For some companies the hoopla about how people are using the Internet to connect with others about health is old news. MedHelp, founded in 1994, is one of them. Born way before the first dotcom crash, MedHelp has been connecting consumers with healthcare providers for nearly 15 years. In this episode, we chat with John De Souza, CEO of Med Help about the Internet and being an online old-timer.

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.

During DHR’s trip to San Francisco for the Health 2.0 conference we were grateful to Healthline, a health-focused search engine, for providing us with space to conduct several interviews with people attending the conference. While at Healthline’s offices, we spoke with Dean Stephens President & COO of the company about online health search and of course, Google.

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.

Sometimes combining two simple ideas creates a really great idea. I had a chance to sit down with Stanley Schoen, CEO of LifeLinks Video Interpreting Services, who has built the foundation for a pretty unique business.

LifeLinks combines two off the shelf services - video conferencing technology and interpreting services. LifeLinks has a stable of interpreters in a few different locations who can translate from virtually any language, including sign language, to English.

Every translator spends their day in front of a computer with a $20 Web cam. Translators are available 24×7.

A hospital installs the LifeLinks Web conferencing software on a server. A doctor can then sit down with a non-native English speaking patient, open their laptop with their own USB web cam, select the language they need help with, see which interpreters are available, click on the interpreters name and see, full screen, an interpreter ready to assist. The interpreter can also see the doctor and patient in total detail, down to the coffee stain on the doctor’s red tie.

This allows for some pretty interesting interactions. A doctor can ask “where do you feel pain. point to where you feel pain.” The interpreter translates and the patient points to his chest. Both doctor and interpreter can see the patient pointing to his chest.

The bottom line, of course, is improved care and / or reduced cost. With LifeLinks, a hospital doesn’t need to have an interpreting team on staff. Interpreters are available on-demand, at any time day or night, in any language, from the infrequent (Urdu) to the common (Spanish).

Hospitals can buy LifeLinks service like a utility. This is the future of software and services - paying for what you need when you need it. With LifeLinks, instead of paying upfront, hospitals pay per minute of translation service. And the per minute cost is nominal.

LifeLinks, based in NYC, already has installed their platform in a few NYC hospitals, including Bronx Lebanon Hospital(new York), Jacobi Medical Center(New York), New York Community Hospital(Brooklyn). They even signed up a hospital in Tenessee - Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare.

I’m sure there are other applications of this one-two punch within both the health care space and other industries. For example, I have a friend who used to volunteer as an interpreter for, I believe, the US Immigration and Naturalization Services office in NY. Her specialty was Chinese. Think of how many different ethnic groups have to sit down with an English only administrator every day. Imagine if the administrator, the person who decides the fate of thousands of people per year, had on-demand access to interpreters at their desk.

- Peter

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

This presentation on technology innovations in the Nursing Home community is from the Ziva Media Nursing Home industry conference in Rhode Island.

This panel discussion is from the Ziva Media Nursing Home industry conference in Rhode Island.

This panel discussion on electronic medical records is from the Ziva Media Nursing Home industry 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.

Elizabeth Gooding, President, Art Plus Technology, leads a technology panel discussion at the Healthcare Communications Forum, hosted by Insight Forums.

Technology systems that are fully up to the task of producing effective health care communications require more than just composition and output solutions - in fact, there are a multitude of moving parts that must be orchestrated, and many of the issues they raise aren’t even purely technical!

This session delves into the design, programming, and business influences that must be addressed lest even the best-intentioned initiative be derailed. Our panelists describe how today’s leading offerings address these issues and will share their perspectives on what the future may hold.

Moderator
Elizabeth Gooding, President, Art Plus Technology

Panelists
Pete Ranft, Account Manager, Exstream Software
Mark Patton, Chief Operating Officer, Healthx
Robert Wickham, Senior Vice President for Operations and Strategy, NEPS, LLC

• 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

In this episode we are joined by Unity Stoakes, cofounder of OrganizedWisdom.com. Stoakes’ company recently relauched as a “human powered” health-focused search engine. Interestingly, rather than taking aim at search giants Yahoo! and Google, Stoakes has focused on partnering with these companies in a bid to make them more useful and relevant to people looking for health-related information online. Stoakes discusses why OrganizedWisdom changed course and the impact of online search on patients.

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.