May 10th through May 13th:

• Be Well Mobile, Patient Engagement Software that works - cell phone platform for disease management
• Medical Advances—Through Your iPhone? - Portable applications in health care that the iPhone could enable.
• Scientific Misconduct Blog: LSD and the corruption of medicine (Part III): Naming names - A chilling account of experimentation on US citizens without consent
• Texting may help teens remember meds - CNN.com - Cell phones as a tool in medication adherence.
• The Open Secret of Success: Financial Page: The New Yorker - One of the best summaries of what Toyota does well that I've seen.
• ITIF: Explaining International Broadband Leadership - Summary of broadband access in the US and other countries
• Ruthsarian Layouts - Some helpful CSS layouts for blog design

I am in Oakland, California, today, participating in an discussion sponsored by Kaiser Permanente about Web 2.0 applications in health care. As part of the discussion I presented my story as a physician who wrote a blog internally for our medical group, and since October, 2007, on the public Internet (here).

From 2005-2007 I managed an internal blog that ended up having 748 posts total, so for 2 years, I posted something almost every business day, along with other physician informaticists on my team with me. That’s quite a commitment. This blog has 298 posts on it since October, 2007. I actually never thought I’d keep a blog, but I’m (a) glad I’m doing it and (b) glad I have a story to share about it as a Health Information Technology leader. I want people to know how I am serving them.

I also got to moderate/interact with two industry experts in the field, Tim Collins, SVP of Experiential Marketing for Wells Fargo Bank, and Lee Aase, Manager for Syndication and Social Media for the Mayo Clinic. It’s an honor to meet other industry leaders who are embracing this technology, and they are embracing it. I know this is the future (or the present…)

Given my experience, the idea of patients bringing their user generated content into the physician patient relationship really interests me. Could an electronic health record of the future subscribe to specially tagged RSS feeds from our patients? I don’t think physicians can or would be following 2,000 lives worth of lifestreams. However, if there’s something in a patient’s life that they want us to know about and can get it to us without double entry, I think that information would change the content of our relationship a lot. And in a good way.

• Safari 3.1 includes hidden one-window preference - This is the holy grail of Safari as the browser of choice. That plus compatibility with blog authoring tools.
• Mac BU promises bibliography improvements to Office 2008 - Interesting discussion somewhat unrelated to the article’s title about the state of bibliographic software. I would look forward to further refinements of Zotero, and maybe a server version.
• QLPlugins - Quick Look Plugins - Great efficiency improver of one of my favorite Leopard features.
• Aetna Smartsource Demo - Aetna’s latest information tailoring system for patients. Getting closer to supporting the patient-provider relationship?
• Apple - Support - Discussions - Unresponsive Keyboard and Trackpad … - This is a real issue for MacBookPro owners - prepare yourself just in case this happens to you.
• A new snapshot of health consumerism from EBRI and The Commonwealth Fund - Nice overview from Jane Sarsohn-Kahn
• Roblog » Batch Categories - Another category management plugin, for Wordpress 2.3 and 2.5
• uwMike » WP-Cats - More preparation to migration to WP 2.5
• Disk Inventory X - Map your hard drive to avoid wasting space
• How to Fly Without ID and Skip Lines | The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss - Just in case this happens to you, here is how you can fly and recover.

March 28th through March 29th:

• WordPress ? Search and Replace « WordPress Plugins - Wordpress 2.5 is out. I have a feeling this plugin will be useful to have handy
• JAMA — Preserving Confidentiality in the Peer Review Process, March 24, 2008, DeAngelis and Thornton 0 (2008): 299.16.jed80000 - With tremendous respect for Catherine DeAngelis’ leadership during a tough situation. I am left wondering if the best place to hide is out in the open - if peer review became more Web2.0 like. What would happen in a situation like this?
• Findings From the 2007 EBRI/Commonwealth Fund Consumerism in Health Survey - EBRI - About 2 percent of the population is enrolled in a consumer directed health plans. Significant points for me: (1) almost half of the population with a chronic condition reports not filling medications or skipping doses or delaying care due to cost. Sobering reminder that patients can and do choose to do what we doctors prescribe. (2) “There have been no significant gains int he provision of information on provider cost and quality by any health plan type over the three years of the survey. There has been no increase in the share of CDHP or HDHP enrollees who say their health plans provide them with quality and cost information about their providers, and they remain no more likely to receive such information than enrollees in more comprehensive plans.” Okay, one more point - they did not ask about the impact of involvement in care in choosing a health plan - no mention of medical records access or involvement in information sharing at the level of the encounter.
• My Starbucks Idea - How about doing this for a health care org?
• Bronson Beta - Mail.appetizer - Nice Mail notification tool, Leopard

