Health 2.0 Conference Recap
eMids' CEO Saurabh Sinha takes a first look at Health 2.0
Last week, I attended the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Its audience, comprised of leaders in both technology and the provider community gave me the perception that is Health 2.0...next-generation concepts of healthcare. The program discussed emerging models of online care (American Well, Myca etc.) i.e. clinical groupware, Adoption of Health 2.0 platforms by physicians, Payers Health 2.0 strategy, PHR platforms (HealthVault, Google Health & WebMD) i.e. Consumer Aggregators and Value of data from user generated healthcare content. Several products exhibited at the conference and a few did deep dives and new launches.
The maturity curve of healthcare or "Health 2.0" is seen to go from:
- Users generating healthcare content to...
- Users connecting to providers to...
- Partnerships that reform care delivery to finally...
- Data driving decisions and discovery...
The Health 2.0 conference had products that spanned across this spectrum. Most products were either B2C or B2B2C business models. Conference programs recap were the following:
- The conference began with an interesting key note by Aneesh Chopra (CTO, US Government) emphasizing the need to decouple and ‘liberate’ data for it to be useful while protecting privacy of patients. His office’s main objective is to drive innovation to solve legacy problems.
- The use of online care is evolving, so is its business. Both American Well and Myca did deep dives and approach online care from different perspectives. The concept of using online tools to schedule and conduct follow up appointments has value. Not only do patients feel the convenience, such platforms enable physician-to-specialist interaction online as well which facilitates better primary care. Unlike patient-doctor relationship that is dictated by state boundaries, doctor-to-doctor consultation has no such boundaries and therefore online collaboration tools unlock the tremendous potential of nearly a million doctor network within U.S.A.
- There were several physicians in attendance and some took stage to show how Health 2.0 tools were changing their approach to practicing. Usage varied from some using online communication tools like Skype to some blogging for patients etc.
- Cigna, Regence BCBS, State of Minn. and Kaiser Permanente participated in discussing Payers role in Health 2.0. Their involvement varies e.g. Cigna has partnered Quicken Health Group to offer consumers an easy way to manage healthcare finances.
- The discussion on PHR/Consumer Aggregators was very interesting. WebMD clearly has a strong brand to back its PHR efforts whereas HealthVault and Google Health are attempting to serve as backbones to all healthcare information flow. There was an emphasis to guide the user along the online "value chain" (i.e. start with smaller and value tasks such as scheduling and then gradually as consumer habit forms, move to more intensive operations like maintaining health records online). Analogies mirrored what happened with the e-commerce and banking world, we began by simply viewing statements online to entering basic data to today doing billions of transactions online. Consumers need to be nudged along through a similar journey in healthcare. The opinion was that a rapid change in behavior is being expected from the consumers today which is not feasible.
- Some "very" Health 2.0 websites shown – www.lifemojo.com, www.livestrong.com, www.thecarrot.com , www.happy-neuron.com
A snapshot of the lessons learned:
How do we make the healthcare industry make 'more' affordable 'for less'? Clearly, the following needs to occur:
- Reduce cost of care
- Reduce cost of insurance
Reduce cost of care:
1. Move towards outcome driven care models adopting best practices across all care providers
2. Reduce negligence and administrative costs – adoption of IT and demonstration 'meaningful use'. Increased use of IT prevents errors and reduce admin cost
3. Tort reform- behavior of care providers have become, following 'care instinct' to following 'legally right instinct'
Reduce cost of insurance:
1. Allow for more competition
- Via government-sponsored payer
- Via dissolving state boundaries
- Via setting up healthcare cooperatives
2. Increase volumes – making health insurance mandatory for all citizens is an option
The second section to this message is the technological implications which can drive the above mentioned information. Interoperability – the ability to integrate applications from disparate sources will be key to the success of the next generation of health care applications. Imagine the outcome of the applications that provide high quality services and can integrate well are poised to take collaborate with others that can drive significant changes in behavior.
Evolution of patient /doctor behavior, not revolution – healthcare industry has so much to adopt from other industries like ecommerce and banking which has transformed the way of living.
Last but not least – Innovation. There is an extraordinary amount of innovation happening in the healthcare industry, where people have started developing applications of their own, research and development towards medicine and mush more.
In conclusion, an underlying principle across all Health 2.0 applications needs to be openness and interoperability. Business models are evolving and user behavior can only be predicted and so applications that are intuitive and easy to integrate with will succeed in the long-term as some business models succeed more than others.
For additional information on how eMids can help you, please email us at sales@emids.com, or visit: www.emids.com.
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