Tomorrow, Microsoft, together with Building Healthier Chicago and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, will kick-off the first of a new series of forums entitled “Innovation in Public and Private Collaboration.” The event will focus on cutting-edge and emerging business and public health collaborations among organizations in health, education, economic development and technology sectors. The keynote address will be presented by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin.

In the coming months, Microsoft will hold additional forums around the country to discuss additional drivers for facilitating public-private partnerships to improve health, economic, workforce and education outcomes. Future forums will focus on health modernization models, partnerships in healthcare and education, business and public health collaboration, technology innovation and health and economic development.

Since Microsoft is actively involved in many areas of healthcare, the company has a unique position from which to observe and participate in emerging public-private partnerships. Indeed, Microsoft works with both commercial and federal, state and local payers and providers, as well as life sciences, research and academic organizations and other community resources.

As part of an ongoing conversations with health decision makers across the country, William O’Leary, Executive Director, Policy, Health and Human Services at Microsoft talked with Dr. James M. Galloway, Assistant U.S. Surgeon General for the United States Public Health Services (who will facilitate the discussion on business and public health at the Chicago forum) and Claire Gregoire, chair of the Health and Wellness Coalition for the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.

From the interview:

The forum will also discuss cutting edge collaborations among health, education, economic development and technology. Regarding technology, we know that Congress, business and the health community are investing billions of dollars in health IT as a means to reduce health costs, facilitate access, as well as measure and improve outcomes.

These efforts leverage the Internet as a means to connect consumers, business and health care. For example, the Surgeon General’s My Family Health Portrait helps users organize and share family health history. Government and business recognize that Internet access is a critical tool for improving health, education and economic development. As another example, Connect to Compete is a national public, private and nonprofit partnership announced by the Federal Communications Commission, which includes businesses such as Microsoft and Best Buy. The goal is to increase broadband adoption and digital literacy training in disadvantaged communities throughout the country.

You can read the rest of the interview at Microsoft in Health.

This article was written by Hope Leman.

Just try keeping track of the plethora of players in the online patient community / health-focused social network scene. Many patient communities have been started (e.g. MDJunction) by entrepreneurs who were spurred to create their sites by the difficulties friends or relatives had in obtaining emotional and social support during prolonged battles with illness.

HopeCube is one such site. HopeCube, like its rivals Trusera and MDJunction, has virtually no presence of medical professionals (unlike the heavy presence of such at sites such as MedHelp). At HopeCube, there are a mere six MDs listed under the category “Health Professionals” and the others on that page were providers of the New Age variety (e.g. relationship counselors — misspelled on the site as “counseler” — and fitness trainers). The details on this limited number were sketchy and many of the links on the page were dead. One of the doctors listed is Dr. David Kim of Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery, which gives you an inkling of HopeCube’s target audience.

Rather interestingly, unlike the blog of Patients Like Me and that of OrganizedWisdom, which are slick marketing tools, HopeCube’s blog is a forum for HopeCube members who, incidentally, don’t seem to be into tagging their entries given that the vast majority of them fall under the unhelpful rubric “Uncategorized.” HopeCube’s blog appears to be the main method of participation for many of the members. But the participation is asymmetric in that the vast majority of entries have not elicited any comments.

HopeCube may not have the lineup of medical heavyweights that is a notable feature of MedHelp, but it does provide helpful links to authoritative sources. For instance, on the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis page the related links were to the Mayo Clinic, MedlinePlus and the ALS Association — all solid, reputable sources. There was also a handy pathway to recent stores on Neurology / Neuroscience News in the online news service, Medical News Today which is a very useful resource in and of itself and one which I have not seen on other consumer health sites or at rival online patient communities in particular.

But much of the rest of the site seems mundanely pre-Web 2.0 in many respects. Rather blah interface and much of the site is old-line discussion board question and answer stuff at the member to member level — a far cry from the medical authority-laden dialogues of MedHelp or of the longstanding easy camaraderie among the members of Patient Like Me. You just have to wonder when health consumers will say, “Enough already with one paragraph answers by Joe Average — I will just call my local public library or visit MedlinePlus.” I thought that maybe I was just not seeing a richer interactive experience because I had not registered, so I finally reluctantly did (which, admittedly, went smoothly enough). But I still didn’t see much that wowed me — the interactivity level of HopeCube is circa 2001.

I don’t think HopeCube has too bright a future and is pretty pedestrian on the whole. Those who want to get health information from other health consumers would be better off visiting the far livelier, content-rich Omgili Health.

Additional patient social networks are listed in the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory.

About the author: Hope Leman writes about Health 2.0 and the e-patient movement at Significant Science. She is also a writer for AltSearchEngines, which covers hundreds of alternative / niche search engines. Hope is a research information technologist for a health network in Oregon and is also Web administrator of the grants and scholarship listing service ScanGrants.

As Highlight HEALTH 2.0 celebrates its’ first year following the use of Web 2.0 in health and medicine, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your readership.

Three websites make up the Highlight HEALTH Network:

• Highlight HEALTH 2.0
• Highlight HEALTH
• The Highlight HEALTH Web Directory

Each of these sites has a different purpose. Highlight HEALTH 2.0 is focused on new ideas in health and medicine (if you’re interested in writing a review about a social health network or co-blogging about the integration of Web 2.0 technologies into health and medicine, please let us know). Highlight HEALTH promotes advances in biomedical research to encourage health literacy. Lastly, the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory is an online reference guide for reliable health and medical information.

There are more ways than ever to connect with the Highlight HEALTH Network, including email/RSS, Twitter and Facebook. Highlight HEALTH 2.0 is also optimized for the mobile web.

Top 5 most popular articles

Here are the most popular articles for 2008 (top 5 based on the number of page views/number of days posted):

1. Online Patient Community Battle for Survival: MDJunction
2. iMedix: Reliable Health Search and Patient-to-patient Social Network
3. Mednar Search … and Hope said, “It is good.”
4. Following the Tweets of Health
5. Core Biomedical Research Software and Web 2.0 Tools

Thank you and Best of Health in the coming year!