The Health Wisdom Blog™ (by OrganizedWisdom)

Q&A With OrganizedWisdom's Chief Medical Officer, Howard Krein, MD, PhD

When we set out to create a human-powered search service for health, our goal was to create a service that doctors would recommend to their patients and families to use.  Quality control and credibility has been the essential focus of our team ever since we launched.  From day one we have worked with doctors on all aspects of our product development to make sure we are building a service that can be trusted and will be most useful to people.

Our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Howard Krein, is responsible for shaping our quality standards.  He works closely with our Medical Director, Dr. Scott Pearlman, and our physician review team to make sure we build a service designed to help the most people.

We thought it would be helpful to post this recent Q&A interview we did with Dr. Krein to give our users more background about his thinking and share his insights into the OrganizedWisdom quality process and why he believes it is so valuable to integrate experts and doctors into the process of guiding people to better health information.

Question and Answer Interview with Dr. Howard Krein, Chief Medical Officer, OrganizedWisdom.

   1. You've said that OrganizedWisdom is like having a doctor in the family.  Can you share what you mean by this and describe some of the ways OrganizedWisdom is helping people manage their health?

         One of the interesting things that happened as I went through medical school was my family and friends started to call me with healthcare questions. They were looking for guidance in navigating topics that were sometimes complicated but always important. If you ask any doctor, they'll tell that the same thing happened to them... It's one of the perks of having a physician in the family.  The advantage of having someone close to you who is knowledgeable, always available and accessible to answer healthcare questions is a benefit few people enjoy. As a physician, you are limited in being available to your patients at that same level. At OrganizedWisdom, we are dedicated to bringing that same level of accessibility of healthcare information to people all across the world. Our goal is to provide easy access to quality healthcare information to everyone all the time. When we do quality reviews of our WisdomCards, we look to make sure all the information that I would want my family to have about a topic is represented on the Wisdomcard. This is one of our standards.

Several months ago, I bumped into a friend who told me “I almost called you the other evening”. She went on to tell me that she was diagnosed with a thyroid mass and although her doctor answered the questions she asked, when she got home that evening she thought of more questions. Instead of just calling me, she went to OrganizedWisdom and found all of the answers to her questions. This crystalized the standard we are shooting for so we can help more people by providing instant access to quality healthcare information and you trust, anytime day or night.

And as we innovate we keep going back to this concept of creating a service that is like having a doctor in the family.  Our new LiveWisdom service is a great example of this because it makes it easy for people to chat LIVE with doctors directly from our WisdomCards.

   2. What's the role of the Chief Medical Officer at OrganizedWisdom and why did you decide to join the team?

When Steve Krein and Unity Stoakes (Steve is my brother and co-founded the company with Unity Stoakes) were starting OrganizedWisdom, they came to me and asked for guidance about what they were building from a medical doctor's perspective.  They were trying to create something radically different and more useful, but wanted to make sure they were building a service that doctors would want to recommend to their own patients.  So joining OrganizedWisdom was a no-brainer for me because I had so much confidence in the team and the vision. As a physician, I spend much of my day as a patient advocate and educator, so this opportunity is a meaningful extension of what I already do. I feel very lucky to have the ability to be involved in a company that strives to provide the best health information and resources to anyone who needs it.

Being Chief Medical Officer at OrganizedWisdom means that I am ultimately responsible for setting the quality and accuracy standards of our service.  I also work with our Editorial Director, Guide Manager and Medical Director in overseeing the quality controls and training programs for our physician reviewer and guide programs. As a practicing physician, I understand what patients need and want because I am interacting with them everyday. Our goal is not only to provide all of the pertinent information on healthcare topics and resources, it is also to make sure that information is the up-to-date and the best that’s available. That means that on top of creating hand crafted search results (WisdomCards), we constantly review and update these WisdomCards. That’s the OrganizedWisdom difference.

The OrganizedWisdom team starts where traditional search engines end. We take the best of what’s out there, and make it better.

Finding quality healthcare information shouldn't be a time-consuming process. We are solving this problem by adding the wisdom of trained expert search guides and physician reviewers to the power of computerized search tools and social bookmarking sites. This human-powered model helps us deliver far superior health search results by eliminating search index spam from low-quality websites, links to duplicitive libraries of licensed health content or potentially dangerous web sites.

