digital healthcare

The Digital Medicine Society

As the host of both Get Social Health and “People Always, Patients Sometimes” (a podcast for Spencer Health Solutions), I have even more opportunity to talk with some exceptional individuals and organizations. As such I get jealous of some of the guests on the other podcasts, which seems odd because I’m doing the interviews for each. Can I be jealous of myself?

For all my Digital Health listeners, I wanted to share this interview with Jen Goldsack of the DiMe Society from the “People Always, Patients Sometimes” podcast. This podcast is a production of Spencer Health Solutions (full disclosure: my day-job!). Our podcast focuses on the innovators, thought leaders and patient influencers who are demanding change now in clinical trials

The Digital Medicine Society is a group of individuals who are committed to innovating and transforming how digital apps, medical devices, software and processes can positively impact healthcare and clinical trials. Since Jen handles all my questions so well, it didn’t make sense to repeat the same interview for Get Social Health.

Here is the interview and transcript from my interview with Jen Goldsack about the DiMe Society on the “People Always, Patients Sometimes” podcast.

The DiMe Society – Jen Goldsack

It’s time to discuss the digitalization and democratization of medicine so we invited Jennifer Goldsack to join us on the “People Always, Patients Sometimes” podcast.  Jennifer is the interim executive director of the DiMe Society, pronounced like the coin, an abbreviation of the Digital Medicine Society.  In our discussion, Jennifer spoke about the “trans-disciplinary nature of digital medicine as a field” and how, without professionals from every field at the table, the healthcare community will make mistakes and under-deliver on possible treatments for the individual.  As a nonprofit, Jennifer explained that “we do welcome all comers” at the DiMe Society – unlike other organizations, the DiMe Society charges individuals only $50 for membership, creating a low barrier of entry and ensuring accessibility to everyone.

The DiMe Society was created with the mission to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration between professionals within the global healthcare and technology communities in their research, teaching, and promotion of best practices in medicine.  The DiMe Society believes that everyone has something to contribute to the advancement of medicine, from white-hat hackers, engineers, and clinicians to citizen scientists.  Founded earlier this year, the DiMe Society already has around 700 members from 24 countries after only 5 months of opening their doors.

To learn more about how Jennifer and the DiMe Society cultivate collaboration in the field of digital medicine, click on the link and listen to this week’s episode of People Always, Patients Sometimes, hosted by Janet Kennedy.

 

Virtual Reality for Healthcare Education – INVIVO

Virtual Reality for Healthcare Education

Digital health has gone beyond simple smartphone apps into virtual reality for healthcare education. A leader in the world of augmented and virtual reality for healthcare, Andrea Bielecki, President of INVIVO Communications joins me for a discussion of this exciting technology. INVIVO is a digital healthcare agency pioneering the integration of science, art, and technology into communication that changes the way people learn about medical science.

Listen to our conversation or drop in at the conversation points below:

00:00 Introduction
Google Cardboard00:39 Meet Andrea Bielecki
01:10 INVIVO Communications
02:06 Medical Animation
02:50 Skills for medical animation
03:45 Biologist or programmer?
05:04 Medical Illustration and Animation
06:44 C-Suite & Virtual Reality acceptance
08:12 Choose your own adventure: “Blood Stream Explorer
09:38 Occulus Rift, HTC Vive
11:00 “The Enlightened League of Bone Builders and Osseous Enigma
12:15 What VR applications are created for Pharma?
Steampunk13:25 Case study: Medtronic Oculus Rift project
14:55 VR opens doors to physician’s offices
17:10 VR demo of product gets great response
18:10 Time and expense to create?
19:25 How complicated are the projects?
20:51 Patient experience VR games
23:26 Business is booming
24:05 What is augmented reality and virtual reality?
26:06 What are the most frequent misconceptions about VR and AR?
27:25 How is the learning “better” on VR?
28:25 Types of learning plus “Smell-o-Vision”!
29:05 How to find INVIVO Communications
30:39 Social Media Tip: Ed Bennett – Post your Physician Ratings and Reviews
31:28 Get a website today! Get Social Health Academy & The Social Nurse launch a Website Design Service!

