Health Informatics Blog

Eric Schmidt delivers a keynote speech at HIMSS 2008 on Google’s activities in the healthcare space.

Google have announced a $10 million fund for new Google Android apps. Lots of potential for medical apps - portable EMRs and PHRs, drug references, etc…

If you haven’t seen Google Android yet:

Gunther Eysenbach has announced the date and location of his latest conference and accompanying theme issue of JMIR:

Medicine 2.0

  

Call for Papers: Medicine 2.0 - How social networking and Web 2.0 technologies revolutionize health care, wellness, clinical medicine and biomedical research

In the past few years we have seen the rapid evolution of new tools and programming techniques collectively called “Web 2.0 tools”, which facilitate the development of collaborative and user-friendly Web applications.
Typically, the Web 2.0 is a term which refers to a) improved communication between people via social-networking technologies, b) improved communication between separate software applications (”mashups”) via open Web standards for describing and accessing data, and c) improved Web interfaces that mimic the real-time responsiveness of desktop applications within a browser window. Semantic web applications (sometimes called Web 3.0) and 3D environments (Second Life) can also be seen as second generation Web technologies.
These technologies have led to a flurry of new applications and speculation on their potential to revolutionize health care and the entire spectrum of health and medicine – from consumer-led preventive medicine, home care, to clinical care. This coincides with a strong push towards personal health records, with major players such as Microsoft and Google entering the scene. High-profile takeovers and valuations of companies such as YouTube or Facebook also have led to a flurry of investment activities - Venture Capitalists are once again investing in Web start-ups, but much of the linguistics and hype is reminiscent of the Web 1.0 bubble in the late 90ies.
As academics, we have the responsibility to look beyond the hype, and to dissect what works and what doesn’t.
As the leading peer-reviewed journal in eHealth, JMIR, together with a number of sponsoring organizations, is currently preparing the first academic international “Medicine 2.0″^TM conference on Sept 4th/5th 2008 in Toronto (MaRS Conference Centre). (to receive more information about this conference please register with this site). Note that with the term “medicine” we do not necessarily mean clinical medicine, but also preventive medicine, and the part of “medicine” which is the consumers’ responsibility.
This cutting edge conference will bring together academics and business leaders and is hoped to catalyze new collaborations between academia, health providers, and the private sector.
We envision this to be an annual conference, with peer-reviewed contributions, panels, and invited speakers, focussing on “next generation medicine”, which incorporates ideas of collaboration and consumer empowerment.
To celebrate the first Medicine 2.0 conference in 2008, JMIR will publish a “Medicine 2.0” Theme Issue focussing on Web 2.0 applications for health, health care, and the future of medicine. We will publish peer-reviewed research articles, reviews, tutorials, and viewpoints (opinion articles).

NEW Submission deadline for full articles: March 3rd, 2008.

Examples for topics that are within the scope of the theme issue as well as the conference include the following:

• Collaborative Filtering and recommender technologies
• Consumer empowerment
• Personal health records and Web 2.0
• New models of academic / scholarly publishing and peer review, e.g. what is the role of blogs and wikis?
• New models of e-learning, patient education, medical training and continuing medical education
• Youth and digital learning
• Business models in a Web 2.0 environment: User-generated content is free - so who makes money how? What is the role of the private sector?
• Developing and nurturing online communities for health
• The nature and dynamics of social networks
• Web 2.0 approaches for clinical practice, clinical research, quality monitoring, public health and biosurveillance
• How patient - physicians relationship change based on Web 2.0 platforms
• Virtual health care learning environments (web 3D: eg second health
and the ALIVE project at U of Southern Queensland, Australia)
• Use of Web 2.0 applications in health care and education (eg
YouTube…UC Berkeley is the first US university to put lectures
online via YouTube)
• Semantic Web applications

Prospective authors are encouraged to send an email with the title and an abstract to the editor at geysenba at gmail.com (email subject: “Medicine 2.0 theme issue”).
We also welcome inquiries regarding potential speakers and co-sponsoring organizations of the Medicine 2.0 conference.

Manuscripts must follow the Instructions for Authors. Note that JMIR is an Open Access journal and our regular publication fees apply (submission fee and - for non-institutional members - Article Processing Fee in case of acceptance).

To submit, please register as author and make sure to select the section “Special Theme Issue: Medicine 2.0″ when you submit the paper.

About JMIR
JMIR (http://www.jmir.org) is a leading Open-Access peer-reviewed transdisciplinary journal with an impact factor (2006) of 2.9, making it one of the top journals in the fields of medical informatics (#2 of 20) and health services research (#6 of 56). It is also indexed in Medline and other major databases with global reach.

Microsoft have just launched HealthVault…

Information Week has an article about Dossia, the Personal Health Record collaboration between Walmart, Intel and others:

Dossia, a coalition of several large employers including Wal-Mart and Intel (INTC), announced today that it’s taking a second major stab at providing millions of employees with secure personal health records.

Dossia was launched last December and signed a deal with nonprofit start-up Omnimedix, which Dossia funded and named as the prime contractor in building the system from scratch.

But problems began only a few months into the deal, with both parties heading to court with complaints that Dossia missed scheduled payments to Omnimedix and that Omnimedix missed project milestones. The conflict is being privately arbitrated. Dossia president Colin Evans wouldn’t comment on the Omnimedix case.

Now Dossia is starting fresh via a new partnership with Children’s Hospital Boston, which is providing technological and strategic guidance to Dossia. The company will base its personal health record system on “the underlying capabilities” of Indivo, a system that Children’s Hospital built for its patients in 1998.

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