Guest Article: A Tech-savvy Physician’s View of Patient Social Networks

Dr. Jason Bhan is a practicing family physician and an Assistant Clinical Professor and Community Preceptor at the Medical College of Virginia and is board certified in Family Medicine. Dr. Bhan is Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Ozmosis__, a great physician-only online resource for sharing medical knowledge between trusted practitioners. He is regarded as an emerging national expert in the applications of social media to healthcare and medicine and writes a regular blog on these topics and more at his blog.

The nice folks from Ohio State University Center for IT Innovations in Healthcare sent me a note that they are holding their second annual “Healthcare IT Innovation Summit” on November 17 in Columbus, Ohio. It seems like a very interesting gathering and I might be attending. They are inviting thought leaders to explore questions such as: What effect does consumer-driven healthcare have on leveraging technology resources? What are the strategies behind unleashing the true power of technology innovation in health care?

As most of us in healthcare realized long ago, pen and paper is a very difficult technology to replace and compete with. It doesn’t matter how fancy our computers get, how nice tablets become, or how good the voice recognition features are, most healthcare workers spend a majority of their time on paper. The IOGear Mobile Digital Scribe is probably the closest device I’ve seen that may allow doctors to switch to a non-traditional pen/paper technology.

A friend of mine sent me a note to take a look at Make Mine Paper by a blogger who calls himself “#1 Dinosaur, MD”. It’s a well written article that explains why there are some physicians who will never use an EMR. Some choice words: Until there is a single, interoperable system in wide use, EMRs will never have the portability and versatility of paper. Just imagine the chaos that would result if doctors’ offices used 8.

A friend of mine sent me this link – “Beware of the EMR ‘Ponzi scheme,’ warns physician leader” — earlier this week. The article starts off by saying: Healthcare IT does not necessarily make life easier for primary care physicians, says a leader in the movement to make medicine more efficient and patient-centered. “When you put an EMR into a primary care practice, your life is hell for the next year,” said L.

The nice folks over at RNCentral.com have posted their list of the top 50 Health 2.0 blogs. This humble blog is listed in their Health and Technology section and I thank them for their consideration.

The folks at SoftwareAdvice.com recently published EHR vs. EMR – What’s the Difference? It’s a good, but at times too high-level and could have been a bit more substantive in terms of real problems and potential solutions (but I suspect this was “landscape” summary so I can’t fault them too much). It talks about what is an EMR, EHR, and PHR from a definitional perspective and goes on to give a good summary of how often each term is used (with Google stats) and why vendors are still calling themselves EMRs.

Caring.com is an excellent example of how to use Web 2.0 for improving patient care — by targeting not just those affected by illness but actually helping those that are caring for the patients. Caring.com’s focus on eldercare (adult children caring for aging parents) is a good one and should prove profitable. I really like their “to do list” ideas that give actionable advice and specific steps for how adult children can care for their elderly patients.

George over at Patient Centric Healthcare blogged about using mobile phones’ texting capabilities to get insurance company deductibles and other information. Nice idea, worth reading — somebody will make some money off of it. He says: Imagine texting your plan for an immediate response on: Your deductible Your FSA balance Your copay on a specific drug Whether a provider is in network The status of your prior authorization A list of formulary alternatives

Neil Versel recently wrote about Medicine 2.0 here and here. Check out the postings, it looks like there was some nice stuff going on there. The proceedings of the conference are freely available.

Medigy Innovation Network

Connecting innovation decision makers to authoritative information, institutions, people and insights.

Medigy Logo

The latest News, Insights & Events

Medigy accurately delivers healthcare and technology information, news and insight from around the world.

The best products, services & solutions

Medigy surfaces the world's best crowdsourced health tech offerings with social interactions and peer reviews.


© 2023 Netspective Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Built on Jan 17, 2023 at 9:26am