Find Andrea Bielecki

Article on Virtual Reality used for patients by Salutem Digital Health

Entrepreneurs Hacking Healthcare

Many health-related projects are getting millions of dollars in venture and angel funding.  But do you ever wonder where some projects get started? Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs that create an environment to share ideas, form teams and launch startups – all in a 54 hour weekend! Startup Weekend hosts over 1,000 weekend events annually around the globe focused on a mission to inspire, educate and empower individuals, teams and communities.

TSW OrganizersRecently I have the opportunity to be on the organizing team for a Startup Weekend held in the Triangle of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) with a theme of “Health.” The Startup weekend experience is a full weekend from Friday at 5:00 pm to Sunday at 6:00 pm. The Triangle Startup Weekend runs a few hours shorter than other Startup Weekends. Why? It’s a mystery. A “traditional” Startup Weekend will have about half the participants with technical or design backgrounds and the other half will have business backgrounds.

Beginning with open mic pitches on Friday, attendees bring their best ideas and inspire others to join their team. Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas, practicing LEAN Startup Methodologies and building a minimal viable product. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts.

What made this weekend different? By organizing under the theme of “Health” the event brought together a different mix of participants and the structure of the weekend added a few new twists.  Our group was a little bit smaller than the typical event due to the summer weekend and the specialized theme of the event. Demographically we had an interesting mix including;

  • 29 Men & 15 women on teams (Does not include volunteers, mentors, judges and audience) With 34% of teams having women that’s much higher than the 10-20% usually seen at Startup Weekend.
  • Normally you would have three categories of participants: Developers, Designers and Business (non-tech). In the case of our health event we also had 16 medical professionals – 32% of our participants.
  • Triangle Startup Weekend also had a high percentage of PHDs among the participants – 21!
  • Five of the teams were led by women including the team that won the “Best Overall” – Aura.

TSW_Health_600-184

Throughout the weekend I was able to capture the experiences of the a number of the participants from the organizers to volunteers, mentors and judges. Let’s hear their reactions to their Triangle Startup Weekend Health experience.

  • Global Startup Weekend Facilitator: Shashi Jain
  • Participant: Tia Simpson
  • Participant: Michael Brown
  • Participant: Mike McNeill
  • Mentor: Dr. Michael Cousins
  • Organizer: Jon O’Donnell
  • Participant: Leo Alonzo
  • Participant: Christina
  • Volunteer: Dr. Dexter Louie
  • Presentation Coach: Andy Roth
  • Judge: Farnoosh Brock
  • Mentor: John Austin

 

A Challenge to Cancer… and Healthcare from Stupid Cancer

Challenges. Facing them, beating them, issuing them. Matthew Zachary of Stupid Cancer does not take life as it comes. After facing life-threatening pediatric brain cancer at age 21 in 1995, Matthew found that a lack of resources made his cancer battle hard and lonely. He beat a six-month survival prediction to continue his college career, regain the ability to play piano and committed to making the battle against cancer for teens “suck a little less.”

Matthew founded Stupid Cancer in 2007 as a non-profit organization to empower those affected by young adult cancer through innovative and award-winning programs and services. They are the nation’s largest support community for the under-served population and serve as a bullhorn for the young adult cancer movement.

Matthew ZacharyLaunching in September 2014 in a beta, Stupid Cancer has developed an app that will connect teens with other teens anonymously. To hear more about the launch of Instapeer, tun in to the episode.

Follow the conversation with the time stamp of the episode below:

