When they announced it’s early retirement, the Google Health team explained how they were unable to translate their notable success in other consumer-centric services – including a search engine you might have come across, a certain user generated video site, web browsing and mobile operating systems – into the healthcare arena.
Envisioning the wholesale uptake of their electronic health record service – to the potential benefit of both patients and caregivers – instead Google found only niche support amongst “tech-savvy patients and their caregivers.”
Or as you and me know them: geeks. And not just the average computer geek, but computer geeks into digital healthcare and social media. Apparently, this turns out to be a relatively rare breed (although if you worked in eBee, you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise).
Google certainly tried. During beta testing, several high profile clinics and insurers in the US agreed to support importing and exporting of Google Health records. But, in the end, with no immediate benefits, this was not enough of a draw for general consumers (not geeks) to upload their records and the service collapsed.
So, while Google beat a rare retreat from innovation, others continue the charge. In the UK, electronic health records for the NHS are already in place, despite concerns from some quarters over privacy guarantees and the opt-out approach being adopted.
Yet, besides ‘caregiver conveniences’, I’m interested in how electronic health records can help patients more. Is there more potential here, besides offering a convenient replacement for NHS filing cabinets?
Married with healthcare social media ideas – I think so. No strangers to patient communities ourselves at eBee, I’ve been watching closely the growing success of the Mayo Clinic patient community, often described as a health-centric version of Facebook. Or ‘Healthbook’, by me (I have checked and that domain is already owned but not active).
In September, the mayo clinic announced they already have over 7,000 users, and expect this figure to top 10,000 by the end of the year. And it is far from the only patient community. Patients like me has over 118,000 users at the time of writing, catering for more than 500 conditions, and there are dozens if not hundreds more.
What this really shows is a desire for people to chat about health in their own space. And with anonymity if they so wish – it doesn’t take much imagination to realise that many may wish to keep certain medical problems separate from other social networks (notice anyone ‘like’ the gonorrhoea Facebook page lately? Me neither.)
But it is the prospect of communicating both with doctors and patients that is shows the most promise to me. How are you?, in partnership with NHS East of England, offers precisely this blend of online carer access, online health records and patient social networking features. You can even arrange online video consultations.
Perhaps, in the near future, electronic health records could do even more. Tied with other services, they could automatically suggest online patient groups or chats to join. They could be used to generate tailored health information, and maybe even medication advice. Even more intriguing, is the possibility of datamining health records to predict patients at risk of certain diseases.
The funny thing is, all of these services are ripe for pharma to get involved in – either as value-adds to brands, as general patient support and disease awareness, or in driving peer to peer dialogue and knowledge sharing for experts. But there is curious a reluctance to seriously pursue any meaningful ‘web 2.0’ functionality – what you or me might call commenting – within the industry.
In the UK this is widely considered to be due to a fear of the ABPI. Yet the APBI itself doesn’t prevent such services. It rightly requires that companies ensure they do not advertise prescription drugs to consumers, and that any side-effects discussed are properly reported. On the HCP side, pharma cannot endorse off label use.
Of course all of this could be easily managed within a social network context with moderation. For an industry predicted to generate a trillion dollars in 2012, it seems unlikely there are no resources to support this approach – something that has been offered without fuss for years by many online gaming or social network services that target children. Indeed, moderation itself can be described as service, offering users reassurance and protection from unwanted messages, as well as general help about the site.
Times are changing though. It seems that, like a slumbering giant, the pharma industry is slowly awakening to what is at stake. That, as they go elsewhere, it is losing the chance to connect with patients in a way that has never before been possible. And that if it doesn’t act soon, the next ‘Healthbook’ could take away that chance for good.
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