Highlight HEALTH 2.0 » Medicine 2.0 http://www.highlighthealth.org New ideas impacting health and medicine Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:14:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Highlight HEALTH 2.0 Interview: Phil Baumann http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health-2-0-interviews/highlight-health-2-0-interview-phil-baumann/ http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health-2-0-interviews/highlight-health-2-0-interview-phil-baumann/#comments Mon, 01 Nov 2010 02:20:39 +0000 Walter Jessen http://blog.highlighthealth.info/?p=566 Phil Baumann is an anomaly; he began his professional career as an accountant, a treasury analyst and an enterprise process designer. After years in the enterprise, he decided to make a difference in healthcare and trained as a registered nurse. Following two years in the ICU, Phil transitioned into the pharmaceutical industry via a clinical research organization (CRO). In his free time, Phil Baumann blogs about how technologies influence us, focusing on healthcare applications of social media. He expounds regularly on his blog (PhilBaumann.com) and on Twitter (@PhilBaumann), discussing how healthcare and other related industries should approach emerging media technologies. Indeed, over the past two years, Phil has averaged over 500 tweets per month on Twitter (top five words: rt, twitter, #hcsm, good, social).

Phil Tweet Cloud
Phil Baumann

Last year, Phil Baumann started CareVocate Strategies, offering organizations personalized, professional and focused strategic guidance on how to understand their relationship with social technologies and communities, and how to best interact with their customers.

In July 2010, Phil started Health Is Social, a website where the healthcare and life sciences learn how to integrate digital and social media into their strategies. I had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with Phil Baumann about CareVocate Strategies, Health Is Social and the future of social media in healthcare. Last month, Phil was also recently invited to be on the Board of Advisors for Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media.

The Interview

Phil Baumann, thanks for taking some time to talk with me. Talk to me briefly about how social media relates to patient empowerment.

Before directly addressing patient empowerment, I’d like to offer a historical perspective of media and then relate that to today’s healthcare environment.

Social media are evolving technologies that are opening up and revealing new ways for people to network and connect with each other, share experiences and locate information. As such, they are destroying traditional power structures and relationships while creating new ones. Just as moveable type extended literacy from the small enclaves of empowered political and religious authorities to the populations they governed, today’s media similarly break open the 20th Century model of limited and unilateral channels of communication. One key difference, however, is that the changes the printed word brought forth transpired over 500 years. Today’s media evolve over just years, months, weeks. And these media are not just one form: they involve text, audio, video and mashups of all three.

The printed word re-shaped how we thought — from a more naturalistic and curvilinear way of viewing the world to a more literal and linear way. It was that way of thinking which the printed word spurred that had the most impact on civilization: it catalyzed technological innovation, mechanized political and economic relationships and ultimately sent us to the moon. Now as far as healthcare is concerned, we are seeing changes in power relationships between patients and providers. The information which traditional medicine held and provided centrally to patients is now leeching away into a Web of decentralized sources. So patients can now search online, connect with others from around the world and share experiences and stories in ways unthinkable only a few years ago.

Information is power; it’s energy that does work. But the information has to be reliable and vetted. And the brain which interprets and uses that information needs to be enlightened enough to make the most of it. Furthermore, it needs to be connected to other brains that can do the right kind of lifting.

And therein lies both the opportunities and dangers of healthcare social media.

  • How do we balance the absolute need for patient empowerment, with the vital need for proper assessment, diagnosis and treatment?
  • How do we ensure that both patients and providers are truly empowered?
  • What differences do different media make in terms of communication, information-gathering and curation?
  • How radically do we need to re-think medicine, healthcare provision and collaboration?
  • Social media in healthcare is forcing us to ask these questions. It’s imperative that physicians and nurses and researchers and others involved in healthcare to voice their views — and even re-think what they’ve learned.

Social media is also, quite interestingly, provided the very forums in which both providers and patients can tackle these questions. My hope is that we can harness social media towards a Healthcare Democracy, and not just a Healthcare Cacophony. That is, people need to work with each other, no over.

In September of last year, you started RNchat. What’s it all about?

The idea of RNchat was something I had working for quite some time. RNchat is about creating an ambient, intimate and pliant environment for nurses to learn about each other, trade experiences, brainstorm about finding better ways to deliver care and just generally socialize and have fun. I had been working on the basic premise of RNchat for a while. One of the reasons I began blogging and forging an online voice was because I realized that nursing didn’t have a strong enough presence online. When Twitter arrived, I saw it as a fundamentally new kind of communications and utility platform that could open up novel ways of connection — not just among people, but among machines. To me, it seemed to be a new kind of internet — a simple technology as deceptively valuable as TCP/IP. I saw the need for nursing to come into the 21st Century. Healthcare in general has been behind social media and I believed that without nurses, any conversation about healthcare adoption of social media and digital technologies would be unacceptably incomplete.

In 2009, Twitter chats grew in popularity. But almost all of them were Twitter chats about social media. They really weren’t much different from each other actually. Nothing wrong with that at all — but I wanted to actually use these media to do the work they claimed to achieve. So I started RNchat. The goal of RNchat was to provide a gateway for nurses into social media of course — but it was more importantly to get them to network with each other, develop comfort with an online voice and to create a unique place where their ideas an experiences could be publicly synergized. It’s been over a year now since it’s launched and has received much attention and has grown rather nicely. I even have a couple other nurses moderating the chats — Ellen Richter (@EllenRichter) and Terri Schmidt (@OnlineNursing).