   3. What feedback are you getting from your patients about OrganizedWisdom?  Do you have any examples of how people are using the service?

It's amazing to hear how helpful OrganizedWisdom has been for so many of my patients! As a practicing physician at an academic university (Jefferson University Hospital Philadelphia, PA) I have the privilege of being part of a busy practice.  Along with trying to answer all the questions my patients have, I feel I have the responsibility to help them find quality sources to answer questions that come up after they leave my office. OrganizedWisdom has given me the service that I have always wanted to share with my patients so they could help themselves.

OrganizedWisdom gives physicians the ability to send patients to a website that reviews and organizes the best information online thereby allowing people to continue to educate themselves and help them get a clearer understanding of their health questions. In addition, patients who use OrganizedWisdom prior to coming into our office feel that they are better prepared to engage in a quality conversation regarding their issues…and this can be very helpful.

    4. What feedback are you getting from other doctors and medical professionals about OrganizedWisdom?

Feedback from other healthcare providers has been very positive. As I mentioned, whether patients use OrganizedWisdom before or after a visit, there seems to be a perceived benefit by most healthcare providers I have spoken with. Having a free service that provides patients with easy access to the best information available in easy to navigate Wisdomcards, helps patients to prepare for their appointments and helps streamline some to the conversations that must take place. This is advantageous to both the patient and provider. I have also gotten feedback that many providers use our site as a starting point for their own searches.

   5. OrganizedWisdom has been working hard on a new service that will give people instant access to chat with a doctor from a WisdomCard.  Can you tell us about this new LiveWisdom service and how do you think it will help people?

I believe Live Wisdom is one of the most exciting developments in healthcare today. We believe that asking doctors questions should be easy, affordable, and accessible to all.  LiveWisdom gives people the access that they want to physicians and healthcare providers anytime day or night.

No longer will people have to worry over an unanswered healthcare question, even if it is in the middle of the night. Whether a person has insurance or not, whether they have a primary care physician or not, whether they are employed or not, we are making sure they have access to affordable, vetted, healthcare information from medical doctors and health experts.  Although there is no replacing visiting your own doctor, we are going to provide qualified and professional physicians to help bridge the gap between what you know and what you need to know.  No longer will someone have to wait till their physician calls them back to get answers.  The LiveWisdom physicians are informed experts who can help you understand conditions, medicines, and answer your questions.

With the click of a button, people will gain access to information that will help them make better healthcare decisions and possibly help facilitate a more productive visit with their own physician.  As we role out this new innovation in health information I think its becoming easier to see why OrganizedWisdom truly is like have a doctor in the family.

   6. Can you give some insight to how OrganizedWisdom will continue to evolve?

At OrganizedWisdom, we are constantly making improvements and enhancements. Healthcare and health information is not static so we are always looking to provide the most useful resources available. By staying active in academic medicine I have to be aware and understand theses changes. Our team and I continually discuss how we can make OrganizedWisdom even better and more useful to people. I ask my patients, as well as our users, what they want and how we can make the site better. So, how we evolve, partly depends on what users need.

Currently, in addition to LiveWisdom, we are adding additional features such as EmergingWisdom, WisdomCollections designed to make it easier for people to find what they need.

   7. What are you most excited about in the Health 2.0 space that you think will have a true impact to improve the lives of your patients?

I am excited about all of the inovation and entrepreneurialism that is pushing the industry forward.  We are in a stage where we are making dramatic leaps and bounds because new ideas are getting funded, new thinking is helping break down old barriers, and ultimately Health 2.0 is changing the way people access health care and health information.  This is a good thing for all of us.

   8. Tell us about your medical background and what made you want to become a medical doctor?

Becoming a physician was sort of a circuitous path for me…I always had an interest in medicine but initially wanted to be a scientist. After college, I decided to pursue graduate school and I earned a Masters degree in Neuroscience and then a Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology. During that time my interests evolved to include clinical medicine. I then earned my M.D. at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia (one of the oldest medical schools in the United States). I stayed in Philadelphia for two internships (Emergancy Medicine and General Surgery) as well as a residency Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.  I finished my training by completing a fellowship in Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at MCV/VCU (Virginia Commenwealth University) in Richmond Virginia. After teaching and practicing in Virginia as a Clinical Instructor at both MCV/VCU as well as at McGuire Veterans Medical Center I returned to Philadelphia and took a position at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital as a Assistant Professor.

