The Health Wisdom Blog™ (by OrganizedWisdom)

Will the future of health search be mapped to your DNA?

We think so. And we'll be speaking more about this concept tonight on a panel with John Doerr called Personalized Genomic Health: New Paradigms, New Industry. 

The discussion is about new paradigms with personalized genetics.  We are going to be introducing a concept that I think will have a dramatic long-term impact on education/personalized information especially as it relates to health search.  Today we have local search, and we have tailored search based on your interests and behaviors.  And we have algorithms and we have expert guides. It starts to get even more interesting if you consider this: the new local search will be information/education and search results that are actually personalized to your DNA/Genome.  I think it is a big idea that OrganizedWisdom will be working on in the coming years to help people get better health information tailored specifically to their needs and interests.

If you're in NYC, hope to see you at the event. There will be a lot of discussion around this concept and it's implications. If you can't attend, feel free to share your feedback or ask questions in the comments...

Personalized Health Information Based on Your Genome

Navigenics Health Compass is launching this week in NYC at a series of events and panel discussions called DNANYC.  OrganizedWisdom Health is thrilled to participate on the panel Personalized Genomic Health: New Paradigms, New Industry this Thursday evening.  Steven Krein will join John Doerr, David Agus, MD, and Dean Ornish MD  to focus on the impact these new services will have health care services and health information.

As more people use services like Navigenics Health Compass or 23andMe.com, they will need personalized information and education to help them better understand their genomic report. One reason the service from Navigenics is so interesting is because it provides 24/7 access to a team of Genetic Counselors to help explain what your genetic analysis means and support you in knowing how to take next steps. OrganizedWisdom is supporting this concept by developing WisdomCards on each of the relevant SNP Codes and health conditions currently mapped by the reports. Get your genome mapped, and use OrganizedWisdom's WisdomCards to research more about each of the specific conditions in your report.

Personalized health information tailored for an individual is here.  Just like people want specific information tailored to their location and interests, they will be able to get education and WisdomCards that map to their human genome. 

Pretty amazing where this is all going.  And it's only just the beginning.   

WIRED Says To Search Smarter, Use a Person

The human-guided search trend continues to gain traction as more companies are integrating the power of human intelligence with great technology.

Now the mainstream press has finally gotten around to covering the trend.  Newsweek featured a piece on the rise of the expert a week ago, and here's a great read from WIRED:

"Algorithms Are Terrific. But to Search Smarter Find a Person."

Getting Vertical Search Right: The Future of Search is Service

Just about to head over to SES right now.  Steven Krein is speaking on the main stage this afternoon about Getting Vertical Search Right.

We'll be presenting on our strong belief that the future of search is SERVICE.

At OrganizedWisdom Health we realized when we launched that when people are searching for something as important as health information, abundance is not what they are looking for.  Service is.  Most people want information, links, and resources they know they can trust.  It's no longer about getting back 1.4 million search results in .09 seconds.  People want to be guided to a few of the very best links on the topic they are searching for.  People want vetted information, curated links.  Not just a big heap of Web pages with relevant key words and lots of links in/out.

This is where the concept of service comes in.  There are great search services developing that are layering experts, and the power of human guides, onto the world's best search technologies.  Mahalo is an example of a general human-powered search service covering popular search topics from video games to entertainment news.  ChaCha is an example of a general search service where experts will help you via live chat or text.   SeamlessWeb helps people search local restaurants and place orders for delivery.  And OrganizedWisdom (what many have dubbed the Mahalo of Health) is a search service using experts and doctors to guide people to the very best health information and resources.

We believe that as a result of abundance (too many web sites, too many spammers, too many marketers, too many offers, too much information, too many options), there is going to be a powerful service infrastructure that gets built on top of search technologies.

Let me give you two key examples of services we have layered into the search experience and offer at OrganizedWisdom Health.

Last year we launched RequestWisdom - a free service where anyone can request a WisdomCard on any health topic.  If we don't already have the requested WisdomCard created, one of our expert Guides will build the WisdomCard and send the results to the person and publish for all other searchers benefit.  We do the searching for the user.  The good news is that most of the time, our team has already created a WisdomCard on the requested topic and our library of WisdomCards is growing every day (now have over 10,000 health searches covered).  But by adding a free service onto our already running human-powered search service, we are able to deliver specific, clutter-free and organized results that our community needs.

Another example of layering service into search is the new service we are testing in private beta and rolling out site wide soon.  It's called LiveWisdom, and enables anyone to chat LIVE with a doctor to ask questions for $1.99 a minute.  It's an anonymous service and easy to use.  We're adding the service of speaking with a doctor in real-time during the search experience.  We believe that connecting with a doctor should be easy, affordable, and accessible by all.  By adding this service into our search process, we make this a reality.

We'll be talking about these examples and many others today along with an incredible panel of experts.  We hope this spurs a great discussion and others begin to think of new ways to integrate service into search.

Panel Details:

Orion Panel: Getting Vertical Search Right
The need for specialized search capabilities has never been more prevalent than it is today. Established leaders and experts in vertical search application and execution will discuss the state of the industry, positive and negative experiences and best practices for answering needs of today's demanding searchers.

Moderator:

• Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch
• Rebecca Lieb, Vice President & Editor-In-Chief, The ClickZ Network

     

Speakers:

• Bill Tancer, General Manager, Global Research, Hitwise
• Jason R. Finger, Co-Founder & Chief Executive, Seamless Web
• Paul Forster, CEO, Indeed
• Steven Krein, CEO, Organized Wisdom.com
• Joshua Stylman, Managing Partner, Reprise Media

Newsweek: UGC Pendulum Swings to Info Vetted by Experts

Tried to search blog posts recently in Technorati?  Or find the best videos on YouTube? Or how about just searching Google to answer an important health question?

It's getting more and more difficult as a result of the millions of Web pages, blogs, and videos being posted by millions of Amateurs - the so called crowd.  This is an issue we've been speaking about for more than two years now at OrganizedWisdom so you can bet we were happy to see the most recent issue of Newsweek highlighting the "expert" powered movement online.