This month marked the launch of MDchat for physicians. The physicians involved so far has found it to be a positive experience, just like the nurses who joined RNchat early on.

In July at Health 2.0 STAT DC, you talked about nurses and social media, calling them “the last Jedi knights of this republic”. How do you see nurses leveraging social media?

On one hand, I see nurses using social media just like everybody else. On the other, they bring a unique perspective about the human condition which is clearly important in understanding how social media influences our world. Nursers appreciate the subtle nuances of human interaction, communication and behavior. It is, after, what they do: they answer the question “What is the effect of all this healthcare stuff — from disease to treatment — on the human being?” So I see nurses getting more involved over time. The will build and lead new communities and platforms for professionals and patients to do a better job of creating better healthcare for all.

What motivated you to start CareVocate Strategies? My impression of CareVocate Strategies is that you’re focused on consulting individuals and organizations about social media. What are your future plans for the company? Tell me more.

CareVocate was intended to help understand how emerging media are changing how business gets done. I simply mashed up my enterprise, technology and healthcare background to build a business that would make it easier for clients to extend their presence to the Web. I don’t have a traditional marketing background, but over the years I recognized the need for traditional marketing to dovetail with emerging media. I think not having a traditional background has actually enabled me to provide fresh insights into 21st Century marketing. Another way to express this is that I didn’t have to unlearn processes and assumptions that evolved over technological conditions from last century.

When you look forward three or five years, where do you hope to find yourself?

I hope to continue learning about how technology is influencing us. Naturally, I plan to grow my business because we all need to do that. But I’m genuinely interested in paying attention to technology because we don’t have a theory of technology. It’s kind of odd, isn’t it? Technology is one of the most important things in our lives and has been for millions of years. But now, technology’s infiltration into our lives is deepening like never before — and the pace of this infiltration is accelerating at an increasing rate. Before our time, change was something you could deal with over a lifetime. Today, we will have to deal with it in much shorter spans of time. So although I see plenty of business opportunities in the next five years, I also see critical changes to our culture, politics, economy and health. I hope to be heavily involved in asking and perhaps answering the big questions technology is raising. I’ll continue to use social media to make sure others will be involved.

Why did you start Health Is Social? Is it an extension of CareVocate Strategies or something different?

Currently, I’m in the process of shifting towards Health Is Social because I want to expand services. Consulting is fine, but I find strategic and tactical education more valuable propositions. So going forward, I’m going to be offering more online services, including seminars, in addition to conducting workshops and speaking engagements.

How important is it for a company to have a social media strategy? Describe the foundation — what are the essentials for an effective social media strategy?

First, I think it’s very important for a company to have a strategy. I mean: a really clear and executable strategy. The question any business should first ask isn’t “How does social media fit into our strategy?” A more important question is: “Might social media and digital technologies actually change our strategy?” A company’s strategy may or may not need to change because of technologies. It depends on the industry, who the informational customers of the company are, etc. I’ll talk with a business about their needs and break up their approach to social media into three stages: Vision, Mechanics and Process. All three are difficult in their own way, but vital in figuring out before jumping in.

Vision is pretty straightforward. What does this company want to accomplish? Who are its informational customers: end-consumers? Employees? Vendors? Investors? What does this company hope to achieve with these customers? What does it do now and what do they want to do differently that may provide everybody more value?

Mechanics involves the resources, logistics and tools that need to allocated and set into place. Doing social media is far harder than a first look might appear. Resource-allocation, for instance, can be a real challenge. You need people and time and permission. All of those things cost money too — it may not be much, but it could be.

Process is where it all comes together. Vision and Mechanics are nouns. But process is a verb. How will this company execute its vision on a daily, weekly, yearly basis? How will it evaluate effectiveness, refine its mechanics and ensure informational customers are properly taken care of?

It’s very easy to get lost in social media. Even if a business ‘gets’ the value proposition, it needs to work out exactly how it will ‘do’ it. It’s not enough to have conversations and engage with people — its key, but it’s not a strategy that moves the dial. What businesses need to do is value and lead their audience. It used to be that you blasted your passive audience with messages you hoped would stick. But now, your audience has more power than ever before — and their messages can stick on you. And therein lies the greatest opportunity for business social media: you get to lead your audience intimately and talk WITH them. That’s invaluable, and being able to communicate directly with your audience can be a market research Holy Grail.

I know this is a rather open ended question, but I hope you’ll do some hand waving for me. Describe the future of social media in healthcare.

The future of social media in healthcare is wide open. It’s in its infant stage now. Social media is just a small part of a larger party. And the party is technological and personal connection and convergence unlike any before. People are now fascinated and focused on social media. But we are moving towards newer technologies in which Social will simply be embedded into them. Social is only one kind of connection. In healthcare, we’ll see more social connectivity for sure. But we’ll also see more technological and informational connectivity. For example, medical devices will soon ‘tweet’ their data to other medical technologies, and those technologies will connect to patients and nurses and physicians. But the future of social media really depends on how people use them. We need to understand better just how these technologies will work in healthcare and we need to be using the technology — much more than the technologies use us.


