New Media in Healthcare
From Baruchnewmedia
Contents |
Introduction
Thanks to the advances of new media and other technologies, now patients and doctors can obtain and give faster and more accurate care. If you work or plan to become part of the Healthcare Industry take a look at the beginning of a world of information and updates on the media that moves this industry. However you should be warned that while this information can be obtained faster it isn't always accurate. Health care professionals should always be aware of the potential risk using new media in Health Care.
The "Web MD"
Web MD
WebMD has created an organization that we believe fulfills the promise of health information on the Internet. We provide credible information, supportive communities, and in-depth reference material about health subjects that matter to you. We are a source for original and timely health information as well as material from well known content providers.
The WebMD content staff blends award-winning expertise in journalism, content creation, community services, expert commentary, and medical review to give our users a variety of ways to find what they are looking for.
And that, we believe, requires dedicated, full-time staff professionals with state-of-the-art expertise in:
Health news for the public Creating and maintaining up-to-date medical reference content databases Medical imagery, graphics, and animation Communities Live web events User experience Interactive tools Our board-certified physicians, award-winning journalists, and trained community moderators are solely dedicated to your daily information experience on WebMD. Our content staff includes individuals who hold advanced degrees in journalism, medical illustration, health communications, clinical informatics, nursing, and medicine.
Most of us at WebMD Health have spent our entire careers dedicated to helping people find the health and medical information, support, and services they need -- even before there was an Internet! We are dedicated to providing quality health information and to upholding the integrity of our editorial process.
As serious as we are about credibility, we also know that at times, health information can and should be engaging, exciting, and entertaining.
We pride ourselves in knowing our audience's needs and delivering the most appropriate experience. We know that there is a difference between using a health site for health "performance" issues (e.g., flat abs) vs. health research needs (e.g., "What is type 2 diabetes?") vs. community support (e.g., "Does anyone else feel like me?") vs. e-commerce. Our mission is to fulfill all these needs in the most appropriate ways possible. We are committed to improving our site. We will continue to publish even more content, communities, and services to help make your life better, to help you find your way when faced with healthcare decisions, and to help you feel better about the health of you and your family.
Source: http://www.webmd.com/about-webmd-policies/about-what-we-do-for-our-users
This blog discusses relevant aspects of the proposed New Health Care Bill. Link: http://minus30.ology.com/
Weight Loss and New Media
Lose weight without stepping out
Weight Watchers online site[1] can help you achieve your goal to a healthy living in the comfort of home. Members have access to different tools that help track their progress, get healthy recipes and be part of a friendly and supporting community who they can share their success stories with. Follow the link below for more information.
Social Networking in Healthcare
Social networking comes to health care Friday, December 29, 2006 By Laura Landro, The Wall Street Journal
At Dailystrength.org, patients and caregivers dealing with hundreds of issues, including asthma, celiac disease and depression, can join a support community, start a wellness journal, share advice and recommend doctors, link to news stories and Web sites with disease information, and even send other members a virtual hug.
The social-networking revolution is coming to health care, at the same time that new Internet technologies and software programs are making it easier than ever for consumers to find timely, personalized health information online. Patients who once connected mainly through email discussion groups and chat rooms are building more sophisticated virtual communities that enable them to share information about treatment and coping and build a personal network of friends. At the same time, traditional Web sites that once offered cumbersome pages of static data are developing blogs, podcasts, and customized search engines to deliver the most relevant and timely information on health topics.
The same technologies are making it possible for advocacy groups, government agencies and health-care providers to update consumers on relevant health news and deliver personalized health-awareness messages, reminders and alerts to email accounts, wireless devices and mobile phones. Online collaborations known as wikis, which let different users jointly work on Web-based information such as photo albums and contact lists, are developing to help communities plan for public-health emergencies, such as fluwikie.com, a flu-pandemic planning site. Mainstream advocacy groups and government agencies are offering their own specialized health-information "feeds" to consumers, and even experimenting with three-dimensional online computer worlds that use surrogates known as avatars to let visitors interact.
Both the American Cancer Society (cancer.org) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC.gov), for example, have been experimenting with virtual computer worlds such as the popular three-dimensional site Second Life (secondlife.com) to test whether so-called social media can help spread the word about such issues as nutrition awareness, cancer screening, and infectious-disease prevention. "We're trying to leverage social networking for health promotion," says Adam Pellegrini, director of online strategy for the cancer society. "Everything is based on communities now."
The CDC has held some virtual health fairs on the Second Life Web site where visitors can learn about subjects like pandemic flu resources. Though Second Life, which resembles a videogame, requires special software to participate and isn't easily available to consumers without high-speed Internet access, the fast growing virtual community offers an alternative to more traditional methods for educating large numbers of people quickly about new treatments or informing them about health dangers such as the recent E. coli outbreak -- especially teens who might not visit a government site like CDC.gov.
