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 :

Thoughts from Medicine 2.0: Going Full Circle or the real story of SoMe #med2

There's an amazing conference going on in Palo Alto at the lovely Stanford Med School campus, organized by the no less amazing Larry Chu under the supportive eye of Gunther Eysenbach. The weather is sunny and crisp. We're a stone's throw of some of the US's if not the world's most amazing tech companies and medical institutions. But, I am not going to talk to you about "hi" as in tech and the latest sensor or app or mobile tablet.

I am going to talk about "hi" as in the way we greet one another, because that's what all of this is about.

We have gone from a pre-technology world, where man/woman survived by living in communities, at a time when it was impossible to do otherwise. And with that community came not only food, clothing, and shelter, but also belonging, a place, a role, a natural support group, a spirtuality.

And then, thanks to technology, we could progressively travel greater distances and ultimately live on our own thanks to the advent of electricity, mail order, frozen food...I think you get what I mean. 

And with each invention, we went one step further -- unwittingly-- in making that distancing possible...In the 21st century, our ability to satisfy our individual needs has led us to live with almost no consideration for "the other". Those who are not able to support themselves are not automatically attended to, whether ill, old, homeless...in need.

But, and this is the key point, technology has also enabled man/woman to come full circle to what we are meant to do.  We are all seeking at least moments of happiness. We all know that real happiness doesn't come from material gain, even if the promotion, new home or expensive object are momentarily fabulous. It comes from "feeling good about yourself".  And when do we feel best about ourselves?

It's above all when you're doing good. And we all know what that is. I may sound Pollyanna-ish, but I've been interested in the "study of happiness" for sometime. And so I was even more attentive to keynote Jennifer Aaker and her happiness lecture, where she talked of the contribution of thousands to potentially help a stranger with a bone marrow graft.

And now in a subsequent session, we've just heard 10 patient voices -- all people with medical challenges. Not only are they each examples of courage, we can see how that courage is multiplied by coming together with others.

And how is this all achieved? This is the Full Circle. We have for the past number of 2.0 years invented ways for technology to bring us all back together again. And that is the real story of Social Media. It's about putting people together as we were meant to be biologically and that is why in this room as we've heard this morning first from Jennifer Aaker and now from the epatients, there is an extraordinary sense of well-being and endorphins flying around. I don't need to measure it. I know they are there. Thank you all!

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.

Shifting GeoPolitics of Online Physician Communities (purchase of Doctors.Net) #doctors20 #hcsmeu

How would you describe the universe of online physician communities? Up until today, there were two historic categories, those  launched within the borders of one country and those, generally more recent, that were launched with a global perspective. This of course can change through acquisitions, and one such acquisition was posted today.

One of the first communities to think beyond borders was DocCheck who created a multi-country network in Europe. This was followed by Medting  from Spain which integrates Google Translate,  Doc2Doc from BMJ in English, and most recently VoxMed which operates in 8 languages.

We could also talk about specialties. Specialties tend to think more globally and work in English, even in non-English speaking countries.

Amongst the national communities, Sermo in the US has generally been cited as "the" example, because the US is the most common eHealth reference. Yet, Doctors.Net  of the UK, the object of the acquisition,  had been created prior to Sermo and counts more physicians (186k) both in the absolute and as a per cent of the number of practicing physicians in the country than Sermo. The Doctors.net.uk email domain is also cited as the primary email address for many UK physicians. In addition, Doctors.Net  developed a working relationship with other important physician communities on the Continent, in France, Germany, Spain, in the past 12 months.

So the August 23rd, 2011 acquisition  of Doctors.Net Uk by M3 USA is no minor event. M3 USA  manages MDLinx, an English-language medical news publisher of physician-recommended online bibliographies, itself a subsidiary of the Japanese corporation. By placing in one hand, a significant physician presence in Japan, the US, and Europe, this sale most certainly represents a seismic shift in the geopolitics of online physician communities.

Many questions remain. What will  physicians gain from this greater proximity with other communities? Will some of the content assets of the acquiring company be applicable to Europe? Will British physicians be comfortable as a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation? Will all of the various partner companies get along in this new constellation? Will multi-country programs be able to work smoothly despite legal and regulatory differences? M3 USA's announced objective is to be able to interface with global companies such as pharma and health investors. Will the new company be able to deliver on global promise? In the current climate, will this put too much emphasis on pharma's rôle?

I am sure the team at Doctors.Net tested out their hypotheses before the sale, and that we'll be seeing some interesting developments in 2012.

 

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?

Clinicians, fear the e-patient no more ; read this scholarly publication. #doctors20 #hcsm

Are e-patients, -- as for example, online patient bloggers or members of an online patient community -- attempting to serve as "amateur doctors" for other online patients? Those who read this blog know that that is not my perspective. I welcome the engaged, expert patient and wonder why it is taking us so long to give them their rightful place in health care. But many people are still uncomfortable with the online patient, even simply seeking information on the Web, let alone engaging with other patients. The Journal of Medical Internet Research has just published a very interesting research paper entitled "Managing the Personal side of health: How patient expertise differs from the expertise of clinicians" by Hartzler and Pratt at the University of Washington.

The Physician-Patient Partnership, an interview with Catherine Cerisey

For today, Silber's blog presents Catherine Cerisey, a French patient advocate and author of her blog "after my breast cancer", « après mon cancer du sein ». Since we launched the health 2.0 chapter meetings, community, and blog in France, Catherine has been present  IRL and virtually via Twitter and tweet-ups #health20fr  #hcsmeufr #doctors20. This June, Catherine Cerisey participated in the French-language Doctors 2.0 workshop about patient expectations.

Catherine and I had a rich exchange recently about the rôle of patients and I want to share with you her insights on "patient partner". Have as a well a look at this brief video animation called "Communicate" about the before and after of the Internet and its impact on the physician-patient relationship.

And here is the interview with Catherine.

Denise Silber : What is your perspective on the cancer patient's rôle? What has the Internet changed?  

Catherine Cerisey :   In a chronic disease such as cancer, in my observation, the patient has always known when and here it hurts, which drug brings relief, where the nurse can inject with the least pain;  it is often the patient who sounds the alert of an abnormal pain that may lead to a series of tests, for example.

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. 

Ireland and UK top two health systems for efficient reduction in adult mortality. US near bottom of 19 countries studied.

Some surprises from the latest publication of Pr Colin Pritchard in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine comparing  health system results of 19 "Northern" countries. The authors examined the reduction in mortality results between two periods of time and created a ratio taking into account health expenses as a percent of GDP. 

The good news is that the study confirms the significant reduction of mortality for those between 15 and 74, the ages studied in this comparison of the period between 1979-1981 and 2003-2005, by the authors. 2005 is the most recent year for which data was available.

First position goes to Ireland, second to the UK, and third to New Zealand. France is 13th and the US trails near the end of the list, for the high cost of saving too few people.The article was immediately picked up by The Guardian, noting that if the UK is doing so well, reforms would be rather inappropriate. (A French  post is available here.)

The subject of the cost of health in France and internationally will be the theme of the next CHAM  conference taking place in Chamonix on Sept 30 2011. Hope to see some of you there. 

Here is the ranking of the number of deaths gained per million on 10 of the countries.

• Ireland 4941
• Australia 4328
• UK 3951, 
• Italy 3579
• Canada 2822
• France 2779, 
• Japan 2600 
• USA 2498, 
• Germany 2395
• Spain 1586

When we introduce the ratio of expense to gain, we get:

• Irleland 1:696
• UK 1:557
• Australia 1:521
• Italy 1:436
• Japan 1:380
• Canada 1:324 
• France 1:316
• Germany 1:247
• Spain 1:233
• USA 1:205

 

Here is the original article.  Téléchargement JRSMpaperPritWall

 

Infographic about Doctors' Use of Technology

++ Click to Enlarge Image ++

Image Source: Spina Bifida Info.com

Why would Google's domination end ?

Roger explains that Google neutralized all brands other than Google visually on the Google webpage, creating the LongTrain. This allowed a lot of "junk" to reach the user and users wound up using other platforms such as Facebook and Wikipedia and now Apps, where indexed search is not king.

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

Twitterized infographic on @health20paris

Application of 1992 French Law prohibits mention by tv, radio stations of their FB, Tw accounts

A French court has ruled, in application of a 1992 French law, that French tv and radio stations can no longer mention their Twitter and Facebook accounts during news programs. They can still say that the journalist has a social network account but not which one. The objective is to avoid "hidden advertising "for the media's own Facebook and Twitter accounts.

