OrganizedWisdom Health Blog

VentureBeat Features OrganizedWisdom at Health 2.0

We're happy to be one of only six companies from more than 50 attending Health 2.0 to be featured in David Hamilton's VentureBeat post today titled: Six Health 2.0 firms reinvent doctor-patient ties.

Here's a snippet from the post:

OrganizedWisdom already has an established presence in Health 2.0 with its “human-powered” medical search engine, a Mahalo-like attempt to bring expert attention to search requests. The startup essentially lets people search through precompiled “wisdom cards,” each vetted by medical experts, that list reliable resources on diseases and drugs along with recent news headlines, treatment alternatives, support groups and message boards, and research findings.

OrganizedWisdom now plans to supplement that information with a new service it calls Live Wisdom, in which anyone can chat online with a medical professional for $1.99 a minute. CEO Steve Krein demonstrated what he described as an actual chat between a patient just diagnosed with laryngeal cancer and a doctor, in which the two discussed treatment options and probable outcomes — and even the physician’s response when the patient asked, “Am I going to die?” (The cure rate for an early-stage cancer turns out to be pretty good, the doctor replied.)

Click here to read the complete article and learn about Carol, Myca, AmericanWell, Phreesia, and Pharma Surveyor.

OrganizedWisdom Introduces LiveWisdom: Connecting People with Doctors Should be Easy, Affordable, and Accessible to All

We've just returned from the second Health 2.0 conference that took place in San Diego earlier this week.  It was a tremendous event with standing room only, as was to be expected given Indu Subaiya and Matthew Holt organized it. 

Over 30 companies presented and hundreds more attended.  The networking was fantastic and we were happy to meet with so many other thought leaders, friends and colleagues in the Health 2.0 world.  Some highlights included Esther Dyson showing us 23andMe in action, spending quality time with Adam Bosworth (formally Google Health now Keas.com), participating in the Unconference, announcing the dCard at the Health 2.0 Accelerator, learning more from Susannah Fox, working with IDEO, catching up with Craig Stoltz, finally meeting David Hamilton from Venture Beat in person, doing video interviews with ICYou.com crew, finalizing details with Cheryl Greene from DrGreene.com, convos with Scott Schreve David Kibbe, and Enoch Choi, hearing from Josh Seidman that the next Information Therapy Conference will be in DC, and having drinks with East Coast friends Bill Allman from Health CentralNetwork, Paul Gollash from Virgin, Jack Barrette from WEGOHealth, Jay Parkinson from Myca. The list goes on and on...

But the highlight for us was presenting LiveWisdom for the first time.   

On stage with AmericanWell and Jay Parkinson, OrganizedWisdom demoed something we are extremely excited about and believe will help change health care forever.  We launched LiveWisdom, a new Live Chat and Email service that is currently in a beta pilot and will soon be integrated on all of our WisdomCards.

LiveWisdom enables people to chat LIVE and anonymously with a board-certified doctor, health professional or health advocate for only a $1.99 a minute.  Yep, $1.99 a minute.  We are brining micro payments to health care so that anyone (insured or not) can at least ask a doctor a question when they need to.  LiveWisdom is embedded directly into WisdomCards so that people can ask important questions or get additional information directly related to the health topics they are searching on at the time.  It's that simple. 

We believe that connecting with doctors should be easy, affordable, and accessible to all.  There are millions of people who have questions they need answered quickly, privately, and from the convenience of their own home.  LiveWisdom is not meant to replace a doctor visit, like the service AmericanWell will provide, but people often have important questions that a live chat with a doctor could quickly answer.  If more information or an actual visit to a doctor is required then we can refer people to American Well, Myca,  a local mediclinic, hospital or doctor depending on the situation.

(Click to read what VentureBeat had to say about our new service).

In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the service and integrating LiveWisdom into all of our WisdomCards so that people who are searching for important health information will now have access to a doctor.  If you are a board-certified doctor or health professional and are interested in joining our LiveWisdom program please contact us at info at organizedwisdom dot com.

Meet with the OrganizedWisdom Team at Health 2.0

We just finished meeting with David Kibbe and Indu Subaiya to review our forthcoming presentation we'll be giving at next week's Health 2.0 conference in San Diego.

We're thrilled to be demoing for the second time (I believe we are the only company attending to hold such an honor!) at this amazing event. We can't wait to show the group how we will be evolving our WisdomCards and even more importantly, we can't wait to introduce these new features to our users over the coming weeks. 

Next week, we'll post more about these features and how they will help our users so be sure to check back.   We'll also post several updates about the exciting new companies and people we meet at Health 2.0.

The past few months have been very exciting for OrganizedWisdom and we couldn't be happier with the progress we're making.  Because of an amazing team effort, we've managed to beat our own aggressive projections, and have already created WisdomCards to cover more than 8,000 of the most important health searches.  And, we're only just beginning.  Additionally, user feedback for our new WisdomCard design has been tremendous.  What do you think?

