Interview with Denise Silber at Stanford Medicine X #medx #hcsmeu #doctors20

Thank you Larry Chu and team for the lovely video. The interview is about healthcare social media, the empowered patient, the physician, Europe, the US...

 

Hospital Use of Social Media in Europe

This is an old infographic, by internet standards, dating from May 2012 and based on a study done in the Netherlands regarding hospital use of social media in Europe. A similar study is  done in the US, noting state by state, which hospitals are active on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, FourSquare,.... The original author stopped doing the study when the use became very frequent and passed it on for continuation to the Mayo Clinic Social Media Center.

We aren't there yet in Europe, but there is activity!

 

Health Care Social Media: Hospitals in Europe Embrace Social Media infographic

Meet Jorge Juan Fernandez Garcia, Hospital San Juan de Dios, Barcelona, at Doctors 2.0 & You.

 Jorge Juan Fernandez Garcia, from the Liquid Hospital in Barcelona, has been very active at Doctors 2.0 & You as a speaker and advisor.  He was  interviewed by Muriel Londres, last spring  during the conference to talk about his hospital, eHealth, healthcare social media, patients and professionals. Thank you Jorge and Muriel.

 

Doctors, Social Media, Conflict of Interest: which doesn't belong? #doctors20

Berman Bioethics Institute, at  Johns Hopkins has just published a new article with a striking title, Physicians, social media, and conflicts of interest. If we need to eliminate the piece that doesn't fit, it would have to be conflict of interest.

The author suggests that social media cannot function without the elimination of conflict of interest, because, in his opinion, Americans are already wary of online doctors. The wariness stems from the news of fraudulent studies published by doctors in the US, and growing information regarding conflicts of interest. The use of pseudonyms, while fortunately not universal, is a hindrance to the establishment of trust with doctors online. Additionally, the author reminds us that the brevity of web articles and microblogging make it practically impossible to ensure that specific conflict of interest information reaches readers.

Although the good news is that various professional organizations in the US, have published guidelines for social media, Johns Hopkins notes that these guidelines are ineffective. They may be voluntary or not even mention conflict of interest.

We can only concur. Consumers must know the real identity of physicians they contact online and whether they have conflicts of interest...ie the Dollars for Docs initiative. The question remains of course, to define "conflicts of interest."...Isn't "fee for service" a conflict of interest in itself.

Copenhagen eHealthWeek Mobile Health Symposium May 7: will we see you there before Doctors 2.0 & You Paris?

The title is almost longer than the post. I'll soon be in Copenhagen, hosting a panel on Smartphone Apps I've put together with Jorge Juan Fernandez Garcia (San Juan Dios Hospital) and David Doherty (3GDoctor) from Ireland. So we'll present a European overview of smartphone apps,  the hospital perspective and the use of smartphones for distance consultation between a patient and a physician around an electronic health record. Looking forward to seeing the eHealth crowd at the mHealth symposium.

(left: Denise and David at a recent conference in Spain) 

Paris, international capital of web 2.0 & social media in Health, May 23-24, 2012

Basil Strategies announces the 2nd edition of Doctors 2.0^_TM & You, the conference (Paris, May 23-24, 2012). This year will focus on emerging trends in Health Care Social Media Communities, Tools, and Apps in Europe, the Americas and Asia

Paris, France, December 9, 2011 - Paris France will be the world capital for Web 2.0 and Social Media in Health and Medicine, when the 2nd edition of Doctors 2.0^TM and You convenes on May 23-24, 2012, at the International Residence situated in the elegant Cité Universitaire campus. Doctors 2.0^TM & You will shed light on strategic issues for all of Health Care. The exciting program will examine: how doctors and other professionals, patients, hospitals, government, pharma, and payers use Social Media, mobile apps, and Web 2.0 tools to connect and the best practices that emerge for each.