A Social Media Congratulations to Digestive Disease Week 2011 #ddw11 #doctors20

Let's congratulate DDW11 for a very pro-active social media strategy.

YouTube channel : David Sack, a visiting gastro-enterologist at Digestive Disease Week 2011, did the above video interview, at the "win a Flipcam" contest at the conference.  The DDW organized the video recording of 32 poster presenters and of numerous physicians presenting highlights of the conference here.

Facebook: here is the DDW page  The FB page is another vehicle to tell the story of DDW and be where the audience is. 

Twitter:  1700 tweets approximately tell the story of Digestive Disease Week 2011. You can read the transcript here, gathered on FoxePractice

Téléchargement  #ddw11 - Healthcare Twitter Transcript »

So, if you didn't get to DDW11, you can't get it all online, but you can still get a real flavor for the information and the exchange among physicians, whether they or you were on site or not.

What does it mean for the future of congresses that so much information can be gathered on line. Surely, this is a good thing that gatherings of this nature can go beyond the onsite market. But, not everyone appreciates the transparency of the information and the availability for non-registered attendees...or even for the registered attendees. What will happen to all the publishers of online newsletters, for example?

Anyhow, go AGA, go!

Your Next Consultation?

 

Here is the scenario of your next consultation. 

You call a unique national phone number and explain your problem to someone who is specialized in managing this type of call and who can provide a pre-diagnosis. Conscious of the importance of your problem, he or she gets you a same-day appointment in the town where you live. The appointment is confirmed by email during the phone call.

When you get there, a first person with an iPad greets you, checks off the appointment and lets everyone who could be following up with you know that you're there. The Center is very busy, but you are taken within 10 minutes of your appointed time. That person performs a very quick examination, confirms the earlier diagnosis, and notes the result in her iPhone.

She goes off to get just what you need. And you are already starting to feel better.

While she's gone, you get on the Web, thanks to the Center's great wifi. You look at your online file and see that everything is already noted. You'll enjoy recollecting the event, because all of the people you dealt with were so competent and welcoming.

 

 No, this was not a medical appointment, but the replacement process for my iPhone that suffered a major dysfunction and was replaced the same day. Congratulations to Apple and the Apple Store (I went to one in Paris) for their own use of IT to improve service.

 

New: Doctors 2.0 & You Video on Paris, Program, Party #doctors20

Where are the Doctors 2.0 & You workshops and plenary taking place? Where is the Mobile Application Demo Party happening and why? Where is the Eiffel Tower? The video will tell you all ! PS Will you join healthcare professionals, pharma managers, tech companies, government employees and payers in Paris? You tell us! 

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

 

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

Introducing Gmail Motion

This interesting video should have been published on Friday. Sorry for the delay.

 

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.

Encouraging Organ Donation: Facebook #health20fr

The story of a kidney donation thanks to a Facebook friend whom the recipient had never met was  published on March 31.  The two people met once the volunteer had stepped forward. The tissue compatibility was verified and a friendship began between the 2 people. This is not the first such case. Other stories can be found by googling.

So, altruism exists. Facebook didn't invent it. But it did simplify the means for altruists to meet, and you can even encourage them. Here is a banner you can download.

Once again we demonstrate that the internet is  just a digital image of the people and world around us.... 600 million people on Facebook? Hmmm, who's checking that number?

Hot topic: Doctors & Social Media #doctors20

It's all over the web these days: blogposts, studies, tweets, about how doctors are behaving in social media. Are doctors being professional, ethical, non-promotional? Today's Huffington Post article on the subject does a good wrap-up citing TwitterDoctors.Net, site that includes 1300 physicians and their stats, a Jama study, and Kevin Pho, a physician blogger.
What will we be hearing in the coming weeks and months about doctors and social media? Lots! As usual, everyone is worried about the "other guy," that physician who violates patient privacy or who spouts out about subjects on which he/she is not an expert, something that the writer would never do.  What is the solution? Come to Doctors 2.0 & You, in Paris, on June 22-23, 2011, the only conference focussed on understanding the doctors' needs in the digital world.