The article titled, Revenge of the Experts: The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals, picks up on the fact that user-generated content created by amateurs has flooded the Internet.

In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. "People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information," says Charlotte Beal, a consumer strategist for the Minneapolis-based research firm Iconoculture. Beal adds that choice fatigue and fear of bad advice are creating a "perfect storm of demand for expert information."

Perhaps no area of the Web is this issue more important than with health information which is why we've been focused on using the power of experts to curate the best health information.   Not only do people want to know that the health information they read online is credible, but they don't want to have to wade through a haystack to find the best nuggets.

We're not sure that the wisdom of the crowds is even close to peaking, but we couldn't agree more with this quote from Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis that helps end the piece: "Web 3.0 is taking what we've built in Web 2.0—the wisdom of the crowds—and putting an editorial layer on it of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined."

Expect to see the power of human guides, experts, and new service layers become more integrated into many of the most successful user-generated content sites.

Human-powered search engines offer a fresh experience

Scott Austin, from VentureWire, wrote a compelling commentary yesterday that does a great job of explaining the value of human powered search.

In his article, Trying to kick the Google habit, he says it's great to get 1.7 million Web pages in .017 seconds, but "it's laborious to sift through the results that aren't very organized. I rarely venture past the first ten results, and many of those listings are often stories from five years ago or links to sites that are placeholders for advertisements."

Judging from the dramatic increase we are seeing everyday in the number of health searches being conducted on OrganizedWisdom Health, there is no doubt that consumers are demanding more from their search results, especially when searching for something as critical as health information.

If you are interested in, or still unfamiliar with, the human-powered search movement, it is a worthwhile read.

What's in store for the Health 2.0 Movement in 2008...

For arguments sake, let's say 2006-ish was the year that Health 2.0 was born. At least that's when the first new companies really started to take shape in the space and promote innovation in health care in a significant way.  Besides our own OrganizedWisdom.com, companies like Sermo, DailyStrength and Revolution Health all launched new offerings.

But it was 2007 that turned Health 2.0 into a movement (a moment noticed by all who attended the Health 2.0 Conference last September in San Fransisco) and laid the foundation for what's to come over the coming years: an explosion of innovation, investment, and mass market adoption that if we have anything to do about it will bring us all new/better health care services, bring transparency to our perplexing system, and help us reduce health care costs.

So what's in store for the Health 2.0 movement in 2008?

2008 is going to be an important year for the Health 2.0 movement. 

That's because we are seeing a number of new products and services launch, get funded and strike new deals. Perhaps more importantly, several "start-ups" that have been around for a few years, will start to hit their stride, gain traction, and refine their business models.  But the biggest trend for this movement may be the integration of Health 2.0 services and ideas with the health care "establishment" -- large health care providers, networks, health plans, organizations and information providers as an example. 

Companies from the so-called old guard in health care are already starting to take notice of Health 2.0 from our own observations, but in 2008 they will much more actively get involved, and begin to learn how to integrate and innovate the ideas, thinking, and services that have been brewing these past few years.

Dozens of new online health companies were launched in the past 24 months and if you were at the Health 2.0 Conference last September, then you too felt the momentum that has been building ever since in our space.

We're feeling these trends take shape in big ways at our own OrganizedWisdom Health, but we know it is still very early.  There's a lot of work to do in 2008 (and 2009, 2010, etc.) and we look forward to helping bridge the gap between Health 2.0 and "Health Care".

 

The State of Search: 7 of 10 Americans Experience "Search Engine Fatigue"

There's some great new data to support what we've been saying for two years now: Search has become a vast wasteland of clutter, noise, spam, and information.

A new research report conduted by Kelton Research, examines "The State of Search" and describes “search engine fatigue." People are actually giving up on searching because they can't find what they are looking for.

Here are some of the key findings:

-72.3 percent of Americans experience “search engine fatigue” (either “always,” “usually,” or “sometimes”) when researching a topic on the Internet.

--65.4 percent of Americans say they’ve spent two or more hours in a single sitting searching for specific information on search engines.

--More than three out of four (75.1 percent) of those who experience search engine fatigue report getting up and physically leaving their computer without the information they were seeking – either “always,” “usually” or “sometimes.”

One of the more interesting findings that seems to confirm the need for human-guided search:

When asked to name their #1 complaint about the process, 25 percent cited a deluge of results, 24 percent cited a predominance of commercial (paid) listings, 18.8 percent blamed the search engine’s inability to understand their keywords (forcing them to try again), and 18.6 percent were most frustrated by disorganized/random results.

Here's the press release that reflects some of the data and report's primary findings.

New Pew Study Shows Patients Turn to Internet for Health Information; Now Can We Get Docs to Do The Same?

Those with chronic conditions are more likely than other e-patients to report that their online searches affected treatment decisions, their interactions with their doctors, their ability to cope with their condition, and their dieting and fitness regimen, according to Susannah Fox's just released report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project titled: E-patients With a Disability or Chronic Disease.

NPR aired an excellent story yesterday that highlights this important data and gives insight into how people (and their families) with chronic conditions are using the Internet to help with health issues.

The piece indicates that "the Internet is changing not just the way patients get medical information, but the way they interact with doctors, their families, and even with strangers."

Coming back from the 6th Annual Information Therapy Conference this week, this is clearly a significant issue.  New technologies and changing behavior for how people are getting health information means there is an opportunity to fix one of the biggest challenges facing the patient doctor relationship: patients are going to the Web for health info, and physicians are actually telling their patients NOT to go to the Web. 

One of the big health care challenges today is that many physicians do not have a trusted and unbiased online resource they can prescribe to their patients to guide them to the very best health information.  But we know that more people start online to find health information than ask their doctor.  The reality is patients are going online (and they will continue to do so) and physicians know that the current clutter online may do more harm than good so they are not sending patients to places like Google (where most people start their health searches). 