One of the unique features of Doctors 2.0 & You is that

2.6 Social Media Accounts per Engaged US Hospital #hcsm #hcsmeu

A good number of hospital social media and communications people follow "Found in Cache," whose author Ed Bennett (@edbennett on Twitter) is a health care social media blogger who has been painstakingly following hospital use of social media on major platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs. Thank you Ed! I also like your pedagogy in response to those asking about social media's ROI:"What is the ROI of my red plaid pants?" asks Ed,"since I can't go to work without pants." Anyway, regarding statistics, I decided to make a numbers chart out of Ed Bennett's latest bar charts, and play with the figures, in order to provide my analysis.

 

1) Facebook has clearly affirmed its lead in 2011, with Twitter coming in second and YouTube third. So, if a hospital is only planning on managing one account, Facebook would seem to be the one to choose at present.

2) If YouTube is lagging to Twitter, the practical difficulty of producing videos versus producing tweets is undoubtedly the reason here.

3) LinkedIn is gaining popularity quickly and at 566 could overtake YouTube's 575 in 2012, despite the fact that YouTube is third most popular site in the world.

4) The increase in number of hospitals adopting social media is slowing, from 200% to 140%...Hmmm, will end 2012 see only 15 or 1600 hospitals? Could be.

5) And finally, for the past two years running hospitals are averaging 2.6 accounts each, Facebook and Twitter, being the most frequent couple.

 

Steve Jobs: Larger than Life, Best-Seller in Death. Let's talk medical choices.

As you can see on the left, Steve Jobs was present with us at Doctors 2.0 & You 2011, in a larger-than-life image, with an amazing caption : "Apple announces the iPad, changes the course of history." Click to enlarge the photo even more!

The iPad taught us that the killer app  for physicians is in fact a killer device: doctors, hospitals, med schools have snapped them up as never before--hopefully ending some of the persistent skepticism around professionals and computers. But, Steve Jobs' legacy will not be limited to technology. It will be about the man, the man with a will to do things on a big scale, perfectly, a will to change not only IT but music as well and maybe other fields had he lived on.  I, like many if not most of you, knew very little about the personal experiences in his early years that helped shape him into the person he would become and certainly little to nothing about his medical choices during the final chapter of his life.

Steve Jobs' authorized biography will be launched on October 24th, 2011, in the US. The book is above all Steve Job's legacy to his family, his desire to tell them his innermost thoughts in a structured way. But there is every reason to believe that the biography will be a runaway best-seller for perhaps millions around the world who will be interested in knowing more about this visionary --  which is why I want to focus here on the medical side as did the New York Times in an article entitled "Jobs tried exotic treatments to combat cancer, book says."

We learn through this article two things of major importance. Steve Jobs first learned of his pancreatic cancer in October, 2003 and refused to accept surgery and medical therapy for around nine months,  

preferring "fruit juices, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments — some of which he found on the Internet — and that infuriated and distressed his family, friends and physicians".

"When he did take the path of surgery and science, Mr. Jobs did so with passion and curiosity, sparing no expense, pushing the frontiers of new treatments (DNA sequencing to determine personalized treatments). According to Mr. Isaacson, once Mr. Jobs decided on the surgery and medical science, he became an expert — studying, guiding and deciding on each treatment."

So, some questions :

A Fresh Look at the Cost of HealthCare #CHAM2011

 A new look at the cost of Health Care is promised at the 3rd edition of Prof. Vallancien's conference CHAM, convention on health analysis and management taking place on Sept 30 - Oct 1, 2011 in Chamonix.  Get the program here.

You'll be able to attend virtually, by live streaming. It will be the occasion to meet up with a concentration of French health economists and some international guests.

I'll be there, interviewing Joseph White of Case Western Reserve University on an exciting question: is it possible to improve population health? You think it's a given that public health is everyone's hero. Maybe, maybe not.

Yes, favorable internet evaluations be purchased.

While internet rating sites for physicians in the US have been around for a number of years and a number of specialized sites are now part of the online health landscape (HealthGrades, RateMDs, and others), this is not the case in Europe in general, and France in particular, despite the presence of Yelp, GoogleMaps, and other US-based sites that allow for physician ratings. Health care professionals in France believe that physician rating will lead to either a) friendly reciprocal reviews amongst professionals (I'll evaluate you, you'll evaluate me, and we'll all evaluate each other) or b) unjustifiedly negative patient reviews. There is simply insufficient trust in crowdsourcing re docs. While French sites such as Le Guide Santé and Hôpital.fr do allow patients to rate hospitals and clinics, they don't provide for ratings of the individual professional. What's the latest on this front?

