The Next Net

Disruptors Video: Social Networks for Healthcare (Sermo/PatientsLikeme)

The problem with healthcare is that too often information  does not flow easily between those who need it most: doctors and patients.  In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, I speak with the CEOs of two startups—Ben Heywood of PatientsLikeMe and Daniel Palestrant of Sermo—trying to change all of that.  Both are creating social networks for healthcare. PatientsLikeMe gathers together patients who suffer from the same diseases and compare notes, track their symptoms, and anonymously compare their progress with one another (read our profile here).  On the flip side, Sermo is a social network for physicians to communicate directly with one another about the latest treatments and how they are working with actual patients.  Watch the video.  (Full transcript after the break).

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Steve Case's Revolution Rising

Steve Case's Revolution Health is on a tear.  Hitwise reports that traffic to the health-information site has doubled in the past month, making it now No. 11 in the Health & Medical category.  Here are complete rankings from Hitwise:

Health and Medical - Information Category Weekly Market Share of US Visits                        

Rankings for the week ending 05/26/2007

                        
Rank    Name                    Domain                        Market Share            
1        WebMD                    www.webmd.com                9.25%            
2        MayoClinic.com         www.mayoclinic.com          3.89%            
3        MSN Health              health.msn.com                   3.80%            
4        Yahoo! Health           health.yahoo.com                 3.46%            
5        MedicineNet              www.medicinenet.com          3.35%            
6        Everyday Health        www.everydayhealth.com    2.53%            
7        Kids Health              www.kidshealth.org               2.08%            
8        Drugs.com               www.drugs.com                    1.96%            
9        HealthLine.com         www.healthline.com               1.95%            
10       Righthealth.com        www.righthealth.com          1.66%            
11       Revolution Health      www.revolutionhealth.com   1.57%            

(Compete.com shows similar gains).  Most of Revolution Health's rise is due to traffic sent by search engines like Google and Ask.com.

Case either has some search-engine optimization mojo going on or maybe he's really onto something (again).

The True Cost of Electronic Medical Records

  graph of the heart 
  Originally uploaded by romanlily.

Steve Lohr raised a good question in Sunday's New York Times: Will the spread of electronic medical records actually save us money?  He quotes David M. Cutler, a health economist at Harvard, who notes:

"If better information really helps us understand what is happening in health care, it could well lead to more care for more people and higher costs for the system as a whole."

Lohr goes on to suggest that once electronic medical records are in place, and personalized medicine becomes more feasible, doctors will be more likely to prescribe more niche drugs to patients.  They will also be able to identify patients who are more at risk for certain diseases, and prescribe yet more drugs to treat those patients—drugs which they might not prescribe today.

He may be right that the widespread adoption of electronic medical records probably will lead to the U.S. spending more on drugs.  But that's because the promise of electronic medical records, and personalized medicine in general, is focused on prevention rather than responding to health crises as they arise (which is the norm in today's healthcare system).

Prevention might be expensive, but it still is usually less expensive than the alternative, which often is surgery.  I'd rather pay $100 a month for Lipitor than pay $100,000 for a triple bypass in ten years. 

The second issue that needs to be addressed is how would improving the flow of health data affect the quality of care.  Even if electronic medical records do end up costing us more overall (which I doubt), if we are healthier for it, wouldn't it be worth that price?

That's the debate we should be having: Can digitizing healthcare help to save lives and give people healthier, longer days on this planet?  Can it give us better healthcare?  If it can, then we should be doing everything we can to hasten its arrrival.

Trend Watch: Medical Tourism

  Chance is Random 
  Originally uploaded by | HD |.

With healthcare costs going through the roof and insurance paying for less and les sthese days, many people are opting to get their surgery done in cheaper locales.  B2.0's Krysten Crawford investigates:

This year alone, upwards of 500,000 Americans are expected to travel overseas to get their bodies fixed, at prices 30 to 80 percent less than at home.

Medical tourism, as the practice is known, is rapidly becoming the top choice for consumers who grapple with hefty medical bills. Adult Americans who are either uninsured or considered "underinsured" number more than 61 million - a figure that's likely to soar in coming years.

With places like Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, India, the Philippines, and Thailand pitching their low-cost care, Americans are expected to help turn global medical tourism into a $40 billion-a-year industry by 2010"

The part I love is that the companies who package these trips to exotic locales tell their ailing customers:  "While you are there recuperating, make a vacation out of it."

Price Comparison for a Craniotomy

Healthia, a Website that lets you find health plans and write reviews about your doctor, has a really great new price-comparison feature that points to the coming era of consumer-driven healthcare.  You can put in your zipcode and see what local hospitals charge for different procedures.  For instance, in New York City, the list price for a craniotomy can range from $43,000 (at Memorial Hospital for Cancer) to $122,000 (at Beth Israel), according to the site. It also tells you which hospital does the procedure the most often (New York Presbyterian) and which hospital across the country is the very cheapest (Hospital De La Concepcion in Puerto Rico only charges $8,300).