There is clearly a disconnect here which is one of the reasons why we are working hard to build the first doctor-guided search service so physicians will have a credible option to recommend patients too. From our perspective, the Web is broken for health until it is organized in a way that physicians will recommend it as a credible, helpful resource to patients, friends and family.  There are already great content sites and health portals like WebMD, RevolutionHealth and Health Central.  There are great content providers like Healthwise, A.D.A.M. and The Mayo Clinic. The problem is, people are being connected to the right information, at the right time.  And with 40-50% of the health information online now resulting from user-generated content, there is a lot more going on than evidence-based information and encyclopedia articles on health. In fact, it's one big mess of spam, clutter, UGC, and duplicative content.

The NPR story highlights the experience of Terry Wilson who was diagnosed with kidney cancer in July.  "He went straight to his computer. There was so much information out there that, at first, he felt overwhelmed.                         

"It was sort of scary at first," he says, "because there was no way to put it in perspective. There was no person I could talk to, to say: What's good information? And I didn't look that much, because my wife was afraid I was getting too upset over... what I was reading, that I would feel like I was doomed. And so she tried to keep me away from it as much as she could at first."

There are many great companies now working to solve this problem so that we can make the Web less scary for patients and physicians.  Together we can put this information in perspective, filter out the junk and guide people to great resources.

>> If you believe in the need to fix this problem the way we do and want to help out, please check out our Guide program.  We are recruiting nurses, physicians, patient experts, members from health foundations, stay at home parents, college students and anyone who cares about helping organize the world's health information to help others. 

Information Therapy Movement Taking Off

I'm in Park City, Utah participating in the 6th Annual Information Therapy Conference, hosted by the Josh Seidman and the Center for Information Therapy.  It's a great event so far and I'm looking forward to speaking about Health 2.0 trends and presenting OrganizedWisdom along with RevolutionHealth and DailyStrength on a panel hosted by Matthew Holt and Indu Subaiya.

It's clear that the iX movement is evolving and is moving beyond the education phase to becoming a full-blown "movement".  Six years into the great work and education from the thought leaders attending over the years, there's no doubt the information providers, media companies, hospitals, physicians, nurses, marketers, etc. all get the value in prescribing information to patients as a solution to improving people's health, and solving some of today's biggest health challenges. 

It makes sense that just like prescribing medications to patients, one of the most essential solutions to improving patient care and people's health is to prescribe the right information, to the right patient, at the right time.

Making sure patients get quality information is perhaps the most essential solution the healthcare universe can implement when you consider that more people are now searching online for health information than seeing their doctor and that 80% of patient care today continues to be self-care.  That is, most people today continue to self-diagnose and self-treat (links to the powerpoints where I got these stats will soon be available on the iX Alliance Web site).

Attending this year are not only some of the country's largest hospitals and health providers, but also a new crop of Health 2.0 innovators as well as major media companies like the NYTimes which continues to make amazing innovations to The Gray Lady's health section under the leadership of Sarah Greene.

The energy is palpable and it is exciting to see such a great group of thinkers, entrepreneurs, leaders, health practitioners, and organizations working together to push this mission forward. There's no doubt that access to better information will help a lot of people.

Malcom Gladwell: The next revolution is not going to come from a machine.

This week a bunch of bloggers started talking about the definition of Web 3.0, debating everything from the proposed definition, to announcing that it is non-sense to even be discussing the definition.

The definition of Web 3.0 doesn't matter much at all. What does matter are the results of continued innovation.

And we believe the result of continued innovation online means a new crop of human-powered and machine supported services designed to provide better information, improved quality, more relevancy...and ultimately a whole host of new opportunities for knowledge workers. 

Thanks to Web innovation, collaboration tools, and social media we are entering the age of Social Services.  And that is a good thing for us all.

That's because people + machines are more powerful than machines on their own. People know how to see things that machines can't and vice versa.  People know how to make judgments in a different way.  People know how to organize information using common sense, while machines have all sorts of other abilities like sorting through massive amounts of information quickly to find useful patterns.

One theme that we have been preaching since the inception of OrganizedWisdom is that much of the innovation that is happening today, and that will continue to happen, is not the result of new technologies alone, but rather the new service offerings that people start providing using these new technologies.  It's the People Powered Movement. 

Mechanical Turk is a great example.  And Wikipedia is perhaps one of the beset examples of this trend...a bunch of people working together with the power of the MediaWiki platform.  Seth Godin has written about the need for People Powered before, and most recently Jason Calacanis suggested the same in his definition of Web 3.0:

"Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform."

Perhaps Malcom Gladwell summed up the thought best in a recent interview:

"Google in a sense is a symbol of the solution to an old problem. We don't need more Googles; what we need is a way to prioritize and analyze and make sense of the information we have at our fingertips. And maybe those kinds of solutions aren't technological at all. I'm quite prepared for the possibility that the next revolution is not going to come from a machine; it's going to come from creating a more thoughtful work force and giving people the opportunity to be thoughtful."

No matter the definition of Web 3.0, 3.1, 4.0 or whatever, the future of innovation is how we empower the power of people's wisdom with great technology.

eMarketer Says Pharma Failing at Web 2.0

In case you didn't see this research from eMarketer:

DESPITE ACCOUNTING FOR AN EVER-INCREASING share of online ad spending, the pharmaceutical industry is still failing to embrace the Web 2.0 strategies that could help it better engage consumers looking for health care assistance, according to eMarketer research.

The new study, "Pharmaceutical Marketing Online: Stuck in Web 1.5," projected that the pharmaceutical category--which includes hospitals, drug companies and other health care services--will account for 5% of Internet advertising by 2011, or $2.2 billion. Last year the industry was responsible for $820 million, or 4.9%, and is on track to ring in $975 million this year, or 4.5% of total Web spend.

