Medical social networking
After being trapped in an Atlanta airport for 24 hours I purchased and read Ben Mezrich's new book, The Accidental Billionaires, about the Facebook start-up story.
I have become a fan of Facebook and must commend Zuckerman for having built a great application and network.
There have been medical applications that play off of the social networking theme. PatientsLikeMe allows patients with similar medical conditions to share information with each other about treatments.
Within the CTSA there is a grant opportunity to establish tools for researchers to network with each other. At the moment it appears that the CTSA initiative will either focus on a network already established by Collexis, a private company, or to take the open source route of hardening tools used at UCSF and within Harvard's CTSA in their catalyst site.
We also have seen many physician networks try to establish a social network among their physicians to encourage increased intranetwork referrals.
There will surely be social networking extensions built upon PHRs like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault.
At Recombinant we are likely to intersect with social networking in all three areas. Each network is dependent on rich reference and clinical data sets that must be powered by data warehouse strategies. For example - knowing a physician's specialties is a secondary use of credentialing data normally found in tools like ECHO or Cactus. Knowing their practice patterns is a matter of analyzing their medical claims. Microsoft is already linking their data management engine, Amalga, with their PHR. We have even discussed using the data warehouse to help physicians socially understand best practice care patterns from their peers.
The holy grail that may never come to be would be an integration of the networks of patients, researchers, and providers. I think Jim Clark had some vision of this when he started Healthscape as his follow-up to Netscape before it became WebMD.
Given the projects we are working on today we can see many exciting opportunities and challenges in the intersection of data warehousing and social networking. It's a hot space that may take ten years to settle before the dominant Facebook-like platforms emerge. After all, Facebook followed the work of SixDegrees (too early), Friendster (too date focused), and MySpace (too ego driven).
There may be some smart kid at Harvard or MIT with a better model for social networking in healthcare and a drive like Zuckerman. Maybe we already know them? But if you are out there.... give us a call when you are ready!
Dan Housman
Managing Director, Analytical Applications
Recombinant Data Corp.
I have become a fan of Facebook and must commend Zuckerman for having built a great application and network.
There have been medical applications that play off of the social networking theme. PatientsLikeMe allows patients with similar medical conditions to share information with each other about treatments.
Within the CTSA there is a grant opportunity to establish tools for researchers to network with each other. At the moment it appears that the CTSA initiative will either focus on a network already established by Collexis, a private company, or to take the open source route of hardening tools used at UCSF and within Harvard's CTSA in their catalyst site.
We also have seen many physician networks try to establish a social network among their physicians to encourage increased intranetwork referrals.
There will surely be social networking extensions built upon PHRs like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault.
At Recombinant we are likely to intersect with social networking in all three areas. Each network is dependent on rich reference and clinical data sets that must be powered by data warehouse strategies. For example - knowing a physician's specialties is a secondary use of credentialing data normally found in tools like ECHO or Cactus. Knowing their practice patterns is a matter of analyzing their medical claims. Microsoft is already linking their data management engine, Amalga, with their PHR. We have even discussed using the data warehouse to help physicians socially understand best practice care patterns from their peers.
The holy grail that may never come to be would be an integration of the networks of patients, researchers, and providers. I think Jim Clark had some vision of this when he started Healthscape as his follow-up to Netscape before it became WebMD.
Given the projects we are working on today we can see many exciting opportunities and challenges in the intersection of data warehousing and social networking. It's a hot space that may take ten years to settle before the dominant Facebook-like platforms emerge. After all, Facebook followed the work of SixDegrees (too early), Friendster (too date focused), and MySpace (too ego driven).
There may be some smart kid at Harvard or MIT with a better model for social networking in healthcare and a drive like Zuckerman. Maybe we already know them? But if you are out there.... give us a call when you are ready!
Dan Housman
Managing Director, Analytical Applications
Recombinant Data Corp.
Labels: Data Warehousing, PHR, Social Networking
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