The American Cancer Society, which plans to open a virtual office on Second Life, used the site this year to help raise $40,000 for its annual Relay for Life, which attracts millions of participants in local communities who walk, donate or volunteer in an overnight event. The cancer group has also launched a social-networking site of its own for the effort (relayforlife.org), and next year plans to launch social-networking sites focusing on tobacco, prevention and volunteerism.
The cancer society, which still wants any information on prevention and treatment to be vetted by experts, next year plans to launch new features such as a "My ACS" portal that allow users to customize their information searches. It is also working on a Health Reminder Assistant that will send health information and guidance via phone, instant messaging and email; an interactive "Great American Health Suite" that will focus on prevention; and desktop "widgets" that can help users find cancer information quickly and interact with other patients.
The rise in social networking and health-care blogging has sparked a nascent movement to set standards and guidelines for "open media" in health care. At a recent health-care blogging summit, Dmitriy Kruglyak, publisher of the Medical Blog Network, which hosts medical blogs, called for guidelines that include conflicts-of-interest disclosure and privacy protection.
The efforts come as more consumers are looking for health information online again after three years of little growth, according to Harris Interactive. Use of the Internet to search for health-related information by online U.S. adults increased to 80 percent in July from 72 percent in a year-earlier survey, and the total number of adults who have ever searched for health information online rose 16 percent to 136 million.
But new trends on the Web are taking the search for health information and support "to a whole new level," says Doug Hirsch, the founder of DailyStrength.org. Mr. Hirsch, who had stints building community products such as message boards and chat groups for Yahoo and later worked for Facebook, says that unlike email discussion groups, where users post messages for anyone to read and there is little ability to filter out spam or abusive comments, the social-networking sites make it possible for users to branch into different conversations and create special relationships.
Laurel Simmons, a project director at the nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a leukemia survivor who started one of the first email discussion groups for the Association of Cancer Online Resources (acor.org), says it is still too early to tell whether health social-networking sites will flourish, since they will depend on how vigilant members are about keeping them going. Social-networking sites "make the space available and wait for champions to emerge," she notes. "It is so simple to create your own site these days that the people with the passion may be more interested in starting their own site rather than using the space made available for them at sites like DailyStrength."
While some sites don't offer all the bells and whistles of full-blown social networking sites, they are taking advantage of the phenomenon to reach out to special audiences. The Wellness Community, a nonprofit group that provides free support and education to cancer patients and families, launched a Web site, grouploop.org earlier this year to help teens with cancer connect in a private, safe environment. The group says it has reached more than 15 percent of the approximately 50,000 teen cancer survivors in the U.S., and is also connecting teens in nine other countries. In addition to weekly scheduled support groups moderated by a professional, teens can log in at any time of day to post or read messages in a password-protected site. A comprehensive search engine allows users to search for other teens with cancer on such criteria as age, location, or diagnosis.
Eighteen-year-old Kaitlin Mazik, who is undergoing treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, learned of Group Loop from a poster at her doctor's office, and found that many of the teens were already used to connecting online through social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.com. "I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't too downhearted and pessimistic -- we are allowed to have fun and even joke about things, like the special treatment you get when you have cancer," she says.
But the teens also talk about more serious issues, like how their identity has changed as a result of cancer and their anxiety about the future. Though she has never met any of her new friends in person, she says, "we are all going through something similar, and it really is a community."
Retrieved from "http://baruchnewmedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Social_Networking_in_Healthcare"
Virtual Worlds in healthcare
IBM Opens Healthcare Island in Second Life To show off a proposed overhaul for the healthcare infrastructure, IBM announced Virtual Healthcare Island in Second Life yesterday. Built by IBM India, the island demos the Health Information Exchange (HIE) architecture, letting users create a Personal Health Record in a patient's home, push that into an array of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems, and follow the health record through the system, interacting across a radiology lab, pharmacy, emergency room, and clinic. “We are pleased to offer our IBM Virtual Health Island as a tool for our healthcare customers and our worldwide sales force. The island allows each healthcare stakeholder to envision how the total system can be affected by intercession at each juncture of the healthcare delivery process,” said Dan Pelino, General Manager, IBM Global Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry. “We believe that the use of our new virtual world provides an important, next-generation Internet-based resource to show how standards; business planning; the use of a secured, extensible and expandable architecture; HIE interoperability; and data use for healthcare analytics, quality, wellness and disease management are all helping to transform our industry. “
IBM Opens New 3D Virtual Healthcare Island on Second Life
Interactive environment displays IBM’s vision for consumer-driven healthcare
ORLANDO, FL - 24 Feb 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) debuted at HIMSS®08 its newest island in Second Life: IBM Virtual Healthcare Island. The island is a unique, three-dimensional representation of the challenges facing today’s healthcare industry and the role information technology will play in transforming global healthcare-delivery to meet patient needs. The island supports the strategic healthcare vision that IBM released in October 2006, entitled, Healthcare 2015: Win-Win or Lose-Lose, A Portrait and a Path to Successful Transformation. The paper paints a picture of a Healthcare Industry in crisis – of health systems in the United States and many other countries that will become unsustainable by the year 2015. To avoid “lose-lose” scenarios in which global healthcare systems “hit the wall” and require immediate and forced restructuring, IBM calls for what it defines as a “win-win” option: new levels of accountability, tough decisions, hard work and focus on the consumer.
