Allscirpts’ CEO Glen Tullman has had a good year. Allscripts’ stock is up four-fold, sales are going well and some people think that ARRA/HITECH’s fillup to the healthcare IT industry is mostly his doing–he was an early fundraiser for Obama. Any clouds on the horizon? You’ll have to watch the interview I did with him at HIMSS to find out.
Community Wars? WebMD launches Health Exchange
Just when we thought things were calming down in the world of Health 2.0, it’s kicking off. WebMD has been watching Everyday Health take over its spot as top Health site ranking in the ComScore rankings (cue angry diatribe from those who don’t believe Comscore, and explanations from those who think they understand what Comscore is up to). They’ve also presumably been watching as MedHelp.org went from nowhere to close to 10m visits a month (WebMD claims 60m users but Comscore says closer to 24M).
Yesterday came WebMD’s response—a serious upgrade of their community features. Over the past two weeks they’ve soft launched Health Exchange and have migrated their bulletin boards over to the new platform. On Health Exchange there’ll be lots of things familiar to Health 2.0 mavens—expert advice in the Forums from leading medical centers, the ability to tip, share resources, vote on opinions and much more.
The new launch is probably a bit of welcome change of pace for WebMD which spent the last couple of weeks getting spanked for a not-too-objective quiz on its site suggesting that everyone had depression and needed Cymbalta. Whether the new Exchange is really different to the previous bulletin boards, which weren’t as vibrant as those of its competitors, remains to be seen. But overall it shows that the world of Health 1.0 is changing and that the grandaddy of online health content sites is really going to be featuring user-generated content from now on.
Octopus and other Fishes
One of the most fun times at HIMSS last week was the MEDecision party at the Georgia aquarium. I took a few videos of the Fish and the humans—so something a little different for you all
Why cameras shouldn’t be let into bars
Captions for a bubble above Jonathan Bush’s or Judy Faulkner’s head? In the comments please
Bush & Palestrant–Live from HIMSS
After days of technical gremlins holding me back, I’m getting my HIMSS interviews up online. I’ll start with one from two of my favorites. This is Daniel Palestrant of Sermo and Jonathan Bush of athenahealth, who are starting to work together in a potentially interesting way (if you’ve been following my mantra of Health 2.0 Tools and Communities merging). And both of them are pretty riotous to interview, so enjoy!
HIMSS impressions
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HIMSS is like a 4 day party with interesting conversations, meetings that I always miss (sorry RelayHealth & Ingenix—I owe ya both!), and usually a travel complication. This time I got there smoothly but missed my plane out while chatting with Mitch Work at the next door gate. I was going to be spending the night in Dallas but I got lucky and the next plane to DFW arrived early enough that I could rush to the SFO flight and make it home. Great to see my wife for the first time in two weeks!
I have about 10 longish interviews that will go up when the video gremlins give up, but here are a few impressions.
Busiest booth?: I think Cisco wins. Maybe it was HealthPresence, maybe the magician—but it was always packed. What I think it means is that mainstream Internet tools are now coming into health care (with some little tweeks). But as MrHISTalk says, putting all the big guys in the A hall was a mite unfair on the C side—although I got to both a little.Continue reading…
A little HIMSS housekeeping
Today till Weds I’ll be at HIMSS in Atlanta. You can see me at the Bloggers panel at 3pm Monday, or more importantly at the talk Jane Sarasohn-Kahn & I are giving on Health 2.0 & Participatory Medicine at 1pm on Tuesday in Georgia Ballroom 1.
I’ll also be wondering around with the trusty flipcam, so expect to see a few schedules and not so scheduled interviews up on THCB too. And you can always follow my twitter feed http://twitter.com/boltyboy If you want to meet me, best bet is to DM or follow my social schedule here although with Jetlag waking me up at 4am not sure how long I’ll last tonight!
Interspersed in all of that tech stuff, THCB will roll on as usual. I’ll let you know in 3 days time if the tech sector in health care has made more progress since last year than their political cousins!
Bentley & Stanton: Two UK docs talk about Health 2.0
Last week in London I met with two of the brightest lights in the UK’s community of physicians looking at Health 2.0. Annabel Bentley is the medical director and head of informatics at Bupa, the UK-based non-profit health insurer, which owns Health Dialog amongst many other activities, and is also a sponsor of the upcoming Health 2.0 Europe conference. Emma Stanton is a psychiatrist, round-the-world yachtswoman, and has just spent two years on assignment working with Sir Liam Donaldson the Chief Medical Officer in the UK, and is on her way to a Harkness fellowship in the US working with Don Berwick & Eliot Fisher. Not bad company!
Both will be speaking at Health 2.0 Europe on April 6–7 in Paris (and you should come too, you can register here!) and both of them gave me some gems about why they think Health 2.0 is important in this brief interview—captured in the glamorous location of the Bupa canteen.
HIMSS Parties, and a little more
Next week the health IT world descends on Atlanta which means a lot of chat, lots of meetings and lots of parties. You’ll be seeing the results of my interviews on THCB next week.
But meanwhile more importantly—the party schedule. So far I’m signed up on Monday for the MEDecision party (mostly because it’s in the aquarium), the HISTalkparty (in which you try to spot the mysterious MrHISTalk and Inga) at Max Lagers. I’ll likely be wearing a sash.
For Tuesday night I’ve been asked to give a special shout out to the FierceHealthIT party. Apparently this one will be huge but there’s room for more. It’s at the World of Coca-Cola, and I'm not sure if you have to bring your own rum. Sign up here
Finally, there’s a new party on Tuesday called HITMen which has an interesting group of cats & dogs on its host committee….although probably only worth going after the palavah is over (unless you like sitting through award ceremonies).
Of course there’s a large chance that I’ll miss all of these but there are two sessions I won’t be missing.
Monday at 2pm in room C201 I’ll be one of the bloggers to meet in the Meet the Bloggers session. It’ll be a good chance for me to argue in public with Val Jones.
And Tuesday at 1pm the ever wonderful Jane Sarasohn-Kahn and I will be presenting on Health 2.0 & Participatory Medicine in Georgia Ballroom 1.
This does all assume I can get out of France despite the air traffic controllers strike! Hope to see you in Atlanta.
Who does PhRMA need next? Robin Strongin thinks she knows
I met Billy Tauzin last summer in Aspen and you couldn’t help but love the guy. He had that amazing Louisiana charm, and was helping PhRMA walk a tightrope between being the bad guys, and giving away the store. Whether or not like Paul Krugman you’re appalled at his old school N’Awlins sense of ethics, he was clearly able to cross lines and get PhRMA to a place it hadn’t been before.
But now that reform is receding from likelihood, where does big pharma need to go now that Billy jumped (or was pushed)? At the Disruptive Women in Health Care blog, Robin Strongin suggests that pharma needs to get out of its box and really embrace the new type of patient—and appoint a leader who is on the technological cutting edge.