9. What's your favorite feature on OrganizedWisdom and why?

My favorite feature is LiveWisdom and I think it will have a dramatic impact in helping people get affordable access to doctors to ask their questions.

Esther Dyson Interview About Health 2.0 and Why She Invested in OrganizedWisdom

We recently had a enlightening conversation about health 2.0, technology and innovation with Esther Dyson (seen to the left flying! Picture courtesy of Zero-G).  We've posted the highlights of our discussion below. 

We're thrilled to have Esther involved with OrganizedWisdom as both an investor and on our board of advisers.  Esther is one of the best known and most respected names in high-tech. She's a long-time catalyst of start-ups in information technology. Since the early 1980s, she's been closely involved in dozens of major development in computing technology and her insights have been a great guide to the future of technology innovations and their impact on business, society and individuals.  Esther's primary activity is investing in start-ups like OrganizedWisdom and guiding them as a board member. She specializes in online services and, more recently, IT and healthcare/genetics, and space travel.

Esther is an early investor and sometime board member of numerous successful technology companies including 23andMe, Medstory (which was acquired by Microsoft), PatientsLikeMe, Meetup, and Flickr and Del.icio.us (which both were acquired by Yahoo!) just to name a few. Esther is also on the board of advisers of the Health 2.0 Conference.

Unity Stoakes: As active investor in so many health companies and an advisor to the Health 2.0 Conference, you have a great perspective on new start-ups just launching.  What trends and innovations are you most excited about?

Esther Dyson: The thing that excites me the most is all the research and discoveries that are being made around genetic information. That's just part of something even broader, which is – there's gonna be a lot more information available.  We'll be able to understand the impact of treatments, and the relation between treatments, conditions, environment...We're gonna know a ton more. 

Unity Stoakes: What opportunities do you see for innovation or improvement with health search over the next few years, and really what do you think needs to  happen to make health search more useful to the average person?

Esther Dyson: Well, right now you're reading a lot about behavioral targeting of advertising; the notion is: You track someone's behavior online, you collect a lot of data and you can show them more relevant ads.  Imagine if, instead of tracking someone online without them necessarily knowing, you could ask someone, "Will you give us your health information?"

Then, instead of showing you more relevant ads, we can also show you more relevant content. And ideally, there's a difference between, "Oh, this guy goes to the travel site, let's show him an airline ad,".... and the guy who, in some form, tells the system, "Oh, I'm traveling to Paris next week," and you can show him an offer for 20 percent off on a flight to Paris.  That is not targeting, that’s actual personalization of the message to the person's specific circumstances.... In the same way, you can give them specific health care advice. We don't just guess you have headaches; we know the specific condition that is causing those headaches so we can personalize the content and make it more useful.

Unity Stoakes:  You've been a board member or early investor in so many innovative Internet and technology companies [23andMe, PatientsLikeMe, Flickr, Del.icio.us, Orbitz, Meetup, Medstory and dozens of others].  What lessons do you think health care companies could be learning from these types of companies to help people better manage their health, reduce costs, create a better health care system?

Esther Dyson: Well, certainly, one big area is the sharing of information, the sharing of experience, and people's interest in looking at their own data. On Flickr, you share photos.  You also look at your own stats: "How many people looked at my photo?  How many people thought it was interesting?"  On the medical side, that's somewhat akin to PatientsLikeMe. People might say, "Well, Flickr's frivolous, and PatientsLikeMe is serious."

But it's still a natural human instinct that information about yourself is fundamentally more interesting than information about other people. As people look at more health information, it's got to foster healthier behavior. As people pay more attention to their personalized health information, and as they generate more information to look at, we will have much more information to do research on, and figure out what the correlations actually are between behavior and genes and exposure to environmental things, and various kinds of diseases, and also which therapies are good for them.... Just as we are seeing on sites like Flickr where it's really about sharing, people are just beginning to feel much more comfortable with going online with creating data, looking at data, and are no longer as scared of all the stuff as they used to be. This won't happen all overnight with health information; it just takes time.