But most of that money is still going to traditional Web 1.0 ventures that provide only limited interactions with users. "[By] restricting their brand sites to simple online information centers, pharma marketers are missing opportunities to engage consumers and boost compliance," the study said.

The study's author, eMarketer senior analyst Lisa Phillips, said Pharma's slow adoption of Web 2.0 strategies like blogs, social networks and broadband video can be attributed to its conservative approach to advertising in general and to government restrictions.

Read the full article at Online Media Daily here.

White Paper Provides Strategy to Help Drug Firms Leverage Social Media Safely

Over the past year and a half, we have met with marketing executives, compliance officers, and lawyers from more than 20 of the world's top pharmaceutical companies to discuss how they could and should be using social media to join the conversation and connect better with patients.

We felt there was (and still is) a significant opportunity for them to leverage the power of social media to share information and education to try and bridge the massive divide that currently exists between Big Pharma and the people who buy their products.

But meeting after meeting, we would be met with resistance to the effect of, "We don't do social media; We don't want to lose control; We can't use blogs..." and so on.

Being the resilient entrepreneurial types that we are, we pressed on determined to convince these companies that a healthy dose of transparency and openness would go a long way in improving relations with customers. We even developed a presentation called Pharma-Friendly Social Media to try and bridge the gap between these companies and their customers. Still, it was always an uphill battle trying to get these companies to start listening and communicating to their own customers. (If they listen, they might learn about adverse events, which is a big no-no.  Then they have to file lots of paperwork and disclose issues that may impact their drugs, etc.).

One of the biggest challenges was that the FDA has yet to issue guidance on how to conduct monitoring and marketing practices in social media so pharmaceutical companies are unsure how to proceed. And as we quickly learned, no one wants to be the guinea pig with new innovations in the pharmaceutical industry. And for good reason, Big Pharma must be cautious, conservative, and follow the letter of the law.

It is unclear when or if the FDA will issue guidance on the many new issues that have come up as a result of social media, the Internet, and online marketing. Until the waters settle, we recommend each company take baby steps and get involved. Bring your marketing teams and compliance teams together to figure out how to take the first steps.

And step one should be reading this new White Paper just co-authored by Fard Johnmar from Envision Solutions.

The Difference Between Web 2.0 and Health 2.0 Movement

Healthcare blogger Scott Shreve, MD has a well thought out post today that does a great job of outlining the differences between Health 1.0 and 2.0 and outlines how the Health 2.0 movement differs from Web 2.0. See the charts below and click here to read his complete post which is well worth the read.

Only An Inch Down The Road Of Organizing The World's Information

Seth Godin has a great post today about the numerous opportunities and need to better organize information today.

It's easy to be wowed by what a magical job the search engines do in finding you just the right needle in the haystack.

The fact is that search engines are very good at fairly simple searches, and very good at finding information about single products, services, people and ideas.

But they're terrible at connections, at rankings, at horizontal results. They can't help me find the 25 most important up and coming artists in the United States. They can't help me find six products that are viable alternatives to something that was just discontinued. They can't help me rank the service of four accounting firms.

People are starting to organize real estate data, entertainment content, and reviews in really interesting ways.  And a few new health companies (including OrgnaizedWisdom Health) are just getting started at organizing the world's health information. There's a seemingly endless amount of work to be done, but thanks to the power of collaboration and social media we have a feeling things are about to get a whole lot more useful in how people find the most useful health wisdom and resources.

Look for our official OrganizedWisdom announcement about how we intend to solve this problem later this week.

Why Social Graphing Will Overtake Machine-based Search in 4 Years

There has been a major trend brewing on the Web and over the coming months and years it is going to completely change how we find and get information.  Robert Scoble calls it Social Graphing, and explains it in these 3 videos: 

Part I of Social Graph Based Search. 14:41 minutes.
Part II of Social Graph Based Search. 15 minutes.
And a bonus round III. 6 minutes.

The truth is, as a result of Search Engine Optimizers and the ease with which anyone can publish and distribute content, the Web has become a cluttered wasteland.  Not only is there too many mediocre bits and bytes of information as a result of all this excess, but these SEOs have figured out how to game systems like Google.  Furthermore, search engines do a poor job or organizing all of this information.

That's why so many people are searching for information, but not actually finding what they want without completing multiple searches. 

A crop of new social media sites and services are going to resolve the search problem.  That's because as Scoble says, "Humans are better than machines."  He goes on to say that the power is in fabric of a trusted network.  In his videos, Scoble does an amazing job of clearly explaining why humans are better than machines.

Because Google does not understand social behaviors there is no doubt that humans will play a major role in organizing the Web in the years to come.

Why Ning And The Commoditization of Social Networking Matters

Not long ago companies like Blogger (now owned by Google), Sixapart, and Wordpress forever changed the Web by making it easy and virtually free for anyone to create their own blog and become an online publisher.  After only a few years blog search engine Technorati is tracking over 70,000,000 blogs!

Today, at least two new companies, Ning and KickApps, are evolving the Web even more by making it just as easy for anyone to quickly and inexpensively (FREE!) create their own social network on any topic.

Social networking has been around as long as blogging, but only within the last year have these new turn-key software solutions made it plug-n-play simple for anyone (or any company) to create their own networking communities.  For years, people have been creating Yahoo! Groups, and leveraging the power of MySpace and now Facebook.  But people have little control in these walled gardens and they make it difficult to customize their services.  (Yes, even with Facebook Apps).

Ning and KickApps on the other hand have leveled the playing field yet again and as a result the social network has been commoditized.  In fact, in the past few months tens of thousands of people have launched their own social networks.  Ning alone now boasts over 80,000 communities created since they opened up their platform a few months ago with more than 5,500 new social networks created in the past 10 days!

With the commoditization of social networking we are about to see a lot more niche communities launch in the coming weeks/months/years.  The question is, how will this impact all those companies who are spending a lot of money and resources to build their own proprietary/closed online networks?