How interconnected are we?

At Doctors 2.0 & You, the "& You" referred  to the fact that the health care system is (or should be) a very, if not fully, interconnected world. However, this is still a work in progress. To connect  people within their own country, as most health care is still local, is already a challenge and to go beyond national borders presents an even greater challenge given language and travel requirements. Personal and collective resources both play a rôle. The advent of healthcare social media will help accelerate the connection, where basic resources are available. But much more needs to and will be done!

However, the international language, despite  the improvement of automatic translation tools, tends to be English (or globish ;-) and, given as well, the early start that the US had both on the internet  and in the demonstration of the need for eHealth, many of the most-known protagonists, whether patients, physicians, start-ups have tended to be based in the US while much is happening around the world. We can salute to this end, the hashtags developed by @andrewspong and @whydotpharma in the  #hcsm... series.

Nonetheless, Sermo is still often cited as "the" physician community, because of its rôle in the US, whereas Doctors.Net in the UK has more physicians both in the absolute and as a percentage of UK doctors. Doctissimo in France has a higher proportion of internet users in France, than any health site to my knowledge around Europe or North America. Various countries, organizations and individuals are doing amazing things. The list would be too long to place here.  But we have previously posted on this blog articles in English about both Gilles Frydman of Acor, a Frenchman in the US and Dave de Bronkart  an American in...the US and author of the remarkable Laugh, Sing, and Eat Like a Pig. I highly recommend a re-read of thoseposts.(And for the Francophones, there are other articles on the French version of Silber's Blog --use the search box-- and the Santé 2.0 Blog.)

At Doctors 2.0 & You conference in Paris, one of our key goals is to highlight the best in healthcare and social media and web 2.0 tools with an international perspective. While we could not of course cover all continents, speakers represented many countries and participants even more, a total of 22. And  amongst the patient advocates present were (by alphabetical order) Kathi Apostolidis (see her bilingual blog), Catherine Cerisey, Gilles Frydman, Jan Geissler who prepared a video for Doctors 2.0, (See also this link to an interview of Jan by Silja Chouquet).

Our next blog post presents Catherine Cerisey, a first in English. 

Infographic about Doctors' Use of Technology

++ Click to Enlarge Image ++

Image Source: Spina Bifida Info.com

Surgery Journal July 2011 emphasizes importance of social media for professionals

My attention was drawn to a series of articles in the July 2011 subscriber-reserved issue of Surgery concerning the importance of social networks for the medical profession.  Each author explains why he or she considers social media  important and provides examples of their relevance  to doctors.Please read on for highlights

Doctors 2.0 & You Conference: Welcome Greek participants ! #doctors20

 

All Greek participants will be warmly welcomed by @kgapo and the Doctors 2.0 team !

Have you read "The Case for eHealth"? #ehealth #hcsmeu

The Case for eHealth is a publication I had the great fortune to write at the request of the European Commission (Ilias Iakovidis, Petra Wilson) unit in charge of eHealth, in 2003.

It is now referenced in publications in many languages, although there have been no translations.

I thought it would be interesting to circulate it again now, thanks to Twitter and Facebook, as we ask ourselves about the best way forward.

Here are 2 quotes from page 36 :

 

 

 

 

Please feel free to download the report via this link.

Téléchargement Case_for_eHealth03.

Video regarding launch prostate robotic surgery Rambam Hosp Israel #ehealth

Launching Mayo Clinic Social Network #doctors20 #health20fr #hcsmeu

By alphabetical order, the following institutions are charter members of the Mayo Clinic Social Media Health Network:

    * Inova Health System, Reston, Virginia, USA    * Mission Health Care, Asheville, North Carolina, USA    * Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA    * Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, Washington, USA    * Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Congratulations from here in Europe to all, and in particular to Lucien Engelen. @zorg20

Cliffhanger: Will Denise join the Mayo Clinic Social Media Center Advisory Board? #MCCSM

Will Denise aka @health20paris and co-promoter of #health20fr #hcsmeufr join the Mayo Clinic Social Media Center Advisory Board? It's not yet midnight at the Mayo Clinic on October 15th, 2010.