00:00 Intro
00:30 Advertisement: EHR2.0 HIPAA and Security Compliance
01:25 Meet Matthew Zachary
02:18 Fard Johnmar & the ePatient
03:28 Angry patients
05:00 Teens in the healthcare system
06:38 Nothing’s connected
07:38 80% of teens with cancer are treated in a rural setting
08:16 Chemo is chemo
08:32 How can teens connect with each other
10:35 Online forums are intimidating
11:07 What would a teen use to connect with other teens
Instapeer11:30 Instapeer – Free mobile app to connect teens and young adults to each other
12:00 Build for the teen, not their dad
14:15 We “make it suck a little less”
14:45 Beta launch requirements
15:55 Matthew’s cancer journey & launch of Stupid Cancer
18:47 Closing the gap
19:35 “Nothing had changed in the survival rate for teens in 10 years and that’s not OK’
20:15 Depression and teens with cancer
22:00 Living with, through and beyond cancer
23:05 18 years cancer free – not cured
24:00 What is Stupid Cancer
25:33 We deserve to be treated age appropriately
26:20 Where does your content come from
27:55 CancerCon
29:55 How are healthcare professionals and companies dealing with digital health
30:45 Digital health startups are a colossal waste of time
31:54 The digital health world does not know it’s audience
33:00 Challenging the digital health entrepreneurial hierarchy
34:32 Social Media Success Tip from Clarissa Schlistra

Visit our resources page for more valuable (and free!) resources on social media and digital health:

StupidCancer.org

Instapeer.org

CancerCon

Health 2.0

Fard Johnmar & “ePatient 2015 – 15 Surprising Trends Changing Health Care”

Are We Paying Enough Attention to Data Security in Digital Health?

Get Social Health welcomes Digital Health Futurist Fard Johnmar as a guest blogger. We were pleased to have him as a guest on the podcast (Episode 10) and could not cover everything we wanted to discuss, particularly on the launch of his new program, Digital Health Illustrated. Congratulations to Fard and team on this new program. I know you’ll be interested in reading about it.

~ Janet Kennedy

social media for healthcareEarlier this year, health consumers, physicians, and others roundly criticized a program backed by the National Health Service to collect and centralize health data gathered by general practitioners from millions of patients across England. They were especially concerned that creating a centralized database of health records could put patients’ privacy at risk.

Are their concerns misplaced? Although data stewards take great care to secure electronic medical records, data breaches are common. In addition, we are collecting increasing amounts of sensitive health data from social media, mobile phones and now, wearable computers. Cybersecurity experts, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine and other publications warn that the health industry is woefully behind other sectors in terms of data security best practices.

In this installment of my new video blog series, Digital Health Illustrated, I focus on the dark side of the health data explosion and highlight consumers’ concerns about health data privacy and security. Click the image below to view.

Fard Johnmar is a digital health futurist and researcher focused on understanding how digital health technologies are used and perceived. He is also co-author of the global bestseller ePatient 2015: 15 Surprising Trends Changing Health Care.

Healthcare Digital Futurist Fard Johnmar

Have you ever wanted to be a time traveler? That’s how I felt during my conversation with Fard Johnmar, healthcare digital futurist and co-author of “ePatient 2015 – 15 Surprising Trends Changing Health Care.”  Instead of looking back, Fard is looking ahead and using his unique perspective to vision how digital and social media can and is impacting healthcare. His book, co-written by Rohit Bhargava, was released in December 2013 and he has already seen some of his “predictions” come to pass sooner that he had imagined.

epatient_2015During the course of our conversation we covered a lot of ground. Here are the time stamps to help you find some of the high points (or just listen to the whole episode)!

  • Digital Health Futurist at 2:38
  • “Augmented Nutrition” at 9:20
  • Data collection & analysis at 9:50
  • “Multicultural Misalignment” at 14:10
  • Digital Peer to peer healthcare at 18:34
  • Stupid Cancer & Instapeer.org at 22:41
  • “Care Hacking” at 26:40
  • “Accelerated Trial Sourcing” at 29:00

Visit our resources page for more valuable (and free!) resources on social media and digital health

Digital Health Illustrated launch at

Susannah Fox (formerly) of PEW Internet Research at 4:34 & 19:00

Matthew Zachary of StupidCancer.org at 22:41

Google Glass at 8:05

Apple HealthKit at 8:10

ePatient 2015 – Surprising Trends Changing Health Care (Affiliate link) at 8:39

Fard Johnmar LinkedIn

Social Media Tip from Ashleigh Verdier, Digital/Social Media Strategist and Content Marketing Specialist at ABB, North America. Here a a few of Ashleigh’s recommended link shorterners: Goo.gl, Ow.ly & Bit.ly