Web 2.0 continues to make it easy for anyone to publish.  Now it's just as easy to create your own network, open or closed.  You don't need a budget.  You don't need servers.  And you don't need any technical ability. It truly is a flat world for social networking.

This means that the power of social networking is open to your local lyme disease foundation, or the regional network of nurse practitioners. You can create a temporary community for a friend's fund raiser, or compete with the big social networking platforms to create an environment more tailored to the needs of your group. You are now in control and can create any social network you want.

This is going to have a major impact on many companies in the Health 2.0 space as well as the Web overall.  Over the past 18 months we have seen the launch of dozens of niche social networking communities in the health sector focusing on everything from MS and ALS (PatientsLikeMe.com), to more comprehensive health communities like DailyStrength.org.  We've also seen millions of dollars be invested in companies like Eons.com focusing on the boomer market.  And over the coming months we'll see many more new companies launch to help bring new solutions to healthcare.

When OrganizedWisdom first launched we billed ourselves as the "first social network for health" with a mission of organizing all the world's best health wisdom.  We quickly realized that building a walled garden community was not the solution and over the past few months we dramatically evolved our strategy for a relaunch this fall (we're in private alpha right now). If you pay attention to OrganizedWisdom.com, you may have noticed that several months ago we stopped building new technology on the live site.  That's because we learned some valuable lessons early and quickly saw that we needed to make big changes to improve our service, stay competitive long-term, and tap into the power of a world where people are sharing such great wisdom across thousands of blogs and now social networks, just like they have in online forums for so many years.  The changes we are making are not merely technological.  They are about adding value to a world where everyone has access to great technology.

For companies like ours, and many others working hard to bring better solutions to people to help manage their health, there is still a significant need for better information, services, solutions.  The opportunity remains to continue to innovate, focus on quality, and add value in a commoditized technology world.

Is Today's Internet Killing Our Culture? Why Human Intermediaries Are Essential In A Web 2.0 World.

For anyone interested in social media, the concept of the Wisdom of Crowds, or the meaning of a flat world, we highly recommend watching this presentation by author Andrew Keen as part of the Authors@Google series.  Mr. Keen discusses his book "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture" and he makes a compelling argument for the value of intermediaries in a Web 2.0 world.

Over the past year as we've been building OrganizedWisdom to help guide people to safe, inspirational and credible health information, we've been thinking a lot about this issue and figuring out the best way to tap into the power of people sharing their own stories and recommendations. 

The biggest issue has been with figuring out the best way to organize all of the great wisdom being shared across the web, and determining the role our editors, guides and medical reviewers in helping curate all of this information. 

These are some of the questions we been dealing with (and continue to deal with) since the beginning: What rules need to be established to guide people to quality information? How do we protect people from spam?  What role should editors play?  What types of content should be considered user-generated? Is a doctor-video on YouTube user-generated? Should we include links to wisdom that are also promoting a specific product or service? And so on...

Mr. Keen makes some important statements in this presentation about the essential need for intermediaries in a world where everyone has essentially acquired their own "printing press". 

To paraphrase, he says in the Web 2.0 world, everyone is able to publish themselves. You don't have to have programming skills to be a blogger.  You don't need to have gone to recording school to produce a video.  Web 2.0 makes it very simple to create and distribute because it does away with the middleman.  And according to many who evangelize the value of Web 2.0, the middleman is bad, corrupt. Gatekeepers are bad.

But, Mr. Keen argues Web 2.0 is not a viable economy because we need middlemen.  We need the expert. Whether in marketing, creativity, or content creation, the middleman helps discover the best talent and polishes their work.  The intermediaries are the core players in any media system whether Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. If we do away with the intermediaries we are undermining media because we are undermining talent.  He warns the reality is that talent is scarce.  The core value of the ecosystem in media is finding and distributing this talent.  The ecosystem is HUMAN.  The only way of discovering and polishing the best of the best is a human function. Not an algorithm.

There is a lot we agree with in Mr. Keen's thinking.  That is not to say we are not proponents of everyone having the ability to publish, and create, and share.  We just agree that there is great value in helping organize, structure, and lend credibility to the best of what the crowds are creating.

Because this flattened media is more open to corruption and lends itself to illegitimate characters gaming the system to their advantage, we are seeing the proliferation of clutter, spam, and junk mixed in with all of the greatness, inspiration and wisdom.  How do we know what information is great/trustworthy/credible in a Web 2.0 world being infiltrated by people who are using the same virtues of open media to sell products, manipulate or satiate their ego? 

Mr. Keen makes a defense of a media with formal, official, and transparent gatekeepers because he believes "Web 2.0 is too easy to game.  To easy to play around with.  Too many sites are too easy to fix."

"The problem with this flattened world," says Mr. Keen, "is when you do away with formal gatekeepers, the problem with web 2.0 media is it is increasingly becoming one long commercial break. Increasingly hard to distinguish between paid content and free content.   The whole thing becomes one long advert.   It is becoming more difficult to distinguish between content and advertising."

We are seeing many of these issues being worked out as communities like Wikipedia institute more guidelines, editorial controls and moderation.  But there is clearly a lot more to be done in order to weed out the junk. Social media and collaboration are incredibly powerful, but as the Web expands it is becoming more clear that humans are an essential ingredient in helping monitor, organize and guide us to the very best wisdom of crowds.

New Survey: Web Is By Far Most Trusted Resource For Researching Drug and Ailment Info

According to a recent study by Prospectiv, the vast majority of online consumers say the web is overwhelmingly their most trusted and reliable resource for researching ailment and drug information, beating out broadcast media and magazines by a large margin.

Some 75% of 800 consumers responding to Prospectiv’s 2007 Pharmaceutical Marketing CPI poll said they view the internet as their most trusted resource, followed by broadcast media (15%) and magazines (10%).

