Health 2.0: Rules of Engagement
In the middle of one of the worst economic crises experienced by the US, Health 2.0 Advisor Jane Sarasohn-Kahn confirmed today that US citizens are not as focused on heath care as they were a year ago.
"Twelve months ago," Jane Sarasohn-Kahn said, "the most important things on American voters' minds were the war and health care. Two days ago, the most important thing on American voters' minds is the economy. Health care and the war have taken a backseat."
This doesn't mean however, that health care plays second fiddle to the attendees of the Health 2.0 Conference in San Francisco this week - it's still their driving force. The rules of engagement however, as Clay Shirky pointed out in his keynote on Wednesday, are changing.
According to a study released today by Edelman [PDF], trust and confidence are inversely proportionate to demand for health care. With an aging population, behavior-related chronic conditions, and expensive innovations, companies must help people address their specific personal health concerns with thorough, transparent and specific information.
Additionally, the financial meltdown is aggravating an already weak health system as people forgo or postpone essential health care due to loss of insurance or inability to pay.
The answer, according to the survey, is engagement: "Effective health engagement can build trust, and conversely, trust is the key to deeper engagement," said Nancy Turett (Edelman).
While the Edelman study serves as a basic guide, the leading providers of health information services have also been monitoring and implementing changes.
WebMD and Aetna
Wayne Gattinella (CEO WebMD), pointed out that health on the Web is no longer only for the electronic literate, a fact that demonstrates the power of electronic information. "Additionally, health care is not only about personal issues anymore," he said, "but financial as well. Patients want to know how to reduce out-of-pocket costs; they want more information."
Mark Bertolini (President, Aetna), said the company is hoping to help customers improve communications with their health insurance providers by giving them the option to transfer their personal health records to Microsoft's HealthVault - "our main focus is on portability," he said.
The Big (Internet) 3 - Microsoft, Google, Yahoo
Of course, the big three - Microsoft, Google and Yahoo - have plans of their own.
Microsoft, according to Peter Neupert (Corporate VP, Microsoft HSG) is focused on making HealthVault, a platform that allows providers to look at patient information [with their consent], easier to use for physicians and consumers.
Roni Zeiger, (Product Manager, Google Health) told the audience that the most important thing they've been hearing is "we want our data," since the launch of Google Health, a site that allows people to store health information. "This is incredibly hard," he explained, "people want data, but they also want two more things: it must be easy, and it must be useful."
Michael Yang (VP & GM Yahoo! Health), said that the biggest changes in the past year are awareness and recognition: "It's amazing to see how much demand there is for health."
While these five companies are paving the way to make personal health records available on the Web, the question remains whether we as a society can get used to the idea.
What do you think?
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Hey! great site.it is very useful to every one.Especially who care about health and heart health.thank you very much for providing me the information about health.
Certainly lots of buzz at the Health 2.0 event, but honestly, most of the small companies in this market have solutions with a weak value proposition coupled with a tremendous amount of overlap. Most will not survive.
That being said, what struck me most about this event is the number of big healthcare stakeholders such as the big health plans, pharma and hospitals.
Will be attending today. Providing live feed at www.ChilmarkResearch.com
I can see an increase in online health sites and users who flock to them. With increasing health costs, and a country full of people who go to doctors when reality is they really don't need to, I could see this becoming a standard practice. I myself have never used a health type of site, but I am going to be checking them out and seeing for myself what they have to offer. Thanks for bringing the issue out for us.
Craig
www.budgetpulse.com
Patients want price transparency now more than ever. That's one of the features we offer at Alijor.com: we allow patients to search for providers based on consultation fees, etc. In addition, many patients are turning to alternative medicine, a less expensive option for health care.
One of the challenges facing healthcare is fragmentation of data sources -- even within a given hospital, xrays, labs, medical transcription, pharmacy are all on different systems that struggle to work together. Let alone communicate with external physician Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo mainly see themselves as data aggregators, which will likely have a positive impact. But it won't really impact the adoption of EMRs by physicians. Cost and disruption of workflow are the main obstacles that hinder physicians form adopting EMRs. What is emerging now is the next generation of software, termed by some "EMR 2.0", where the EMR is hosted, on-line, flexible and dramatically lower in cost. Practice Fusion (Practice Fusion's Free EMR) is an example of next-generation hosted EMR that is free to physicians. When the data is hosted, appropriate clinical chart-sharing between physicians taking care of a given patient becomes possible. In addition, linkage with outside data sources becomes much easier (it doesn't have to be built one-at-a-time, as is needed currently). And building a patient portal, where the patient's Personal Health Record (PHR) is auto-populated by the physicians' EMRs, becomes much more systematic. This is a new era for EMR technology, which may well overcome resistance to EMR adoption seen historically, and result in significant steps forward in US healthcare delivery.