OrganizedWisdom Health Blog

It's a Super Tuesday: OrganizedWisdom Health Launches New Design and New Features

What a day...It's Super Tuesday, Mardi Gras, and the New York Giants Super Bowl Parade was today.

But that's not all...Today, we launched a dramatically improved design for OrganizedWisdom Health and several important features that are making it much easier for you to find the very best health information on the Web.

While our growing team of expert health guides and physician reviewers have been hard at work the past few months creating WisdomCards on thousands of important health topics, our amazing design and tech team have been working hard to make it easier for you to use all of the great WisdomCards being produced each day.

We've dramatically improved the WisdomCards to make them easier to read, share with family and friends, and use.  In addition, there are several important new features we're glad to share with you today:

Tabbed Health Search:  For the first time, people can search all of the major health search engines from one place. If we don't have a WisdomCard created yet for your topic, you get our related WisdomCards and a tabbed search interface to make it easy for you to quickly search Google Health, WebMD, Healthline, HealthVault, Healia, Right Health, and PubMed by simply clicking a button. This is a major leap forward in health search and will help people save a great deal of time when searching for health information.

RequestWisdom: We've just launched a new free service called RequestWisdom, so anyone can request a WisdomCard on any health topic. So far people are requesting WisdomCards on everything from their personal doctor, to rare conditions, and local hospitals.  Our health search experts will do the searching for you so you don't have to.

WisdomCard Library: Our team of health search experts and physician reviewers are creating quality WisdomCards faster than planned and we're thrilled.  Check our our growing Library here.

We're still busy tweaking things in the coming days and we appreciate any feedback you may have.  Please spread the word and pass this site on to your family, friends, your doctor and your patients...   

Speaking at Health 2.0 North East and 7th Annual ePharma Summit

Connecting online is great, but if you happen to be attending one of these events, we'd love to meet you in person to speak about Health 2.0, trends in health care, and how we may be able to work together to keep improving the health care system.

We're looking forward to speaking at several upcoming conferences...we'll continue to post our schedule as it fills up:

Steven Krein will speak on a panel discussion at the upcoming Health 2.0 NorthEast networking event in Boston, on January 23.  Matthew Holt will keynote the event, and Indu Subaiya mentioned she would also be in attendance.  (I am hoping to attend as well along with our Editor, Pat Washburn).

Later this month, I'll be speaking at the 7th Annual ePharma Summit in Philadelphia, PA on January 30th.  The  panel, Social Media, Blogs and User Generated Content: What's Working Today, What Will Work Tomorrow?, will be moderated by Bob Harrell, Director, eMarketing, SHIRE PHARMACEUTICALS.

Panelists include Jack Barrette, CEO, MOVINGHEALTH; Brad Aronson, Executive Vice President, aQUANTIVE, parent company of AVENUE A|RAZORFISH; Melissa Davies, Research Director, Healthcare Practice, NIELSEN BUZZMETRICS; Daniel Palestrant, MD, CEO, SERMO; Kevin Nalty, Consumer-Generated Media Expert, Formerly with J&J and Unity Stokes, Co-Founder and President, ORGANIZED WISDOM.

If we don't see you at one of these events, feel free to follow our OrganizedWisdom Twitter feed and we will keep you updated with our posts.

Request a WisdomCard on Any Health Topic, Doctor, or Health Organization

Great news: Our WisdomCard library is growing faster than planned as a result of the success of our Guide Program and the experts who have joined our team in the past few weeks.  We now have over 1,000 health topics covered and our team of full and part-time guides and physicians are already covering hundreds of new health topics each week.

As you may have noticed, we're beginning to feature some of our WisdomCards on this blog as well as on our new Twitter feed here.

What we're really excited about, is we are starting to introduce new types of WisdomCards that we think will be very helpful to anyone searching for health information of involved in health care (medical professionals, patients, health organizations, health marketers, foundations, etc.).

So now as a new service, you can now request we create a WisdomCard on any health condition, treatment, doctor, hospital, health product, or health related company or organization and our team of physician guided search advocates will do the searching for you and build you a WisdomCard.
 
As an example, if you are an MD, then you know the first place your patients go to find out more about you is the search engines.  If you care at all about your GoogleRank, then it might be a good time to make sure there is a WisdomCard created on you, your areas of specialty, your hospital, etc. Just let us know by contacting us here with the exact name or topic in the subject line.  You and your patients can also contribute by suggesting links to add to your WisdomCard page.

Here's an example of a recent WisdomCard we are working on for Dr. Alan Greene from DrGreene.com. 

Once your WisdomCard is live, you'll be able to promote it by sharing it with patients, linking to it from your Website or blog, and also suggest important links we may have missed. 

And if you are a patient, or are doing research on any new health topic that we do not yet cover, just let us know.  We'll start working on your WisdomCard right away.

We think this will be a very useful service and hopefully help a lot of people so we welcome your feedback as we roll grow it over the coming months.

Send your requests here.

OrganizedWisdom is now on Twitter

Join our brand new OrganizedWisdom Twitter feed where we are just getting started sharing important updates and tweets to many of our most recent WisdomCards:

Click here to see and join the OrganizedWisdom Twitter Feed (http://twitter.com/organizedwisdom).

Is there new hope for ALS?

I was talking with the party hostess when her mom and stepdad arrived. At first, from across the room, I noticed nothing odd -- Stepdad walked with a cane, but that's not out of the ordinary. His wife settled him in a chair right near the door. Then I noticed he was wearing a collar to hold his neck in place. Had he been in an accident? "What's wrong with M?" I whispered to my friend.

"He's dying," she replied quietly. "He has Lou Gehrig's disease." Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis currently has no cure and sentences the person who has it to a life of increasing disability. Some, like famed physicist Stephen Hawking, manage to continue functioning for many years and even remain productive with the help of adaptive equipment.  Others, like my friend's stepdad, go downhill fast.