Other findings from the survey:

• Consumers who conduct online ailment and drug research largely favor general health websites (54%) and specific ailment-focused sites (37%) over pharmaceutical company sites (4%).
• The majority (40%) of respondents said that they had conducted online research only two times or less during the past six months; 33% reported research frequency of at least once-a-month, followed by every other month (27%).
• When asked what would pique their interest in specific drug treatments for their ailments, the majority cited drug samples (55%), followed by e-newsletters to help them learn more (35%) and coupons (10%) as the top incentives.
• Consumers’ views on pharmaceutical television ads:
  • 83% surveyed expressed concerns that pharmaceutical ads on television can be confusing and misleading.
  • 89% agreed with the sentiment expressed by some government organizations and consumer advocacy groups that television drug treatment advertisements need to be more closely regulated.
  • 72% of respondents also said that there were too many drug treatment advertisements on television.

“What’s particularly interesting is the low number of consumers who rely on pharmaceutical sites for information, indicating that brand managers need to find new ways to pique consumer interest and engage them,” said Jere Doyle, President and CEO of Prospectiv.

“Educational e-newsletters, health-focused websites and micro-sites focused on specific ailments have proved very effective in this regard. The first step toward initiating these online resources is for brand managers to build an in-house database of self-profiled consumers who have expressed an interest in learning more about their treatment options.”

About the study: Prospectiv conducted the 2007 Pharmaceutical Marketing CPI Poll online, gathering responses from 800 consumers across the United States. The survey was conducted from June 20-June 22, 2007. Prospectiv provides online customer acquisition solutions and is the owner of the online properties Healthier.com and Eversave.com.

SPAM Sites Infecting Revolution Health And Kosmix

SPAM sites are becoming a major problem in the health sector and something needs to be done to weed out the garbage that's out there.

You would think that you could trust major health portals like Revolution Health and vertical search engines like Kosmix that focus on health as one of their main areas of expertise to protect people from SPAM. But sadly they're not doing a good enough job and spammers are taking over their search results and tarnishing their credibility.

Here are two examples of searches I just did on Revolution Health which features Kosmix searches after their own search results. To illustrate the issue rather blatantly I did one search on the drug Viagra.  And a second search on the topic of Hair Loss. You'll see how the results are filled with SPAM sites:
 

No matter what health topic you are searching on, any credible health site should make it their mission to only deliver high quality results.  It's bad enough these black hat spammers even exist.  It's even worse when health sites with so much promise like Revolution Health let them infest their site.

Vertical Search Engines Take on Google and Gain Traction

When you are looking for a specific type of information where do you start your search?

Pew Internet & American Life Project, found that two-thirds of Americans researching health-related topics online started with a general search-engine and most people use Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

But are search trends beginning to change?

Recently there has been a lot of progress made in vertical search -- search engines that focus on delivering more relevant results on specific topic categories. As people grow familiar with these new sites this will likely start to take away market share from today's major search players.

Vertical search for health is perhaps one of the most active categories and it is only heating up. According to an article in yesterday's Economist, "one promising area for vertical sites is health-related search, which provides a microcosm of the threats and opportunities facing specialists. At stake are the online advertising budgets of the pharmaceutical and health-care giants, which are expected to spend $1.4 billion on online advertising in America alone next year, up from $625m in 2005. According to Jupiter, a consultancy, nearly a quarter of American internet users say the web is essential to taking care of their health."

Google has made it well known that it considers the health sector to be incredibly important, although it remains unclear what their actual plans are.  We've also seen recent acquisitions of vertical search sites like MedStory and Healia, and momentum is picking up for health search companies like Kosmix and Healthline.

From the Economist: "Health is a field where consumers do seem prepared to seek out specialist sites that provide more relevant results. According to a new study from Jupiter, to be published on July 16th, 65% of health-search users believe that relevance is the most important criterion when deciding whether to click on a particular result; only 16% rate the trustworthiness of the source as most important. In short, relevance is king, says Monique Levy of Jupiter, which suggests that a vertical search-engine that successfully pairs a broad target market with a complicated topic can do well."

We agree with the The Economist's assessment and are curious about how Jupiter's new findings will impact the sector.  Relevance is king when it comes to health.  Our sense, however, is that the issue of credibility and trustworthiness will only continue to be more important.  Particularly as health related SPAM sites and sales and marketing clutter make it more difficult to sort through the best information. 

Will vertical search engines be the solution?  There is a lot of work to be done and room to grow in vertical search. There is clearly a huge opportunity to help people find better health information, and their are a lot of great companies building technologies to help solve the challenge.  We'll certainly be doing our part to help organize the world's best health wisdom.

First SPAM Tried To Take Over Email. Now SPAM Sites Are Invading The Web And Hurting Our Health.

Anyone with an email account has sadly had to learn to deal with email SPAM messages infesting their in box.  Each year the amount of SPAM, or Junk Mail, continues to rise.  But for the most part, we've learned to deal with these unwanted messages.  New software and filters are helping and people have become much more savvy these days about how to distinguish between legitimate and phony email.

But a more corrosive threat is starting to take over the Web: SPAM Sites, optimized by so-called "Black Hat" search engine optimizers, are gaming search engines like Google by building fake web sites and blogs.  They are spamdexing the Web. And many of them are targeting health search terms.

This is a particularly dangerous trend now that 8 out of 10 people are searching the Web to find health information.  That's because when you do a search on any of the major search engines that pride themselves on indexing the Web (ALL OF IT), chances are you will have to wade through lots of Web sites to find what you actually want.  It's the nature of the best with so many Web sites today, with millions more being added all of the time, and new software that makes it easy for anyone to create a site in seconds.  But it's also because many of the results being returned are junk, SPAM, or just trying to sell something.

It's demoralizing enough to see that there are 18,800,000 results when I search for hair loss on Google. (As if having to search for hair loss wasn't bad enough!).  But it is not helpful that so many of the results are returning links to Web sites created for the purpose of getting clicks or selling a product. What's more concerning is all this SPAM makes health seekers wonder: How do I know which sites/links I can trust?  Which ones are credible?  And which ones have been created by spammers.

