Posts Tagged ‘HEALTH 2.0’

The Best Things in Life are Free!

04/01/2010 , 11:11 AM by Kevin Aniskovich

It’s not everyday that I use this blog to repurpose a message sent to Intelecare members; in fact, I’ve never used it for such a reason.  But in this age of social media, news comes in all shapes and sizes, and this is one such message we felt would be of interest to the broadest of audiences.  If I’m wrong, I’m certain I’ll hear about it!  Below is the content of the message.

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Intelecare Members:

I want to thank you for selecting Intelecare as your choice for personal reminders.  We are proud to have built our organization over the years based on support from members like you. Delivering nearly 7 million reminder messages every single day, Intelecare has been able to achieve this milestone thanks to our dedicated staffers, enthusiastic clients and loyal members.

Never a group to rest on our laurels, Intelecare sought feedback and released our new interface last quarter to much fanfare. We launched with a more intuitive, user friendly experience complete with options found in no other platform of its kind. At Intelecare, increasing medical adherence is our only goal – it’s what we do each and every day. And today, well today is no exception in our quest to drive adherence while thanking our loyal members.

Today, I am happy to announce that Intelecare is free, for each and every patient and caregiver. Effective immediately, Intelecare will no longer offer premium subscription levels but rather offer our full suite of solutions at no charge. And what’s more, your Intelecare Online account will permit you to access your membership account through our iPad and iPhone Editions, scheduled to be released in April. We believe your information should be able to be accessed that way it makes the most sense to you.

If you previously had a Basic membership, we have already upgraded your account. Plus and Platinum members, we have cancelled your monthly subscription payment as of today. There is nothing to do except rediscover your Intelecare account and enjoy your added features.

This is just the beginning of the very exciting 2010. And I mean very! Stay tuned…

Be well,

Kevin J. Aniskovich
President & Chief Executive Officer

The Great American Health 2.0 Motorcycle Tour

11/05/2008 , 10:17 AM by Alex Sicre

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!

Health 2.0, LLC Launches Health 2.0 Advisors

10/22/2008 , 9:54 AM by Alex Sicre

One of the first announcements to come out of the Health 2.0 Conference is the formation of Health 2.0 Advisors, “an advisory service formed by four principals with national reputations at the nexus of health care and technology.”

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.

Death of Health 2.0? Let’s Start With A Business Model

10/14/2008 , 10:10 AM by Alex Sicre

There have been a number of blog posts over the last few weeks about the demise of Health 2.0, many of which use the death /merger of Revolution Health signaling the end, as well as a few blog posts supporting the future of the movement. There was some intense debate between esteemed members of the H2.0 community through said blog posts, comments on blog posts and more blog posts – all of which I decided not to comment on because those that were commenting and creating the posts know more about the space than I do.

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.

The HealthCampDC Experience

09/16/2008 , 9:36 AM by Alex Sicre

I went down to Washington DC to attend HealthCampDC on Friday (09.12.08), an “unconference” organized by Mark Scrimshire, a Strategic Consultant and Change Agent. I wasn’t sure what to expect. From the group that signed up, I follow four on Twitter, and have spoken with two in the past – so I thought it would be a great opportunity to meet them in person.

As for the agenda? There was no agenda until the group decided what we were going to talk about. Such is the style of BarCamp. Of the 25 people who signed up, only 9 of us made it to the CareFirst offices.

It was a great group and made the day more intimate – representing payor HIT, NIH HIT, consultants for State and Government, MD consultants, Health Ranger, Pollster/e-patient and me.

We had a quick networking session over coffee and muffins, then we all made a dash to the board to post the topics we wanted to discuss.

We all commented how this methodology was much better than a regular conference where people show up with a slide presentation and bore everyone to death. We ended up choosing about 5 different session topics, then sat around a table to discuss. And discuss we did.

Mark did a wonderful job of hosting and organizing, as well as live blogging through the event. Here is his post on the morning sessions, and his recap post of the event.

Our first topics revolved around two projects that two campers were working on. Susannah Fox from the Pew Internet & American Life Project is putting together a new study on Social Media and Health and Lygeia Ricciardi is working on a project to raise patient awareness and adoption of physician sharing of EHRs.