]]> http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health-2-0-interviews/highlight-health-2-0-interview-phil-baumann/feed/ 1 Highlight HEALTH 2.0 Interview: Bertalan Mesko http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health-2-0-interviews/highlight-health-2-0-interview-bertalan-mesko/ http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health-2-0-interviews/highlight-health-2-0-interview-bertalan-mesko/#comments Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:01:52 +0000 Walter Jessen http://blog.highlighthealth.info/?p=531 In 2006, Bertalan Mesko (Berci) started Scienceroll, a blog about genetics and popular medicine. It quickly evolved into a leading source of information following the impact of Web 2.0 on medical education and healthcare. He posts regularly on Twitter (@Berci) about health 2.0, medicine 2.0 and personalized medicine (top five words: rt, ff, medicine, medical, health), and maintains two “microcarnivals” on FriendFeed: Gene Genie and Medicine 2.0.

Berci Tweet Cloud

Over the past four years, Berci has accomplished many things. In 2009, he started a Ph.D. in clinical genomics after graduating with an M.D. from the University of Debrecen in Hungary. From his work at Scienceroll, he has been invited to lecture on medicine in the Web 2.0 era at several clinics and departments at the University of Debrecen, and has presented at several medical conferences around the world.

Berci Mesko

In 2008, Berci launched the first university credit course for medical students that focuses on Web 2.0 and medicine (med20course.wordpress.com). He also founded Webicina.com, the world’s first medical Web 2.0 guidance service. Webicina aims to ease the work of physicians and scientists by recommending useful tools and sites and by presenting them the new world of Web 2.0. Just last week, Webicina launched its 65th medical topic spanning 15 languages on medicine.

I’ve known Berci Mesko since 2006 and we recently had a chance to talk about Scienceroll, Webicina and his professional path in the Web 2.0 era.

The Interview

Berci Mesko, thanks for taking some time to talk with me and being the first of hopefully many interviews on “movers and shakers” in Health and Medicine 2.0. When I thought about doing this series last year, you were the first person to come to mind. So let’s jump right in: you were pretty busy back in 2006 working on your M.D. – what motivated you to start Scienceroll?

I was quite active online, used several web applications and resources in my studies, so I thought it could be a nice experiment to start sharing medical and genetics resources through a blog. That is how I launched Scienceroll.com, which after a few months, got special mention in Medgadget’s Weblog Awards. This was a huge motivation for me and I dedicated even more time to my blog which later became a daily routine. Also based on the feedback and comments I received, it seemed I really should keep on blogging.

Did you ever think Scienceroll would become as well known and regarded as it has? When and how did you start to see a change?

I think Scienceroll has already found its core audience, though the number of RSS readers is still growing. The change, at least for me, was when Scienceroll won Medgadget’s Best Technology Blog Award in two consecutive years and when conference organizers started to invite me to speak because they found the content I publish on Scienceroll valuable and interesting. I believe Scienceroll just became my online CV with several slideshows I uploaded, my thoughts and opinions on recent medical developments, technology or web tools. Even if I use many other communication channels (microblogs, etc.), I think a blog is the most important platform for someone working online.

Several years ago, you started two blog carnivals — Gene Genie and Medicine 2.0 — which have become what you call “microcarnivals” on FriendFeed. Although the microcarnivals are a great resource for articles, there’s very little participation by others. Do you have any plans to change the format?

When I launched these blog carnivals 3 years ago, they were managed in the traditional blog carnival format. I remember, you also hosted some of the editions. But it required a lot of work so I switched to the microcarnivals which, to be honest, are more of a repository of medicine 2.0 and genetics-related information than a collaborative platform. Although, I encourage everybody to share articles there, but I’m not surprised by the little participation. I know many doctors who will never leave comments on my blog entries or send messages to me on Twitter, but like reading the content I share and publish online. They are the “silent readers”.

There’s a growing movement towards participatory medicine and patient research. How do you view these movements and how do you think doctors can leverage them in their practice?

I think this is a very important movement and patients and their doctors should actively participate in it. In my university course, there is a lecture focusing on e-patients and I always tell students, no matter how they are educated right now (doctors, in most cases, are educated to be able to guide patients without asking their real opinion, and get used to patients who do not care about the background of the disease or the evidence behind the treatment they get), in the near future more and more patients will become equal partners in the treatment, which is the real goal after all. I have to tell you some doctors I know are afraid of that as they have no idea how they will handle a situation when the patient knows more about a new treatment than the doctor only because the patient is up-to-date online. So there is no question, we are getting closer to the era of participatory healthcare and I’m very happy about it.

Tell me about your idea behind Webicina: when and why did you come up with the idea?

I came up with the idea in 2008 when tried to find relevant social media resources in different medical topics and realized that there are portals providing quality medical sites such as HONcode but social media is out of the scope of all these portals. I thought I should start a free service that does exactly that: features manually selected medical social media resources. Of course, as time evolved, it became so much more: right now over 65 medical topics are covered in 15 languages including Japanese, Chinese or German. Based on the feedback and the e-mails we receive, people like and use Webicina, they like that the whole content is for free and that the resources are selected manually by professionals.

With more and more misinformation on the Web, it’s challenging to find reliable sources of health and medical information. Talk to me more about the content on Webicina. Where do you find the information and how do you verify it? Are all the sources HONcode accredited?

Some of the resources, mostly blogs, are usually HONcode accredited, but not all of them as our assessment is different. Users suggest topics that should be covered. Then my team starts searching for relevant social media resources based on my “written algorithm”, which incorporates years of experience and medical perspective. Then we have several rounds in which we manually verify all the blogs, podcasts, Twitter users and many more Web 2.0 tools and remove those that aren’t totally reliable. And, what is the most important part, we list the quality features we based the decision of inclusion on. We search for resources really everywhere online, receive thousands of submissions from users (takes time now to evaluate all of them) and users also send submissions after publishing one package. We have 65 topics and I estimate to reach the 100 milestone in 2010.