Steven Krein: What do you think happens in the market with the creation of new content, and new answers, and new information that could be made available as a result of now giving people so much more information that they’ve never had about themselves before?

Esther Dyson: Well, first, I'd word that differently.  I wouldn’t say people are being given more information, I'd say people are getting more information. They're actively going out and getting it.  It's not just lying around.

Unity Stoakes: We're very honored to have you as an investor in OrganizedWisdom, and on our advisory board.  We're very early on in our evolution, and what we're building, and obviously very proud of our mission.  What did you see that helped you decide to work with and invest in OrganizedWisdom?

Esther Dyson: I saw that people are confused, and OrganizedWisdom is providing information that's relevant, rational and useful. Over time, I see this being expanded as well, to become a more personalized service as we've talked about.

Steven Krein: How do you explain OrganizedWisdom to others?

Esther Dyson: Well, interestingly, it's kind of like what Yahoo was, originally, in that it's not only a search tool.  It's a structured information source.  Unlike Yahoo, you actually produce the content, you don’t simply select it, and that gives it a certain consistency of quality.  It's health information that's organized and reliable, which is still hard to find.

Steven Krein: If there was a feature that you'd love to see integrated into OrganizedWisdom one day, what would it be that you think would make our service better?

Esther Dyson: Well, probably it would be something that looked at your personal health record and gave more personalized results than just what you search for.  For example, you feed in a list of the drugs you're on, and it would give you information specific to the conditions that those drugs normally treat.  It would also give you alerts when new relevant information appears somewhere.

 

Unity Stoakes: Health care seems to have been under focused on and under funded compared to other technology sectors. Are you seeing that shift now?

Esther Dyson: I'm seeing lots of regulations, legacy institutions and broken incentive systems; investors have been reluctant to go into a market where you often don’t get rewarded for doing the right thing.What's happening now is that a lot of the old systems are being eroded around the edges by  the new stuff.

Everything from "Minute Clinics", where people are simply saying, "I don’t want to deal with your reimbursement procedures." They don’t want to deal with all the bureaucracy.  "I'm just gonna go to the clinic and pay my forty dollars and get a prescription so that my kid isn't gonna suffer. Just treat the symptoms of the flu that my kid has, or check out his earache, or whatever."

Some people are opting out of the insurance program altogether, not because they can't afford it, but because they don’t want to deal with it. There are lots of people who need their health insurance and it's a useful thing, but the world is changing rapidly, and I think finally some of the institutions are going to respond. Investors are going to respond to that, too.

Unity Stoakes: Any thoughts on the election?

Esther Dyson: Yes. Both candidates have health plans. But neither of them is addressing all of the issues  It's not just about who pays;  it's about what they pay for. You need to pay for health, not for care.

Steven Krein: How does that happen?

Esther Dyson: It happens when you start paying for the difference between the expected outcome, and the actual outcome.... Take, for example, a hospital, and this is a real thing going on right now.  Say there's a hospital related infection. Somebody goes to the hospital, they have some procedure done, and they end up with an infection because of unsanitary practices in the hospital.  That happens all the time.  The hospital ends up treating the infection, and then getting paid more, because, hey, they treated this guy, they had to give him lifesaving meds, whatever.  So nobody in a hospital is trying to get people sick, but it does happen, and they get paid more when it happens.

Now, the payers are beginning to say, "We will pay for the heart procedure, but we're not going to pay for the hospital bill – the infection."  And suddenly, hospitals are realizing, "Wow,  we're not trying to get people sick, but we have to really keep them well or we're not gonna get paid."

Suddenly, you see better outcomes.

Steven Krein: And which candidate is more aligned with that philosophy, even though neither of them is talking about it?  Which do you think is better from the health care side of things?

 

Esther Dyson: I don't really care about health care.  I care about people.  I wouldn’t pick a candidate on who is better for the health care industry.  I do think Obama understands how you can use new technology more effectively.  I think McCain is a wonderful guy, but I think Obama just looks more into the future, and that’s what we need.

Steven Krein: Any last words of wisdom that you'd like to share with the industry, specifically the Health 2.0 industries?

Esther Dyson: The real message is that this is worth doing, it will take a while, and the more information the people have, the better decisions they’ll make.