Both topics sparked lots of back and forth about polls, their importance, Health 2.0 tools, EMRs /PHRs access and ownership. Some of the quotes that I have in my notes:

“Don’t believe polls that do not include cell phones”.
“Everyone is a media company”.
“Don’t offer consumers a service, offer them a solution”.
“CIOs career is based on how many people work under them”.
“The only people without access to electronic health records are the patient themselves”.

Ted Eytan, MD mentioned two real world scenarios he has experienced where a EMR would come in handy. 1) A non-English speaking man collapsed on the street in front of him – no one knew what medications he was on or if he had any medical conditions. 2) A cashier at Whole Foods had a medication reaction, yet no one knew what she was on or her conditions, and no one could find her purse. What do you do as a spectator, EMT, MD when the patient is unconcious and you have no idea if what you are doing is going to help or hurt them?

This led into a discussion about primary v. secondary access to healthcare information and services – patient v. family caregiver. How do you engage Helen Keller or her caregiver? 20% are satisfied not being engaged in their healthcare decisions.

Quotes:
“The HealthCare challenge is bigger than any one person or company can tackle alone”.
“We all have to own a part of the solution”.
“We are all agents of change”.

Jen McCabe Gorman gave a quick recap of her Medicine 2.0 presentation for the NextHealth model that she and her Dutch group have been working on. Susannah Fox has a great write up over at e-patients.net. I sort of understand their model – here is the Slideshare , the NextHealth research paper and Jen’s post about the presentation, but I think I need to walk through it once it is online to fully understand.

Quotes:
“Not all patients are consumers, but all consumers will at some point become patients”.
“The hyper-connected patient (2%) will drive activity and innovation”.
“Everyone can be overwhelmed by the system whether you are the patient, payer, provider or consumer”.
“I feel kinda stoopid”. This was a major thread through the day.

In the afternoon, we started with a discussion of the tools we, as healthcare professionals, use to keep abreast of new technologies and our peers. The longest discussion was about Twitter (which I have written about before).

Other tools mentioned were lots of Google apps: search, alerts, reader – as well as Delicious, RSS Feeds, Jing, Summize, Friend Feed, Stickam, Feedinformer, blogs and YouTube. There was a Stickam live feed of the event which I did not know about until someone twittered me about it. I learned that Google Reader has a search function so you can add RSS feeds based on the topics you follow.

David Hale gave a presentation on a Drug Identification tool that is being developed by the NIH’s National Library of Medicine. It uses FDA pictures and codes to identify pills. We talked about the value of the service as so many patients have unidentified medications. Used the example of medications from Katrina – patients had pill bottles without labels – how to identify them? Would like this tool to be the definitive database for patients, providers, poison control, etc…

The final topics: How can we get DC to become the center for Health 2.0? And where do we go from here? We were but a small group, but everyone has a voice, and has contacts. Who do you get involved? I asked who are the decision makers that can effect change – who has the loudest voice? Patients, providers, payors (probably not), entrepreneurs? Does the squeaky wheel get the grease?

This HealthCamp was a great place to start the East Coast discussion about Health 2.0 and how to enact that change. To quote Mark again: “Despite the scale of the challenge being so great one realization was reached. The Washington DC area is at the epicenter of the transformation of HealthCare. All the major providers compete in this market. Major Provider networks operate, researchers are here, Venture Capitalists are here, Technologists are here, charities representing critical diseases have representation here and the politicians and Federal operations that will pass legislation that will drive change are here. Everyone is in this market. The Washington DC are has all the elements to be the epicenter of Health 2.0.”

Next events are HealthCampNy, an uncoference at the Health 2.0 Conference, and another HealthCampDC in late January or February ‘09.

Thank you again to Mark and all the campers who participated and made HealthCampDC08 such a gerat event! It was a pleasure to meet you all and I look forward to continuing the conversation.

BarCamp | HealthCampDC

08/25/2008 , 10:44 AM by Alex Sicre

I will be attending HealthCamp DC on September 12th.

I really do not know what to expect from this unconference, as I have never attended one before. Several Health 2.0 and patient advocates will be there who I have connected with on Twitter, through email and via the good old telephone will be there, so I am looking forward to meeting them in person.