How do you choose the packages and the specific information sources for each package? Do you intend to review and update the sources for each package as new information becomes available?

I have a very long list of steps my team has to perform when creating a package and there are several reviews before publishing one topic so it takes time to come up with one selection. I do not just intend to update the sources, but we must do it all the time. Last week, a new internal solution was developed and launched so it became much easier for us to update the packages. Also, I’ve been very lucky to have such active users as many of them tell us immediately whenever they experience something unusual in any of the resources we feature (change in the advertisement method, etc.) so we can act fast. We have about 2000 resources included in the packages, and there was only one case when users asked us to remove one resource (an autism blog).

In many ways, Health 2.0 is at odds with evidence-based or science-based medicine, since users often sharing personal (i.e. subjective) experiences. On the other hand, Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, microblogging and wikis, enable patients to directly communicate with one another. What are your thoughts?

I take privacy very very seriously. The key lecture in my course is dedicated to online privacy and doctor-patient communication. I tell students that even if they are now just students, whatever content they publish or share online, it will hunt them forever. They should think deeply before publishing anything (photos, thoughts, entries). My advice for them is “don’t post a photo online which you wouldn’t post on the bulletin board of the university”, because students as well as doctors and patients tend to think they can hide in the internet. Well if there is one place where you definitely cannot hide, it’s the internet so pay attention to your own privacy. But as you mentioned, there are tools with huge potential and that is why we must educate students and doctors (and patients in different ways) to know more about this issue.

Do you have a development timeline for the Webicina? What is your future plans for the company? Where do you see it in three or five years?

Of course, there are huge posters on our wall with lists of future developments for each month. We plan to surpass the 100th topic and reach the 20th language version in December. We plan to include a semantic-like search engine this year, publish an iPhone application in October and a Facebook app in November. As we were approached by US hospitals about letting them use PeRSSonalized Medicine internally, I think we will create unique solutions for them, again for free.

In 3 or 5 years, Webicina should be a key destination for those patients or doctors who are looking for quality social media resources or want to read the latest personalized medical news in their own languages.

You’ve just graduated from medical school and have started working on your Ph.D. in genetics. Where do you see yourself professionally following your graduate studies?

It’s a bit complicated to focus on my PhD, Webicina and also my blogs, but I’m really happy with how my life is going right now. I hope to finish my PhD in 2 years and then I believe I will have to decide which part of my life I will dedicate more time to: the academic career or the online projects. To be honest, I hope to find a compromise as I really love both of them.


]]> http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health-2-0-interviews/highlight-health-2-0-interview-bertalan-mesko/feed/ 2 Highlight HEALTH 2.0 – Year in Review 2008 http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health/highlight-health-20-year-in-review-2008/ http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health/highlight-health-20-year-in-review-2008/#comments Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:53:59 +0000 Walter Jessen http://blog.highlighthealth.info/?p=315 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:

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.

If you enjoy the articles and reviews here at Highlight HEALTH 2.0, I’d like to ask for your continued support.

… and above all, please continue to read and participate.

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!


]]> http://www.highlighthealth.org/highlight-health/highlight-health-20-year-in-review-2008/feed/ 0 Following the Tweets of Health http://www.highlighthealth.org/social-networks/following-the-tweets-of-health/ http://www.highlighthealth.org/social-networks/following-the-tweets-of-health/#comments Sat, 01 Nov 2008 14:13:10 +0000 Walter Jessen http://blog.highlighthealth.info/?p=155 Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows users to send and receive updates or “tweets”, which are short text-based posts. In contrast to a conventional blog, which combines text, images and links to other websites, a micro-blog post is typically restricted to 140 characters. Twitter users can “follow” others by visiting their profile page and clicking the “follow” button. Following someone simply means you will receive their Twitter updates. Interestingly, Twitter is also frequently being used as an instant messaging service, with lengthy real-time exchanges between users.

twitter-logo

You might think that very little can be said when you’re restricted to 140 words, but just the opposite is true. You have to be succinct and get straight to the point. This has been a criticism of Twitter since it was launched in October 2006. Call it what you want. Soundbites … media snacking … everyone is busy today and consuming small bits of information is how we’re keep up with the world’s never-ending data stream.

Although there’s been a great deal of speculation in the blogosphere about the death of Twitter, it remains the most widely used micro-blogging service. I’ve mentioned previously that Twitter is a useful communication tool. The social media service allows you to connect with other people who share your interests. I’ve found a great many people interested in health and medicine on Twitter, and have been actively using it since early this year.

Mark Hawker, a health care informatician in the U.K., recently published a list of the Top 30 Health Tweeple or Twitter users. I’m honored to be one of the 30 Twitter users on the list. The top 30 health tweeple include physicians, nurses, medical librarians, medicine and health 2.0 educators and advocates, and healthcare entrepreneurs from around the world. Mark compiled the list of health tweeple you should follow “based on the quality of their contributions and their overall influence in the field.”

However, it was soon realized that many health tweeple were missing from the list. Thus, Mark’s follow-up post, The Forgotten Health Tweeple rounds the list up to 50. Although many of the top 50 health tweeple I already follow, Mark’s list introduced me to others I had not yet discovered.

