OrganizedWisdom Health Blog

The Health-Focused Social Network Can Transform Health Care

There's lots of buzz about Internet social networking these days.  And for good reason.

Sites like MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Bebo, Xanga, LinkedIn are hugely popular among consumers (without a dime spent on advertising MySpace reports nearly 100,000,000 members with half a million more signing up each day!) and these businesses are making a real impact. Social Networks are changing the way people get and share information.  The way businesses, groups and organizations market their brands.  And how millions of us interact and connect on a daily basis. 

Even though social networking sites have been around for years (the first social networking website was Classmates.com, which began in 1995. Other sites followed, including SixDegrees.com, which began in 1997), the real impact of social networks is just beginning to take shape.  So much so that marketers are finally beginning to take notice: eMarketer analysts report social networks' online ad revenues will near $2 Billion in 2010.

And this is just the beginning.  That's because we are about to see a rise in niche-focused social networking sites.  LinkedIn is an already well established example focused on linking business executives.  And breakaway success stories like Flickr, the photo sharing site, has millions of users and was recently acquired by Yahoo!.  There are also a new crop of sites like Minti.com, a parenting focused social network, that are proving the power of these niche focused communities.

The Health-Focused Social Network Can Transform Health Care

In early August we will unveil to the public the first Web 2.0 health-focused social networking site called OrganizedWisdom.com.  Our goal is to enhance professional medical content by providing experienced consumers, medical professionals, health organizations and the health industry a powerful social networking platform to collaborate and share better health information. 

The health-focused social network can change health care because of its ability to efficiently connect those in need with those who can help. The social network will offer a more efficient channel for information distribution and make it possible for the first time for collaboration to happen on a mass scale between consumers, medical professionals, organizations, health care providers and the health industry.

While the government bureaucracy trudges along and many health companies struggle to figure out how best to get involved with the Internet, our goal is to focus on providing the public, health professionals, and the health industry with a more efficient system to connect, collaborate and share educational information.  There is a lot of fear from lawyers these days about user generated content and of losing control in general.  But we feel this is a powerful opportunity for all of us, including the health care businesses, and the best way to combat these fears is to get involved, participate, and find solutions for the benefit of the public good. 

By embracing these technologies to better connect those in need of health information with those who have experience, wisdom and information to share, we believe we can help millions of people.

We look forward to building out this health focused social network with your help over the coming months and years.  And to working together to transform health care for us all.

The Pharmaceutical Industry Must Be Part of the Conversation

There is a great article on pharmalive,com about how the Internet has empowered consumers through blogs and social networking Websites, forcing the pharmaceutical industry to face daunting regulatory hurdles to join the conversation.

It's called "Lost in the Blog"

IIf the patient is going to become fully-informed, the pharma industry must participate in the conversation. They refer to the conversation that is already taking place all across the Internet about every disease, illness and condition imaginable.

Here's our vision for the perfect conversation: Get everyone talking to each other so that everyone can help each other make better health decisions:

Healthcare Professionals +  Experienced Consumers + Pharmaceutical Companies = People Making Better Health Decisions.

Psst! Design Sneak Peak Here...

For those curious early adopters out there, we are giving a sneak preview to the new OrganizedWisdom logo and business card on our flickr site.  We'll also be sharing a sneak peak of some site images and functionality here over the coming days before the OrganizedWisdom launch:

http://flickr.com/photos/organizedwisdom

Microsoft to Make Big Health Announcement Tomorrow

Rumors are flying around the Internet about Microsoft's health related announcement tomorrow, and whether or not they have plans to compete with Google's own health plans (does anyone know what those are? Does Google?).

It's exciting to see all of the momentum heating up in the consumer health sector these days.  In the past few weeks we've seen announcements from several online providers like Choice Health Network, Revolution Health, Google to name a few.  Our hope is that collectively, as an industry we can find solutions to the health care challenges that continue to impact so many millions of Americans.  So far, other than the growing momentum and discussion, we haven't seen any groundbreaking progress from the big companies in terms of solving consumers real problems so let's hope tomorrow's announcement makes some real advances to help consumers better manage their health, reduce costs, and make better decisions.

We have our fingers crossed, but something tells us much of the true innovation is still to come as a result of a new crop of entrepreneurs and small businesses who are going to make radical innovations and disruptive changes to what types of information, services, and solutions consumers have access to. 

We look forward to being one of those providers finding new solutions working to better unite consumers, medical professionals and health care providers like never before.