You can make it happen. Listen to the audio file and cheer for Denise!

Download MemoSilber  (and/or read the text that follows)

 

Tweet-up #health20fr with @epatientdave & @oxyvet (Ginny) Loving Life !!

Téléchargement 4 Oct 2010 Transcript for #health20fr - What the Hashtag

  Tweetup today with @epatientdave & @oxyvet (Ginny) on #health20fr

True to life examples are unpredictable and highly original and so were Dave & Ginny, our tweet-up guests. Dave deBronkiart has mostly been invited to speak at patient empowerment conferences alone. But, in reading between the lines of Laugh, Sing, Eat like a Pig, one realizes the massive importance of Ginny, Dave's wife, in Dave's life...sort of like the wedding vows to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, ... And Dave regularly reminds us that he and Ginny honeymooned in Paris...So, how fitting for the French and English bilingual tweet-up that they both joined in and told us how much they are loving life.

What are the takeaways from the tweet-up with Dave (three-years after the big battle) and Ginny?

Miguel Cabrer presents Medting, global doctors' case-sharing platform #health20fr

Founder Miguel Cabrer presents, at Health 2.0 Europe 2010, Medting, a global doctors' case-sharing platform with extranet capabilities.

Build it & they will come: India needs +500 med schools #health20fr #india

And you thought you were lacking in accessible physicians?

India projects a need for 500 medical colleges by 2015. Each college should have no more than 250 students and at least 10 acres of land for a college and a hospital.

As France's citizens took to the streets today to protest the extension of retirement age from 60 to 62, Indian medical professors' retirement age has been extended from 65 to 70 yrs of age.

India expects to take 15 years to achieve the ratio of 1 doctor for 1000 people.

Long live telemedicine!

"Laugh, sing, eat like a pig", my review #hcsm, #hcsmeu, #health20fr

  When "Laugh, Sing, & Eat Like a Pig" was published in summer 2010, Dave deBronkart was hoping for a quick review. But, in fact I had to wait to find my voice and be able to express all that I had felt in that first amazing read.

1) This is a love story. Dave loves Ginny. Ginny loves Dave and that is fundamental to the story. 2) This from the title on...as Dave tells us that "two legs are better than one" or that needs a banana cream Blizzard from Dairy Queen. 3) This is a DIY  on how to face Death...with the presentation of "radical acceptance" such that Death seems manageable. 4) This is a reverse whodunit where the potential victim does away with the alleged killer. 5) This is a medical casebook with lots of details about what happens to the body 6) This is an essay about accepting a measure of responsibility in order to get better 7) This is un '"teaching through example" the art of communicating with a healthcare team 8) This is the autobiography of a man, an individual in 360° and not just a patient. And finally it's a guide to some of the issues of our health systems.

Dave & Ginny will be with us via Twitter October 4th 11 AM EST on hashtag #health20fr.

Iowa Health System puts the Social in Social Media. A must video. #hcsmeu #hcsm

How yo communicate the idea of improving outcomes through professional collaboration?  Iowa Health System shows us there's more than one way to get a serious idea across. You've got to see this video. The couple below is dancing. Click on the photo and watch the YouTube 2 minute hit about  BOFEPET - Best Outcome for Every Patient Every Time. I loved it.

 

A Mayo Clinic First: the Social Media Center #hcsmeu #health20fr

Silber's Blog has previously presented some of the Mayo Clinic's successes on YouTube. Now, the Mayo Clinic has taken another step forward in its commitment to Social Media by setting up a Social Media Center, in recognition of the positive impact of social media on healthcare.

After its commitment to YouTube (137 videos), Twitter ( 61k followers),Facebook (22k fans), and others, the Mayo Clinic has realized that there is still much more to do to pursue its century-old policy of listening to the patient, through modern Social Media.