That's the kind of information I would want to know before going in for a major operation.  Now if we could just get doctor-specific data (weighted in such a way that does not penalize doctors who take on the unhealthiest, highest-risk patients), then we could really start to take control of our own healthcare and make some informed choices.

(Hat tip to David Cowan).

A Very Healthy Financing for Take Care

Take Care Health Systems just raised $77 million, which it claims makes it the largest health care services funding in two years.  That's mega.  The company, which I wrote about earlier, will use the cash to open up 1,400 nurse-operated healthcare centers in drugstores such as Rite Aid and Sav-On Drugs

Virtual Patient Patent

Biosimulation startup Entelos just got another patent for its virtual patient software.  From the press release:

The software based on this method allows Entelos scientists to rapidly create new virtual patients and effectively use them to validate drug targets, identify biomarkers, translate preclinical data to human outcome, and optimize clinical trial designs.

“By developing this methodology, Entelos can effectively represent patient variability in a computer on both the individual and population scale,” stated James Karis, President and CEO of Entelos. “This ability allows us to address this critical drug development challenge, which is also a key hurdle in fulfilling the promise of personalized medicine. This patent further strengthens our leadership position in biosimulation and lays the framework for Entelos to develop the first-ever virtual human.”

Now there's a twist on intelligent design for you. 

(Image via NYU Research).

Dr. Google, I Presume . . .

From a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine:

Finally, the visiting professor asked the fellow if she had made a diagnosis, and she reported that she had indeed and mentioned a rare syndrome . . . . It appeared to fit the case, and everyone seemed satisfied. (Several weeks later, genetic testing on the baby revealed a mutation in the FOXP3 gene, confirming the diagnosis.)

"How did you make that diagnosis?" asked the professor. Came the reply, "Well, I had the skin-biopsy report, and I had a chart of the immunologic tests. So I entered the salient features into Google, and it popped right up."

"William Osler," I offered, "must be turning over in his grave. You googled the diagnosis?"

Well, yeah . . .

(via Infectious Greed).

Author: Erick Schonfeld

Gene Search

dna blue
Originally uploaded by lizmuzik.

The Google Boys are teaming up with Craig Venter (of human genome mapping fame) to use Google's vast computing power to help unlock some of the myseries of biology, and maybe one day help you search through your genes. From a book excerpt of "The Google Story":

Sergey Brin and Larry Page have ambitious long-term plans for Google's expansion into the fields of biology and genetics through the fusion of science, medicine, and technology. . . .One of the most exciting Google projects involves biological and genetic research that could foster important medical and scientific breakthroughs. Through this effort, Google may help accelerate the era of personalized medicine, in which understanding an individual's precise genetic makeup can contribute to the ability of physicians and counselors to tailor health care treatment, rather than dispensing medications or recommending treatments based on statistics or averages.

"We need to use the largest computers in the world," Venter said. "Larry and Sergey have been excited about our work and about giving us access to their computers and their algorithm guys and scientists to improve the process of analyzing data. It shows the broadness of their thinking. Genetic information is going to be the leading edge of information that is going to change the world. Working with Google, we are trying to generate a gene catalogue to characterize all the genes on the planet and understand their evolutionary development. Geneticists have wanted to do this for generations."

Over time, Venter said, Google will build up a genetic database, analyze it, and find meaningful correlations for individuals and populations. . . . Google's data-mining techniques appear well-suited to the formidable challenges posed by analyzing the genetic sequence. It has begun work on this project, but has not been required to disclose any information about it publicly since the work has no impact on its current revenue and profits.

"People will be able to log on to a Google site using search capacities and have the ability to understand things about themselves as they change in real time," Venter said. "What does it mean to have this variation in genes? What else is known? And instead of having a few elitist scientists doing this and dictating to the world what it means, with Google it would be creating several million scientists.

"Google has empowered individuals to do searches and get information and have things in seconds at their fingertips," he went on. "Where is that more important than understanding our own biology and its connection to disease and behavior? With Google, you will be able to get an understanding of your own genes. Google has the capacity to do all of this, and it is one of the discussions I have had with Larry and Sergey."

Now, that's what I call targeted search.

(via Infectious Greed).

Printing Human Tissue

From Future Feeder:

An emerging branch of medicine called “organ printing” takes a patient’s own healthy cells and uses a printer, cell-based “bio-ink” and “bio-paper” to create tissue to repair a damaged organ.

A new hydrogel or “bio-paper”,developed by the University of Utah College of Pharmacy, enables printing of organs by layering thin sheets embedded with cells. The cells and liquid hydrogel are put in the printer cartridge and then dropped into three-dimensional, 1-microliter dots that form layers as the hydrogel hardens. The cells form tissue that can be implanted into a damaged organ. Glenn D. Prestwich believes testing will begin on humans in the next year.