First International mHealth Networking Conference (I was there!)
by Jillian Ketterer
Last week (February 3-4, 2010) I attended the mHealth Networking Conference in DC. Sponsored by mHealth Initiative Inc (mHI), the conference was focused around the use of emerging mobile technologies to improve healthcare delivery. Here are a few themes to give you a flavor: iPhones/mobile phones/Android phones, emailing your doctor, bringing evidence to practice via electronic alerts for patients and physicians, home health monitoring, real-time everything, connectivity, usability, patient literacy, technologies for chronic care management and geriatrics.) The full program seems to still be available, and relevant Twitter posts (e.g., for the #mHealth hash tag) are also available.
Throughout the conference I met a mixture of providers (physicians, nurses, PAs, etc), insurance company representatives, techies/code crunchers, expert patients, and informatics researchers. In fact, according to the mHI, there were about 300 attendees - not too bad for a first shot! Note: A second conference is planned for September 8-9 in San Diego (perhaps they'll provide an option for joining remotely?)
One of the biggest take-home messages I got from the conference is that smart phone technologies won't necessarily solve problems for patients who won't or can't use them (e.g., geriatric patients who may not be able to see small lettering). Usability and design issues again rear their heads in healthcare. We need to attack these issues as a "net", tackling many simultaneously so that when convergence occurs, quality improvement is what emerges.
I also wanted to mention that it was especially interesting to see Adam Bosworth, formerly of Google, present on his new venture Keas, which has the following laudable mission:
To help you understand what your health data means and how you can use it to be as healthy as possible.
Keas is in Beta right now - check it out! (And consider this question: How might healthcare change if the act of interpreting results of diagnostic tests and deciding next steps in treatment is done by a company like Keas?)
e-Patient Infiltrates Medical Professional Assessment Organization
by Amber Montanano
On January 11, we had a guest come in and shake things up a bit here. Jen McCabe Gorman gave a really engaging talk (which can be found here if you’ve got an hour to kill and feel like you could use some stimulation) about medicine, social media, and how the two can be mashed together to help you become a participant in your care as opposed to simply the object of your doctor’s care.
We had a record turnout for her morning session – literally, I think we set a record for attendance! – and then she took the rest of her day to brainstorm with smaller groups of us about topics like patient safety and communication skills (See inset pictures of the white boards... it's okay if you don't understand them. I don't think I do anymore, either. But while she was drawing them, they really made sense!). It was really interesting to see the crowd really start trying to see things from a different perspective, that of the "expert patient" or e-Patient. Even a youngster like me (almost 3 years here which is a drop in the bucket for some folks) has been indoctrinated into thinking that an “expert" must have a bunch of letters after his or her name and run a medical school or a hospital. Jen’s perspective was, in a word used by many folks at the presentation, refreshing!
And now for a non-solicited plug: You should really follow Jen on twitter for awesome scouting tidbits, and get involved in her #getupandmove initiative. It’s a way to challenge your friends to improve their health by making microchoices about their activities. Also, you should check Jen out on LinkedIn to see the many projects she has and is working on currently.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll look at Jen’s profile and think, “She’s just about the same age as me… what the heck have I been doing with my life?!” Yeah. She’s that awesome. And productive. And hopefully a collaborator for many moons to come!
Relatedly, there are now hundreds of hospitals who are finally "getting it" as far as utilizing social media tools to create better strategies for caring for their patients. See if your local hospital is on the list!
20 people who make healthcare better
by Kathleen Rose
I followed a link in a tweet today to an article in Health Leaders Media that put the spotlight on 20 people who make healthcare better. I'm not sure if the profiles are in any particular order, but I was pleased to note that three of the first four on the list were familiar names--Atul Gawande, Dave deBronkart, and Daniel Sands, MD. Full of confidence in my ability to identify and pursue the right "people in motion," I scanned the remaining names on the list and did not recognize any of them. The good news is that there are 17 more interesting people I plan to learn about.
I first heard about Atul Gawande via a guest post on this blog entitled Moral Hazards 'r Us where the author references Gawande's New Yorker article The Cost Conundrum, "...a brilliant piece because it shines a light in so many directions." Give it a read, if you haven't already.
After stalking @epatientdave via Twitter and his blog, I finally had the pleasure of hearing him speak at a conference in Toronto--Medicine 2.0; I wrote about it in a previous post. The Health Leaders article describes Dave as "...the quintessential engaged patient consumer the likes of whom—depending on your viewpoint—is either an anomaly or an inevitability." After meeting Dave recently at a the ePatient Connections Conference here in Philly, I continue to stalk him to keep up with his efforts to enable others to partner with their healthcare providers. Get to know him, he's quite a guy!