March 14th through March 17th:

• To build a better hospital, Virginia Mason takes lessons from Toyota plants - Nice profile of a hospital that employs LEAN. The comments are not as charitable. The challenge is both to communicate what LEAN is and make sure that the core philosophy of LEAN, respect, is a part of every transformation.
• Peachpit: How to Add WordPress Category Feed Links to Posts > Subscribing to Categories - The title says it all. A little blog geekery.
• Agile Development Whitepaper - VersionOne - Agile Software Development Management - A bit of a “state of Agile” survey among its practitioners. Data is useful in figuring out where the drive to go Agile (and by proxy, LEAN) might come from an org, and also what practices are being deployed (55% daily standup - why not in cilnical medicin
• PowerCard Project Management Software - Without embracing a computerized tool for project management, I wonder if this software’s approach most closely resembles Agile. Does it? Looks like it creates burn down charts (?)
• Unconference - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Unconference, I want to experiment hosting these! How would they work for continuing medical education?
• BBC NEWS | Health | Sinus bug antibiotics ‘no good’ - How long will it take actual practice to change?

I’m starting to track the disruption of other industries, like music and real estate….

December 29th through December 31st:

• The Fleecing of the Avatars - The downsides of virtual worlds are starting to match the physical world.
• The Battle for Radio Royalties - Picture two dinosaurs. Both are wounded. And both are grappling with climate change that has weakened their ability to compete. Once they coexisted. Now they’ll do whatever it takes to survive?even if it means turning on one another.
• The RIAA Will Die in 2008 - Forecasting hard times for this industry protector.
• Number of Jobs Held, Labor Market Activity, and Earnings Growth Among the Youngest Baby Boomers: Results From a Longitudinal Survey Summary - Individuals born from 1957 to 1964 held an average of 10.5 jobs from ages 18 to 40.
• 12 Filtering Tips for Better Information in Half the Time | The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss - Nice overview of information management tools from the guru of efficiency. Tim Ferriss’ blog.

December 24th:

• The etiquette of telecommunications | Getting the message, at last | Economist.com - The economist describes the first incident of spam, via telegraph.
• Are Suggestion ?Boxes? the Best Way to Go? | Lean Six Sigma Academy - Also interested in employee empowerment as much as patient empowerment. I should have installed one of these in my office before I went on sabbatical.
• Training Within Industry: Lean Jargon - Part III, Gemba (Genba), Genbutsu, Genjitsu - Catching up on my LEAN studies. Helpful guide to common LEAN terms. These are my favorites.
• Out of the shadow — Calman 19 (1): 170 — Health Affairs - Bearing witness to inequities for those we are trying to serve. I am having similar experiences in my work, and it has impact. Great article by Neil Calman, MD.
• Rising Popularity of Medical Blogs Raises Questions About Anonymity, Reliability - iHealthBeat - This is an important topic to me as a physician blogger. I do not blog about patient experiences except in the most general terms. At the same time, I think patients want to improve the system they get care in and we should (or I am) develop best practice
• Cultural Tourism DC - U Street Heritage Trail - Great map and walking tour of African American History. Perfect for the nation’s most walkable city

December 16th through December 18th:

• Edelman Trust Barometer - a “person like me” is more trusted than a physician
• Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li’s Blog): Blogging policy examples - Examples of organizational blog policies
• Managing Health Online Discussed on NPR?s ‘Talk of the Nation’ | Kaiser Permanente News Center - KPNewsCenter coverage of NPR Talk of the Nation, December 13, 2007
• St. Louis-Based Company Attracts Gen. Y Grads — and Used Car Customers - George?s Employment Blawg: St. Louis labor & employment lawyer looks at HR, labor law, and today?s workplace - Example of a company that is catering to GenY - Enterprise rent-a-car
• Secretary Mike Leavitt’s Blog: Electronic Medical Records and the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate - The Administration proposes a requirement of EHR’s at the same time the SGR is fixed. The comments on this post are worth a read as well.
• Permanente Journal - Summer 2006 - Special Issue - Sidney Garfield Centennial, one of the fore-parents of health informatics

December 4th through December 10th:

• A Wellness Trust to Prioritize Disease Prevention - Brookings Institution -
• Blog Schmog - www.healthleadersmedia.com - Tips on how to blog well, from a blogophobe (self-described)
• Smaller percentage of small firms covering health - Washington Business Journal: - More individuals will be responsible for the cost of their care
• Revolution Health Group buys 2 Web companies - Washington Business Journal: - Revolution now has employees in Seattle….