PHR buzz

I read yesterday the attached article about the acqusition of the collaborative care management services vendor- MEDecision by Health insurer - Health care srvice corporation for $121M in cash.

It seems from the positive aspect that Google and Microsoft penetration to this market is causing a buzz - creative one.
Potential buyers, developers, IT solution providers companies,Medical professionals and consumers are getting more and more interested about this subject and enjoy the fruits of this prosperity.This growing interesting is having financial influence

From the strategic aspect, as I wrote above, this is a good atmosphere for all the competitors but later on some of them surely will pay the price of the "Big lions penetration/involvement".

Microsoft and Google involvement on health 2.0 - Privacy concerns

Yesterday NY Times published a review about an article which was written recently on New England Journal of Medicine

The issue : Privacy concerns regarding MS and google's PHR web based projects .

Some of the concerns are well known and based by strong evidence and theories (ofcourse you can read them on the attached link to the article or in the original review on New England) but still everyone should remember several points as well :

1. Its time that the health sector and consumers will earn and get benefits from the highly speed emerging technology on the web.

2. Privacy is a major an important issue but we should not prevent progressing by adopting technology on behalf of being "privacy guards".

3. Strong power and influence by several major companies on tremendous highly valuble health data is maybe not the optimal situation but the involvement of this two giants in the health sector is going to bring prosperity to the health 2.0 world and eventually to the "general" and traditional health sector. More powefull health sector means better services for the public .

I will be more than pleased to hear and listen to my collegues thoughts and ideas regarding this issue

The battle on the health sector- Google versus Microsoft

So much was written so far and will be written in the future about the coming war between the big two lions on the health sector .
For us its a tremendous proff for the existance and the spreading of the health 2.0 movement.
Lately I found an article posted on the Eweek.com journal . Its about the competition on the online PHR between the two companies .
In the article there are observations about the similiarities and the differences between the Microsoft Health project (Healthvault) and Googles Health.
For me its quite obvious that everyone of them has a strategic plan to be the central player in the health 2.0 sector so the competition at the medium and the distance phases is unavoidable.

Google's Knol - In the eyes of the Health 2.0 sector

Yesterday Google announced Googles Knol - Their new project who will compete wikipedia.The concept is almost the same with some variants. Authors will edit and write about specific items. The result will be mapping and sharing the overall knowledge that are kept by the crowds.The idea, probably is that in some sectors like Health and Science , key knowledge leaders will be in front of the crowd and manage the knowledge in their specialized sectors.
Its going to be interesting how it will influence the the health and science sectors.
We should understand that gooles motivation is that this Knols pages, at least the populars on every items wull be ranked on the top of Googles search engine.
Googles also announced that there will be possibility to add ads on the Knols pages.Now you can imagine that there will be people and firms on the health sectors who will find great interests on specific Knols pages. The end result can be an enchanted circle.Big firms and other "deep pockets" organizations that put adds on specific Knols pages and contribute by marketing inside and outside the web for the popularity of these pages. Another posibillity is hiring key leaders to write specific items by firms/organizations.Some of this writing can be inflenced and not totally objective.

Anyhow its going to be interesting from the web 2.0 as well Health /medicine 2.0 perpective.

Medical search engine- a competitive niche

I wrote in the past about several medical search engines.
This niche is "hot" these days.
Everyone understand the power beyond ultimat medical search engine.
Microsoft purchased Medstory . Google is deep inside the health 2.0 race also ( see my last post as an evidence and example for this).
Curbside.MD is another example and I must say a good one.

1. You can naturally phrase medical and clinical questions in the search bar. Its like asking your tutor or your coleague professional question.

2. There are well defined sections . Including "Quick Consult" section for getting high level review results and "The Best Evidence " to get in- depth results and answers for your questions.

3. There is an algorithm to get the "best hits" results and also results under the topics "clinical trials" and "visual diagnosis".

I will add this platform to ours Medical 2.0 directory.
But he will have strong competition from the others including the "big lions"
Its going to be so interesting in the "medical search engine" this year and in the following year as well.

Googles vision on health/medical 2.0 sector

Attached review by Reuters which published on CNET news.

Its about parts of Googles vision regarding the health on the net.
The speaker is Marrisa Mayer, Google's vice president of Search Products & User Experience.

Indeed, this sector will be under the scope of the giants.
Sure, there will be a place for lot of entrepreneurs in this sector.