For a budget of $800k, the Mayo is setting up a staff of 8 people to train the Mayo personnel, essentially healthcare professionals, on how to use Social Media for the benefit of the patient -- ie that the exchange contributing to better information and participation of the patient, improves health care. Social Media is recent. Your organization willl catch up if it starts now!

Be inspired. Listen to this video of one of the Mayo Clinic physicians

French med school's "patients" go digital #health20fr

"Digital patients, real students" could have been the title of the latest production of the European School of Surgery. I had the great fortune to attend and even to interview France's Digital Economy Minister. That recording will be projected at CHAMONIX 10 in September. You can see the pictures fullscreen, with a click.

 

Dermatology at a distance saves time, gets results #health20fr #health20

Dermatology studies showing that distance is as good, if not better than in person consultation are certainly not rare.

This Norwegian photo shows us Dr Schopf, who along with Dr Bolle, published a study demonstrating that consultation time dips from 20 to 5 minutes or less in 60% of cases, when the consult is prepared by a patient and handled online.

 Partners in Boston also published yet another study showing that results are equivalent at a distance in dermatology. In this study, patients learned how to take an appropriate photo and send them to their physician. There are many other  favorable dermatology at a distance studies.

Of course, we are not saying that all dermatology consultations should be done from a  distance, but undoubtedly far more than at the present time if we want to make good use of patients', physicians', and system resources.

Hospital and clinic web sites in France : "Major room for improvement," according to new Basil Strategies study !

Launched at HIT France, the 1st annual hospital website barometer for France, was published by Basil Strategies.. The purpose of the study was not to create a competition amongst the hospitals and clinics but to identify best hospital web practices, measure their presence, and  guide hospitals on potential  improvements.

The study team examined 131 web sites regrouping 447 of the most reputable providers in France.  26 best practices were identified by the study team and then applied to the sites. Unfortunately, the hospitals averaged only 1 out of 2 of the best practices and suffer the consequences on a daily basis, as patients and families ring through to the switchboard or show up in person to gather information they could have found on the site. 

Just in case you're wondering, social media involvement of French hospitals was too low this eyar to figure amongst the best practices this year. Maybe 2011 !

Crowdsourcing at the VHA: 26 Winning IT Innovations #health20fr #health20

Continuing in the crowd-sourcing, 2.0 mode, Silber's Blog is  particularly pleased to post this information about a completed crowd-sourcing competition at the VHA, who  remain near and dear since my mission to Tulsa and Washington DC a few years ago.

 The employees at the VHA submitted 26 winning ideas between February and May 28th when the contest winners were announced. 

These run the gamut from search engines to a  suicide hotline and a touchscreen device for nurse support.

6500 ideas were submitted. Then a  web-based voting method narrowed the submissions to a smaller group of finalists that were then judged by a panel.  

The panel consisted of 24 department employee and other distinguished participants, including Craig, the founder of "the" list, Dr. Harvey Fineberg, president of the Institute of Medicine; Dr. Robert Kolodner, health IT consultant (and former VHA CTO person); Dr. Mehret Mandefro, White House fellow; Dr. Stephen Ondra, VA’s senior policy advisor for health affairs; Peter Levin, VA’s chief technology officer; and, Todd Park, chief technology officer for the Department of Health and Human Services.   

Click for the 26 best of the 6500 !

French Ministry of Health Examining Adoption NHS Direct in France

While all the world's health systems share the same objectives of improving the health of their population, the regulation and organization of care is national and reflects many local factors (demography, genetics, environment, diseases, culture, resources, history of public policy...). Nonetheless, as many developed economies hit up on the same challenges of insufficient resources, budget deficits, unequal quality of care, benchmarking is becoming more common? The recent Health 2.0 Europe conference is a case in point of the potential synergies amongst European health innovators.

The May 20th edition of the French daily Le Figaro   explains a recent benchmarking development;  the French Health Minister is considering establishing a single govermental portal with a national telephone answering service akin to NHS Direct. The dual program would have several goals a)  to ensure the provision of quality information b) to reduce the inequality of population access to quality information c) to reduce unprogrammed visits to emergency rooms, thanks to nurse/patient phone conversations, distance medical consultations, and an appointment service,  d) to reduce the overconsumption of medications. 