The IBM Virtual Healthcare Island is designed with a futuristic atmosphere and provides visitors with an interactive demonstration of IBM’s open-standards-based Health Information Exchange (HIE) architecture. Working with project leads in the U.S., the island was designed and built by an all-IBM-India team.
Starting from the patient’s home, they create their own Personal Health Records (PHRs) in a secure and private environment and watch as it is incorporated into an array of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems that can be used at various medical facilities. As they move from one island station to the next, they experience how the development of a totally integrated and interoperable longitudinal Electronic Health Record (EHR) is used within a highly secured network that allows access only by patient-authorized providers and family members.
Patient avatars arrive and are welcomed at the Central Park and then visit a Central Information Hub, where IBM’s view of the healthcare industry and the power of information technology to transform it are presented. An amphitheater on the Hub’s second floor provides an area that can support virtual meetings, complete with a large video screen and accompanying slide presentation on IBM’s HIE architecture and the positive impact that this technology can have in the transformation of the Healthcare Industry.
Visitors can then walk, fly or use transporters to visit the various island stations:
- The Patient’s Home: In the secure environment of a private home, patient avatars can initiate a PHR and populate it with their personal health characteristics and clinical history, accessed and downloaded from physician EMR data. They can also establish privacy and security preferences as well as health directives. The ground floor demonstrates secure messaging with providers and activates the initial PHR. Using a transporter to move upstairs, patients use home health devices to take weight, blood pressure and blood sugar readings in the privacy of a bedroom, further incorporating this information into the PHR, which is shown on presentation screens.
- The Laboratory: This stop offers laboratory and radiology suites to help avatars extend their understanding of the benefits of HIE. Here, patients can check in at a Patient Kiosk and have blood work and radiology tests performed. The use of EHRs – revealing only appropriate portions of the PHRs -- shows how consumers can also benefit through cost and time savings.
- The Clinic: Patient avatars transport or walk from the Lab to the Clinic, where a welcome from their primary-care physician awaits. A combination of scripting and information screens supports simulation of a patient exam, after which an electronic prescription is generated, and the continued development of the EHR is explained on nearby screens.
- The Pharmacy: Here, avatars can check in at a Patient Kiosk that simulates the verifying of drug information. They then receive their prescriptions and update their PHRs/EHRs with new medication data. The HIE architecture demonstrates how use of PHR/EHR technology can prevent consumers from purchasing medications that are contra-indicated given the medicines they presently require, as well as alerting them about potential drug-to-drug interactions. The PHR/EHR is again updated.
- The Hospital: In this futuristic, three story structure, avatars arrive for a scheduled visit with a specialist. Physicians’ offices, patient rooms and exam rooms are all simulated here.
- The Emergency Room: Avatars can chose to experience a virtual emergency by “touching” a specially scripted control. This engages a medical episode and a ride on a fast gurney directly into the private and secure emergency treatment area, where a special screen is programmed to reveal the full incorporation of the PHR to ensure proper treatment.
"We are pleased to offer our IBM Virtual Health Island as a tool for our healthcare customers and our worldwide sales force. The island allows each healthcare stakeholder to envision how the total system can be affected by intercession at each juncture of the healthcare delivery process,” said Dan Pelino, General Manager, IBM Global Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry. “We believe that the use of our new virtual world provides an important, next-generation Internet-based resource to show how standards; business planning; the use of a secured, extensible and expandable architecture; HIE interoperability; and data use for healthcare analytics, quality, wellness and disease management are all helping to transform our industry."
IBM’s Healthcare & Life Sciences (HCLS) Industry will continue to develop the new island in months to come. The island can perform as a virtually “always on” demonstration tool for IBM’s sales personnel. A video version of the island is also under production.