PatientsLikeME introduces new rules for recruitment #health20fr

What self-respecting health on the internet fan doesn't know PatientsLikeMe  the site that enables English-speaking patients to create their online profile, generate dynamic graphic representations of their data and-- most important of all, meet up with people "like them"? For many, myself included, PatientsLikeMe is the icon of the Health 2.0 movement. Two new changes to PatientsLikeMe rules inspired this blogpost 1) the PatientsLikeMe site will henceforth apply the principle of cooptation. A member can invite another patient, whatever his or her condition 2) a patient can create a new condition, if one is lacking. People with multiple conditions will be able to follow all of them on PLM.

A final but important question at this time: Why does PatientsLikeMe (with its 80k patient database) represent such a small fraction of the English-speaking internet health-concerned population?  If it's the narrow selection of diseases, that may change with the new rules. But, what if the reason comes from the fact that not everyone wants to create and follow their profile and meet with others? To create and manage a detailed online file is work and revealing of one's vulnerabilities whether as an avatar or visibly. As everyone in the field of EHR's knows, not enough individuals are committed to creating one...

 

March 8, 2011: 50% of the planet, 1% of wealth

Video regarding launch prostate robotic surgery Rambam Hosp Israel #ehealth

#BornHIVFree wins digital engagement award #hcsmeu #hesawards

Having had the pleasure of nominating the #BornHIVFree campaign for the 2011 #hesawards managed by Creation HealthCare, am pleased to note that the campaign is the winner of the 2011 People Power Award.

 

 

 

Below, please find the title of the poster I presented on same subject at Medicine 2.0 Maastricht, in November, 2010. 

Doctors 2.0 & You Conference to Examine Impact of Web 2.0 in Healthcare from Physician Perspective

First event of its kind to be held in Paris, France June 22-23, 2011; agenda will address results to-date, impact and business aspects of social media and tools in healthcare delivery.

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Doctors 2.0^™ & You, a first-time conference examining how doctors use social media and Web 2.0 tools to connect with patients, colleagues, pharma, payers and hospitals, will be held on June 22-23, 2011 at the Cité Universitaire Internationale in Paris, France. Organized by e-health specialist Basil Strategies, co-organizer of the 2010 Health 2.0 Europe conference, the two-day Doctors 2.0 & You event will gather experts from across Europe, the U.S., and Israel, to examine physicians’ professional use of new and social media and its practical, societal and business impact on healthcare delivery.

Mediator (Servier) "bombshell" report by official French inspectors published 15 Jan 2011

On the one hand, prescription drugs contribute to the extension of life expectancy in numerous diseases. On the other, pharmacovigilance or the surveillance of side effects of drugs is imperfect because a) it depends on the central collection of side effect reports, b) a sense of certainty about the specific responsibility of the drug which is not always clear, because patients take multiple drugs and the numbers are low. As a result,  the risk-benefit ratio can be underestimated.  However, on Saturday January 15, 2011, three IGAS inspectors (General Inspectors of Social Affairs) published a 260 page report in French - Téléchargement 33594_mediator-le-rapport-de-ligas - demonstrating a fatal breakdown of the French drug regulatory system over the past decade, as regards the drug Mediator. Mediator can provoke fatal valvulopathies and according to the report, there was not only enough information to take the drug off the market in 1999, the company concealed the true pharmacological profile of the drug since its introduction in 1976. The Mediator report will have far-reaching consequences on the management of "conflict of interest" between physicians and drug authorities, in France, Europe, and most likely the world. What changes will be made to the relationship between the pharma industry and the regulatory authorities, as regards drug registration, post-marketing surveillance, and communication between the industry and physicians? This remains to be seen. 

Interview with Dutch founder of Meamedica, drug rating site #health20fr

 

The recent Dutch-origin consumer drug rating website http://www.mijnmedicijn.nl appears in Germany and France as Meamedika.de and Meamedica.fr It was created by a Dutch pharmacist Wendela Wessels.  Publishing a new rating site in healthcare in France, for example, is not easy to succeed. Private rating sites  are not forbidden by French law, but so far, there are no comparative healthcare professional sites, other than for hospitals and of course Yelp, Google directories. No French company is devoted specifically to rating drugs. It is interesting to note that as a result, novelty comes from an entrepreneur in another country, in this case, the Netherlands.  Having heard various rumors in France about Meamedica, its "secret" investor and various problems, I interviewed  Wendela Wessels and found a more or less typical start-up founder trying to bring a solution to a problem. This article will be translated to French shortly.