But there are many factors to take into consideration.

The May 20th edition of the French daily Le Figaro   explains a recent benchmarking development;  the French Health Minister is considering establishing a single govermental portal with a national telephone answering service akin to NHS Direct. The dual program would have several goals a)  to ensure the provision of quality information b) to reduce the inequality of population access to quality information c) to reduce unprogrammed visits to emergency rooms, thanks to nurse/patient phone conversations, distance medical consultations, and an appointment service,  d) to reduce the overconsumption of medications. 

But there are many factors to take into consideration.

Cleveland Clinic #12 of Top 100 Creatives (Fast Company) with Dr Martin Harris

FastCompany

published its new top 100 creatives list, headed by  Lady Gaga, in case your wondering. Anyhow, it's a serious exercise and the first health care listing is none other than the director of the Cleveland Clinic, Dr Martin Harris,  number 12.

Dr Harris has worked with Google Health and Microsoft and let's not forget to mention recently with the stimulus package, thanks to the Obama White House..

I always like to point out the worldclass health information system at the Cleveland Clinic, its 6 million files, its scorecard for physicians approach, and of course its wonderful  social media policy with quite a few successes. Thank you @johnsharp for bringing Cleveland Clinic to our attention in this light. 

Cleveland Clinic on Social Media #hcsmeu

Having had the pleasure of meeting John Sharp in Toronto at the first Medicine 2.0 (2008), I'm happy to distribute his latest slideshow on use of social media at the Cleveland Clinic. A sound Social Media Policy at the Cleveland Clinic!

Social Media in Health Care, Toronto 2010

View more presentations from John Sharp.

Health 2.0 Europe #health2eu Demo of I want great care, rating site from Neil Bacon

A 2.0 Interview of Miguel Cabrer, MEDTING founder and ex digital hospital CIO

Miguel Cabrer founder of MEDTING, a global site for the exchange of  medical information and images, will be a panelist at Health 2.0 Europe in Paris. Formerly CIO of Hospital Son Llatzer, the first digital hospital in Europe (European Commission eHealth Award in 2004) and eHealth Coordinator for the Balearic Islands Health Department,  Miguel Cabrer is now an independent eHealth Advisor, Member of the HIMSS EMEA Governing Council and Member of the IMIA Web 2.0 taskforce workgroup.  Our Health 2.0 Regional Ambassador to Spain, Miguel even found the time to be interviewed!  

 

Denise says: Please tell us the main reason for a physician to use Medting?  

Miguel says: Physicians use Medting to share a clinical case with a colleague from anywhere in the world.  They also store images and videos, build clinical cases, and access content for research and learning purposes. Content can be restricted to invitees only.  A hospital or other organization can create its own extranet with the Medting Enterprise platform.  

Denise says: How did you get the idea that there was a need for these different functionalities?  Was it something you would have wanted  when you were working in a hospital?  

Is TrialReach.com the new Google of the segment?

 Question : Which online clinical trial repository will French internet users consult?    Reply : Those which are the most Search Engine optimized and the most ergonomic. There is always room for a new player who does both well, hence the title of this post equally available in French on DeniseSilber.com.

The purpose of the original post was to demonstrate that competition for traffic is international in this seglment.

Born in the UK, just across La Manche / the Channel ;-), the site TrialReach.com has an impeccable internal search function that enables the user to enter successive critria and manage its personal data.  The home page is Web 2.0 / Googlish clean. And it seems easy to get around.

Is the data base complete ? Possibly too soon to say, but there are nearly 90K trials listed.