Even though it’s subjective, I think Mark’s top 50 list accurately identifies people that are actively “tweeting” and discussing health, health 2.0 and medicine 2.0 online. This niche social network within a social network — the health community on Twitter — posts useful and informative content and frequently engages one another, exchanging information and resources. If you use Twitter and you’re interested in health, I highly recommend you follow the top 50 health tweeple.

Interestingly, consumers are also looking for companies on social media websites. Indeed, a recent study found that 93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media [1]. This means that brands are being recognized and sought after in a social media environment. I mention this because I maintain two separate Twitter accounts, one for the Highlight HEALTH Network, which provides a way for Twitter users to stay up-to-date with new articles and resources posted on the Highlight HEALTH websites, and a second for personal use (my personal account made the top 30 list). Feel free to follow both.

A word of caution: in my experience, it’s difficult to keep up with the flow of information when you follow too many people. I try very hard to only follow people that are engaging and share my interests. Even when you’re media snacking, you can eat too much!

Here’s a tip: easily keep up with tweets directed at you by locating the RSS link at the bottom of the @Replies page and subscribing to it in your feed reader. You can also convert the feed to email using a service such as Feed My Inbox and you’ll always know when someone sends you a tweet, even if you’re not currently using Twitter.

References

  1. Cone Finds that Americans Expect Companies to Have a Presence in Social Media. Cone Inc. press release. 2008 Sep 25.


]]> http://www.highlighthealth.org/social-networks/following-the-tweets-of-health/feed/ 3 FreeMD – Ask the Virtual Doctor http://www.highlighthealth.org/medicine-20/freemd-ask-the-virtual-doctor/ http://www.highlighthealth.org/medicine-20/freemd-ask-the-virtual-doctor/#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 04:38:28 +0000 Walter Jessen http://blog.highlighthealth.info/medicine-20/freemd-ask-the-virtual-doctor/ DSHI Systems is a physician-led medical technology company and a supplier of triage decision-support software solutions. Last week, the company announced the release of freeMD.com, an electronic doctor that performs an interview, analyzes symptoms and provides expert advice — all for free [1]. The website contains an expert system that emulates the triage function doctors perform when assessing the potential severity of a group of symptoms. FreeMD is able to analyze more than 3,000 symptoms and injuries in infants, children and adults.

freemdFreeMD.com combines text and a video doctor to ask questions about your symptoms and past medical history, and then generates a record in the form of a personal web page. The personal web page contains important information about your condition, your answers to the interview questions, and links to specific health information. Consumers can print out a copy or email the record to their doctor for review. It’s as easy as clicking “E-Mail” or “Print” in the toolbar at the top right of the page.

According to Dr. Stephen Schueler, M.D., CEO of DSHI Systems [1]:

Consumers are on their own when making the decision to see a doctor. Do they go to the emergency room, urgent care center, doctor’s office, or the nurse retail clinic? How does the average person know what to do? We have created a life-like experience that provides personalized recommendations.

FreeMD provides answers to important questions, such as: what might be causing my symptoms; do I need to see a doctor; how do I care for myself; where should I go for care? The website enables consumer-driven healthcare by empowering consumers and enabling them to avoid dangerous delays in care. The system also suggests where to go for care, reducing dependance on the emergency room.

FreeMD Breakthrough Technology

  • Uses video to conduct the interview (also uses text and photos)
  • Analyzes thousands of symptoms and injuries
  • Generates a personal web page that contains care instructions and a detailed health record

FreeMD Evidence-Based Medicine

  • 100% physician-written and maintained
  • Proven accuracy through millions of interactions
  • Reviewed by doctors and nurses for more than 10 years

For the last eight years, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has used DSHI Systems’ Veterans Health Gateway, a sophisticated software system used by nurses to provide health advice via the telephone [2]. A similar system, 24/7 WebMed, has been used by University of Central Florida (UCF) students since 2004 to look up information on specific illnesses and allow the site to guide them through a series of questions about symptoms to determine the illness [3]. UCF now uses FreeMD, which replaces the older 24/7 WebMed system.

According to the website, freeMD doesn’t make a diagnosis, but instead determines your risk for one or more condition(s) that could explain your symptoms. Nevertheless, I tried freeMD a couple of times tonight while writing this article and was impressed with its recommendations. Give it a try and let me know your thoughts.

References

  1. DSHI Systems Debuts FreeMD the Web’s First Virtual Doctor. DSHI Systems Press Release. 2008 Apr 21.
  2. Veterans Health Gateway (VHG). Document Storage Systems, Inc. Services & Solutions. Accessed 2008 Apr 30.
  3. UCF Students Can Access Health Information, Advice on 24/7 WebMed Site. University of Central Florida News & Information. 2004 Nov 21.


]]> http://www.highlighthealth.org/medicine-20/freemd-ask-the-virtual-doctor/feed/ 0 Social Networks and Health http://www.highlighthealth.org/social-networks/social-networks-and-health/ http://www.highlighthealth.org/social-networks/social-networks-and-health/#comments Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:00:13 +0000 Walter Jessen http://blog.highlighthealth.info/social-networks/social-networks-and-health/ social networkPeople are connected to other people – their family, friends and co-workers – in what are called social networks. In its simplest form, a social network is a map made up of nodes representing individuals and the connections or ties between them (see figure at right). Even as late as 2004, social networks and collateral health effects were largely ignored in medical care and clinical trials [1]. However, more recently social networks have been gaining increasing attention in healthcare and medicine [2].

