the market.

Do you have any sense of whether consumers in general are ready for portable health information stored online at sites like Microsoft HealthVault, Google Health, Revolution?

Ready is a relative term. If you lay out a broad definition of “managing personal health information through the use of secure technology” you will get a large number of consumers that think it’s a “good idea” in principle. However, when we analyze the market we like to drill into the audience that is using personal health records (PHR) today – or ready to use them in the near future. It’s the difference between an interesting concept and moving markets.

The latest data we have is that approximately five million U.S. adults are using these PHR applications. While that seems like a large number in isolation, it represents a very small percentage of the overall population - and even the online population.

The key to adoption is to show consumers how they can populate these tools without constant double data entry, manage their information in a way that is intuitive, and at the end of the day they really want to share that information with a personal physician that will actually use that information as part of the treatment and care plan.

Bill Crounse, Microsoft’s Health Care Industry Director, interviewed Jay Parkinson, MD, who has started a new practice that services patients entirely through the Internet and house calls. Jay has no office of his own. He targets young urban professionals, artists and freelancers within NYC. Most of these people are web savvy and uninsured.

A form on the web site guides patients towards trying to make a diagnosis so that when Jay leaves for a house call he can have the appropriate tools and medicine with him. Because his costs are so low, Jay can pass on the savings to his patients. Essentially, Jay acts as a first line of defense for the health care industry to help guide patients towards a healthy resolution to what ails them. Jay often guides patients towards other providers within the health care system.

Most of Jay’s patients are uninsured. Jay acts, on their behalf, as a patient advocate and health financial consultant. He spends a lot of time finding the best value for a variety of services a patient might need beyond his core services. Jay can then refer patients to those providers that offer good service for a good price. For example, in Manhattan the price of a chest x-ray ranges from $50 to $350. Most patients are unaware of this discrepancy. Without Jay’s help, many would be paying more than what they need to pay for a variety of services.

View all interviews from the World Healthcare Innovation and Technology Conference.

After being diagnosed with Type I diabetes, Amy Tenderich went to one of the first places many Americans go for health information: the Internet. Unfortunately, Tenderich had a hard time finding useful and relevant health content. Rather than complaining, Tenderich decided to put her considerable writing skills to work and launched DiabetesMine.com.

Today, DiabetesMine is one of the world’s most well-regarded health blogs. In this installment, Tenderich speaks about her experiences writing her blog and what its like to be a bona-fide e-patient. For more on the e-patient phenomenon, please see this interview with Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet & American Life Project

The Digital Health Revolution is a biweekly WebTV show featuring the people who are using and making the digital technologies that are reshaping health around the world. Join host Fard Johnmar every two weeks to explore the people and technologies reshaping healthcare.

ScribeMedia is a convergent media company that helps organizations in health care, media, technology, and cleantech develop and execute new media strategies. ScribeMedia develops Web-based software applications such as social media platforms, live video webcasting tools, e-learning applications, and contest web sites. ScribeMedia produces media such as concerts, conferences, documentaries, TV and WebTV shows. ScribeMedia helps customers reach their target audience in new and engaging ways.

To view all episodes, please visit the Digital Health Revolution home page.

David Miller: Partner & Director of Brand Strategy, STOKE, discusses brand design at the Healthcare Communications Forum, hosted by Insight Forums.

Health care marketers face significant challenges to developing clear brands. The clutter of messages about “quality,” the barrage of “world-class” technology claims, and the proliferation of “Institute” names has resulted in a vast sea of sameness. Leading organizations in other industries - among them Starbucks, Target, Whole Foods, and Apple — are using the principles of brand design as a strategic driver, and an effective platform for market differentiation.

This session provides insights into how brand design is being and can be used in the context of health care to create high-performance businesses.

