Some news in the world of Health 2.0 today where the worlds of patient communities and tracking tools come ever closer. (Those of you following my Health 2.0 “bubbles” chart know that “social networks” and “tools” are integrating. You can see more in the free exec sum of our report The Past & Future of Health 2.0)
PatientsLikeMe, which already does more tracking than most online communities with members recording their drugs, their symptoms, and much more, acquired ReliefInSite.
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16
February
The (not huge) world of Health 2.0, participatory medicine and ePatients has been fretting itself about a comment Susannah Fox (all hail) elevated into a post called “What’s the Point of Health 2.0”.
Here’s an excerpt from the comment from DarthMed,
The remaining 95% of “patients” out there are not motivated to become informed, or invest the time/energy/money in using any of these tools. These are the folks that know that fast food isn’t healthy, but are just too tired to choose differently. Some (emphasis on some) will do a standard google search when they receive a new diagnosis at best. Yet these are the folks – often folks with multiple chronic (often preventable) health problems, many overweight, on multiple medications, sometimes social problems – that have the real issue that needs fixing.
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6
February
Todd Park is definitely one of health care IT’s good guys. Todd was the brains (but not the mouth!) behind athenahealth. Since he left athenahealth, he spent a year back in California doing angel investing (Ventana among others) and being a dad. But despite his desire to stay on the west coast, he was dragged intothe vortex known as Washington DC, and for the last 5 months he’s been the (first) CTO of HHS. (BTW he cashed out his investments, and politely turned down my proposal to “care for” his cash while he was being a public servant!)
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4
February
Gilles Frydman is one of the leading ePatients. He started and runs ACOR (Association of Cancer Online Resources) and has discussed the role of engaged patients with rare diseases at the last few Health 2.0 Conferences. We'll be hearing more from Gilles in the US this year, but first we're inviting him to present at Health 2.0 Europe. His twitter name (@kosherfrog) reveals Gilles’ ethnic and national background, so we thought he was a very appropriate person to discuss both the future of online patient activism, and the Health 2.0 scene in the US and Europe.
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26
January
Just occasionally we get a really heartfelt comment on THCB that is passionate and rational, and reminds us why for all the bile spewed about the topic the essential partof the health care bill—making insurance available to everyone—is really important. This comment from CF Mother was left on my post “Thinking the unthinkable” on Friday. And of course, this could happen to anyone—including you. And frankly the Democrats need to do a better job explaining this—Matthew Holt
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18
January
In developing countries, (and here too) counterfeit drugs are a mega-big problem. Essentially fraudulently labeled drugs in the supply chain are often not what they say they are, with potentially devastating consequences. But there’s no really easy way for companies to monitor their supply chain. We ran into PharmaSecure as they were getting off the ground last year, and yesterday I met CEO Sarah Hine who showed me how their technology allows the consumer to directly connect with the manufacturer using SMS.
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15
January
One day before 2009 passed into history, the much anticipated final definition of “meaningful use†was released by CMS and ONC, 556 pages and 136 pages, respectively. The blogosphere experts rushed to summarize the contents, some accurate and some less so, and just like everything that has to do with health care reform, for every rule making there are a dozen new questions being raised by the already thoroughly confused stakeholders at large.
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9
January
The last time the US Senate held a vote on Christmas eve, it was 1895. In that one, lawmakers said it was OK for former Confederate army soldiers to serve in the military. The vote was hailed as a milestone in the slow national reconciliation following the Civil War.
No one was talking about national reconciliation following last week’s Christmas Eve Senate vote on health care reform. A bill was passed with unanimous support by Democrats, against the wishes of 40 resolute, disdainful Republicans.
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8
January
Right now, American health care information technology is undergoing two enormous leaps. First, it is moving onto Web-based and mobile platforms - which are less expensive and facilitate information exchange - and away from client-server enterprise-centric technologies, which are more expensive and have limited interoperability. In addition, more EHR development activity is headed into the cloud, driven by large consumer-based firms with the technological depth to take it there. Both these trends will facilitate greater openness, lower user cost, improved ease of use, and faster adoption of EHRs.
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5
January
I love Atul Gawande’s writings on health care.
He has a rare talent for describing technical details of health care, insurance and finances in terms that most people can understand. His recent article in the New Yorker discussed the current health reform bills’ approach to curbing costs, using the agricultural industry as a potential model.
One of his basic points is similar to one I have made before. He describes two kinds of problems: “those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health care coverage belongs to the first category . . . Problems of the second kind [referring to rising health care costs], by contrast, are never solved, exactly; they are managed.”
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16
December