Unity and Steve: Thank you very much for a great conversation.

Esther Dyson: Thank you both.

5 Reasons Why the Revolution Health and Everyday Health Deal is Great for Health 2.0 Movement

While the financial markets are in turmoil, the online health sector is making major strides and heating up in a huge way. (WebMD is even up right now over 4% in the markets while the DOW is getting killed again).

We've outlined 5 major reasons why several new deals and news announcements in the online health sector will have a big impact on the Health 2.0 movement over the coming months and years. 

The Race Begins
In the past week alone, we've heard news of a possible merger between Everyday Health and Revolution Health which would make it the largest health information publisher on the Web and the first competitor to ever surpass the leading online health brand WebMD in online reach. Wasting no time, this week WebMD announced it's $50 million acquisition of Quality Health, extending its current reach as a leading brand of health information.

Additionally, last week comScore announced this major news: the online health information category is growing at a rate four times faster than the total Internet with the category up 21% in the past year.  While other sectors are contracting or flat, the online health space is growing by leaps and bounds. 

5 Reasons Why the Revolution Health and Everyday Health Deal Matters to Health 2.0

1) Competition Expands Markets - There would be no Coke with out Pepsi or vice versa the saying goes.  The Revolution Health and Everyday Health merger would become a catalyst for more progress and is already igniting a new race with WebMD and several other of the top health publishers.  Having more power-house brands in the marketplace and increased competition will ignite innovation and breathe new life into the sector in a major way. 

2) More Opportunities for Exits and Strategic Deals - As we saw this week with the Quality Health deal, this new race between Revolution/Everyday Health and WebMD will create new energy in the sector and creates a greater appetite for deals, mergers and acquisitions.  This is good news for health start-ups which in turn leads to... 

3) Start-ups Will Have More Access to Capital - An expanding market, new competition and growth in the sector will all lead to new investments in start-ups.  More great ideas will be funded, and the most successful start-ups of the past couple of years will continue to thrive. 

4) Environment for Innovation - The first wave of Health 2.0 companies launched about 3 years ago. In fact we were part of that wave of innovation that also included great companies like Sermo, PatientsLikeMe, AmericanWell, and Change:Healthcare to name just a few.  This growing market will lead to even more innovation from the premier Health 2.0 companies of the last few years as well as new ones that will likely start to crop up. 

5) Better Service for Real People - This wave of competition will force the major health brands in the space to offer something new, something different. The same old health services just won't do.  These companies will have to move faster, be smarter.  We will see the largest health brands paying more attention to and working with the leading Health 2.0 companies in the space.

These are exciting times and we've got a long way to go as an industry.  It's great to see the maturation of our industry. Even in these early stages we are all progressing in a way that will have a significant impact on the future of people's health.

OrganizedWisdom Launches Improved Site Navigation and WisdomCollections

Sometimes small innovations make the biggest difference. The OrganizedWisdom team tries to make tweaks and enhancements each week that hopefully translate to better results for our users.

I'm happy to announce two such features that we're beta testing.

Navigation Frames: Making It Easy to Search Multiple Health Resources
Frames? Yes, they were big early in Web 1.0, and we're bringing them back. Why? Well, for an "assisted search" site, we realized that once users clicked on one of the resources on our pages, we weren't really assisting them as they continued their research.  Since we know that people searching for health information often visit 10 Web sites or more, we wanted to make this process as easy as possible. So now, if you visit a WisdomCard on any topic, and click on one of the many links to great resources, you'll find we've added a navigation frame that helps users quickly and easily search, or return to our site, for more information.

Our goal is to provide a health search service that is like having a doctor in the family.  So design changes and improvements like this are intended to make for good "deskside manner." We're holding a user's hand through the research process, and making it even easier to get to the next great resource on our list.

WisdomCollections: Making It Simple to Research Your Condition
OrganizedWisdom helps people do health research by creating hand-crafted WisdomCards--full of expert-selected online resources--on thousands of popular search terms. One of our challenges has always been to make it as easy as possible for people to find all of the WisdomCards we have to offer on a particular subject matter, especially now that we cover more than 16,000 topics. So we've just launched WisdomCollections to address this issue. 