Watch this session and you will learn:

• How brand design correlates to business performance
• How to measure the performance of your brand and compare it to your competitors’
• How to integrate brand design into your strategic planning and to organize brand design programs within your organization
• How to use brand design to shape your customers’ perceptions

David Miller

David Miller
Partner & Director of Brand Strategy, STOKE

David Miller has a diverse background in strategic marketing and brand development. As a founder of STOKE, a Seattle-based brand design firm, he works with leading health care, financial service, technology, and consumer product clients, using research and strategic planning to guide clients to the organizational change and market positioning that creates winning brands.

Mr. Miller has worked with GE Healthcare, Starbucks, McDonalds, Swedish Medical Center, Colliers International, Callison, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, AAA, Safeco, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the University of Washington, and Children’s Hospital. His work has been recognized by Advertising Age magazine with the “Newspaper Marketer of the Year” award, and The Puget Sound Business Journal recognized him as one of Washington’s “40-under-40,” placing him among the top young business leaders in the Northwest. He was named as one of Graphic Design USA’s “50 People to Watch.” A noted public speaker and guest lecturer at the UW’s MBA program, his writing has been published in Brandweek, HOW Magazine, Communication Arts and Marketing.

Mr. Miller has served as President of Marketing Communication Executives International (MCEI), on the board of The Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center-Business Alliance, and as board chair to the American Marketing Association in Seattle.

Stephanie Monette, Senior Systems Analyst, St. Mary’s Health Plans talks about increasing patient satisfaction at the Healthcare Communications Forum, hosted by Insight Forums.

One of the best ways to improve customer satisfaction in any field is to empower those customers to tend to their own needs to the greatest degree possible. Happily, embracing such a philosophy self-service benefits the service provider as well by reducing the load on the call center and thereby lowering costs.

St. Mary’s Health Plan has achieved this twin outcome by deftly applying Web technology to its patient interactions. Members have online access to eligibility requirements, referrals and authorizations, claims status, and much more, and satisfaction rates have increased as a result.
This session will detail how St. Mary’s came to implement its self-service program, the business and technology challenges it faced when doing so, and the benefits it realized as a result.

Stephanie Monette

Stephanie Monette
Senior Systems Analyst, St. Mary’s Health Plans

Stephanie Monette has been in the healthcare industry with Saint Mary’s for 15 years. In that time, she has held many positions in several departments: claims, provider relations, member services, and client services. Now Senior Systems Analyst, she participated in the implementation of Healthx for Saint Mary’s online enrollment, and member, provider, and employer services.

Ms. Monette is now the superuser and trainer, and is responsible for the activities related to system support, maintenance, development, utilization, and enhancement of Saint Mary’s Health Plans computer databases. She is very active in the Northern Nevada Association of Health Underwriters and has held the positions of Secretary, Awards chair, State Secretary, and currently, local President.

• All patients are at risk for receiving poor health care, no matter where they live; why, where and from whom they seek care; or what their race, gender, or financial status is[1]
• Healthcare is increasingly more expensive and less accessible[2], with more than 46 million uninsured in the U.S. from every age group and at every income level, 8 out of 10 being in working families[3]
• There is a knowledge void - the healthcare community is drowning in oceans of information, yet doesn’t know the best ways to prevent health problems and treat them cost-effectively.[4]

In this next series of posts, I will offer an answer to this daunting question: What can be done to drive continuous improvements in care safety, quality and efficiency, which would enable people to remain healthy longer, manage chronic conditions more effectively, and receive the best possible healthcare delivered in the safest and most economical way?

My answer focuses on the creation, use and evolution of valid health knowledge. Why? Because, I contend, the quality of care would improve dramatically and costs would drop precipitously if everyone:

• Knew the best ways to prevent illness, to avoid complications of chronic diseases, and to treat health problems in the most effective and efficient manner
• Used this knowledge to promote wellness, self-management, and recovery
• Participated in evolving this knowledge to make it ever-more useful and effective.

So, what would it take to foster widespread knowledge creation, use and evolution in our healthcare system?

Well, since knowledge emerges from information,[5] it is essential that both consumers/patients and providers have access to useful health information, including patient health data, care outcomes, and evidence-based guidelines. Furthermore, the information must be presented in a way tailored to each persons needs and be made available whenever it’s needed. Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done for many reasons.