If you're planning on attending Health 2.0 we'd love to meet up with you and see how we may be able to work together.  And if you can't make it, then we look forward to getting your feedback about the new services we'll be launching on OrganizedWisdom Health and connecting with you online.

Health 2.0 Northeast kickoff

Thanks to F. Mark Modzelewski and the others who put together last night's networking and panel discussion in Cambridge! Above you see Steve Krein, me, and Unity Stoakes. I was fascinated by the wide range of companies out there, and got to meet some great people, including Shannon Brownlee, author of Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer.

Health 2.0 Northeast!

OrganizedWisdom co-founder and CEO Steve Krein will be among the panelists at the Health 2.0 Northeast forum being held in Cambridge, Mass. today. (Well, tomorrow, but it'll most likely be "today" -- Wednesday -- by the time you read this.)

David E. Williams of the Health Business Blog has a good writeup of the event here. Steve's partner, Unity Stoakes, will be there, and so will I! I'm looking forward to meeting some of the excellent people I've been hearing about as we keep building OrganizedWisdom's quality and reach.

I believe last-minute registrations are still being accepted at healthforum2.com. Hope to see some of you there!

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.

Salon.com: Is there a doctor in the mouse?

It's great to be recognized for the important strides we are making to help patients navigate the complex and ever-changing world of online health information. It makes it especially great when an article written by a doctor points out that physicians themselves need just as much help figuring out the online health landscape.

Check out a great Health 2.0 article today "Is there a doctor in the mouse?" by Rahul K. Parikh, MD in online magazine Salon.com.

Dr. Parikh frames the problem:

The medical establishment...has taken way too much time to understand that the Internet is a disruptive innovation that has overturned the status quo. It has leveled the playing field between expert and novice -- in this case, doctor and patient. While some doctors ... may find that challenge threatening to their status as an expert, the Web is now providing the kind of information doctors need to be aware of if we want to continue to be good at our job, and the kind of trends that can help patients be smarter and healthier.

He describes the difference between OrganizedWisdom and Google

One example is Organized Wisdom, a search engine for medical issues. What gives it an edge over general search engines like Google and Yahoo is that its content is vetted by health professionals. If you type "autism" into Organized Wisdom, you'll receive an organized set of links to reliable sites that allow you to look at the symptoms of autism, potential treatments, research studies, and support groups. If you do the same using Google, the first site you'll see is Autism.org. If you click the link, you'll be taken to a page sponsored by groups preaching that vaccines are unsafe and favoring "alternative" treatments that are untested and potentially dangerous.

He wraps it up nicely...

Patients who, prior to a visit, consult information online can better share in the decision-making process with their doctor. Afterward, they can go online to find information that reinforces their decision or introduces them to viable alternatives.

Be a Health 2.0 Star

Posting this on behalf of the cool people at the Health 2.0 conference:

We are excited to announce a new panel format at our Spring Health 2.0 conference, "Connecting Consumers and Providers" in San Diego on March 3-4, 2008. In addition to spotlighting demos and reactions from industry experts, we will be capturing the user-experience of people living with health conditions as they use Health 2.0 technologies in their everyday lives.

Has the web changed your life? Does it help you deal with the isolation of a condition or improve your quality of life in some other way? We are looking for a few good consumers/patients to feature live on stage or in a video segment. Our roving video crew will be traveling the country to document interesting real-life stories showing how Health 2.0 impacts both people and the healthcare system.

And for those of you budding videographers, we are also accepting user-generated video clips that show how you are using Health 2.0 technologies in your daily life. Maybe it's an active online community where you've found support, a portable medical device, an online tracking tool, a blog, a video game, a virtual world, or some combination of the above. If you have something to say, we'd love to hear about it so we can help you share your stories with your peers and other members of the Health 2.0 community. We welcome you to join the conversation with some of the most progressive minds in healthcare including consumers, health providers, technologists and entrepreneurs. If you are a physician using health 2.0 technologies to connect with your patients or if you know of patients for whom technology has made a real difference, please drop us a line.

Email John our resident Health 2.0 web guru/talent scout at john@health2con.com.

Radio Interview: Unity Stoakes Discusses OrganizedWisdom's Agnostic Approach to Search with the BlogSoma Docs

I did a fun radio interview last night with Dr. Mark, Dr. Jeb and Professor Val from BlogSoma.  It was an intereting conversation about OrganizedWisdom and our approach to using human guides and physician reviewers to build our WisdomCards, and the different types of health topics including wellness, lifestyle and health education topics we're making available to health seekers. 

The segment is about 30 minutes long and you can get to the segment here.

Health 2.0 Taking Off in Germany

GIGAOM has an interesting post about Health 2.0 taking off in Germany.

It will be interesting to see how different countries manage health care innovations in the coming years.  Not only are the health care systems different from country to country, but there are also cultural and regulatory differences.  In particular in regards to how patient privacy is managed.

Read the post about what's going on in Germany here.