Our new WisdomCollections round up all of the assorted WisdomCards related to a common condition or health issue, and display those resources in groupings that are easy to browse and navigate. You can jump from getting the latest news on your condition, to looking up drugs, to investigating various surgeries and procedures, to finding out which celebrities have the same illness. We now offer WisdomCollections on popular topics like breast cancer, HPV, high cholesterol, anxiety, and diabetes, and plan to roll out several hundred WisdomCollections in the coming weeks and months.

As always, we'd love to hear from you so we can keep making improvements to our service. Please share your comments below or email me.

OrganizedWisdom Welcomes Bryce Addison Krein to the World!

The OrganizedWisdom team would like to send our love and congratulations to the Krein family.  Steven and Rebecca just gave birth to their third baby girl, Bryce Addison Krein, who weighed in at 7 lbs 5 oz this morning at 10:17 AM.  All are happy and healthy! 

In honor of baby Bryce and the Krein family, the team would like to share all these pregnancy and childbirth related WisdomCards!

ValueClick Features OrganizedWisdom On It's Premium Health and Wellness Network

ValueClick today announced it has launched AdRx Media, a premium health and wellness online advertising network with a potential reach of more than 20 million unique visitors per month, according to comScore Media Metrix.

AdRx Media is comprised of several well-known publishers, including OrganizedWisdom.com and other high quality health sites including Britannica Health, HealthGrades, Healthy.net, Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, Wrong Diagnosis and more than 50 other premium health and wellness information sites.

Read the news here on MarketWatch.

We're excited to be working with ValueClick as one of our key ad partners because of the premium marketers and brands the company works with.  At OrganizedWisdom we are extremely cautious and careful with the types of companies and brands we allow to advertise on our WisdomCards. Even though all ads are clearly labeled and separated as "Advertisements" we feel it is essential to only feature the most credible, useful and reputable brands in order to provide a better service for our users.

If you have feedback on our new more clearly labeled ad positoins please let us know so we can continue to improve our service to make it most useful for our users and effective for our partners.

Personal Genetics Just Got A Whole Lot More Exciting, And Affordable

The realm of personal genetics just changed in a dramatic way: it's becoming affordable.

23andMe.com, a personal genetics company dedicated to helping individuals understand their own genetic information through DNA analysis technologies and web-based interactive tools, announced this week (press release here) that it has reduced the amount of it's services from $1000 to $399.  Considering you can use this service to find out the latest research on how your genes may affect risk for 80 plus common diseases and conditions such as heart attack, arthritis and cancers, this seems like a small price to pay.

(As an aside, I have not had the chance to get my "Spit Kit" yet, but I plan to soon.  It may sound ridiculous, but I must admit I am a little nervous about finding out too much information about my health.  On the other hand, to have this level of scientific research and information personalized to my health will enable me to focus much more on wellness and prevention as I manage my health.)

My partner Steven Krein and I did attend the 23andMe.com "Spit Party" on Tuesday night where, in addition to getting to hob-nob with all sorts of famous "spitters" like Sergey Brin, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Rupert Murdoch, Harvey Weinstein, and Barry Diller, we learned a lot more about the technology which is truly amazing. In fact, Moore's Law seems to be applicable to the genetics research field now and it's incredible how quickly the technology is advancing which is impacting cost and accessibility in a big way. It's likely that in a year or two, this type of service will be less than $100 and your personalized genetics research will map to hundreds or thousands of traits, diseases and conditions.

Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andMe said when they announced their plans to reduce the cost of the service, “By taking advantage of continuing innovation we are able to introduce a new chip that will give people more relevant data at a lower price. We are excited that we are opening doors for more people to learn about their health and ancestry and for more people to be able to participate in advancing research. It is important to democratize personal genetics and make it more accessible.”

More Personalized Health Information, Now What?
Now that more people have access to their genetic profiles they are beginning to search for very specific information about diseases and treatments and SNP Codes (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism).  It can be difficult to find this type of information online and often it doesn't exist so we've had our team of health guides working on hundreds of genetic WisdomCards to make it easier for people to find the best information available. 

View the OrganizedWisdom collection of Genetic WisdomCards here.

Note: we'll be posting more about this topic shortly when we share the transcripts from a recent conversation we had with Esther Dyson about Health 2.0, technology and innovation. Esther is on the board of 23andMe and also is an investor in OrganizedWisdom and on our advisory board.

