SeekCEO wonders whether there are any ex-WebMD/ex-Healtheon folks who would like to lead a new Healthcare Web 2.0 startup in Southern California? If you’re qualified email for details.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Susan Promislo writes in with this to say about the "Disruptive Innovations in Health and Health Care" competition we wrote about last week.  

"Thanks for the note about the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation/Changemakers competition to identify disruptive innovations
in health and health care. I also wanted to add that the $5,000
Changemakers cash awards are an important component of the competition,
but they are not where the action ends.  All entries will be reviewed
by RWJF’s Pioneer Portfolio, which has made available up to $5 million
to support innovative, disruptive approaches that come in through this
competition.  Once the competition closes, promising projects may be
invited to submit proposals to Pioneer for possible future funding.
More info. is available at
http://rwjfblogs.typepad.com/pioneer/2007/04/back_in_january.html

The deadline is July 18, which means you’ve basically got all weekend to get your entry in to win a grant!

Unity Stoakes of Organized Wisdom responds to concerns on the part of privacy advocates that the military-industrial Google complex
may pose a threat to consumer privacy. "Google already has all of our
data. They know more about me than I do.  May as well give them all the
rest and see how (on an aggregate level) this type of data can
collectively help us improve our health. For better or worse the age of
privacy is quickly being replaced by what I call THE AGE OF
TRANSPARENCY. Whether we want to or not, not only is the world flat
again, it’s also OPENING UP and AGGREGATING."

Ginger B comments on the thread about the reasons doctors don’t like to use email to correspond with patients. "I have Kaiser and I like the email feature. I have many other things to do besides sit next to my telephone waiting for a phone call from a Doctor. It’s one of those things where if you have one meeting that day, that will be when they try to call you. I’ll also add that when I emailed about my PCP ordering a lab test for me she emailed back and informed me that she was also ordering blood lipids to be done because I was due for those, and she wanted me to come in and get the results so we could review them."

Anonymous writes in to comment on the same thread.  "If our patients want to contact us, they must use email, we don’t use the phone.  For three days after an appointment and for special circumstances determined at the time of the visit (for which they are given a code) they may email us for free.  After that, it is $25, refunded if I can’t answer their concerns satisfactorily. Questions are answered within 24 business hours. I haven’t had one complaint and though my practice is closed, I have requests daily to take patients.