This episode of the Digital Health Revolution features Fabio Gratton, President of Ignite Health’s (www.ignitehealth.com) eastern division. Gratton talks about how the pharmaceutical industry has been influenced by social media and whether it is ready to engage Internet empowered consumers on their own terms. Gratton also discusses “Live With It,” a groundbreaking animated HIV education video series that has garnered significant attention and praise.

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.

Irwin Redlener and Paul Simon co-founded the Childen’s Health Fund twenty years ago. For two decades CHF has delivered free health care to disadvantaged kids in 20 sites around the country in both rural and urban areas using mobile medical units.

They try to fill in the gap for children who don’t have access to the health care they need. CHF does an enormous amount of advocacy in Washington on behalf of kids.

Paul Simon, who was a part of the We Are The World project to raise money for children in Africa, wanted to know if there was a need for money in the US for poverty related issues. One of the largest needs was health care.

Unfortunately, Health care for children in America has not improved in the past twenty years.

There is still a tremendouis amount of poverty in America.

Panelists discuss how established health sites try to stand out from the pack? How have old-line publishers moved beyond shovelware? What are portals doing to grab users’ attention? What are they doing to adapt to changing times and increased competition? Health portals vs. portals with health vs. old-line publishers vs. niches vs. service providers and more? How do they get the attention of advertisers and marketers?

Panelists
Stephanie Dolgins, VP-Women’s & Lifestyle, AOL
Marjorie Martin, SVP, General Manager, About.com Health
David Kang, SVP and Editorial Director, Rodale Interactive Services
David Kramer, CEO, Digitas Health

Moderator
Chris Schroeder, CEO and president, The HealthCentral Network

Broadband video, search engines, merging medical info with personal medical data, ad networks, and social media; efforts to mesh health and Web 2.0 abound. What’s working? What’s not? What’s next?

Panelists
Raj Amin, CEO and co-founder, HealthiNation
Steven H. Krein, CEO and co-founder, OrganizedWisdom
Daniel Palestrant, CEO, Sermo
Dean Stephens, president & COO, Healthline.

Moderator
Michael Mason, Health Editor, NYTimes.com

The health-and-wellness media space is one of the hottest around when it comes to M&A and venture capital investments. What are buyers and investors looking for? How long can that continue?

Panelists
Esther Dyson, EDventure
John Lambros, Managing Director, Savvian
Morris R. Levitt, Managing Director-Life Sciences, DeSilva+Phillips
Benjamin Wolin, CEO, Waterfront Media/EverydayHealth.

Moderator
Rafat Ali, publisher and co-editor, ContentNext Media/paidContent.org

Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, a co-founder of America Online, discusses changes in online health.

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.

Steve case believes 8 things will happen in health care in the next decade:

1. consumers will take control
2. centralized approaches will break down - distributed systems and open networks will take over
3. less regulation in health care in the long term
4. a torrent of innovation in the health space over the next decade - dealing with people while they are healthy (wellness and prevention) and when they are sick and moving into the world of chronic disease.
5. innovation and disruption also leads to chaos & misfires. some bad stuff will happen, but on balance good.
6. emphasis on being healthy, staying healthy
7. personalization - the one size fits all approach will break down. people will engage more and care more about their health if they have personalized tools to manage their health.
8. the killer application is community. people are social beings. instant messenger, social media, etc. if community is important to kids listening to music and watching movies, imagine how important it will be to people who have health issues.

This video is from Consumer Health World.

Register now for future Consumer Health World conferences.

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.