My Health Care is Killing Me

We wanted to congratulate our friends over at Change: Healthcare for publishing their new book, My Health Care is Killing Me.

We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to participate during the process of writing the book so we saw an advanced copy. It's truly an important read so share it with your friends and family.  It's packed with practical information that will help you survive today's health care system and save valuable time and money.

You can get a free PDF download of the book here.

OrganizedWisdom Launches LiveWisdom in Public Beta: New Service Helps People Chat Live With Doctors From WisdomCards

OrganizedWisdom is very excited to announce that we have just launched the public beta of LiveWisdom, a new service that enables anyone to connect LIVE via chat with board certified doctors, health professionals, and health advocates for an inexpensive per minute access change.

The LiveWisdom service, which has been in private beta since it was first previewed at Health 2.0's Spring Fling in San Diego, officially went live on hundreds of OrganizedWisdom WisdomCards late last week and over the coming weeks we plan to integrate the service into thousands of WisdomCards where people will find it most useful to ask doctors questions about the topic they are searching on.

Test the LiveWisdom Service:

HIV, Birth Control, Erectile Dysfunction Treatments, Chickenpox

Why Live Wisdom?
We launched LiveWisdom service because we believe that asking doctors questions should be easy, affordable, and accessible to all. Even if you don't have health insurance. And especially if you don't have easy access to experts anytime day or night when you may have an important health question. 

In fact, as we integrate new features and services into our WisdomCards our goal is for you to feel like OrganizedWisdom is like having a doctor in your family (see our related post titled Do You Have A Doctor in Your Family). The LiveWisdom service is an important part of achieving this mission.

Does LiveWisdom Replace the Good Old-Fashioned Doctor Visit?
LiveWisdom does not replace the need to visit with your doctor in person, especially in the case of a medical emergency.  LiveWisdom is a complementary service to seeing your own doctor and lets you chat or email with medical professionals to ask them questions.  In fact, depending on the health issue or your specific questions, it may be likely that the doctors will advise you to see your doctor or go to an emergency room if they think it is necessary. 

Affordability, Anonymity and Access
There are three great benefits to LiveWisdom that we believe will help a lot of people.  First of all because of the unique low-cost per minute charge, it is possible to have your helath questions answered for only a few dollars. This means that anyone can afford to use the service even if you don't have health insurance.

The service, now in public beta, also enables people to chat with doctors anonymously and in a private forum.  There is no link between the information you provide the doctor you are chatting with and the account you set up to use the service.  They won't even know who you are other than what information you provide. We believe this will help many people who may want privacy, anonymity or not feel comfortable speaking to a doctor in person about certain questions. 

Perhaps the greatest benefit of the service is the access it provides people to medical professionals and board certified doctors. Any time day or night, seven days a week, you will be able to chat live with a doctor and ask them questions.

How to Use the Service
To have a LiveWisdom chat session with an expert, you must be on one of our WisdomCards that features the LiveWisdom service as pictured above. The experts who are available for Live Chat have a flashing orange/yellow "Contact Live" button next to their listings. You may want to browse through the listings of a few of the available experts, view their profiles and compare their ratings.

To enter a Live Chat session, click on the "Contact Live" button that is located next to the expert of your choice. You will be asked to register to become a member of LivePerson (a public company whose technology runs the LiveWisdom service): it’s simple and there`s no obligation. You will be asked to accept the LivePerson legal agreement and submit your billing information. Your card will not be charged at this stage.

Click on the "Start Session" button to open up the Communication Center. You will not have to download any software in order to chat live. Please wait a few seconds for the expert to respond. The session begins in free mode. You can click on the "Hire Expert" button when you are ready to begin the paid session. To quit, simply click the "Quit Session" button.

If the expert is unavailable, the following message appears: `Sorry! This expert is not available at this time`. If you wish, you can send the expert an email inquiry by clicking the blue "start an E-mail Session" icon.

Just the Beginning...
We'll be showing off the LiveWisdom service much more in the coming weeks and months as we work to integrate the service across our WisdomCard Library.  We'll also introduce you to several of the doctors and experts and share feedback and more testimonials from people who have used the service.

In the meantime, test the service for yourself and let us know what you think.