Why the increased attention?

When a patient receives medical interventions, there may be unintended health effects in that patient’s social network, i.e. other people to whom that patient is connected. For example, treating a heart attack may cause the patient’s children to change their dietary habits, improving their health and possibly improving their future medical outlook. Knee replacement surgery may allow a wife to better care for her husband, thus improving his health. Helping someone lose weight may influence that persons friends to also lose weight. Indeed, recent scientific studies, two of which are described below, are finding that social networks are quite relevant to health.

Social network studies and health

The prevelance of obesity in the U.S. is increasing [3]. An analysis of the nature and extent of the person-to-person spread of obesity was published recently with surprising results [4]. Researchers found that an individual’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if they had a friend who became obese. However, the type of friendship was an important variable: persons in closer, mutual friendships have more of an effect on each other than persons in other types of friendships. Adult siblings also influenced one another, increasing the chance of obesity by 40%. The risk of becoming obese increased by 37% if an individual’s spouse became obese.

Additionally, the sex of friends and siblings was also important [4]:

… pairs of friends and siblings of the same sex appeared to have more influence on the weight gain of each other than did pairs of friends and siblings of the opposite sex. This finding also provides support for the social nature of any induction of obesity, since it seems likely that people are influenced more by those they resemble than by those they do not. Conversely, spouses, who share much of their physical environment, may not affect each other’s weight gain as much as mutual friends do; in the case of spouses, the opposite-sex effects and friendship effects may counteract each another.

The authors note that while connected individuals may share common exposure elements (e.g. environmental factors, experience of simultaneous events, genes) that cause people to gain or lose weight simultaneously, their observations suggest an important role for a process involving the introduction and person-to-person spread of obesity. The study results suggest that the acceptance of obesity can spread through social networks. The change in the acceptance of obesity may alter behavior and affect a person’s food consumption.

Another recent study examined how a spouse’s illness or death affects the subsequent risk of death of their partner. Perhaps the strongest link in a social network, a spouse’s death was found to increase their partner’s chance of premature death by about 20 percent [5]. In fact, the danger to a partner can be much higher within the first month of a spouse’s hospitalization that marks the beginning of a serious or chronic illness. According to the study authors, rising risk months or years later may reflect a decrease in social support.

Social network ties may indeed have unintended health effects in other people to whom a patient is connected. The effects may be positive or negative. An editorial in the British Journal of Medicine [1] a few years ago suggested that:

Doctors, trialists, patients, or policy makers might see reason to take them [the sum of the direct health outcome in the patient and the collateral health effects in others] into account when choosing treatment or evaluating benefit.

Web 2.0, healthcare and medicine

The first incarnation of the web, which we now call web 1.0, has been summed up as essentially all about commerce, while web 2.0 is almost all about people and participation [6]. Web 2.0 services, including social networking services, blogs, collaborative filtering, social bookmarking, taging, instant messaging and online tools specifically designed for health search will likely change healthcare as we know it today. These same technologies are expected to play an important role in the future of medicine for physicians and scientists as well as patients. Indeed, a recent review of emerging web 2.0 social networking technologies and software [7] suggests that:

… careful thinking, testing and evaluation research are still needed in order to establish ‘best practice models’ for leveraging these emerging technologies to boost our teaching and learning productivity, foster stronger ‘communities of practice’, and support continuing medical education/professional development (CME/CPD) and patient education.

A blog carnival highlighting posts between web 2.0 and medicine, Medicine 2.0, is currently published biweekly. Still a term to be precisely defined, Medicine 2.0 is the science of maintaining and/or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis and treatment of patients utilizing web 2.0 internet-based services, including web-based community sites, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, folksonomies (tagging) and Really Simple Syndication (RSS), to collaborate, exchange information and share knowledge. Physicians, nurses, medical students and health researchers who consume web media can actively participate in the creation and distribution of content, helping to customize information and technology for their own purposes.

The tenth, jubilee edition of the Medicine 2.0 blog carnival was hosted right here on the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory Blog. There, you’ll find links to many articles that discuss Web 2.0 in health and medicine.

Health 2.0 – social networking services and health

More generally, web 2.0 empowers everyone in healthcare. The Health 2.0 wiki defines Health 2.0 as:

New concept of healthcare wherein all the constituents (patients, physicians, providers, and payers) focus on healthcare value (outcomes/price) and use competition at the medical condition level over the full cycle of care as the catalyst for improving the safety, efficiency, and quality of health care.

In this context, Health 2.0 extends far beyond social networking. However, according to The Health Care Blog,

Our definition [of Health 2.0] is currently focusing on user-generated aspects of Web 2.0 within health care but not directly interacting with the mainstream health care system.

This means things like health search, communities (online social networks) and tools for individual and group consumer use.

What are online social networks? An online social network is a relatively new type of virtual community that is designed to allow members to build relationships with other members of the community. Web 2.0 empowers users, encouraging members to create content online to be shared with other readers. Users can post information on their profile page that is accessible by other members of the community. Additionally, these social networks also typically offer the ability to create additional personal web pages — blogs, image galleries, video clips — that help to build relationships with other members.

According to a survey by Manhattan Research, 9.9 million consumers, in addition to reading weblogs, regularly post health information online and learn from each other [8]. People are clearly using these tools.

