Singing the Praises of (the Fight Against) Glaucoma. Literally. I'm Not Kidding.

Jeff O'Connor — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 16:38:00 GMT

Speaking of international healthcare organizations, the Assocation of International Glaucoma Societies Web site sings, dances, and makes gratuitous use of frames.

Seriously.

Check it out here: http://www.globalaigs.org/

In addition to moving bobbleheads of (presumably) well-known researches who study and treat the disease, the site features someone who sounds an awful lot like the person who did the opening score for the original Star Trek theme singing an opera about fighting glaucoma.

No, I am not making this up. Here are the words, and here's a link to the actual audio file:

Glaucoma, Glaucoma, Glaucoma
Constricting vision slowly
Halted by progress of science
Vision of a world united
Beyond all science knowing!

Someone please join a club and beat their Webmaster over the head with it.

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.