Thanks to ScribeMedia for allowing me to embed this great video from David Kibbe, Director of the Center for Health Information Technology, American Academy of Family Physicians.

Dr. Kibbe hit the road earlier this year to produce (with Scribe) this documentary about Health 2.0. He rode his Honda Gullwing up and down the East Coast, interviewing some of the players in the H20 space, many of which I have blogged about. Included are interviews with the CEOs of MedHelp, Healthline, Hello Health, Patient’s Like Me, American Well and change:healthcare.

Two other interviews I enjoyed: New York Times Well blogger Tara Parker-Pope who doesn’t like the term Health 2.0 because it connotes a software package; and a CVS Minute Clinic RN who is not only providing patients with quick diagnoses in the pharmacy, but also encouraging and setting-up PHRs for them.

Google also makes an appearance in a quick conversation about, what else, Google Health.

Enjoy!

Matthew and Alexandra ask that you download the slide, start a viral movement, have these conversations and transform end-of-life care. To learn more visit Engage with Grace, where you can download the one slde, register for free, learn how to start the conversation and store your answers to the questions.

The questions are very morbid, but deal with an important issues: will your wishes be followed in the event of a terminal illness, do you have an advocate, where do you want to die, do you have a living will, power of healthcare attorney.

Visit the website, think about these questions, answer them and spread the word.

Thank you.

I know, it is very exciting – contain yourself!

There are still blog posts surfacing from last week’s Health 2.0 Conference, and I’m sure more to come:

- Matthew Holt, the co-founder, muses about his final thoughts and addresses criticism on the conference at The Healthcare Blog.

- Jane Sarasohn-Kahn from the Health Populi blog reflects on her personal experiences around the conference as a moderator, panelist and participant.

- A medical librarian’s review of the health search engines featured at the conference on the AltSearchEngines blog. Reading this has inspired me to once again revisit and tackle writing a post about the various health search engines and their results for medication non-adherence.

- Amy T from Diabetes Mine writes a brief post about her Health 2.0 experiences with a diabetes focus of course!

John from Chilmark Research did a great job of covering Health 2.0 and is now covering The Center for Connected Health’s 2008 Symposium. This Boston symposium also features a number of speakers who were at Health 2.0.

Alexandra Carmichael, from CureTogether, proposes an Open Source Health Research Plan.

Cary Byrd from eDrugSearch comments on a study that found higher drug costs in poorer neighborhoods.

John Halamka (who is a localvore) from Life As A Healthcare CIO writes about the ROI for EHRs.

Enjoy!

The official Health 2.0 Conference blog is a little slow to update as all the contributors are currently making the event run smoothly, however I believe they will update it throughout the conference.

Craig Stoltz is posting on his Web 2. Oh…Really? blog as well as cross posting on The HealthCare Blog.

I was told the Ozmosis Community blog is also updating throughout the conference.

On Twitter, some people are using the “Health 2.0” tag others are using the “#health20con” tag. Either tag shows up in a Twitter Searchfor either term. You can even search for a product that is demoing or person who is speaking at the conference to see who is tweeting about them.

NOTE: You do not have to have a Twitter account to see these feeds or to search.

Others are not using tags, but providing great coverage:

Scott Shreeve from Crossover Healthcare, Mark Schrimshire, Unity Stoakes from OrganizedWisdom, Dr. Greene, Robert Hendrick from change:healthcare, and Carlos Rizo.

I apologize if you are also blogging or twittering and I do not mention you. Please comment if you want to be included and I will update at the end of the day to add your feed.

Thank you and enjoy the conference!

UPDATE: Bob Coffield compiled a RSS Feed and a Search Feed for all of the Twitter tags. Much easier to follow. Thanks Bob!

From their Press Release:

“The mission of the new advisory service is to partner with clients to critically evaluate the continuing evolution of the Health 2.0 marketplace and how its tools and processes can maximize business value.”