ALS -- popularly named after Gehrig, the ballplayer who was one of its better-known victims --  is a frightening and often tragic prospect for patients and their families. Today there are several treatments being tested, along with research to find genetic clues and learn more about the mechanism that causes this condition. OrganizedWisdom has gathered the best ALS resources to help you better understand the disease.

Check out the ALS WisdomCard

Photo by ewen and donabel of Gehrig's locker, on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Dorothy Hamill has breast cancer

Figure skater Dorothy Hamill has defeated tough Olympic competitors, endured two divorces, gone through bankruptcy and fought an ongoing battle with seasonal depression. This week the 51-year-old announced her absence from the next several Broadway on Ice performances because she is being treated for breast cancer.

Fortunately for her and for many women, breast cancer is not the automatic death knell it might once have been. Hamill's representative tells reporters that her cancer has been caught at an early stage, which makes her prospects even better.

The figure skater has been a strong advocate for charitable causes, including the American Cancer Society, throughout her career, and her fan base remains strong more than 30 years after she won Olympic gold. She's planning to be back at work as soon as possible, and I expect she'll also take the opportunity to share her experience as a way of advocating for regular mammograms and early detection. I know I'm pulling for her -- just as I did as a 10-year-old cheering in front of the TV in 1976. (Photo: Paul Shannon)

Check out the Breast Cancer WisdomCard and the
Dorothy Hamill Breast Cancer WisdomCard.

Conference Planning Time! 7th Annual ePharma Summit and Health 2.0

It's hard to believe it, but our schedule is filling up fast for next year already.  There are two events in the next couple of months we are really looking forward to: The Health 2.0 Conference and the ePharma Summit.

We know Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya are hard at work creating a great program and roster of speakers for the second Health 2.0 event (March 3-4, 2008 at the Westin San Diego). And their advisory board is packed with an amazing roster of people which now includes Esther Dyson.  We can't wait, as we'll be unveiling some great OrganizedWisdom developments and news at this event...

We'll also be participating at the 7^th Annual ePharma Summit this January 28-30, 2008.  We had a great time presenting last year and stirred things up a bit with our discussions on Social Media with the pharmaceutical marketers.  There has been so much progress made by the industry in the past 12 months, and there's a compelling lineup of speakers and panelists including Steve Case, Jack Barrette, Peter Frishauf, and Daniel Palestrant, so this year's event should really be amazing and foster some great discussion between Health 2.0 leaders and the pharmaceutical industry. 

The event is at The Ritz Carltion, Philadelphia, PA.  For more information you should visit www.epharmasummit.com.

Hope to connect with you at these events and many others throughout the coming months!

Finding the best medical Web sites

The American College of Physicians published a useful article this month in ACP Hospitalist listing some of the most useful health Web sites that patients and medical professionals are now using to get health information.

Jessica Berthold's article, Smart surfing: Finding the best medical Websites, points out that "patients aren't the only ones doing the Web surfing. A 2006 article in Postgraduate Medical Journal found that 71% of health care professionals use the Internet regularly for medical or professional updating, and 63% recommend Web sites to patients. The issue for many physicians is not whether to use medical Web sites, but how to find the best ones."

We were happy to be included in the list of useful sites featured on the list patients are using including:

• WebMD Health  is an interactive site with information on more than 90 disease and lifestyle topics, and more than 140 message boards.

• Daily Strength  has support groups for people with more than 500 medical conditions.

• EverydayHEALTH is a general medical news site, with health calculators, polls and discussion boards.

• The HealthCentral Network  is a clearinghouse of community-focused Web sites sorted by specific conditions (e.g., MyDiabetesCentral.com, MyHeartCentral.com).

• OrganizedWisdom  selects and organizes user-generated health content from the Web.

• Revolution Health is a comprehensive, interactive site with articles, discussion boards, disease information and more than 125 consumer-friendly health tools.

We've put our own list together of useful resources our health guides use to find great health resources to create WisdomCards.  We are constantly adding to this list so feel free to send us suggestions.

Sites with spirit of Web 2.0 encouraging people to share thoughts on illnesses, doctors

The San Fransisco Chronicle has a nice round-up piece on some of the new Health 2.0 companies working to help patients.

We were happy to see OrganizedWisdom featured along with several other great companies.

Read the article, titled For these startups, patients are a virtue here.

Google Health Executive Adam Bosworth Leaves, Heavyweight Marissa Mayer Takes the Helm

Google's health initiatives have been a mystery for many months now.  That's because they keep talking about the importance of organizing health information, but to date we haven't seen any major new products launch or acquisitions take place. 

So what does this week's news that effective immediately, Google exec Adam Bosworth has left the company, mean to the future of Google Health?

For starters Google's head of the core search group, Marissa Mayer will (at least temporarily) take the helm. Which is probably a good sign since she is one of the most influential and important executives on the Google team. The company is clearly taking this change seriously, whether Bosworth's exit was expected or not. 

In our opinion, having Google in the game promoting innovation in health care is a great thing.  They have the talent and deep pockets to promote great ideas, entrepreneurs, and new companies. This is not only a great thing for their company, but also for others in the burgeoning Health 2.0 space because we all benefit when we are propelling each other forward.

Having Google paying attention to health care innovation is also critical to health searchers. With so many people starting their search at Google now, it is essential that visitors get credible, quality search results. 

As we have blogged about extensively about this trend (here, here, here), because the quality of search from resources like Google is now in shambles.  Spammers, clutter, and marketers are really taking a toll on the quality of their search results, especially in the area of health.

We hope and look forward to Google continuing to innovate in health care and support other companies that are working hard to find better ways to solve these same challenges.