The Consumer Aggregators

Sponsored by Cisco

Danny Sands, MDNG Editorial Board member, introduced the panel and discussed why the healthcare industry is so important to Cisco. Moderator: Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, Think-Health & Health 2.0 Advisors

Panelists: Wayne Gattinella, WebMD; Roni Zeigler, Google Health with Bob Smoley, MDLiveCare, David Cerino, Microsoft Health Solutions

David said the highlights for Microsoft has been the area in building a truly consumer-centric system. Launched a tool with Mayo Clinic (Health Manager), partnership with Telos for Health Vault, and the ecosystems around has grown.

Consumer trends is about getting the value back from the service. We’re asking consumers to jump into the value chain of health very high in the curve. Managing a chronic disease online is too heavy; get into the simple stuff first and then make it a more natural transition to these bigger problems.

Demonstrated My Health Info on the MSN Health & Fitness Channel. Nice slick interface and seemed to work very well at adding widgets and providing information in a dashboard. Uses data sitting in Health Vault to give them an experience that’s easy to use and let them customize it any way they want to.

For Wayne, WebMD, we’re seeing the market is going more global and more personal in a very real and quantitative way. Mobile applications especially. Seeing that grow rapidly on the physician side. Consumers are even using our mobile apps to better their health. Localization of information is good; much stronger “in-country” demand for information. We’ve seen assessments online grow; 80% have completed their online health assessment.

WebMD is moving toward personalized medicine. What we’re seeing is that people are much more willing to provide information to us about their health. Just asking about people where they stand on certain issues, and providing/sharing information because they see the benefit of what they’re giving.

Live demo on WedMD on their mobile application. Integrating a suite of mobile applications. Symptom checker, drugs & treatment and first aid information. Showed a sample patient who had back pain, rec’d diagnosis, let him find a doctor, and make an appointment. Updated the mobile PHR automatically and the demo went into the WebMD Health Record and what’s available and how to enhance the patient experience.

For Dr. Zeiger, the PHR side for Google launched. American Postal Workers Union, as well as some other healthcare groups. Now we have to convince them the value is actually there. MDLiveCare and Hello Health with Myca also became partners. Working extremely hard on Google Flu Trends; engineers could figure out the way people are using Google is how sick people are with the flu.

Demonstrated MD Live Care, part of the Google Health network. Puts the consumer at the center of the conversation. Real-time availability of doctors, and the complete transcript is available at the end of the conversation. Fully secure, HIPPA-compliant. Demo did not show the video consultation process; seemed to be a problem.