One daunting core problem involves exchanging patient data between disparate electronic record systems. After all, knowledge can’t grow and care can’t improve unless patients share their health information with their providers, providers share patient information with each other, and researchers have access to this information to develop evidence-based guidelines. And this must be done in a convenient and secure manner that protects patient privacy.

With cost estimates for developing a national health record system enabling patient data exchange being between $100-276 billion,[6] the question is, why must it be so expensive? Aren’t there any easy, inexpensive ways to do it? Let’s examine these questions.

One way to reduce health information exchange costs is by developing and using standards that promote interoperability between disparate health record systems.

Standards are models, principles, policies, or rules that provide an agreed-upon framework for doing and understanding things. When it comes to health information exchange and knowledge growth, at least two types of standards come into play: data and technology standards. These standards describe how health data are categorized and defined, how health outcomes and healthcare performance are measured, how healthcare knowledge is used, and how different software systems communicate with each other when exchanging data.

In my next post, I examine this double-edged sword of standards, pointing out their benefits and the thorny problems they create.

References:

[1] The First National Report Card on Quality of Health Care in America by RAND Corp (2006)

[2] Health Care Coverage in America: Understanding the Issues and Proposed Solutions by The Alliance for Health Reform (March 2007)

[3] The Current Situation - WellnessWiki

[4] The Knowledge Void - WellnessWiki

[5] DIKUW Blog

[6] Linking Providers Via Health Information Networks by The Alliance for Health Reform (2006) and
Dying for Data by R.N. Charette (2006)

Steve Beller, PhD

Bob Forster, MD of The Little Clinic: Paul Gorman, MD, of QuickHealth: Chris Kersey, MD, of RediClinic: Sandra Ryan, NP, of TakeCare Health Systems

This video is from Consumer Health World.

Register now for future Consumer Health World conferences.

Screening technologies for diseases such as prostate and breast cancer are constantly improving. The media eagerly reports stories about new tests and the public devours them because the underlying assumption is that screening can only be good. But this premise is flawed.

Screening results can be ambiguous; they do not necessarily lead to better treatments; and, they can change people’s lives for the worse. Earlier detection can lead people to panic, worry, subject themselves to risky medical procedures, and take medications with serious side effects. Early detection may, in fact, have no effect on mortality but can significantly and permanently alter the quality of life. Messages about medical screening promulgated by journalists are often one-sided and fail to convey the complexity of issues involved.

Speaking before an audience of journalists at Medicine in the Media, Barry Kramer, Director, NIH Office of Medical Applications of Research, warns of the negative implications of prostate cancer screening, and urges journalists to weigh the pros and cons of screening when communicating information to the public.

This impromptu dialogue took place during a 3 day course offered to journalists by the National Institute of Health.

The National Institutes of Health’s Office of Medical Applications of Research (OMAR) presents a free annual training opportunity to help develop journalists’ ability to evaluate and report on medical research. Now in its sixth year, the course curriculum builds on the best of prior years’ offerings to create an intensive learning experience with hands-on application. This year’s course will he held at an idyllic, retreat-like setting near Bethesda, Maryland.

The course examines the challenges and opportunities inherent in the process of communicating the results of medical research to the public. Stressing an evidence-based approach and re-examining intuitive beliefs about medicine, the course will prepare participants for the crucial task of interpreting and evaluating research findings including statistics, selecting stories that hold meaningful messages for the public, and placing them in the appropriate context.

Faculty include prominent experts from the fields of medical research and medical journalism. Sessions will be interactive, with hands-on opportunities to apply lessons learned, and will incorporate journalists’ special perspectives on the public’s need for useful medical knowledge.

We invite application by journalists whose primary target audience is the general public. Applicants may produce news stories about health or healthcare for newspapers, magazines, or newsletters; television or radio; or on-line media. Participants should be eager to develop skills and knowledge necessary for good medical science reporting, but need not have specific experience or background in medical journalism.

There is no cost for the course. All meals and lodging are provided. Participants are responsible for their own travel. Learn more…