Blogs

The Healthcare Information Systems Blog Has Moved!

Jeff O'Connor — Fri, 12 May 2006 23:26:00 GMT

The Healthcare Information Systems Blog has moved to the following URL:

http://healthcareinformationsystemsblog.blogspot.com.

Through email dialogue with Jeff Julian, I've been told that this site can stay active indefinitely if I wish. I'll be leaving it up for the foreseeable future to redirect other healthcare techies to its new location.

Thanks to everyone at Geekswithblogs who helped me get this little project off to such a good start!

University of Minnesota Unveils Online Healthcare Publications Portal

Jeff O'Connor — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 09:46:00 GMT

This has been a good week for healthcare in the media. First, Yahoo! launched Expert Blogs on Yahoo! Health, and now this:

MINNEAPOLIS - Newspaper and magazine health coverage will be reviewed online at a new Web site beginning Monday.

Access to the site and its findings, http://www.HealthNewsReview.org, is free and open to consumers. It was created by University of Minnesota journalism professor Gary Schwitzer, who fashioned the site after similar efforts in Australia and Canada.

"For consumers, we hope it will help them improve their critical thinking about claims in health care," said Schwitzer, who directs a graduate program in health care journalism.

[ more ]

It looks like I have another RSS feed to add to the old start page!

Expert Blogs on Yahoo! Health

Jeff O'Connor — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 23:44:00 GMT

Yahoo! has introduced Health Expert Blogs on Yahoo! Health. I'm not sure if this is part of the “social Web” model Yahoo! is gambling their future on, a symptom of what happens when 1 out of 5 Americans has no health insurance, or merely an outgrowth of the blogging phenomenon. Whatever the company's motivation, Yahoo! has really delivered.

There are fourteen blogs covering twelve topics:

Aging & Caregiving
Asthma & Allergies
Breast Cancer
Child & Family Health
Cholesterol & Heart Disease
Depression & Anxiety
Diabetes and Living With Diabetes
Nutrition & Weight Loss
Pregnancy
Sex & Relationships and Sexual Health
Sports Medicine & Exercise
Yoga

Some of the bloggers are “powered by” very prestigious organizations and institutions. Nutrition & Weight Loss, for example, is provided by Johns Hopkins Medicine. Others, like Sex & Relationships are associated with third-party Web sites.

Yahoo! Health has, in my opinion, always been better than its counterpart at MSN, and the addition of expert blogs has only increased its lead. Yahoo! Health has had discussion boards and has been integrated with Yahoo! Groups for a while now; message boards are the most recent addition to MSN Health & Fitness and the site's health experts don't interact with them. Oddly enough they don't blog either; they selectively respond to email instead (the “Ann Landers” model).

New Media for Doctors and Healthcare Geeks - The Medical Blog Network

Jeff O'Connor — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 05:46:00 GMT

I was very excited to find Healthvoices.com: The Medical Blog Network this morning through Technorati (I couldn't sleep and it was either browse Technorati or play Civ IV for the umpteenth time). As I've alluded to in previous posts, the healthcare field can be a lonely place for a geek because so few people in it understand what it is their IT and IS support are trying to tell them most of the time.

(In my situation I am doubly-damned because my primary customers are the Sales and Marketing department and, to a lesser extent, the Planning and Marketing Support group. Although they're my favorite people within my company to work with, well, suffice it to say that from a geek's perspective there's a reason those organizations' initials are S&M and PMS.)

At any rate, it's nice to see that there's an on-line community and blog aggregator for members of the medical profession. I'm thrilled that there are doctors, nurses, and other folks who are passionate about the health and wellbeing of others who understand the sea change that Web 2.0 and the social software paradigm is unleashing on their vocation.

From their site:

HealthVoices.com is the premier medical blog network and aggregator, that organizes user-generated medical content by easy-to-find categories. Unprecedented consumer access to "unvarnished" medical information created from the first-hand experience of medical consumers and professionals encourages greater trust and confidence in their decisions. The service provides independent medical professionals with unmatched opportunity to build reputation, trust and referral base online.

[ more ]

Now if I can only someone at work outside of the IS Department to get as enthusiastic about this as I am...

Banging the Blogging Drum - Again

Jeff O'Connor — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 22:17:00 GMT

Tomorrow I will put a one-page summary of the pros, cons, and who's who of corporate blogging along with a multi-point plan into the titular basket at the Basket of Ideas breakfast the healthcare organization I work for puts on every quarter.

