The Health Wisdom Blog™ (by OrganizedWisdom)

How Doctors Are Using Twitter To Help Patients and Connect with Colleagues

We're very intrigued by this article on AMNews about how physicians are using Twitter to help their patients and connect with colleagues because it's a trend we've been actively involved with for over a year now.  In fact, our R&D team has been heads down, working on one of the most exciting projects I've ever been a part of and we can't wait to share it with you when we launch later this year.

Many doctors we've spoken to over the past year about Twitter have said, I just don't get this Twitter thing and why it will be useful to me or my patients.  That's ok, and frankly to be expected at this stage because the reality is the Twitter platform is only 3 years old and most people hadn't even heard of Twitter before a few months ago when Oprah and Ashton joined.  We're still very much in the early adopter phase.

But as the AMNews article points out, and we are seeing firsthand, there are thousands of doctors using the service in valuable ways already:

"Doctors who keep tweeting stick around because they find it can be useful. Physicians most often use Twitter as an extension of their Web presence, a patient communication site, a marketing tool or a virtual water cooler with their colleagues. Or, maybe a combination of all four." (Read the complete article here.)

And we believe this is just the beginning which is one reason why OrganizedWisdom (@organizedwisdom) has been very active on Twitter and uses the platform not only to share valuable health information and updates with our users via over 100 condition specific Twitter streams, but we have been building an active community focused around health advocacy.  Earlier this year we launched @PolarWisdom, a news, community and advocacy feed for those living with bipolar depression.

I wish I could let the cat out of the bag now and show you what we're building but it's super top secret.  We promise those who follow us Twitter.com/organizedwisdom will be the first to get more details and special access so stay tuned...

Take a Power Nap to Lose Weight, Look Younger, and Feel Better Fast!

It's too bad the Spanish concept of the siesta never caught on in the U.S.A. We might all be a lot better off.

OrganizedWisdom's sleep advisor, Michael Breus, Ph.D., author of Beauty Sleep, tells us that napping offers all of the wonderful benefits of a good night's sleep. So if you can't always get a decent snooze, a nap can help give your body a mini reboot.

If you feel like you can't nap because you wake up feeling groggy and disoriented, guess what? You're doing it wrong!

Here are Dr. Breus's 10 steps to a perfect power nap. You'll learn how to give it a try today (right at your desk), and see if your brain and body work a little better 20 minutes later!

Also, be sure to check out our questions and answers with Dr. Breus about sleep disorders and insomnia. It's all part of OrganizedWisdom Expert Answers series where we seek out professional advice to address the most highly searched real-life FAQs!

We're curating the best health information for you!

At OrganizedWisdom, we've always called the men and women who hand-craft our WisdomCards "Guides" but perhaps we should start calling them "Curators."

Let me explain.

Just like the art aficionados who painstakingly select the masterpieces that will adorn a museum's walls, our Guides carefully assemble WisdomCards full of resources to address the very health topics you're searching for.

And it just so happens that the concept of curation is seen as the next big thing in media. Steve Rosenbaum's recent piece in the Silicon Alley Insider explains that there is a new role for media companies that's all about: "giving folks who don't want to spend their lives looking for an editorial needle in a haystack a high-quality collection of content that is contextual and coherent."

Well, as someone on the inside of a company that's actually been doing this for a few years, it's exciting to see that it's catching on! And as the daughter of someone with a chronic illness, I've never been more convinced that it's absolutely essential, especially in the area of health.

My mother has multiple sclerosis. And every time I try to look something up for her, even as a professional health editor with years of research experience under my belt, I am simply overwhelmed by the amount of, well, junk that I find.

On the other hand, here's an example of one of our WisdomCards on depression and multiple sclerosis.

It has a helpful summary, a few interesting facts, and an assortment of links to quality outside resources, thoughtfully picked by our Guide, and medically reviewed by a physician.

OrganizedWisdom has now curated more than 50,000 health topics just like this. Why don't you let us find those needles in the haystack for you?

Browse our new slideshows: famous fictional shrinks, celebrities with mental illness, and the best foods for your mood.

Sometimes you're itching to read and research, sometimes you just want to flip through pictures and captions. We know. We're like that, too. That's why the OrganizedWisdom team is so happy to announce the arrival of our latest project -- slideshows.

Here are our first three installments. Happy browsing:

Famous Fictional Shrinks
They can make you laugh, they can make you cry, but they can't actually write you a prescription. From Dr. Melfi to Frasier Crane, you're sure to find your favorite on-screen psychiatrist on our list.

Celebrities with Mental Illness
Everyone has their ups and downs. It's reassuring to know that even the biggest stars are no exception. Find out which conditions celebs like Mel Gibson, Axl Rose, and rapper DMX deal with daily.

The Best Foods to Boost Your Mood
Not only are salmon, lobster, and chocolate delicious, they're natural "uppers." Be sure to add these foods to your grocery list for the ultimate feel-good pantry!

(Be sure to drop us a line here if we've missed any great items in our lists above. Thanks!)

Have you had these questions? Now, we've got answers!

 Have you ever wondered:

• How will bipolar disorder affect my relationship?
• Is gaining weight part of bipolar disorder?
• Why do I have trouble sleeping?

If you're one of the 5.7 adult Americans with bipolar disorder, these are likely the same questions you asked when you were first diagnosed. And how do we know that? They're some of the questions we see coming up in the search queries we look at every day, and we thought it was time they got answered!

You see, OrganizedWisdom is taking our focus -- helping people find the health information they're seeking -- to the next level. Our new Frequently Asked Questions section (see our first installment, Bipolar 101) invites doctors and other qualified medical professionals to help answer these hot questions while directing users to WisdomCards loaded with helpful resources.

We invite you to flip through these new FAQs, tell a mental health professional you know to submit a response, and share with friends or family members who live with this condition.
 
And don't forget to tell us what you think. Please share your feedback here!

OrganizedWisdom is Hiring Health Writers, Bloggers and Assistant Editors

OrganizedWisdom has an extreme commitment to quality.  Everyday we are looking for ways to improve our service. One initiative we are focused on is to add more great health writers to our team.

We are currently hiring great health writers, assistant health editors and health bloggers. 

You can learn more about the opportunity from our job description here.

Candidates should have at least two years of professional writing and editing experience, ideally covering health and wellness. Preference will be given to those with online journalism backgrounds and/or blogging experience.

Apply here.

How OrganizedWisdom is Dealing with the Economic Downturn: An Extreme Focus on Quality

Every company today is reviewing its strategy, goals, and budgets to adjust in this economic environment.  Our approach at OrganizedWisdom is very much the same and we thought it might be helpful to discuss the process we went through and the outcome of our review.

As entrepreneurs who lived through the dot com crash (as a publicly-traded company no less), we knew we needed to take this opportunity to review EVERYTHING very seriously. While the market had its worst month ever, OrganizedWisdom had by far its best month ever on every metric we track (i.e. unique visitors to the site, revenue, pageviews, WisdomCards published) so we asked the team two important questions: what can we do more efficiently and what can we do better?

We are fortunate to have raised a round of financing from an extraordinary group of investors a few short months ago and have always run a hyper-efficient operation (thanks to our "$0 Dollar Office" model). As a result, we are able to build our business with a very low burn rate.  While there wasn't anything major we had to cut from our budget we asked how can we improve our operation.  Not necessarily by spending less, but by taking action on things that will improve our product and our process.  We looked for opportunities to simplify, to leverage technology in more efficient ways, to save time, to train and communicate to our team better, and so on.  We ended up with one conclusion: we must continue to focus on improving the quality of our service.  As a health search service there is a high standard for quality and it's our belief that we can do a better job to keep improving our quality.  The more we focus our resources, time, and core team on building the best possible service for helping people find health information, resources and products they trust, the more progress we will make during the downturn.