 

CardioCam or medical mirror, a gamechanger for healthcare ? #ehealth #health20fr #telemedicine

The short video below demonstrates the basics of CardioCam, developed at MIT. Cardiocam enables accurate detection of heart rate, blood pressure, and other basics by looking at a technology enhanced mirror. Will this lowcost, accurate technology lead to permanent monitoring of everyone, in order to optimize our various parameters? A whole host of scientific, practical and ethical questions to think about...Will today's blood pressure monitor go the way of the buggy whip?

This invention came out in mid 2010 and was noted in December by the NYTimes in their annual idea recognition article. Here is the citation: Ming-Zher Poh, Daniel J. McDuff, and Rosalind W. Picard, "Non-contact, automated cardiac pulse measurements using video imaging and blind source separation," Opt. Express 18, 10762-10774 (2010)
http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=oe-18-10-10762

 

 

Best Amateur Cameraman 2010: TimeLapse Film of THE Blizzard

Social Media Platforms: Does "what matters" matter ?

 

As the above figure demonstrates, the number of articles explaining the importance of these various sites: Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter is quite different. These numbers tend to confirm the hypothesis that the less obvious that importance is, the more complex it is to understand that importance, the more articles there are about it--which is a Catch 22. If it is indeed so obvious, why write about it?

When I see the figures today about the number of internet users using Twitter, I question its potential to go truly mainstream. Yes Twitter was very helpful during the recent blizzard to put people in touch with some airlines and townships, but will organizations really staff up to be able to answer Twitter messages, replacing email helpdesks?

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

#LeWeb Bravo Loic Le Meur = @loic #health20fr

For those of you have been following with pleasure the Le Web conference created by Loïc and Geraldine Le Meur in 2004, you know that it has become an interesting example of the power of livestreaming and Twitter.

2115 people are in the conference

2000 people are following the livestream

7849 people are tweeting about #leweb

Two factoids from LeWeb:

according to Carlos Ghosn, 15% of Renault's marketing budget is for digital.

Orange is announcing, via Stephane Richard CEO, the 4G telephone in the next 18 to 24 Months.

Xavier Bertrand + Nora Berra named to Ministry of Health

In President Sarkozy's new cabinet, we find:

Xavier Bertrand in charge of Labor & Health and

Dr Nora Berra, in charge of Health.

Both are seasoned politicians, Bertrand having previously been Minister of Labor and Health, where he as known for his ability to master the subjects at hand.

Dr Berra was previously in charge of the "aged."  Dr Berra is also known as a champion of the sons and daughters of immigrants.

How do u say eHealth in French? e-santé ! #health20fr

http://esante.gouv.fr/en

Here is the link to the English part of the official eHealth web site of the French government.

Only a select number of articles are in English, but it will give you a good idea of what's going on and who does what. 

You see  on the left

a photo of the French pharmacists' president, whose 10 million electronical pharmaceutical records (shared by pharmacists) are impressive.

and mention of the DMP which is France's national EMR, expected very shortly.

Quebec's Social Media campaign for more family doctors #health20fr #hcsmeu

Quebec's population is seriously lacking in family physicians and has gone to  Facebook and YouTube to attract national if not international attention.

<-- Scene from the video

--> Photo from Facebook

Yes, health care systems everywhere need to dialogue with real people, when and where they are...and of course provide solutions...Dialogue does not suffice, but there at least has to be dialogue to get to the solutions...So, how many such organizations are getting around to appointing social media savvy folks?

 

 

 

The Chilean miner rescue, # telemedicine, and the philosophy of life

As one of the many following the Chilean miner rescue, it occurred to me, beyond the incredible human interest story, that this event highlighted various lessons beyond the courage of the miners themselves. As you can see from these 3 points, given the extreme situation, the rules of the game changed.

a) telemedicine was embraced  (read about the Zephyr Physiological Status Monitoring system)

b) there was delegation of medical responsibility to non-physicians 

c) cost of $10 to 20 million was apparently not an issue in the saving of human life (several hundred thousand dollars per person) - although the mining company is being asked to reimburse 2/3 of the cost.

Hmmm. I'll leave you to ponder the above.

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)

 

#health20fr Presenting the pharma panel at Health 2.0 Europe

Representatives of Bayer, Pfizer, UCB, Creation Interactive, JeSuisUnique, Webetege,