By Matthew Holt

Ever since the “build your own network” company Ning moved to a pay model for its networks, there’s been some browbeating on the blogosphere about what to do with those communities which had created traction on Ning, but didn’t have a way to pay.

For the next year at least that little problem is over. The sugar daddy here is WEGOhealth, which has positioned itself in an unusual niche—the place where people leading online patient communities can go to learn from each other. WEGOHealth is run by former Yahoo Health leader (from a few years back) Jack Barrette. Jack is a hell of a nice guy but I suspect that this deal wasn’t just about being nice. The WEGOhealth business model is about convincing advertisers that they can get in front of influential patients, and anyone running a Ning network for a health condition is likely to be (as Edelman call it) a health infoential.

So if you have a NING network that might qualify, here’s how to apply. And I suspect that Jack would appreciate it if you also paid a visit or two to WEGOhealth as well.

By NORTIN HADLER, MD

There has been much progress in the understanding of the biology of Alzheimer’s disease. Chemicals detected in the blood and spinal fluid of patients with Alzheimer’s and findings with new brain imaging techniques are the long sought after “biomarkers” of the disease. They are clues to its cause that are already targets for drug development. But there is a great public health danger in jumping the gun and prematurely using biomarkers in clinical practice for diagnosis or prognosis. It is for this reason that I have serious reservations about the new diagnostic guidelines proposed for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

The current guidelines, which have served as well as possible for 26 years are based entirely on the patient’s narrative. The diagnostic label is applied when there is no better explanation for a severe and global compromise in cognition that developed insidiously. The diagnosis of Alzheimer’s when it is full blown is not a challenge. The challenge is in making the diagnosis when it is less obvious, when it is but “Possible” or “Probable.” These categories are confronted in the old criteria by considering the degree to which elements of cognition are compromised. The application of these qualified diagnostic labels provokes as much anxiety in the clinician as it does angst in the patient and foreboding in the patient’s intimate community. Maybe the fact that grandpa occasionally forgets his keys or his neighbor’s name is all there is to it; “grandpa’s losing it” or has a touch of “senility”. That would call for a supportive community, and not the specter of a slide to a dreadful fate denoted by Alzheimer’s.

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By Matthew Holt

It's been a little while since I checked in with the folks at BenefitFocus. They essentially create a system that allows employees to sign up for benefits all at once. They market it via a lead health plan in each area, and then give the employer HR department the ability to glom their other benefits plans onto it, saving lots of time and trees during open enrollment and for new employee hires. (The really old reader may remember that this was the very first business model of Healtheon in 1996 and funnily enough Healtheon's first "client" for that version of their business model, Blue Shield of California, is a decade and a half later using BenefitFocus for the same thing).

They also have an interesting side business making videos and selling that service to HR departments for internal education, and have a public side to their video business, a sort of Youtube for health called ICYOU, who of course come to every Health 2.0 Conference (Hi, Nina & crew!)

Last week I caught up with Shawn Jenkins, the CEO of BenefitFocus. This is a guy who started a business in the middle of the dotcom bust in the technology backwater of South Carolina (cue abusive emails!), and now has 500 employees, lots of clients and a very profitable company. And of course they are well positioned to be at the hub of the forthcoming exchanges–the state of Maryland has already signed on the dotted line. And now they're moving into analytics.

Interested in what they're up to? Listen in.

Shawn Jenkins, BenefitFocus

By Matthew Holt

SUBTEXTAt Health 2.0 Goes to Washington on June 7, 2010, Kenneth
Buetow, Associate Director of BioInformatics for the National
Cancer
Institute and Founder of caBIG, talked about the launching of a large
scale effort called Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG).