The Health Wisdom Blog™ (by OrganizedWisdom)

The Open Health Care Manifesto - Get On The Healthtrain

OrganizedWisdom has signed on as founding supporters of Healthtrain, The Open Healthcare Manifesto, an important new set of standards which is still in its early stages of development. Dmitriy Kruglyak, from The Medical Blog Network and organizer of the upcoming Health Blogging Summit has been working on this for some time with a large group of collaborators and the project is really taking shape.

In 1999, Cluetrain Manifesto (which was just released in its entirety free online), made history by proposing a vision for how Internet communication will change business. This vision helped encourage many important innovations including blogging technology itself. As Dmitriy points out on his blog post about the manifesto, "healthcare is way more complex than 'general business' and the stakes are human lives. Surprisingly, Cluetrain principles have not been "translated" for this industry. Till now. HealthTrain = Healthcare Cluetrain."

The list of proposed principles, which are further discussed in the document:

1. Openness
2. Empowerment
3. Conversation
4. Empathy
5. Trust
6. Critical Thinking
7. Guidance
8. Control
9. Credentials
10. Transparency
11. Privacy
12. Anonymity
13. Scientific Validity
14. Conflicts of Interest
15. Sponsorship
16. Promotion
17. Controversy
18. Civility and Respect

It looks like the HealthTrain ideas will be discussed in depth at the first Healthcare Blogging Summit 2006 on December 11 in Washington DC.  We plan to be there and blogging about any of the new developments.

Information as Therapy - Podcast Interview with Healthwise CEO Don Kemper

TheHealthCareBlog is featuring Matthew Holt's excellent podcast interview with Don Kemper, CEO of Healthwise.

Don Kemper created the concept of information therapy--the prescription of evidence-based medical information to a specific patient, caregiver, or consumer at just the right time to help the person make a specific health decision or behavior change.

Of particular interest was the discussion about the importance of peer to peer information and how this type of health information works well with evidenced-based research.

"Clearly you need both." said Mr. Kemper. "You need good vetted scientific information that has a good base of scientific research. You need that to be able to work with your doctors. You also need to know what worked for other patients.  The two work together quite nicely."

There is also a great discussion about how peer to peer health communication helps people cope with the social aspects caused by health issues.

Online Health Search Trends from Pew Internet Project

The Online Health Search 2006 Report from the Pew Internet Project has just been released.  It's a must read as usual.  Here are some highlights:

• Most internet users start at a general search engine when researching health and medical advice online.
• Three-quarters of internet users who look online for such advice do not consistently check the source and date of the information they find which translates to about 85 million Americans gathering health advice online without consistently examining the quality indicators of the information they find. Just 15% of health seekers say they “always” check the source and date of the health information they find online, while another 10% say they do so “most of the time.”
• Eighty percent of American internet users, or some 113 million adults, have searched for information on at least one of seventeen health topics.
• Most health seekers say they are pleased about what they find online, but some are frustrated or confused.

User-Generated Health Content Will Work With Trust, Transparency and Collaboration

HealthCareVOX has been one of the leaders talking extensively about the benefits and drawbacks of health-focused user-generated content.

Today, Fard Johnmar from HealthCareVOX, posted a recent email interview he conducted with OrganizedWisdom co-founder Unity Stoakes that covers these issues in-depth.

Read the full interview by clicking here: http://www.healthcarevox.com/2006/10/trust_transparency_knowledge_a.html

The conversation covers a lot of important ground about the credibility of user-generated content and how OrganizedWisdom is different from vertical search engines like Healthline and Healia.  Here's a list of the questions we answered:

Q1: Please tell me a little bit about why you decided to develop OrganizedWisdom.com.

Q2: What are the major differences between OrganizedWisdom and other health search engines like Healia and Healthline?

Q3: OrganizedWisdom relies on users to develop health content.  What are the benefits and drawbacks of this strategy?

Q4: How do you ensure that users contribute high-quality content?

Q5:  What do you think it will take for people to view OrganizedWisdom as a trusted source of health information?

Q6: How can marketers ensure that they are engaging people using OrganizedWisdom.com and resources like it appropriately?

Q7: In recent months, some marketers have posted content on Wikipedia without disclosing that they are doing so for commercial reasons.  What is your opinion of this practice and do you think it could occur on OrganizedWisdom.com?

Want Your Health Topic To Be Optimized For Natural Search? Publish WisdomCards And Shoot To The Top

Here is are two big secrets about OrganizedWisdom: It is helping anyone with health knowledge, expertise and wisdom shoot straight to the top of Google. And we are seeing the Long Tail of health take shape very quickly.

We are seeing a very important trend develop on OrganizedWisdom. Our user-generated health WisdomCards are showing up at the top of the natural search rankings on Google and other search engines. 

This is helping both health seekers as well as those who have health knowledge to publish.  Simply put, our model to connect those who have wisdom to share with those who need practical health information is working, albeit we are still in the nascent stages of building our user-generated content library.

We specifically designed our technology, and the user-generated content shared by consumer patients, health professionals and the industry on OrganizedWisdom, to have huge credibility with Google.  Our goal has always been to make it easier for people to get better access to health knowledge.  And with every new WisdomCard added to our system, this is actually happening as a result of how we are optimizing our content for natural search. This means that health seekers are now finding your published WisdomCards not only when they search our site, but also when they start at Google, Yahoo!, MSN, as many people do.

In addition to the trend of our content being found near the top (or first) on search engines, we are seeing the Long Tail effect for health in action.  That is, people are searching using keywords, search terms, and using health topics many people might not immediately expect.

Here are a some examples.  Type any of these key words into Google and you will see our WisdomCards near the top of the results. (Just click any search string to see what we mean).

have had a cough for 3 weeks, is it serious
continued cough for 2 weeks
two week cold
wrestling saunas cutting
recovery time after having a wisdom tooth pulled
vomiting from infant to toddler
listerine colds
supplements+manic

In only a few weeks, we already have hundreds of examples of these types of results. And as more people share WisdomCards this trend will only multiply. 

If you are a blogger, author, physician, health professional, patient advocate, leader of a foundation, member of a health group, etc. you now have a way to publish your knowledge so others can easily find it in search engines. You can use our WisdomCards to share your wisdom, increase your profile, and increase awareness and traffic to your own sites, blogs, podcasts, and so on.

If you are an eye doctor for example, we suggest you publish several WisdomCards on your areas of expertise, for example Lasik Surgery or the questions you should ask your eye doctor before getting contacts.  Link back to your own Web site to increase your traffic.  Remember, the better the wisdom you share, the more credibility you will have with the community.  Also, be sure to be transparent about who you are so your motivations are clear.  The goal is not for this to be an "advertising" channel, but to collaboratively build a knowledge base of great advice, recommendations, and wisdom people have to share.  The same goes for patient advocates, foundation leaders, authors, and health groups. For example, if you are a breast cancer survivor your experience could greatly help someone else figure out what questions to ask, how to cope, and what to be aware of.  You may have already published your experience on a blog or bulletin board. But by publishing a WisdomCard you can help others find your information by making it easier to find in search engines. 

When you know a lot about something, it feels good to share. Help other people discover what you found out the hard way. And remember, a popular WisdomCard gives credibility to the author. A popular WisdomCard reinforces your role as an "everyday expert." And a popular WisdomCard makes you the go-to authority for those looking for help.

Test it out.  Create one really useful WisdomCard and watch it show up in Google.  Watch it generate awareness for your cause.  Watch it start driving traffic to your own site.

An Unbiased, efficient system to get the word out

There's an interesting article in a NY Times op-ed piece titled "The Sting of Ignorance" in which Harvard Medical School professor Jerry Avorn details the importance of learning from the health experiences of ordinary people, not just expert medical information.  In it he details why "We need an unbiased, efficient system to get the word out to practitioners on what works best."

Why Social Media's Perceived Hazards Are Actually An Opportunity for Health Innovation

An interesting controversy is heating up in great blogs like HealthMarketingVox and mainstream media like the Boston Globe as a result of Sermo.com, a new Web site that is making it easy for physicians to identify and discuss trends in medicine before they become widely known. 

At the center of this debate loom several very important questions:

Is social media hazardous to the communications channels of the health industry? Can collaborative information networks be trusted to deliver credible information? And will new forums for knowledge sharing help identify important health issues faster?

We suggest the debate be framed in a different way.  The reality is, social networks are here to stay and as technologies get even easier to use (and those in college now become the physicians and the patients of the future) they will only proliferate in prominence in the health sector:  Physicians will continue to use social media to collaborate more not less; Consumer patients will continue to publish their own health experiences more not less. 

The reality is the debate about health information and social media is only just beginning.

That's why for several reasons, we believe, there is an opportunity for industry leaders to learn from the perceived challenges posed by the social media revolution. And if properly thought through, social media will actually be one of the best things to ever happen to the health care industry.  That's because
collaborative information networks will help pharmaceutical companies develop better products and foster closer relationships with consumer patients; health agencies will be able to identify safety issues faster; physicians will be able to tap into the wisdom of their colleagues to become more knowledgeable; and consumer patients will get better health care.

So if social media has such great potential, why is Sermo.com, the quickly growing online community for physicians, already hearing complaints from pharmaceutical makers?  And why did the consumer advocacy group Public Citizens, that frequently petitions the FDA to have dangerous drugs removed from the market, tell to the Boston Globe that companies should not attempt to supplant the FDA's watchdog role?

While the details are largely different, we have seen (and can learn from) similar trends in several other industries (consumer electronics, music, entertainment, automotive, and so on) that have confronted similar disruptions and communications challenges as a result of social media and the Internet. The bottom line is that consumers (or physicians and consumer patients in our case) now have more control than ever before.

In each of those industries, the companies that looked at Internet communications as an advantage rather than something to fear have become the new innovators and leaders of their sector.  Those that recognized and learned early how to cultivate community, promote transparency, and always put their customers first seem to keep coming out as the winners.

We suggest you dip your toe in the water.  Start learning early how to join the discussion in a safe and credible way.  Because if you crack this code, you'll be winning for a long long time.

More Examples of Inspiring WisdomCards

It is truly inspiring to see people sharing their personal experience on important health issues so they can spread their knowledge to help other people.  Here are two great examples of WisdomCards published yesterday on Epilepsy:

Problems with Disability & Medication with Epilepsy

College and epilepsy don't mix!

Over the coming weeks and months we will be reaching out to thousands of people who have wisdom to share on everything from surviving breast cancer, living with celiac disease, and what you need to know about diabetes, and hundreds of other important topics. 

Help us reach our first milestone of 1,000 WisdomCards. It happens one card at a time, and we hope you'll be the next person to share your wisdom.  Remember, you can do it anonymously or build a complete bio which can help establish credibility for your wisdom.

What's Been Keeping Us Busy And How Your Feedback Helps

We have been getting some really incredible feedback from members, friends and partners.  We can't tell you how much your support and suggestions are helping.  To give you a little insight into our process, here's how it works. 

In addition to analyzing the raw numbers and metrics, to see how things are working everyday, we pay most attention to everything you tell us - good and bad! 

In fact, we really appreciate hearing what we can do to improve.  What we can do to make things more intuitive.  What things simply don't make sense or work right.  That way we can quickly jump on the most important issues and fix them.  By taking your suggestions, digesting them, we are able to implement the very best new ideas, features and fixes.  We are able to innovate and get to where we are trying to go: building the most useful health community in the world full of health wisdom from people like you.

So here's a list of some of the things that have been keeping us busy.  And also a sneak peak at some of the new features we are working on right now based on your feedback: http://wisdom.blogs.com/changelog/

As always, keep sharing your wisdom, spreading the word, and sending us your feedback.

Crowdsourcing: Time, Momentum and The 1% Rule

Health industry leader Fard Johnmar published a post about crowdsourcing today that features OrganizedWisdom on HealthCareVOX.

As his article correctly points out "crowdsourcing", a term first coined by Wired Magazine, has been going on for a long time in healthcare.  Fard mentions examples of people using blogs, bulletin boards and wikis to share health information.

Consistent with the recent review of OrganizedWisdom on Mashable.com, Fard points out "[OrganizedWisdom] will become most useful when there is more user-generated content available."

The beginning growth stages of any new online community can be daunting.  That's because crowdsourcing takes time. It takes time, support, and inertia to build momentum. And of course, there are never any guarantees a community will thrive.

So that brings us to one of our big challenges as we build OrganizedWisdom and help create a thriving health community: how do we get more and more people to begin to share their health wisdom? How do we get people who have so much wisdom to share, to unleash their life experience, advice and knowledge to help other people?

We know most Internet users have searched for health information (80%), but only a small percentage have yet joined this crowdsourcing movement to give back to the community by contributing themselves.  In fact, this phenomenon is actually the norm for most social networks. According to Jakob Neilsen's article on Participation Inequality, most people just look (90%), some participate and take some action like voting, linking, etc. (9%), and the small minority actually join the discussion and contribute content (1%).  Amazingly, these trends remain true for sites as comprehensive and full of activity and content as Wikipedia, Digg, and YouTube.

As we grow our community, finding the 1% who are willing and dedicated to sharing their most important health wisdom to share other people, remains one of our main areas of focus everyday.  For example, we are reaching out to health associations who are trying to educate others about important health topics like breast cancer, Lyme disease, and immune deficiency disease.  We are reaching out to health groups so they can tell their members to spread their wisdom as far and wide as possible by publishing WisdomCards, and we are contacting as many individual bloggers as possible.

Since this is just the beginning of this movement to get people to share their health wisdom, we need everyone's help and support.  Everyone knows someone who has important health wisdom to share. Take five minutes with someone you know who has experience of value to share and help them publish their story on OrganizedWisdom.  With each new WisdomCard published, this community becomes stronger, more helpful, and more valuable to everyone.

See for yourself what we mean.  All you have to do is read some of these helpful and inspiring examples of recently published WisdomCards on OrganizedWisdom.com to see how much value sharing can bring:

Shared WisdomCard on - Hodgkin's Lymphoma Disease
Shared WisdomCard on - Epilepsy
Shared WisdomCard on - Alzheimer's Disease
Shared WisdomCard on - Bipolar Manic Depression
Shared WisdomCard on - Lyme Disease
Others...here

This is a long journey and together we will build something truly amazing that will help a lot of people. And as we embark on this challenge to help more people share their experience, there is a great story from one of the co-founders of YouTube in today's New York Times.  In a video shot in April 2005, co-founder Steven Chen talks about “getting pretty depressed” because there were only 50 or 60 videos on the YouTube site at the time.  Only 17 months later, and there are tens of millions of videos...

Have you joined that 1% yet? Start by sharing your health wisdom here.