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HEALTH2.0: More on the conference, and the Google situation

Health 2.0 is officially sold out. However, if you
still want to come there is a chance that we will be able make room for
you, as cancellations and other changes open up spots. You can still register on our waiting list. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible — although we may not be able to tell you anything until early next week.
This will also (hint, hint) put you on the list to be notified when spots become
available for the next Health 2.0, tentatively scheduled for the first
quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, to receive updates on conference developments please sign up for our newsletter.

Peerclip_logo
Also, a big welcome (cue applause) is due to HEALTH 2.0’s latest charter sponsor. PeerClip hasn’t launched yet, but you can go take a sneak peak at what they are up to on their site. What exactly are they about? The mystery will be answered soon! Stay tuned to THCB for more details.

DVD  boxed set

Meanwhile, if you can’t make it to Health 2.0 but want to catch all the action or share the Health 2.0 experience with your colleagues, we will be making a DVD set available shortly after September 20th. To  reserve your set, please email in**@********on.com with "DVD boxed set" in your subject line. Full details will be provided.

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What About Health Plan Transparency? – Brian Klepper

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As you might have noticed, Matthew has been a little preoccupied lately. He and Indu are putting the finishing touches on the Health 2.0 conference. This meeting will be 4 times the size they originally conceived, with content that describes a good portion of how health care will undoubtedly be shaped in the future. I’ll be there, typing furiously, trying to capture the blow by blow for THCB.

In any case, while Matt’s energies are elsewhere, I thought I’d float a topic that’s been on my mind recently.

Senator Clinton plans to roll out her health plan tomorrow, but in the roll-up last week she pointedly singled out the health plans as a big part of the problem.

"I intend to dramatically rein in the influence of the
insurance companies. They have worked to the
detriment of our economy and of our health-care system."

There has been a lot of discussion and progress lately on the transparency of doctor and hospital pricing and performance. But health plans are also very important, costly system players. What about the transparency of their pricing and performance? At this point, nearly all health plan costs and performance are opaque to the purchasers who buy coverage and to the vendors whose services they broker.

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Best of: AthenaHealth’s Jonathan Bush on the end of software

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AthenaHealth’s Jonathan Bush was patient enough to talk through two interviews with me. The first died in a software flameout–the second crashed my computer, but thankfully the recording was still there after my very fearful restart! Jonathan explains AthenaHealth’s business model, why software is "nearly dead", and why he might just send a detective to your house if you want a job with him!

The rumors are true–he’s entertaining and "provocative". And he’ll be coming (assuming his schedule clears up) to the Health2.0 conference. So take a listen to the interview

HEALTH2.0: User Generated Healthcare, Health2.0FAQ (by Matthew) with UPDATE

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Q. What is Health2.0 and why are we running a conference about it?

The term Web2.0 has been around since 2003. The O’€™Reilly organization both coined the term and created a definition that year, and then they went on to create the Web2.0 Conference. Meanwhile over at The Health Care Blog and in his by now relatively long consulting career, Matthew Holt (your author–€I’€™ll be switching to "€œI & we" from now on) has been following technology in health care since the early 1990s. Some of my eHealth era reminisces were relatively poignant…

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Best of: The AMA goes 2.0

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Most of you reading about Health2.0 will be bored by now of me talking about Sermo and how they’ve become the quickest growing physician online community in well under a year–although there’s now competition in that space from the  likes of Within3. You’ve also probably got bored of me saying that the big question about Health2.0 technologies is whether "the health care establishment" is going to adopt them.

However, you’d probably be a little surprised to find that one of the bastions of America’s health care establishment–and one that doesn’t get much good press on THCB–has decided that it needs to jump on board the Health2.0 bandwagon. Today Sermo announces a deal with the AMA that allows the AMA to see what doctors are talking about on Sermo, and gets its user docs free access to all the AMA’s journals, as well as starts making Sermo’s ranking and discussion tools part of those journals.

This is a coup for Sermo and a big move for the AMA. Not to mention a validation of the impact of at least one part of the Health2.0 movement. Want to know more? I thought you did–which is why I interviewed Sermo CEO Daniel Palestrant about the deal yesterday. Listen to the interview.

And yes, Daniel and Sermo (and the Within3 folks) will all be at the Health2.0-User Generated Healthcare conference. But you all knew that too!

BEST OF: JD Kleinke talks about PHRs, Omnimedix and the Dossia controversy

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JD Kleinke is always one of the more controversial and fun people in health care policy and health care IT. He doesn’t just write about stuff–he also gets really involved. From his early days at HCIA to his more recent roles at Healthgrades. And now of course he’s the head of Omnimedix — which was developing the technology for the employer based PHR Dossia, funded by WalMart, Intel et al. But apparently not funded enough.

I had a wide-ranging discussion with JD about his policy work, his career, what he thinks about health plans, and what went wrong with Dossia. The interview is of course well worth a listen.

HEALTH2.0/TECH: Way too much going on!

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I’m trying to organize a conference with everyone and their brother claiming that they need the last seat and that the dog ate their mouse so they couldn’t register. And we’ve been coaxing our demo panelists through their demos–which are all going to be really great, other than no one believes you when you tell them that four minutes went by in just 240 seconds.

And Tuesday was just one of those days…

Perennial THCB Health2.0 favorites Sermo are cooking up some fun stuff for the wine and cheese reception they’re sponsoring to close the Health2.0 Conference. But they’ve had a huge few days. Last week they announced that the FDA will be using Sermo to monitor potential new adverse drug events and much more. Initially FDA staff will be looking at what docs are talking about online, later they’ll be posing questions. Then Tuesday Sermo announced a $27m Series C Round, which should just about cover the cost of the cocktails….

Meanwhile, Kosmix has taken the beta tag off its RightHealth stealth search engine site. You can hear far more about this from my interview with Venky a month or two back. But they’ve announced that they got 2.5 million visits and 9 million searches generated a month and are in the top 12 health search sites measured by Hitwise. The concept is to extend the "home age for a search" to let people explore topics in context, while still making those top 10 search results visible.

Speaking of searches, OrganizedWisdom is changing its spots and moving from being a user-generated content site, to being a community search site that integrates user-generated content from all over.  More details here and to be revealed at the conference next week. CEO Steven Krein tried to explain this to me at lunch a while back but I didn’t understand what he was talking about. Now I do and it’s really very interesting.

Finally, we’ll have more to say about how the news that Adam Bosworth is leaving Google health will impact Health2.0 shortly. But rest assured that Google is still participating in the conference and that they remain committed to health care.

HEALTH PLANS/TECH: Selling out a name–et tu Harvard?

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Over at HISTalk there’s frequent criticism of "awards" that are handed out by analysts to vendors, and frequent assessment of which consultants can be trusted as independent, as opposed to which ones will "sell" an award. Frost and Sullivan gets a particularly bad rap over there on the latter issue.

Which all struck me as a little strange when I saw this press release. South Carolina Blues has won an award for its pre-certification technology. Who bestowed this honor?  Harvard School of Public Health’s Dept of Health Care Policy.

BlueWorks is a partnership between the Blue Cross and Blue Shield
Association and Harvard’s Department of Health Care Policy that recognizes
innovative Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies working with doctors and
hospitals to increase the efficiency and consistency of care delivery
nationwide. <SNIP> Since 2004, Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care
Policy has named 35 Blue Cross and Blue Shield programs as BlueWorks winners.

Of course all major Universities collaborate with business, but I’m not sure I recall one going into the "handing out prizes" part of consulting. Anyone know any more?

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