If anyone would like to get together to talk about medication adherence, Health 2.0 or how Intelecare can help your organization on the 11th, please let me know: Alex.Sicre [at] Intelecare [dot] com, as I will line up a few meetings the day before.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Pharmaceuticals and Word Of Mouth

07/18/2008 , 11:30 AM by Alex Sicre

An article in today’s Emarketer, reports on a study by Keller Fay that “less than 10% of pharmaceutical-related word-of-mouth in the US takes place online, compared with nearly three-quarters that happens in person”.

I was very interested in this study, and how they measure offline word-of-mouth. It is not as if they can talk to everyone. Their methodology is to poll 36,000 people >13 to find out what the buzz is of the moment and how worth-of-mouth marketing travels. Is this ligit for pharmaceutical marketing?

I rarely have conversations with friends about medications, except to tell them the negative side effects of what I am taking (Niaspan burn). Maybe 8 conversations in the last two years, not including my wife and family. Whereas online, I have had over a hundred “discussions” including conversations through Daily Strength, Revolution Health, posted blogs, hit up chat rooms, commented on other blogs, etc…

Fard Johnmar and I had a “conversation” on Twitter yesterday about the Keller Fay report and how it relates to online trust. He discusses the marketing angle with social media today on his Healthcare Vox Blog. He tweeted the question, how do you define online trust vs. offline when you actually talk to people you know. Per Fard, from an iCrossing Study, only 23% of patients trust others with the same condition online.

How does this relate to medication adherence? Most of these “discussions” are about medications that I have taken, explaining the efficacy, as well as the side effects both positively and negatively – just factual about my personal experiences. On all of the posts I have been very transparent about my ID, and can be easily Googled. Does that mean that a stranger should or would trust me because we both have high triglycerides? 23% do. What effect do I have? Well, 1 in 4 will heed my warnings and trust my positive outcomes.

When I look at a patient who has commented online about a medication that I have taken, I will trust them if they have had the same experience, but I am not really looking for their advice or input. I prefer to rely on my doctor who has prescribed the medication for me and went to med school and who is an authority. Is this a double standard since I freely dose out my own advice? Probably. I have seen patients who have had bad side effects from a script where I had none. They will probably not trust what I have to say, considering we had a different experience.

My point is that I feel I have more influence online, not that I am trying to influence anyone, but I will answer questions, comment when I have something to add, and try to help others figure out what medication regime is best for them based on my own experience. Granted I am 35, and the majority of my friends are not on any medications so I do not have that offline word-of-mouth experience because no one needs my advice or cares. I am also in the Healthcare Technology biz and Health 2.0 movement, so I am more online health sensitive than others.

Will patients take or not take medications based on what they read about online? That is the real question for pharma marketers, and how do you control all the negative reporting?

Patient 2.0 Blog

07/16/2008 , 11:35 AM by Alex Sicre

A colleague of mine, Emily Stanziale, has started her own blog: Patient 2.0.

This blog chronicles her evolution as a patient in today’s modern world, who uses both traditional and holistic methods for achieving better health. As with our Adherence 2.0 model, no patient is the same, and I can obviously say ditto for personal health blogs.

Over the last few months, she has suffered some ailments, and her doctor has had a difficult time deciphering what was wrong. This has lead her to re-examine her PCD’s role, and search for answers. She is very honest with what she has been going through and well informed about the industry, as she works in pharma sales.

Please visit her blog to see her unique perspective on her own health, today’s healthcare industry and Health 2.0. I hope you enjoy!

50 Web Apps to Help with Your Health

06/03/2008 , 10:33 AM by Alex Sicre

I was reviewing some twitter feeds and Matt C mentioned this link for 50 Web Apps in the Health 2.0 space. Many great web apps are not mentioned, but this is a good place to start!

Disease Management Colloquium in Philadelphia – Day 1

05/22/2008 , 10:06 AM by Alex Sicre

I attended the DM Colloquium hosted by Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia at the beginning of the week.  I wanted to blog from the conference, but I didn’t want to be rude to the presenters, and I couldn’t get the T-Mobile Hotspot to work outside of my room at the Hyatt.

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?