Over the coming months, a series of review articles will be published here on the Highlight HEALTH Web Directory Blog describing a number health-focused social networks, what they have to offer and how they can affect your health. New material will also be announced on Highlight HEALTH.

If there’s a social health network you’re interested in learning more about, send me a message and let me know.

References

  1. Christakis NA. Social networks and collateral health effects. BMJ. 2004 Jul 24;329(7459):184-5.
    View abstract
  2. Barabási AL. Network medicine–from obesity to the “diseasome”. N Engl J Med. 2007 Jul 26;357(4):404-7. Epub 2007 Jul 25.
    View abstract
  3. The United Health Foundation’s 2006 edition of “America’s Health Rankings: A Call to Action for People and Their Communities”.
  4. Christakis and Fowler. The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years. N Engl J Med. 2007 Jul 26;357(4):370-9. Epub 2007 Jul 25.
    View abstract
  5. Christakis and Allison. Mortality after the hospitalization of a spouse. N Engl J Med. 2006 Feb 16;354(7):719-30.
    View abstract
  6. Barsky and Purdon. Introducing Web 2.0: social networking and social bookmarking for health librarians. Journal of Canadian Health Library Association 2006, 27, 7-8.
  7. Kamel Boulos and Wheeler. The emerging Web 2.0 social software: an enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and health care education. Health Info Libr J. 2007 Mar;24(1):2-23.
    View abstract
  8. Forecasting the Future: Consumers 2010. Manhattan Research.


]]> http://www.highlighthealth.org/social-networks/social-networks-and-health/feed/ 5 Medicine 2.0 #10 – Medicine and the Second Generation of Internet-based Services http://www.highlighthealth.org/medicine-20/medicine-20-10-medicine-and-the-second-generation-of-internet-based-services/ http://www.highlighthealth.org/medicine-20/medicine-20-10-medicine-and-the-second-generation-of-internet-based-services/#comments Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:00:24 +0000 Walter Jessen http://blog.highlighthealth.info/medicine-20/medicine-20-10-medicine-and-the-second-generation-of-internet-based-services/ Medicine 2.0Welcome to the tenth edition of Medicine 2.0, the bi-weekly blog carnival of the best posts pertaining to web 2.0 and medicine.

Medicine: derived from the Latin ars medicina, meaning the art of healing.
Web 2.0: the second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services that strive to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.

Medicine 2.0 = Medicine + Web 2.0

For the uninitiated, lets begin with a general definition of the term Medicine 2.0 and the difference between it and Health 2.0.

Medicine 2.0 is the science of maintaining and/or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis and treatment of patients utilizing web 2.0 internet-based services, including web-based community sites, blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, folksonomies (tagging) and Really Simple Syndication (RSS), to collaborate, exchange information and share knowledge. Physicians, nurses, medical students and health researchers who consume web media can actively participate in the creation and distribution of content, helping to customize information and technology for their own purposes.
Health 2.0, a new concept of healthcare, also utilizes web 2.0 internet-based services but is focused on healthcare value (meaning outcome/price). Patients, physicians, providers and payers use competition at the medical condition level over the full cycle of care as a catalyst for improving safety, efficiency and quality of healthcare delivery.

The goal of both of these movements is the delivery of optimal medical outcomes though individualized care.

Medicine 2.0, Informatics and Personal Health Records

ScienceRoll

Why should doctors use web 2.0 in their practice? Dr. Bertalan Meskó, founder of Medicine 2.0, writes an Open Letter to the Physicians of the World, explaining how the new generation of web services will change the way medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered.

Tech Medicine – Healthline

Dr. Joshua Schwimmer provides an excellent example of a physician using the communication tools of the web, describing A Mobile Medical Practice — Dr. Jay Parkinson.

Medical 2.0

Dr. Uri Ginzburg also writes about Dr. Parkinson and suggests other applications that would make his medical service more accessible to his patients in The New Age of the Outpatients Clinics.UPDATE: October 20th, 2007 Dr. Parkinson’s blog can be found here.

Gene Sherpas: Personalized Medicine and You

Dr. Steven Murphy, aka the Gene Sherpa, discusses his new personalized medical practice, writing About Helix Health. As most medical informatics systems are outmoded, he and his partners have developed their own electronic medical record (EMR) system.

Release Zero Blog

Peter Murray believes that heath informaticians need to address the issues of personalized health/medicine, online identity, new forms of online interaction and hyperlocality as he discusses Web Trends and Personalising Health/Medicine.

Constructive Medicine 2.0

Earlier this month, we witnessed the first of many online health management services as Microsoft launched a free, ad-supported online health portal and personal health information database. Dr. Rahul Shetty writes about the Microsoft Health Vault and his Perspectives on Personal Health Record.

Project HealthDesign

Lygeia Ricciardi also writes about the Microsoft health portal, giving us More on HealthVault: Profiling the Platform.

Kidney Notes

Google is working on their own personal healthcare site. Dr. Joshua Schwimmer presents A Stanford Medical IT Specialist Interviewed by Robert Scoble, a video conversation with a medical IT specialist who’s working with Google.

ScienceRoll

The future of patient records may be the use of 3D representations of the human body. Dr. Bertalan Meskó reviews Visualization Software of IBM for the Future of Medicine: Interview!.

Doctor’s Gadgets

Life Record has developed an emergency medical record (EMR) application that’s compatible with a web-enabled iPhone. Dr. Chris Paton covers a YouTube video demonstrating the Life Record EMR on the iPhone.