Perhaps no topics get spammed more on the Web than searches related to sex and health.  There are now so many fake and phony health related Web sites it can be hard for anyone to find quality Web sites or know if they should trust the information from the site they are on. 

All this clutter and SPAM is creating an erosion of credibility. This is a real challenge to the rest of the legitimate and credible Web sites working so hard to offer legitimate content, quality resources and valuable services.  The good news is that there are also so many great health Web sites, and often times these legitimate sites will rank well on the first few listings for any given search query. The bad news is it is becoming increasingly difficult to know who the good guys are.

Squidoo Gets Banned
Thankfully there are continued attempts by companies like Google to tweak their process and algorithms to ban and block these types of Web sites.  For example, just this week there have been reports that Google is finally blocking Squidoo lenses from its search listings because so many of the pages on the site are created by spammers and search engine optimizers. (Here is one of thousands of examples on Squidoo).

If the news about Google is true, then this is a step in the right direction. But can technology really solve this problem alone?   With so many spammers and black hatters out there, can technology really protect us? Or are other approaches needed to help protect the Web from SPAM and guide us to quality content again. Are there collaborative solutions to help combat this challenge?

We'll be writing a lot more about this SPAM issue as much more progress needs to be made to protect the Web, especially from spam sites that target health topics.  In my next post I'll be writing some lessons learned about How To Spot A Spam Site.

Kids Search for Health Info Online As Much as Adults, But for Different Reasons

Numerous studies and reports over the past few years have made it clear that the majority of people now use the Internet to search for health information.

But would you guess that Gen Yers (18 to 26) and Gen Xers (27 to 40) are now searching for health information online as much as Boomers and Seniors?

That's what the results from a 2006 Forrester Research survey titled How Different Generations Use Online Health Research show.

While different generations all seem to be using the Internet to find health information, what's interesting is the different types of information each age group is really using looking for.

Even though 84% of consumers said they have researched a health-related topic online in the past 12 months, the reason for researching health information online and the way consumers conduct their online research varies by age group significantly.

Here are some examples:

76% of Seniors (adults 62 and older) use the Internet to research medical conditions related to their own personal health, while only 19% of seniors research health conditions online out of curiosity, and fewer than 10% conduct online health research for academic, scientific, or professional reasons.

 

Gen Yers (18 to 26 year olds) were also most likely to research specific medical conditions online related to their own personal health, but 31% of this segment said they conduct online medical research out of curiosity and another 21% said they conduct online medical research for professional, scientific or academic reasons.

Here is another enlightening trend from the survey:

The Internet is the preferred source to learn about health topics for younger consumers, but it decreases with age. The survey found that 61% of Gen Yers say the Internet is their top source for health information, compared with 55% of younger baby boomers and 44% of seniors. 

The survey also found that Gen Yers are the most likely to research health information online when their physician suggests it, while older boomers were the most likely to go online to confirm what a physician or health care professional has told them.

It will be very interesting to track this data over time as each generation ages and see how these generational paradigm shifts will impact today's health care services online and off.

Lynette Has Lymphoma -- And It Could Be a Good Thing

Lynette, the Desperate Housewife played by Felicity Huffman, ended the season on a startling note: She was diagnosed with cancer -- specifically, Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Lynette is surely not the only cancer patient whose diagnosis disrupts an already tense marriage -- though she may be one of a select few who gets diagnosed  after she falls out of bed during a rough encounter with her husband. Lynette is also surely not the only cancer patient whose diagnosis brings family tensions out of the woodwork -- in her case, a domineering mother who intends to help her daughter through chemotherapy, whether the daughter wants it or not. How will it all turn out? We'll have to wait till next season.

In the meantime, the plot line on one of TV's most popular shows may do much to raise the profile of Hodgkin's lymphoma. If this happens, it will be an echo of the effect Katie Couric had when, after her husband's death of colorectal cancer, she underwent her own colonoscopy on the Today show. Researchers found an increase in the number of Americans getting colonoscopies after the show ran. It's a testament to the power of storytelling to change people's behavior -- and health -- for the better.

Hodgkin's lymphoma patients have not been content to leave the storytelling to TV producers. Hodgkin's is one of the most curable forms of cancer (good news for Ms. Huffman's chances of continued employment) and many of those who have it have used the Internet to communicate about their disease and treatment.

Some, like Jenny Goellnitz, are in the first few months of dealing with "the Hodge." Since she is a real person and not a TV soap-opera character, cancer disrupted not a tumultuous sex life, but her career as a lawyer and her hobbies of running and Civil War history.

Some, like Sarah from Journey to Babeland, were already bloggers before they became cancer bloggers. The title of her blog reflects its beginnings as a weight-loss journal, before two years of far weightier concerns (including a stem cell transplant) took over.

I've been reading a lot of cancer blogs lately. Some of them are heartbreaking, like Fight 2 Win, whose author Alese Coco fought but did not win her battle against cancer. Others are uplifting, like the bright side, where Ally has stopped posting very often now that she's two years in remission. Each of them is real. So, in her own way, is Lynette Scavo  -- particularly if her story helps inspire people to learn more about cancer, take good care of themselves and reach out to those in need.

 

New Research Shows How Social Media Is Impacting Health Search

We're looking forward to digging into this new research report just released from Envision Solutions: Diving Deeper Into Online Search. 

The research provides new information about why Americans trust health content they find online and documents how Internet health seekers are exposed to a significant amount of user-generated media (i.e., blogs, wikis and online bulletin boards) and frequent Websites developed by government, non-profits and corporations.

 

Compiled from Hitwise data taken between December 2006 and January 2007, this research was inspired by a Pew Internet & American Life Project report indicating that “three-quarters of Internet users who look online for [health] advice do not consistently check the source and date of [content] they find online.” 

Following are some of the key findings of the study: 

• Internet users’ exposure to health-related user-generated media is significant: Out of 16 queries Envision Solutions conducted on Yahoo and Google (using popular health/medical keywords), UGM appeared on the first three pages of searches 88% of the time.
  
