The following is a two part post (both parts are included so please read all the way through) that calls attention to an exciting and important new effort to engage everyone in health reform. Do you have a “2 minute rant” you’d like to share with the administration? If so, read on…
Introducing h20tv!
Indu Subaiya, MD, MBA
Co-founder, Health 2.0
Blame it on election fever or my move to the filmmaking capital of the world, LA, but I was recently inspired, along with my amazing conference teammates, to create and launch h20tv, a video channel for Health 2.0. It has been apparent for a while now that we’re hearing a lot more from the community than just feedback on new technologies and we wanted a way to surface that.
While technology is still what we live and breathe most days, what’s been interesting is people’s responses to how technology is actually changing healthcare experiences or enabling new visions for change on many levels. Our work with the Center for Information Therapy on a joint conference and on the first h20tv video project has already surfaced many lively debates.
We’re now a few years into this Health 2.0 thing if you will and it’s not speculative anymore. There’ve been successes and failures, hard data and experiences we can all learn from. In the present context of healthcare reform, sure, the papers and blogs have been full of the punditry exchanging blows…we wanted to capture more of the dinner table conversations. Because there are some really good ideas out there and they’re not all from experts. And who is an expert in healthcare anyway? For more about that sidebar, see Great Debate #5 at the upcoming conference agenda.
So what do you get when you ask people what their 2 minute rants to the new administration would be about healthcare – not their long manifestos, just their biggest, burning issues? It’s fascinating to see what bubbles to the top. My Co-founder Matthew Holt talks about the need for a common social insurance pool, Dr. Thomas Barber of Kaiser Permanente tells us how web tools have decreased his office visits by more than 20%, Julie Murchinson of the Health 2.0 Accelerator talks about the promise of personalized health care, Robin Strongin of Amplify Public Affairs advocates for the consideration of broader life circumstances when providing healthcare including education, transportation etc. and healthcare consumer Julian Robinson describes how challenging it is to find a doctor in a new city… and that’s coming from a web-savvy 23 year old.
We want lots more voices. And we’ll string along select snippets for a little trailer to show at the upcoming conference. No this isn’t going to have perfect production quality – you’ll have to go to expensive agencies for scripted messages and bad background music for that. This is pure user-generated brainpower, the way we love it, straight up and unfiltered.
We don’t have a special in with the new administration, but we know we are part of a growing and diverse community of people who think and care deeply about improving the healthcare system. So we figure the word will eventually float over to the white house over these wild web airwaves. And now, here’s Julie to say more about this project in the context of the accelerator and what she’s seeing on the ground for health 2.0 companies trying to innovate and integrate with the healthcare system.
We the people want more out of health
Julie V. Murchinson, MBA
Managing Director, Manatt Health Solutions
Executive Director, Health 2.0 Accelerator
We are at a turning point in how we the people take part in our healthcare. Just as Facebook and Twitter have allowed people to connect and delve more deeply into each other’s everyday life, h20tv is amassing the power of the people to begin to weave together a story of what we want, our ideas about how to make it happen and, in some cases, desperate pleas to change the status quo. What is most interesting, however, is that many of the videos spell out a fairly simple desire – the personalization of health care – to allow citizens to play a larger role in their care and to have care more customized for each person. Sure, there are still several million Americans who aren’t yet racing to get a seat at their care-team table, but for those who are…why is it so hard to do something so seemingly simple?
Why can’t we jump on our iPhone to track our stomach pain until we realize that its getting increasingly worse, then be able to access some clinical information about treatment options that helps us find a clinician online we can consult with, who recommends a specialist close to work so we don’t have to take more time off, who sees us that day because health IT has improved his/her patient through-put, who sends an e-script to the pharmacy for pick-up on the way home, which launches a medication schedule with reminders to our iPhone to make sure we take our meds on time and appropriately, as well as a health management portal that recommends a dietary plan and begins to help us self-test different diet, exercise and other daily living practices that may impact our condition until we narrow down the flare-up association and circle back around with our clinician to validate our findings? Whew…deep breath. Should this really be that hard to do? And I didn’t even mention the correlation between our genetic make-up and our symptoms, and how that impacts clinician direction, medication and our self-discovery efforts. Now you’re talking!
So, why doesn’t that happen today? Umm…let’s see…how long do you have to read this blog? Or personal relationship with our own healthcare is an unfortunately complicated one. At the Health 2.0 Accelerator, a nonprofit organization working with Health 2.0 companies and traditional health care organizations, we are beginning to chip away at this ideal by driving integration of technology and the consumer experience. From our perspective, we see consumers starting to seek comprehensive solutions, rather than fragmented tools and services, from this emerging movement referred to as “Health 2.0.” Health 2.0 companies are seeking ways to expand their offerings to consumers rapidly and cost effectively, while fortifying or evolving their business models. “Traditional” healthcare organizations are starting to explore new capabilities for patients to generate, analyze and consumer health information.
The great ideas in these videos are finding realistic test beds to see what works and, most importantly, what we the people need, want and will use to begin to take part in our healthcare…just for us…in the same independent, personalized way we have begun to do so in so many other parts of our lives.