This will be my latest tactical maneauver in a two-year battle to get the word “blog” on the radar of my company's CEO. My previous efforts have largely involved me playing the role of Cyrano to the Sales and Marketing management's Christian. Unfortunately Christian, having no idea of what I was talking about, never uttered my words to Roxane.

Can you tell that I wasn't a computer science major?

The southeast Michigan market for healthcare is one of the most competitive and difficult in the nation right now. Plagued by layoffs and generally poor corporate performance among its subscriber base, I believe that my organization needs a more effective communications strategy than it is currently employing. Not that what we have right now is bad; it isn't. The problem is that our message doesn't stand out. I believe a corporate blogging strategy will help change that.

Healthcare is a deeply personal issue as it touches on two of the most intimate and important areas of a person's private life: their health and their wallet. Yet, as the article I referenced in my previous post illustrates, the healthcare industry as a whole is very impersonal in its interactions with the majority of the people who consume its products and utilize its services.

It's true that outside of the providers themselves, there's only so much that can be done in the way of direct, personal contact with your customers. My organization rightly prides itself on the services it provides to patients with chronic health problems and the communication channels it maintains (largely through printed materials) with broad categories of our subscriber base (women, seniors, etc.). The strength of these programs lies in their ability to convey a great deal of information on relatively narrow topics to discreet segments of our customer base; their weakness lies in the converse. Simply put, they are of little or no interest or value to the majority of the people we service. Yet they are also comparatively expensive programs to maintain.

Especially in light of current economic conditions in my state, I am baffled by the failure of my organization and its competitors to utilize such a cheap and effective communications medium. Under the best of circumstances, people like assurances that their money is being well spent. Under difficult circumstances they demand it. What better way for a CEO to communicate his or her vision, demonstrate empathy and understanding of consumers' needs, and present proof that they're getting their money's worth than through a blog?

In the healthcare industry new products and services don't mean a thing unless they're delivered in context. So you're rolling out Consumer Driven Health Plans (CDHPs). So what? What does that mean to me, the consumer? Why is it a good thing? How does it help me better allocate my healthcare dollars? Without going into my own views on the topic, rest assured that there are a lot of opinions on CDHPs to be found on the Web, much of which appear to answer these questions in the negative. Advocates of CDHPs need every advantage at their disposal to counter these negative reviews and clearly articulate their view of the product and its benefits.

Another advantage that early adopters in the corporate blogosphere have is that blogs are a self-promoting medium and they generate their own buzz. You heard it here first: the initial wave of healthcare CEOs who start blogging about their organization and the goods and services it provides are all but guaranteed additional, positive media coverage while the johnny-come-lately bloggers will have to settle for being also-rans. Love them or hate them, believe them or not, the early adopters have an advantage that no amount of money can buy late in the game.

Have No Fear Of The Blogosphere

Jeff O'Connor — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 08:17:00 GMT

Shahid Shah, known to some as the Healthcare IT Guy, did a “guest spot” over at Envisioning 2.0, a blog about healthcare marketing. For me, his article enetitled Pharma: Have No Fear of the Blogosphere is the perfect storm of blog entries, since I also work in the healthcare industry as an information systems specialist and my primary customer is the Sales and Marketing group.

Mr. Shah's article discusses the lost opportunities and missed potential that the dearth of blogs in the pharmaceutical industry is allowing to exist. However, you can easily swap “pharamceutical company” out and replace it “hospital”, “managed care plan”, “doctor's office”, etc. Here are a couple of excerpts:

If you’re not creating corporate blogs, it’s due to a lack of vision and innovation and perhaps a lack of respect of your customers...

[D]on’t think that just because you’re not blogging about your own products that nobody else is. Nature abhors a vacuum but so does the blogging community. Third parties are already talking about your drugs and company in their own blogs and forums.

It's definitely worth reading, even if you're not particularly interested in healthcare.

Health Care Blog Law

Jeff O'Connor — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 07:50:00 GMT

Bob Coffield blogs his “Comments and Thoughts on Health Care Legal Issues, HIPAA Privacy & Security, Technology and Other Legal Odds and Ends” at Health Care Blog Law.

I'm especially interested in this blog because Mr. Coffield is an attorney, and I've recently begun the application and testing process for law school myself. It's good to know that lawyers can be geeks (I mean that in the best possible way if you're reading this Mr. Coffield, so please don't sue!).

Now the question is: can a geek become a lawyer?