“The firm is a joint venture between Health 2.0, LLC, and a team of four individuals: Matthew Holt, a Health 2.0 pioneer and co-founder of the Health 2.0 Conference; Brian Klepper, an expert in change dynamics in health care; Michael L. Millenson, an author, consultant and expert in quality of care and consumerism; and Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, a respected health economist and founder of THINK-Health.”

This is an amazing combination of talent in the Health 2.0 space and will certainly help large Health 1.0 organizations identify the value in adopting Health 2.0 technology.

Several critics have recently been complaining about the problems of monetizing Health 2.0 and signaling the end of the movement. Obviously with the 1000+ attendees at the Health 2.0 Conference (including Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!), it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon!

Matthew has consistently advocated for larger healthcare organizations to adopt the technology of the smaller, more nimble emerging Health 2.0 companies. Hopefully Health 2.0 Advisors will help bridge the gap between what is not working in the current healthcare system and the new technology that can effect a positive change, improve outcomes and reduce costs.

“Across health care, a wave of innovation has begun in earnest,” said Holt. “For stakeholders in the health care industry, understanding Health 2.0 has become absolutely mission critical. At Health 2.0 Advisors, we’re about ROI and guiding our clients to unlock the tremendous value of Health 2.0.”

Well said sir! I wish them the best of luck with their new venture.

Smells like Conference season, considering the Health 2.0 Conference launches tonight, and there are four more events on the horizon in the next two weeks!

While the results are not groundbreaking, they further reinforce the disconnect between patients and doctors regarding medication adherence.

1,017 responded to Zoomerang’s invite to participate in InfoMedics, Inc.’s 2008 “Following Doctor’s Orders: Patient Prescription Behaviors” survey. All had taken prescription medications, with no particular demographic breakdown.

Survey Says (my comments are in BOLD):

34% do not always fill a new prescription from their doctors; another 5 percent said they never fill those prescriptions.
The latest poll I saw was around 30% – getting higher, wonder if economy affected this answer? Probably too early.

46% said there is a chance they would not tell their doctor if they stopped taking a medication or decided not to fill a prescription. This is bad. Obviously if a doctor doesn’t know you are not taking your medication, they will not know how to effectively treat your ailment. Good thing there is blood work to determine medication levels.

67% forget to take their medication at times. Last figure I have from 2007 is 87% – so that is a pretty steep decline.

9% said they would keep taking a medication if they started feeling worse. Not a very engaged population number.

34% sometimes, often or always stop taking medication if they feel better. This number sounds low.

46% are careless at times when taking medications. Sound about right.

32% are always motivated to take a newly prescribed medication.Better than 30%!

When asked for multiple responses about where they go for medication information, 51 percent of respondents said they look to the Internet for this information; 49 percent said they ask their pharmacists and 37 said they ask their doctors.
This follows Manhattan Research’s Cybercitizen® Health v8.0 report that stated 53% of patients prefer to look online for health information.

Overall this survey is pretty representative of the current research, with a good indicator that adherence rates are not going above 50%. I am looking forward to seeing the whole survey when it is published.

However, I saw two posts today that I thought summed up the economic situation as it relates to Web 2.0 and the health of Health 2.0.

The first of which was written by Dmitriy Kruglyak, from Trusted MD, a healthcare blogging network that FD I have been a member of since July of 2007.

It includes the famous Sequoia Capital presentation to their portfolio companies, quotes from TechCrunch signaling the “ignoble end of Web 2.0″, and Dmitriy’s own analysis on how this effects Health 2.0:

“I am not going to beat this dead (dying?) horse. If you paid attention to this blog over last two years you would not be surprised at this turn of event. I will just say that an “average” Health 2.0 company that gets mentioned in the news is typically orders of magnitude lower in terms of traffic, engagement and monetization than their Web 2.0 cousins……As I said time and again, Web 2.0 is becoming just as toxic as dotcom (or subprime mortgages and credit default swaps). Conventional wisdom takes a while to form but this process is picking up pace. You can take a guess what will happen with derivative (copycat) ideas, like Health 2.0.”