Marrisa Mayer's vision .

web 2.0 presentation on "Google Presentations"

I like the application of google which is part of google docs - "Google Presentations".

I tried it several times. It seems that combine all the features with IM tool is giving it great benefit.
I spoked yesterday with another person who watched the same presentation as me at the same time.
Not suprisingly, we found a lot of common and shared a lot of knowledge.The starting point for ours discussion was the subjects regarding the presentation- web 2.0.
For doctors it can give added value to find other professionals in their field and talk with them live. So simple but so friendly and useable.
As i mentioned, the subject was web 2.0. Here is the link for the presentation ( you need to have Googles account).
One interesting idea behind the presentation is "collaboration concept".
You can write to the author and suggest new ideas for the content. You can become collaborator of this presentation.
Its sounds like the concept of the Wikis but from the "presentations side".
So the concept is truely nice and interesting and the content itself is the same.

GrandCentral - Control your phone world

Every one of us is facing with this situation ( or almost everyone):

We have several phone numbers (not including one or more email accounts and IM tools) .Some of them are currently working, some of them are old ones. We change work places, we change mobile phones and with them mobile phone numbers.

In the world of bussy sectors like the health sector I met so many people who have different phone numbers for different situations.
How many doctors do you know who have phone number especially for their outpatient clinic and different mobile phone number for their patients or mates/ residents at the hospital ( not mention, different number to their private life?).
How many of them want that different sectors will call at different hours via seperate roots? ( For example : someone who prefers all his hospital patients will call him only direct to his outpatient clinics phone while he is working there).

GrandCentral develops solution for these kind of situations.

The company was founded in 2006.The basic idea behind them is creating one phone number for everyone for life. This will be your public number.
By that single phone number you can control all your incoming and outcoming communications ( not mention that you dont have to update your numbers everytime you change home phone number or mobile number).
They are using VOIP technology to converage all your phone numbers to one point of contact.
You can choose that different phones will ring for different sectors or persons in different times. You can change it whenever you want. Its so easy to do it - just log in to yuor private account by the web.
You can control and manage your voice male either.
Now go back to the examples I wrote above and see how you can manage and control the different dimensions of your professional world and also keep some privacy for your own life and your family life.
Grand Central is a web service. Lately they where acquired by Google.
Yes, The phone market is taking his place in the web 2.0 world.
For me is also a very usefull medicine/health 2.0 tool because of its usability and necessity for the bussy professionals in the health sector and because phone communication is a key tool in our working enviroment. ( I still remember my nights phone calls to the words seniors as a junior ).
Still, you have to remember that this service is still in the beta phase.

Weaver - Google's new health information storage program

Hi
Want to share with you the latest news from Google:
They are launching first screenshots from their project for " health information storage"- "weaver"
It can makes a dramatic change in the market of this sector.
So many institutes including hospitals, outpatient clinics, insurance companies etc, have modern information storage platforms for our patients and for all of us , but lack the possibility to form connections between them.
Google spreading their vision. Probably they intend to be the unofficial international platform for the health information storage .
Here's more detailes from google blogoscoped.
Google is becoming major player in ours health/medical 2.0 world.

Google's new calendar

Google, the "master of the web 2.0 tribe" , released the new calendar.
Still in beta version , but seems to be with high usability standarts.
Doctors, which have so many obligations in their life circles (hospital, outpatient clinic, personal life etc.) can find this tool very convenient.
It has the option for searching others who makes their calendar in public.
Everyone can choose such kind of option for his calendars or one specific calendar of his total calendars groups.
You can use it even as an additive tool for built community ( example : research community).
Indeed web 2.0 tool that has great usability to the medical sector.

google vs. pubmed

I
See "google vs. pubmed"
Found this article through post of new and interesting blog about medicine and technology called Ronald Healy MD .
It's short post that was published in the open medicine blog - OM blog.
Deals about and compare between search abilities with google and pubmed.
Seems to be interesting for eneryone in our community.
Concerning the new blog - wish him all the best and happy to welcome new friend to our family.

MEDICAL SEARCH ENGINE

I'm not your judge ,i'm just try to open your minds and expand your horizon a bit more than googles frontiers.
Try http://www.healia.com/healia - the medical search engine.

Its both to consumers and professionals.You have subsections for searching, so if you are a Med Pro you can get results that fit for your demands.

Worth to compare it with Google.