Last night, when I wrote the French post, the Afssaps or French medicine agency's data base was inaccessible. Is it ergonomic. That's another question... https://icrepec.afssaps.fr/

And of course there are other major options for internet users.

a) ClinicalTrialsSearch.org lets you look for sites in France

http://www.clinicaltrialssearch.org/france_clinical_trials.html

b) So does the US government 

ClinicalTrials.gov

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?cntry1=EU%3AFR

Cancer.gov

http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/search

c)  The IFPMA provides a French interface as well as other languages

http://clinicaltrials.ifpma.org/no_cache/fr/monportail/index.htm

d) Let's not forget OrphaNet and its annuaire d'essais cliniques for rare disease (in multiple languages)

So, online publishers beware. There is a competition for traffic to clinical trials even in your home country, since users will find international sites with large data bases even before the national ones. Welcome to the web, TrialReach.com We'll be following you.

signed Denise or @health20paris

Rating or Narrating, that is the question : how best to relate the patient experience

This April 6–7, the Health 2.0 Europe conference will feature the many ways in which Web 2.0 tools are providing innovative solutions to, amongst others, our fundamental need for self-expression, known more recently as “user-generated content”.

Several panels will refer to these issues, but we will focus in this post on the Hospital and Payers’ panel. Payers want to ensure that their patients are being oriented to good care. Hospitals want to know that they are being considered “justly”. The Health 2.0 panel will include demonstrations by Guide Santé (France) and Patient Opinion (UK), both web 2.0 sites created by physicians concerned by patient satisfaction with hospitals and clinics. Payers like the UK NHS and Big-Direkt from Germany will participate in the conversation and Big-Direkt will also demo their new online tools.

Rating sites in health are high profile in France, especially amongst those who are rated and some early entrants have bit the dust for methodological reasons. Rating sites, however are not all identical and they are certainly not alone in capturing the patient experience. They live alongside online story telling or narrative tools, deployed in a variety of ways on sites that will be featured in Paris from a dozen countries.

How did all of this come about?

Communicate (animated film on you, your health, and the internet)

Independent evaluation of web sites of French hospitals and clinics

How good are the web sites of French hospitals and clinics? Which web sites should be studied? Which criteria should be included in the review, with what methodology?

Well, the short answer to the long question is that Denise SIlber convinced Basil Strategies ;-) to study the web sites of what are reportedly amongst the best hospitals and clinics in France. The conclusions of the Basil Study are that these institutions are clearly not perceiving the benefit to their organization in maintaining an attractive, up to date site that answers most of the basic questions, recruits new employees, and actually saves its institution time and money. The average score was 50 out of 100, with no major difference between public, private, and not for profit, although the best one seemed to be public and the worst, private.

More on the study soon!

French hospitals & clinics must make public 10 specific quality indicators

On Dec. 30, 2009, the French daily official publication (Journal Officiel) regarding law stated that French hospitals must make readily available to the public (ie as in on the institution's web site ) 10 quality indicators as follows, demonstrating yet again, the relation between the quality of care and the availability of information.

ICALIN (fight against hospital infections), ICSHA (consumption of hydro-alcoholic products), SURVISO + (surveillance of infection in O.R.);  ICATB (proper use of antibiotics);  a composite score of the above

+ 5 scores from the patient file: management of the patient file, time required to receive post-hospitalization letter (which in Denmark would be instantaneous), record of pain evaluation, nutritional prevention,  anesthesia file.

It is interesting to note that this request does not come from a Twitter-like movement on the ground, but more from traditional lobbying, by patient groups and efforts of the French Health Authority (HAS). Hopefully it will be picked up and amplified by the tweeters.

Will hospitals be able to comply with this request? Please see the following post which discusses Denise Silber's exclusive new study of hospital web sites...The short answer is "unlikely". If the information is just "thrown up there" on sites that are already not well-organized, the information will not really be accessible.

Free Wiki handbook on Medical Informatics and more: just out on Wikipedia in time for New Year's

The Wikipedia Handbook of Biomedical informatics is itself a gem "published" today, thanks to the wonderful new Web 2.0 world in which we live and in particular to the organizational  efforts of Pr Renato Sabbatini in Brazil. Read on for  the reasons to not miss out on this one!

Health 2.0 in Europe: Couldn't? Wouldn't? Does!

(first published on the Health Care Blog)

They said it couldn’t happen in Europe, that social media and online tools wouldn’t catch on, because the healthcare context was soooo different from the US. They said that Europeans don’t worry about access and cost, that they aren’t looking for information online because they they trust their doctors utterly and fully, and that European doctors don’t go online, except if they're Scandinavian. Well, it just isn’t so!