Put Consumers Back in Control of their Health Says Steve Case in Charlie Rose Interview

Steve Case shares his insights on The Charlie Rose Show on Friday and discusses how Revolution Health, entrepreneurs, new businesses and technology are helping solve one of the nation's biggest problems: fixing health care. 

A new crop of consumer directed health care companies (including our own OrganizedWisdom) are creating new services, better access to information, and easier ways to put consumers back in control of their health care.  See the full interview here (note: you must skip forward a few minutes to see Steve Case portion):  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6507538008164695118

Organizing The Need For People To Share Their Experience.....

According to the just released Pew Internet & American Life Project study on blogging, already 8 percent of Americans are blogging! 

This is a compelling number for a few reasons.  First, it shows how quickly this new trend is sweeping through American culture.  In only a few short years, tens of millions of people are now sharing personal stories and experiences with friends, family and others online.  This number also gives a glimpse into the opportunity for growth as more people join the user-generated content movement.

The report titled, Bloggers: A portrait of the internet's new storytellers, shows us that blogging is bringing new voices to the online world and shows that while many blogs are about politics, the most popular topic among bloggers is to share their life and experiences with others (76%!). 

Our goal at OrganizedWisdom is to tap into this trend of millions of people wanting and needing to share their personal experience.  By creating a structured way for anyone to share their best health wisdom, we believe we can channel the collective wisdom from millions of people and together create a more useful knowledgebase of health information.

Update: Only two weeks away from public launch at www.organizedwisdom.com...

 

JupiterResearch Study: 71% Use the Internet to Search for Health Info, But Only 16% Find What they Need!

About 71 percent of online consumers use search engines to find health-related information, but only 16 percent find the information they are looking for, according to a new JupiterResearch report, "Health Search: Assessing Consumers' Demand for Health Vertical Search Engines."

It's great news that consumers now have the Internet as an important health resource.  But what is the problem here?  With so much great health information available online, why are people not able to find the information they actually need?

As we have been building out OrganizedWisdom, a new community that makes it easy for people to share health wisdom (launching for the public at the beginning of August), we have been focused on this issue as a critical component to our design.  After all, we all need more than information -- we need information that can actually help us better manage our health and wellness. We need to be able to make decisions and to take away actionable advice.

It is great progress that there are plenty of new health search engines being developed.  Google Health continues to make improvements for example and Healthline.com is making progress to help people search for information. But while health search is improving, part of the problem is after users search -- when consumers actually land on a health Web site and try to find the information they need. 

The first problem is that the top health Web sites duplicate the exact same professional content, almost word for word by licensing it from the same circle of information providers.  On one hand, these databases provide vast amounts of professionally reviewed health knowledge from experts.  This information is so important for consumers to educate themselves that we plan to offer much of the same on OrganizedWisdom. There is a big gap of quality content available from the millions of people who actually have experience with any given health issue.  Some sites like WebMD also have message boards, but these are often unorganized and cluttered making it difficult for users to quickly find information they need. No one is yet providing an organized way to learn from the wisdom of millions of people who have real life experience.  OrganizedWisdom believes by enhancing professional content with user generated advice, recommendations and wisdom, consumers will get a more complete picture on any health topic.

The second problem, is that when consumers get to any of the leading health Web sites, they are barraged with information, buttons, banners, options, features and so on.  There is simply too much information!  To much clutter.  To much going on.  Too many decisions to make...Our goal is to strip away the clutter and focus on making it easy for consumers to find the information useful to them.

The third problem making it difficult for users to find information they need is that much of the information consumers actually want has simply not been organized or collected in an easy to use format.  Consumers want practical advice, recommendations, wisdom from other people.  People need information they can actually use to make better health decisions.  The public needs more than encyclopedia-style definitions and background.  Many of professional medical articles out there today do not address these needs. The content is often too general to be of much use to people looking for specific information. We believe that by focusing on the Long Tail of health information, we can help more people get relevant information .

Our goal is to dramatically simplify how people find and share health information.  By collaborating with you, and millions of other people who have experience with thousands of health issues, we will be able to help each other make better help.  And hopefully lead more than 16% of the people to the health information they truly need.

Coming Soon: Get health wisdom on any topic delivered to you via RSS

Interested in staying up to date on Celiac Disease, Migraines, Weight Loss, Pregnancy, {your topic here}? Soon you'll be able to subscribe to any RSS feed for topics you care about and you will get the most recent health wisdom at all times delivered right to you...

RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) have not yet entered the mainstream -- yet!

In fact, only about 6% of Internet users have adopted this new technology.  But as we've been preaching for a few years now to friends and other Internet and new media entrepreneurs, they will. RSS is simply a more convenient way to get the information that matters to you. Instead of having to spend time searching, with RSS it becomes easy to get information you want delivered directly to you (via an RSS feed reader like My Yahoo!, Google, Newshatch, etc.).

This week, Wikipedia launched RSS feeds for all of its posts; Now you can subscribe to find out how the subjects you care about have been changed by other Wikipedia users. We believe the power of this technology will help people get easier access to information they want and need.  That's why we are busy building the same functionality at OrganizedWisdom for over 6,500 health topics.

Check www.OrganizedWisdom.com when we launch in a few weeks to learn more.

Leveraging The Long Tail To Build A More Useful Health Knowledgebase

An important new book hit the shelves yesterday from Wired editor Chris Anderson, called The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.  While this book focuses on a significant new trend taking shape impacting Internet commerce, OrganizedWisdom is leveraging this trend to help more people get better health information on the thousands of issues and conditions impacting them.

What is The Long Tail? According to Wikipedia: 

The long tail is the colloquial name for a long-known feature of statistical distributions resembling the accompanying graph. Anderson argues that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. Examples of such mega-stores include the online retailer Amazon.com and the online video rental service Netflix. The Long Tail is a potential market and, as the examples illustrate, successfully tapping in to that long tail market is often enabled by the distribution and sales channel opportunities the Internet creates.

As Publisher’s Weekly describes in its book review:

Anderson declares the death of "common culture"—and insists that it's for the best. Why don't we all watch the same TV shows, like we used to? Because not long ago, "we had fewer alternatives to compete for our screen attention," he writes. Smash hits have existed largely because of scarcity: with a finite number of bookstore shelves and theaters and Wal-Mart CD racks, "it's only sensible to fill them with the titles that will sell best." Today, Web sites and online retailers offer seemingly infinite inventory, and the result is the "shattering of the mainstream into a zillion different cultural shards." These "countless niches" are market opportunities for those who cast a wide net and de-emphasize the search for blockbusters.

So what does the Long Tail have to do with healthcare information and OrganizedWisdom?

For years now, we have seen a similar trend in healthcare information as more and more consumers have been searching the Internet to learn about various diseases, medical conditions, medications, treatments and so on. Consumers now have readily available access to professional medical information on virtually any health topic. The problem, however, is that much of this information often comes from the same data set, created by the same few content distribution providers. For example, as searches on WebMD, Yahoo Health, AOL Health, MSN Health will show, you can now type in any drug, any disease or treatment, any ailment, and chances are you will get the same content almost word for word from the same licensed information sources. The good news is that there is consistency of information out there. While there is a great knowledgebase of information written by a few hundred medical professionals, what is missing is the collective wisdom from the millions of patients, doctors, health associations, and friends and family members who have real life experience with these same diseases, medications, treatment centers and health issues.

At OrganizedWisdom, we believe we can help more people by combining the collective wisdom of millions of people who have experienced thousands of health issues, with the same professional health information that these other big health providers share online. And in so doing we can create a Long Tail of better health information on thousands of health topics.

 We don’t want to focus on only the top 20 most popular health topics of the moment because that is where advertisers are spending money that month. We want to provide useful information to everyone who needs information on the thousands of health topics that get no attention, that go under recognized, that no one ever hears about or sees on the homepage of WebMD (WBMD), Yahoo Health (YHOO), AOL Health (TWX), or MSN Health (MSFT).

Together, we will develop a more useful database of health knowledge, by organizing the collective wisdom of The Long Tail so you can get better information of any health topic, not just the most reported health concerns of the day.

Would you recommend this information to a friend?

Instead of asking people to complete cumbersome questionnaires and surveys about their satisfaction with your product or service, it's been proven to be more useful to ask just one question - "would you recommend this product to a friend?"  It's referred to as a net promoter score and in company's like GE and Intuit, it's become a very revealing barometer of
customer satisfaction.

It's described in an article in Business 2.0 called "The Only Question That Matters" and we're going to be applying this same idea to health information found on OrganizedWisdom.com.  If you're reading about Gastrointestinal Reflux Disease, you'll know right away if the information you're looking at has been found to be helpful to others'.

Be sure to sign up to be a beta tester at http://www.organizedwisdom.com and be the first on your block to try it!