We learned a lot going through this process. The biggest change was deciding to make sure that every single Guide in the program was the best of the best so that we can focus our efforts on building an elite squad of medical researchers, writers, reviewers and physicians. These changes were imperative so that we can focus on the quality control and product development that is essential for a health search service like ours.

The other big changes have to do with improving our process to make it more efficient.  A review of each of our systems helped us find ways to make our technology faster, improve our service and find ways we can work together as a virtual team more effectively.  The good news is that because we've been operating all along in a very efficient manner, we only had to make limited changes.  We are fortunate that our strategy enables us to focus 100% of our capital on talent, as opposed to offices, operational infrastructure, servers, computer equipment and so forth.  We are investing in a team of people who have one goal: building the best health information on the Internet.

We sincerely hope sharing a bit about how we are managing our company during today's changing economic environment will in someway be useful to you.  What others have shared has certainly been valuable to us. These are uncertain times, but we're optimistic about the innovation, passion and progress we see everyday.  It's a big mission to change healthcare, but there are hundreds of other companies and thousands of people working on the same mission.  Now that is change we can believe in...  

Follow OrganizedWisdom on Twitter, Get Our News First

We'll be releasing some big news about OrganizedWisdom this Wednesday and we are announcing it first to our Twitter followers.  You can follow us at http://twitter.com/organizedwisdom.

You can also follow the tweets of several team members including:

Unity Stoakes: http://twitter.com/unitystoakes
Steven Krein: http://twitter.com/skrein
Zach Mayberry: http://twitter.com/zachmayberry
Emily Lapkin: http://twitter.com/emilylapkin

OrganizedWisdom Gets Ready for Health 2.0 in San Francisco with Big News

Are you going to Health 2.0 in San Francisco this week?

We are...and we're thrilled to be presenting for the third time at this event. In fact, we're the only company to be chosen to speak at all three conferences, an honor we are very proud of given the influence and impact Health 2.0 has marshalled since its inception.

If you are planning on attending the conference, or happen to be in the area this week, we hope to connect with you in person.  Come see us speak, give us your feedback, and let us know how we're doing.    

This Wednesday, our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Howard Krein will be presenting how OrganizedWisdom has changed health search by organizing hand-crafted search results for the long-tail of health topics...the way most people actually search today.  The panel called, Search in the Long Tail & Intelligence in Communities, features several of the the most important companies and thought leaders in the Health 2.0 space including:

• West Shell, CEO, Healthline Networks
• Tom Eng, President, Healia/Meredith
• Venky Harinarayan, Co-Founder, Kosmix/RightHealth
• Steven Krein, CEO, Organized Wisdom
• Daniel Palestrant, CEO, Sermo 
• John DeSouza, CEO, MedHelp
• Bill Allman, GM, HealthCentral
  
• Ben Heywood, CEO, PatientsLikeMe

Much of the promise of Health 2.0 is in searching for and finding exact, personalized health information content, especially for rare or hard to categorize conditions. Much of that information is in social networks, on blogs, in forums and other hard to find communities where great health information is being shared everyday. Matthew Holt & Indu Subaiya will introduce a new framework looking at the evolution of search into the long tail. And we're excited to participate and show exactly how our WisdomCards work to guide people to this hard to find content.  We'll even be showing some top secret data from our search logs in real time so attendees can see exactly the types of topics that make up the long tail for health search.  You'll be amazed at what you see.

And on Thursday, we'll be participating in a very fun panel called the Health Search Bakeoff, being moderated by Craig Stoltz.  We'll be showing the audience exactly how people use our service to find what they are looking for by conducting live searches after being given a random health search by the panel.  This will be a great way to show off how our expert guides are able to hand-craft exceptional results and guide people to the very best results on over 20,000 WisdomCard topics.

We're also excited because we have some big news we'll be announcing on Wednesday morning via this blog and live from the conference floor.  Our twitter followers and blog readers will get the news first of course.  It's big news that is going to make a huge impact on health search as well as health professionals. More details on Wednesday...

We'll be out and about Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and looking forward to meeting you in person or hearing your feedback.  We'll be taking lots of video and pictures to post on the blog too.

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.