Web 2.0 Tools: Blogs, Video and More

DavidRothman.net

As Healia searches PubMed/Medline, David Rothman reviews some of its notable features. An excellent alternative to the native PubMed interface.

Business|Bytes|Genes|Molecules

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. Deepak Singh questions why their search is limited to peer-reviewed publications and is Proposing a “Plus Box” for Google Scholar.

Medical 2.0

Video sharing is one of many web 2.0 tools that can be used with medicine. Dr. Uri Ginzburg presents LabAction.com, a niche video sharing tool for scientists and researchers.

GooMedic Blog

Hamza Mousa shares his own list of medical student resources, reviewing a series of Neurological Examination Videos.

Healthcare Vox

Fard Johnmar announces the launch of a bi-weekly program to chronical how the Internet, computers and other technologies are impacting health globally. Introducing … The Digital Health Revolution.

Flags and Lollipops

Connotea provides free online reference management for researchers, clinicians and scientists and recently, there have been some issues with the service. Stew discusses Connotea and Postgenomic Complaints.

MedGadget

The blog is perhaps the fundamental web 2.0 tool and many of the posts mentioned here are written by physicians. Now it appears that blogs can be cited in biomedical literature. MedGadget describes the Citation Rules for Blogs from the National Library of Medicine.

Brain Blogger

Although many physician bloggers disclose their identities, others blog anonymously. Dr. J C writes about Anonymous Physician Bloggers and his reasons for anonymity.

Nursing Online Education Database

With so many blogs out there, which one do you choose? NOEDb.org provides a comprehensive list of the Top 100 Health and Wellness Blogs and Top 25 Nursing Blogs (By the Numbers).

Shelved in the W’s

Mark Rabnett presents his own select list of English-language med student blogs. 19% of online teens blog and as they grow up they are now Blogging Med School.

Envisioning 2.0

A number of websites are available today to rate physicians. Fard Johnmar writes about Physician Rating: New Study Brings Debate to a Boil.

MedSqod: Podcasting for Medical Professionals

Have you ever wanted to make a quality medical podcast? Dr. Peter Beck writes From The Podcast and New Media Expo. Find out more about MedSqod.

Health 2.0

Health Care Law Blog

Bob Coffield blogs live from the Health 2.0: User-Generated Healthcare Conference 2007.

MedBlog.nl

Jan Martens also writes an excellent review of the recent Health 2.0 conference in SFO [an overview]. I thought the Scribe Media film that opened the conference, A Brief History of Medicine, was awesome.

Shelved in the W’s

Mark Rabnett had other thoughts about the Scribe Media video. Above all the noise and commotion of the video, he’s Scratching an Itch.

Scott Shreeve, MD

Scott Shreeve evaluates the Athena Health Internet-based business services model and maintains there is a real business model in creating value through the aggregation, analytics and advising services they provide. He takes a serious look at the Health 2.0 Business Model: “Payment Dependent on Results”.

ICYou.com

In short video clip from the Health 2.0 conference, Bob Coffield talks about business models and what will attract people to utilize new web-based services.

Social Health Networking

The Health Wisdom Blog

Unity Stoaks discusses the challenge physicians face when prescribing their patients a trusted and unbiased online resource. New Pew Study Shows Patients Turn to Internet for Health Information; Now Can We Get Docs to Do The Same?.

Little Blue Pill

Asif Shah reposts Healthcare and Web 2.0, an article from Modern Healthcare, about healthcare startups using the models of social networking sites.

MedGadget

MedGadget reports that physician-only networks are easy to penetrate and outlines a series of questions they believe need to be addressed by Sermo and other physician social networks, announcing that it’s Confirmed: Sermo is Not for Physicians Only; New Important Questions Raised.

Medical Science, Biotech and Healthcare

SharpBrains

There’s only one place where laypeople can go to learn about medical science and its implications for their lives, investments and political interests. Alvaro provides 10 Highlights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum.

Bayblab

University teaching used to be limited to chalkboards, slides and overhead projectors. Anonymous Coward discusses innovation toady when Teaching Science with Web 2.0.

Clinical Cases and Images

Dr. Ves Dimov touches briefly on the new biochech company 23andMe and asks if You Can Carry Your Genome Information on an iPhone?.

Nursing Online Education Database

The 2008 U.S. Presidential elections are fast approaching and there are a number healthcare issues. Do you know where all the candidates stand on all the issues? NOEDb.org breaks it down for us with a Comparison: Presidential Candidates on Major Healthcare Issues.

Evolution … not just a theory anymore

Web 2.0 is not just a technological phenomenon but also a cultural one. Greg Laden explores an otherwise typical survey of political attitudes of groups of academics, believing that Health Scientists Need a Slap Upside the Head.

Tech Medicine – Healthline

Dr. Joshua Schwimmer writes about iGuard: A New Drug Safety Website, one of the first web-based services that allows you to get free personalized safety alerts and updates about your medications.

Conclusion

That’s a wrap for Medicine 2.0 #10. It’s been a pleasure to host this edition and I’d like to thank everyone that contributed articles. Be sure to take a moment and let your fellow bloggers know this issue of Medicine 2.0 is available so that everyone’s hard work can be appreciated and enjoyed by all.

Have you written a blog article about web 2.0 and medicine? Submit it to the next edition of Medicine 2.0 using the carnival submission form. The next edition of Medicine 2.0 will be hosted at The Health Wisdom Blog on Sunday, October 28th, 2007.


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