Archive for January, 2009

The Wellsphere Blogging Controversy

January 30, 2009 · Filed Under general, news & gossip · 29 Comments

You may have heard of the Wellsphere blogging controversy (if not, here’s one take on the issue, and here’s another from a different perspective). In a nutshell, Wellsphere went to bloggers in the health world and asked them if they could syndicate their blog entries on the Wellsphere website. In exchange, Wellsphere promised no cash, but additional readership and hopefully, traffic back to the blogger’s blog.

This is neither a stunning nor original business model in the Web 2.0 world. In fact, it’s pretty par for the course. Web 2.0 (and Health 2.0) are predicated on a simple premise — you provide the content, and we (the company) will find a way to monetize it. Whether you’re PatientsLikeMe, DailyStrength, or Facebook, the model is the same. In fact, Dr. Val Jones, who ranted about the practice in her blog entry linked above, is familiar with this model first-hand when she worked as the Senior Medical Director for Revolution Health. Revolution Health’s mantra was “Health 2.0″ — an informational website with a healthy dollop of encouraging users to put all of their health information on the site, contribute posts to the site, etc. and expect nothing back in return (except whatever “good feelings” one has for sharing all of that information with the world).

Computers reduce odds of in-hospital deaths

January 27, 2009 · Filed Under found on the net, positive patterns, trends & principles · Comment

This reinforces my repeated assertion that healthcare is far, far behind ordinary enterprise in adoption of practices that work: “When computers replace paper, patient mortality rates drop 15% during hospitalization, among other metrics, according to a study of 41 Texas hospitals by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins School of Medicine researchers published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.” Full article here. (ModernHealthcare.com)

The e-patient white paper: Seven Preliminary Conclusions

January 27, 2009 · Filed Under chapter reviews · 27 Comments

One year ago today I finished reading e-Patients: How they can help us heal healthcare, the e-patient white paper. It turned my head around because although I’d experienced excellent care in almost all ways, it showed that I as a patient have far more to contribute than I ever would have imagined.

The people who assembled that report (not me) are smart, perceptive, and insightful about the future. When I “synopsized” each chapter in posts on my own blog last summer, here’s what I wrote about chapter 2.

Clinical trials: Unfavorable results often go unpublished (Science Blog)

January 22, 2009 · Filed Under found on the net, understanding statistics · Comment

E-Patient Dave spotted an informative post on the Science Blog about an inherent shortcoming of the publication process: failed trials don’t get published, so others don’t have the chance to learn from them. His post about it here. (Where did he learn about it? In his patient-to-patient peer community, on ACOR. E-patients on the hoof!)

Moving from “medicine as individual heroism” to “medicine as a team sport”

January 18, 2009 · Filed Under e-patient stories, e-pts resources, general, hc's problem list, news & gossip, policy issues, positive patterns, reforming hc, trends & principles · 16 Comments

This topic isn’t directly in our wheelhouse here in the e-patient movement (“empowered, engaged, equipped and enabled”), but as I continue one patient’s odyssey in learning about healthcare, a discussion on Paul Levy’s blog has taught me a lot. So I’m posting it for other interested patients.

It’s on his post What does it take? The original post was about why Boston hospitals aren’t agreeing with Levy’s offer to share knowledge to reduce hospital-acquired infections etc. But it’s shifted to being largely about the use of checklists, which has led to some profound comments about cultural and human issues when change is in the wind.

One comment, from Brent James of Utah’s Intermountain Health Care, is so informative I want to share it here.

An e-patient call to arms

January 15, 2009 · Filed Under e-pts resources, hc's problem list, news & gossip, policy issues, reforming hc, trends & principles · 8 Comments

E-patients, this is a call to action. Now. I want you to go express yourself on Paul Levy’s blog.

Most readers of health policy blogs know what a costly, inefficient mess healthcare in America has become. Paul Levy would like the people in his business to work together to fix that. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Last month he proposed that all the hospitals in the area band together to share information about how to solve problems like hospital-acquired infections. (He’s already been posting his own hospital’s failure rates on their web site, for people to monitor as they work to improve it.) And on 12/21 he proposed that hospitals not only share data, but work together to figure out how to prevent problems, so you and I don’t have as much chance of being harmed during our stay in all their hospitals:

What if all of the hospitals in the Boston metropolitan area — academic medical centers and community hospitals — decided as a group to eliminate certain kinds of hospital-acquired infections and other kinds of preventable harm?

And what response has he gotten? NOTHING. From his post today:
Read more

Health Care Law Slides

January 15, 2009 · Filed Under found on the net · Comment

Bob Coffield’s slide set, Consumer Driven Health Care: The Impact of Social Media and Health 2.0, is a lawyer’s eye view of the current market. Plus he included a couple neat Wordles.

In the Spin III: The Smart Resident

January 13, 2009 · Filed Under e-patient stories, hc's problem list · 12 Comments

My quest for a second qualified opinion on an abnormal mammogram (microcalcifications) began in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Two days before the end of the year, a sharp surgical resident put an end to the spin. The solution was simple – and not high tech. She got on the phone and spoke to the various physicians involved. She was proactive where the system was flawed or obviously broken. Most important, she listened to me, the patient. Read more

FDA Gives Light Scrutiny to Investigators’ Financial Ties

January 12, 2009 · Filed Under general · 5 Comments

Via Twitter, from the Wall Street Journal Health Blog: “The FDA should do a lot more to police potential conflicts of interest among researchers conducting clinical trials of experimental drugs and medical devices, a government watchdog says. Read the report, out today from the office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services.” The details are, pardon my extremism, shocking:

Teens, Sex and Technology

January 9, 2009 · Filed Under found on the net · 1 Comment

Our own John Grohol has an interesting article up on PsychCentral about teens, sex, technology, and the online disinhibition effect (comments are also open on Well). For us: Does online disinhibition play a role in everyone’s use of online health resources?