As a biproduct of my stalking Dave, I learned about Danny Sands, engaging physician and one of the key reasons Dave is able to actively partner in his own medical care and promote participatory medicine. Danny is assistant clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and senior medical informatics director for Cisco Systems. Check out the Health Leaders Media article to learn more about Danny and the others.
I know I’m preaching to the choir.
by Amber Montanano
e-Patients are getting more and more press lately. This morning I heard some people on the radio talking about how folks are using the internet for support and information. They even dropped the Patients Like Me name. What surprises me more than anything is that it's taking so long to get the medical community to pay attention to the social media explosion.
Medicine 2.0 – A truly engaging conference
by Kathleen Rose
When I scout “medical conferences,” I attend sessions, scribble notes, and retreat to my room in complete control of the television remote (a feat almost never achieved at home). The “take home” is usually an update on the latest techno-medical snippets for colleagues interested in the future of medical education and assessment.
Medicine 2.0 was a unique experience for me. Was it something about the size of the conference? The sense of community among participants and speakers? The constant buzz generated from the concurrent sessions? I’m not quite sure when it happened, but I became a participant rather than a spectator, and for the first time enjoyed a relationship with fellow conference attendees, even if it was via Twitter. I experienced first hand the impact of social media (see my previous post). I did stop short of fraternizing on the dinner cruise—not quite ready to relinquish the remote control.
During his opening statements, conference chair Gunther Eysenbach clarified the 1.0/2.0 thing.
- Medicine 1.0 – what a mess it is today
- Medicine 2.0 – what it could and should be
The keynote Gimme My Damn Data, given by cancer survivor and participatory medicine champion, Dave DeBronkart (aka e-Patient Dave), was thought provoking and quite moving at times. Take home points for me included
- Keep an eye on the movement toward decentralized medical care – how technology changes industry; the general hospital model is not sustainable
- It’s a human right to have your health data – your life may depend on it
- Peer controlled study data is not useful (woefully out of date) for the newly diagnosed
- Physicians and patients as partners, makes for optimal medical care
The first panel discussion (Jen McCabe, Saad Alaam, Chia Hwu, Robert Fraser) responded to the challenges of
- How to build confidence in social media
- How to affect institutions with power
- Vulnerability of putting yourself out there in online health care situations
Jen was as spunky as I expected, and during a later session had the audience shouting out micro choices we regretted and tweeting #getupandmove.
Reviewing the proceedings from the 2008 conference, it was obvious that there was a shift in the focus for 2009. The majority of the sessions last year seemed to focus on tools and technologies, with this year focusing on the trends and movements around the social and participatory nature of Medicine 2.0. I hope to follow up on connections with interesting “people in motion” and some of the resources I learned about that might facilitate medical education and/or the practice of medicine in the future.
I attended a number of interesting sessions and more detailed information about each session can be found on the Medicine 2.0 Official Blog.
- Learning in a Virtual World: Using Second Life for Medical Education
- What do residents really want? The Stanford Ether Project
- Social Healthcare Networks: Connecting Patients and Clinicians
- Enabling Semantic Health Apps: The MEDgle Clinical Decision Support Service API
- Apomediationand Women’s Choices of Birth Place and Attendants
- Improving Patient-Physician Communication about Internet Use
- Twitt-ER: Using Twitter in the ER for Dispatch, Order Communication, Patient Alerts, and Progress Reports
- Solas a Virtual Community for Children with Cancer
- Facebook: Awareness-raising, Fundraising and Support for People Affected by Breast Cancer
- ScanGrants: Reaching out to Researchers in the Health Sciences www.scangrants.com
- Bikmas 2.0: A Biomedical Knowledge Management Antenna System
- OrphanData.org: Enabling Transdisciplinary Scientific Collaboration Using Web 2.0
- Implementing Participatory Medicine Strategies and Exploring the Evolution of Choice/Control Aware Care
Scouting Themes
Research
- Content analysis of patient complaints
- Changing physicians' competence and performance: Finding the balance between the individual and the organization
- Individual Differences and the Development of Perceived Control
Bookmarks
- Pre-Grade Your Paper!
- Doctor Leads Quest for Safer Ways to Care for Patients - NYT Interview with Dr. Peter J. Pronovost
- Popular Science puts its archives online for free - awesome!
- amednews: National Practitioner Data Bank expanded beyond physicians to other healthcare professionals
- Bloggasm » New study shows some correlation between free ebooks and higher print sales