• Online health searchers are relying on government, corporate and non-profit produced Websites for information:  For example, 32% of those who typed “diabetes” into major search engines went to the American Diabetes Association’s Website www.diabetes.org.
  
• In certain cases, wikis and blogs are receiving significant traffic:  Five percent of those searching online for information about the antidepressant Lexapro between mid-December 2006 and mid-January 2007 went to CrazyMeds.org.  This is a popular blog that provides information about the safety and efficacy of psychiatric medications.   

To download a free copy of the study report, please go to http://www.envisionsolutionsnow.com/healthsearch.html.

Microsoft Dives Into Healthcare And Acquires Medstory

Some highlights from Steve Lohr's NYTimes article, Microsoft to Acquire Health Search Engine:

• The Medstory purchase, according to Microsoft, was a first step in a broader company strategy to assemble technologies that will “improve the consumer experience in health care.
• The Microsoft move comes at a time of increased investment in online health ventures, rising traffic at consumer health sites on the Web and profits at the most popular sites.
• WebMD, the leading health-related site, last week reported strong quarterly profit of $8.9 million on revenue of $80.6 million, surpassing Wall Street’s expectations. The stock price of WebMD — an Internet pioneer in health information that struggled for years — has surged in the last year.
• Aging baby boomers, fond of personal choice and technologically literate, tend to want a say in their treatment decisions. And the Internet is already an important source of health information. Eight million people in the United States go online for health information every day, according to a study last year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit group.
• The longer-range goal is to link personal information like age, sex, drug regimens, family history and even genetic markers to search. The ideal is that search results are tailored individually, identifying treatments, drug interactions and medical journal articles of interest.

Physicians Are Encourgaged To Embrace Trend of Online Social Networking For Health

A new article  just out on CMP's ConsultantLive.com, a leading site for primary care physicians highlights the trend of online social networking and features OrganizedWisdom among others who are helping to develop tools and sites to foster these communities.

Online Social Networking Brings Further Change to Doctor-patient Relationships by Sara Selis, Online Associate Editor, CMPMedica USA.

A new generation of healthcare Web sites is connecting patients to each other, allowing them to share information and advice on virtually any medical condition. Despite concerns over some sites' accuracy and credibility, physicians are encouraged to accept, even embrace, the trend.

The Internet has become such a central part of modern life that most physicians are accustomed to patients coming into their offices with thick printouts of information they've found online.

Now, a new generation of healthcare Web sites, following the "social networking" model of sites like MySpace and Facebook, is taking online health content to another level.

These interactive Web sites (see Related Links) -- ranging from efforts by medical societies like the American Cancer Society and the National MS Society, to venture capital-backed startups with names like OrganizedWisdom, DailyStrength and Revolution Health -- not only provide expert medical content, but also connect patients to each other through disease-specific online communities, virtual support groups, real-time Web chats, and other features whereby patients share experiences and advice, and even rate their doctors. Many of the sites feature educational videos and health-assessment quizzes. Others offer an online "personal health record," along with tools that track patients' health goals (such as blood sugar and exercise goals) or send users e-mailed reminders to get recommended health screenings.

As these sites move into the mainstream, they're affecting how patients get health information and advice, how they manage their medical conditions, and how they interact with their doctors.

Click here to read the complete article on ConsultantLive.com.

JupiterResearch: Significant buzz exists around social marketing and consumer-created content in the healthcare industry

JupiterResearch published a new online health report yesterday on the impact of social media in healthcare.

This is an important report because it is the first study that we've seen to assess the importance of "Health Connectors."  Health Connectors, like patient advocates and physician experts, are becoming a powerful and important force in impacting people's health decisions.

The report also answers these questions:

• How many online consumers connect with one another about health issues, and to what extent does this activity threaten or benefit health stakeholders?

• How do health connectors communicate as well as create, consume, and share content, and how does this activity impact marketing strategy?

• How can publishers increase the number and engagement of health connectors?

• Percentage of Online Health Connectors and Share of Online Users Who Looked for Health Information Online

• Types of One-to-One and Social Media Online Users Leverage

• Reasons Online Health Connectors Used the Internet to Connect with Others

• Percentage of Online Users Who Create and Consume Health Content Leveraging One-to-One and Social Media

• Percentage of Online Health Connectors Who Use One-to-One and Social Media in Combination and Exclusively

• Degree of Sources' Influence on Online Users' Decisions to Take Prescription Drugs

• Characteristics of Online Health Connectors, Compared with Average Online Users

• Drivers and Inhibitors of Growth and Engagement of Online Health Connector Audience

• Example of Site Featuring Health Specialists

• Features Encouraging Interaction with Others Online

Health Wisdom Podcast #5: Joshua Seidman

Joshua Seidman, President of the Center for Information Therapy, participated in our most recent Health Wisdom Podcast where we feature people working to push for innovations in health care. 

Beyond covering the basics like the goals of The Center for Information Therapy and the information therapy movement, we focused on how new technologies, social media, and "connected" patients are impacting the quality of the information available and how people are getting information. 

Download the 25 minute podcast here: Download JoshuaSeidman.mp3

You can also read Joshua Seidman's new blog here, and find out about how to help promote information therapy and get involved with the IX Action Alliance at www.ixcenter.org.

(Technical glitch note: there is a slight delay between question and answer. For some reason the audio overlaps and leaves pauses between questions.  We will post transcripts in the near future).

Digital Healthcare and Productivity Features OrganizedWisdom

We're starting to get a lot of traffic today from Matthew Holt's article in Digital Health and Productivity, "MySpace for Healthcare? It's closer than you think."

Even though few people can clearly define Web 2.0, many of its emerging components such as blogs, wikis, video-sharing – social networking activities -- have made millionaires of a whole new breed of geeky entrepreneur. Google paid more than $1.6bn for YouTube. By some accounts FaceBook is valued at over $600 million