We’ll let these guys off the copyright violation (just kidding!), because this Health 2.0 News Portal is actually a knock off of Digg for health stories. I wonder how it’ll do.
HEALTH2.0: Facebook as a platform
Unless you really haven’t been online for the past few months, you’re bound to have noticed all your contacts moving onto Facebook. No longer just for college kids, Facebook is opening up to everyone and seems to be taking off amongst professionals in a way MySpace never did. And just to prove it, we created a Health2.0 group on Facebook. Soon we’ll even add something to it!
Additionally Facebook is becoming a development platform for other applications. One example is this health quiz created by search engine Healia, that is on FaceBook. So go take the Healia Health Quiz.
HEALTH2.0: Sermo & PatientsLikeMe–getting very famous!
Both Sermo and PatientsLikeMe are getting increasingly famous. Ben Heywood from PatientsLikeMe was featured in Business2.0 last month, and Sermo was featured in the WSJ last week, in a column about Social Networking Goes Professional
You can also see both Sermo’s Daniel Palestrant and Ben Heywood in this short video from Business 2.0
And of course you can see both of them and many, many more at the Health2.0 Conference on September 20th. Sermo’s actually buying the drinks sponsoring the post-conference cocktails. Meanwhile, you might want to check out the incredible movie So Much So Fast about Ben’s brother—who inspired the idea of PaientsLikeMe and whole lot more.
And yes, they were on THCB last year and in this article I wrote for Digital Healthcare & Productivity in February. So we’re still ahead of the MSM here…just!
FRIDAY FUNNY: Big Pharma Outsources all “Bad Stuff” to Sri Lanka
Or at least that’s what Steve Woodruff at Impactiviti blog thinks it’s doing!
HEALTH 2.0 UPDATE
We’re pleased to announce a number of new additions to the roster of speakers at Health 2.0. First, we welcome Dr. David Brailer, formerly the Bush administration’s National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology and now the head of Health Evolution Partners. David has been busy since leaving Washington. For background, see this piece in the New York Times. Take a look at the Health Evolution Partners site for a bit more about his investment focus. David will be adding his special perspective to the Consumer Aggregators panel. He’ll be joining Google’s Adam Bosworth, WebMD’s Ann Mond Johnson, Microsoft’s Peter Neupert and Yahoo’s Bonnie Becker, along with moderator and friend of THCB Jane Sarasohn-Kahn. UPDATES: The votes are pouring in the contest to nominate the final speaker for our social media for patients panel. If you haven’t had a look yet, we have a very interesting collection of nominees. Note: To prevent potential fraud our system tracks the IP address of every submission. Unfortunately, for some corporate networks this can cause problems. If you’d like to vote and have been unable to please email in**@********on.com.
APPLAUSE FOR: Health 2.0’s latest charter sponsors – Healthline and Destination Rx. Welcome guys! ADDITIONAL UPDATES: Interested in exhibiting at Health 2.0? A limited number of tables are still available for sponsors. Contact jo**@********on.com for pricing and other details.
You can also go over and have a look at the latest version of the Health 2.0 agenda here.
POLICY: The DEA continue their sorry role
In raiding like Gestapo officers and then shutting down all the medical marijuana dispensaries in San Mateo county Thursday, the DEA confirmed the sensible opinion that it’s ana gency filled with total scumbags. I guess we can blame the cowardly Democrats who did not vote to suspend DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries even when they had the chance to do so last month.
But what’s worse is that for the first time that I can recall local law enforcement in California joined in, with both the City of San Mateo PD and the San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force taking part. That’s just shameful behavior from those local cops, presumably incited by the DEA offering them a share of the take—as usually happens in these situations. Are they unaware of the local support for Proposition 215 and medical marijuana?
Clearly we need Federal resolution of this ridiculous waste of taxpayers money, and the consequent suffering of patients—but the local cops need to get a clue first. I sincerely hope that the citya nd county elected officials let them know about this.
PHARMA: Why Stretch? by Maggie Mahar
Why does the
pharmaceutical industry pour billions into direct-to-consumer (DTC)
ads? One explanation is that drugmakers need a way to market new
products that they are having a hard time selling to doctors—at
least this is what one medical ethicist suggests in the May 2007
issue of The Oncologist.
Noting that more and more
pharmaceutical companies are peddling their products directly to
cancer patients, he writes:
"I have a
hypothesis about which types of oncology drugs are most likely to be
advertised directly to the consumer. I think they are less likely to
be those drugs that have been proven to have benefits, have no
competitors, or are known to be cost-effective. There would be no
reason to promote them, as they are going to be used anyway. In
contrast, it’s those drugs in competitive markets, at the margins of
evidence-based medicine, where pressure from patients resulting from
direct-to-consumer advertising might lead to more prescribing. I
suspect that these marginal drugs will be the very ones that are
advertised most, which is worrisome."
A recent report in The
New England Journal of Medicine confirms that drugmakers tend
to promote their newest drugs DTC: “Notably, nearly all
(17 of 20) advertising campaigns for the most heavily advertised
drugs began within a year after FDA approval of the drug. . .
.which raises questions about the extent to which
advertising increases the use of drugs with unknown safety
profiles.”
POLICY: Guesses at important dates…
In the comments to Brian Klepper’s piece yesterday, troublemaker commenter JD asks the following
Matt, I don’t know if you can do polls on this site, but I’d be interested to see what the readers here would guess as the date universal healthcare legislation passes. My own guess is that SCHIP expansion happens in 2009 (if not sooner), and effectively universal coverage is passed in 2011, effective in 2012. And my guess is that it is more like the Massachusetts model, actually, than Medicare-for-all. Idle wonkery, to be sure, but enjoyable idle wonkery.
I can’t easily put up a poll without pulling John off some real work, but you can all give your best guesses below. How about these three questions.
1) When will SCHIP pass?
2) When will comprehensive health care reform pass the Congress and get signed by the President?
3) When will we get to what reasonable people would agree was 100% universal coverage?
Have fun!
POLICY: Health Care Reform Now? Don’t Hold Your Breath
While Brian goes into the details of what’s need for reform, it just so happens that a few weeks back I wrote an op-ed for the LA Times suggesting that the current “crisis” wasn’t bad enough. As (after soliciting the darn thing) they didn’t print it, I thought it was time to give it an airing and I’ve put up a version of it as my Spot-on piece for this week. It’s called Health Care Now? Don’t Hold Your Breath.
Judging by the number of articles about corporations, unions and politicians decrying America’s healthcare system, you could be excused for believing that we will have health care reform very soon. You’d be wrong. More
Reform’s Tougher Problem by Brian Klepper
Yesterday, Matthew gracefully pointed to my post over at Bob Laszewski’s Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review, which I called "The Tougher Health Care Problem." Bob’s readership leans heavily toward the DC-based health care policy types who may not follow the happenings over here. The policy crowd is a slightly different but very important audience that I hoped might be receptive to a different message than they are typically pitched.
Reform is a complicated topic, particularly because the discussion tends to be so narrowly defined around its objectives: access, quality and cost. But an equally important issue is that American health care is fundamentally about power and money. Achieving reform requires a real understanding of the power dynamics involved.