IBM believes in the significant promise of virtual-worlds technologies far beyond today's usage: the next evolutionary phase of the Internet. IBM is helping clients and partners to conduct business inside virtual worlds and to connect the virtual world with the real world through a richer, more immersive Web environment.
Second Life is a 3D online world created by Linden Lab, a company founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale, to create a revolutionary new form of shared 3D experience. Last October, IBM and Linden Lab announced their intent to jointly develop new technologies and methodologies based on open standards that will help advance the future of 3D virtual worlds.
Follow link below to access this site
Web Searches Help Fund Medical Research
According to the ePhilanthropy Foundation, online donations have skyrocketed, going from $250 million in 2000 to close to $7 billion in 2006. Some of the most interesting things and the ideas in e-philanthropy are being driven by young people. Facebook and MySpace have become hotbeds of charitable giving for healthcare organizations as have sites such as Kiva.org, SixDegrees.org, Change.org, DoSomething.org, and DonorsChoose.org. Ken Ramberg has created GoodSearch, a Yahoo powered search engine which donates 50% of its revenues to the charities. GoodSearch is another idea for fund-raising which is simple and give people at all income levels a tool for benefiting charity without spending a dime.
FSMA began the campaign about the GoodSearch in April, 2006 informing its supporters through email and newsletter requesting them to use the search engine. The organisation continues to remind its members and supporters to use GoodSearch in hopes of keeping its fundraising momentum going. FSMA will fund over $5 million in research every year and asks its supporters to use GoodSearch more often as every cent it raises can make a difference. GoodSearch is an Internet search engine with a simple concept and unique social mission. GoodSearch enables you to help fund any of hundreds of thousands of charities or schools through the simple act of searching the Internet.The company was founded by a brother and sister team who lost their mom to cancer and wanted to find an easy way for people to support their favorite causes and loved ones.
There are thousands of charities connected to cause in healthcare Here are just a few of the many success stories thus far:
ASPCA has earned $29,000, Children's Tumor Foundation has earned $3,700, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has earned $12,100 Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy has earned $5,100, Food Allergy & Anaplylaxis Network has earned $4,900, Invisible Children has earned $5,400, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has earned $10,700
GoodShop.com
GoodShop.com is a part of GoodSearch website, The GoodShop Online Shopping Mall Fundraiser is partner with different merchants like Gap, eBay, Macy's, Land's End, Sears, Target, etc. any click from the GoodShop.com website and then making a purchase at the partner website allows your favorite charity to earn money which is approximately 3% of the total purchase amount. GoodSearch sends each organization a check once a year in December for the funds earned through the prior 12 months. For example, a shopper made a $purchase for $432 at online shoe store Zappos.com, resulting in a $26 donation to the Berkshire Humane Society. Thousands of other purchases large and small have been made helping out different causes.
References
GoodSearch.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/charity-may-begin-at-home_b_115082.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/giving/11SOCIAL.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&sq=goodsearch&st=cse&scp=3 http://www.thonline.com/article.cfm?id=217805
The Controversies of New Media in Health Care
Visualize yourself walking into your doctor’s office and you overhear one of the patients telling your doctor, "Doctor I have cancer, you need to give me radiation treatment!" So the Doctor replies, “How do you know?" "Because I have all the symptoms, I looked it up online," so the patient says; when it really was just a cold. These misinterpretations are just the tip of the iceberg when dealing with New Media in Health Care, also referred to as Health 2.0 and /or Medicine 2.0. Four major tensions within the field of Health 2.0 are: the lack of a definition of Health 2.0, doctors concern over patient’s usage of Health 2.0, information inaccuracy and potential risk associated with Health 2.0, and issues of privacy and ownership. There is a lack of agreement if Health 2.0 really exists; for if you were to look up the definition of the term Health 2.0, you would come up with varies results. There is not one consistent definition of Health 2.0 but there are some that come really close. The example above illustrates the doctors concerns over Health 2.0 causing useless behavior in their patients. Such as not consulting your physician or consulting with them too late and coming to a wrong conclusion about your illness even if the information obtained online is accurate. Inaccurate online information has long been acknowledged as an expose to danger of Health 2.0. Though this risk may be low, due to the fact that most information is accurate and most of the false or misleading statements are rapidly corrected. Many of the practitioners and researchers remain skeptical only because the consequences for an inexperienced individual following the advice may be disastrous. Finally the final issue dealing with Health 2.0 is based on privacy and ownership. When using Health 2.0 privacy, ownership, ethical and legal issues arise, not only for patients but doctors as well.
Source:http://www.jmir.org/2008/3/e23/HTML
http://www.jmir.org/2008/3/e22/HTML