Doesn’t sound very promising. Yet it is true. How can a movement and companies sustain momentum in a down-turned economy if there isn’t a sound business model? VCs have been throwing money at companies that are cool, but do not have a sound plan or any intention of making money. I look to Twitter, which is valued around $25M (maybe more now), but does not have a business model, and doesn’t plan to make any money in the next couple of years. They just received another round of financing this summer. Granted Twitter is very cool and I use it, but there must be something more going on that I am missing here. The value of the community is how Twitter is valued and what they might be able to make from that. Sounds like Facebook, which was valued at $15B at one point from $150M in earnings.

Same with Health 2.0 companies. Lots of them are very cool, but rely on ad revenue or a freemium package. I signed up for a 60 day trial of a PHR to check it out, but when it came time to “buy” a year subscription, I said “no thanks”. There wasn’t enough offered for the paid service that I could not get from a free service.

This brings me a post from Ben Heywood, Co-Founder and President of Patients Like Me from last week on the PLM “Value of Openness” blog: “I believe we, as the eHealth community, need to focus on two major goals: 1) solve patients’ problems, and 2) create business models that allow us to do #1….I don’t want to prognosticate about what types of business models will work for all Health 2.0 companies as the industry evolves (because, ultimately, this is an evolution). It’s up to each company to figure that out. I do believe that there’s no wrong path when you keep both those goals in your sights.”

And this sums up what needs to happen to keep the Health 2.0 movement alive.

PLM’s business model is very straightforward: “We build online communities where patients share structured information about their disease to help themselves and others. In turn, we make money by selling that data.” PLM is very transparent, and tell their members this upfront, and members encourage the selling of data, as this will help the pharma companies and device manufactuers improve their offerings to patients. PLM also received $5M in VC financing, so that gives them a bit of a cushion until they turn a profit.

Some Health 2.0 companies have gone under, others (like ZocDoc) are still receiving VC funding. It is an interesting time to be in the infancy of the Health 2.0 movement. I have faith that it will continue as long as the innovators create a needed product and can monetize without charging the consumer in a time when patients are having difficulty paying for their healthcare at the Health 1.0 level.

I arrived on Monday and saw Stephen C. Schoenbaum, MD, MPH, Executive Vice President for Programs, The Commonwealth Fund give a keynote. You can view his presentation here.

One of the problems attending these conferences is that I do not always learn that much as one of my roles with Intelecare is market research.   I know America spends the most on healthcare (almost double) of any other modern country, and has the worst system but I did not know that 51% of patients in the US with a chronic condition do not have a “Medical Home”.   Meaning no PCP.

I didn’t have a PCP when I moved to Connecticut in 2001, and did not get one until 3 months before my son was born in 2007 – but I was still a little surprised by this number.  I know a lot of patients without insurance use ERs as their primary care, but 51% just struck me as bigger than I thought for chronic conditions.

Dr. Schoenbaum presented some of the CWF findings from a few reports and well as options for “savings” in the healthcare system.  Overall a great presentation for the crowd.

Next up was Matthew Holt from the Health 2.0 Conference.  He (obviously) spoke about how Health 2.0 companies can possibly help disease management companies and healthcare in general (his presentation has not been uploaded to the DMC site yet). I have seen Matt present before, and seen some of his presentations online.  Always entertaining and informative.

He gave an overview of the Web 2.0 to Health 2.0 – Search, Social Networks and Tools.  And referred to the educated patient as one taking control of their own healthcare.

Some great takeaways:

High deductible health plans = pay more and get less.

Netherlands and Sweden have 90% of patients on EMRs – US has only 17%.

53% of adults were “cybercondriacs” in 2006.

Finished with new definition:  Patient Guided Care as opposed to Patient Centric Healthcare.

It was a great first day to ease into things.  Unfortunately my favorite Philly restaurant, Vetri, is closed on Mondays, but what are you going to do?