This photograph is from a session using Tapulous’ Twinkle software, which is a location-aware version of Twitter. This exchange is evidence that the iPhone’s most powerful innovation is not 3G, it’s GPS, which Apple, Inc., has now seeded into the mainstream, just as it did with a host of other technologies, like Wi-Fi.

What is shown here is community being created with complete strangers based on location - this exchange happened when my tweet was broadcast to everyone within a 1 mile radius of the San Francisco airport.

Some of you out there have been expressing your reservations about Twitter, Friendfeed, and the like. Here’s a nice article about both. Don’t be reserved, these are important technologies that will have applications in healthcare. Get your Twitter accounts now. Post your ideas in the comments, as well, please!

And San Francisco, thanks for being nice. You never disappoint.

• Twitter Brand Index « Fluent Simplicity - Look who's on Twitter. Pretty light in the healthcare space, but attracting a nice crowd

• Y Combinator: Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund - Note the criticism of Enterprise software. It's time for Enterprise 2.0, probably starting with lighter weight packages used by consumers now, and then gradually tweaked, not the other way around.

Atlantic Monthly: Electro-Shock Therapy

This quote caught my eye about General Motor’s approach to planning their next generation electric car:

Perhaps most audacious of all was a decision to allow unusual public access to the Volt program. The industry’s standard procedure is to develop new products, especially risky ones, out of sight, unveiling them only when proven. GM decided to do exactly the opposite. The PR department flung open the doors. GM executives discuss the program’s progress as publicly as if it were a bill in Congress. They show off photos of batteries under development. They promise to let reporters ride in test cars. They lead them through the labs and design centers and even into the wind tunnel. They run ads, for instance in this magazine, touting the Volt in the present tense, as if it already existed. By earlier this year, expectations were so high that President Bush was commending the car, and it had developed a national grassroots following. This article is itself a product of the fishbowl strategy.

GM is using the publicity to excite the public, of course. It is also using the publicity to push itself. “We thought it would be a motivating thing to do,” Wagoner says. “Certainly it gets everybody aligned”—not always easy in a giant corporation. And GM wants credit for trying, which it never received for the EV1. “If it fails,” Harris says of the Volt, “we want people to know exactly why it failed. It wasn’t lack of commitment or passion on our part; we hit a hard point we couldn’t get around.”

On the other hand, I don’t see a newer update than March, 2008 on the official Volt Web site. There are blogs about it though, and it’s possible that those publishers have good access to how things are going.

• People-powered customer service & support for Twitter - Example in the Get Satisfaction site, a Web 2.0 way for organizations to work with customers. Interesting to use this within an enterprise, too.

• Beyond Blogs : Businessweek - A refresh of Businessweek's landmark 2005 story about Social Media and businessweek. Interesting update: prediction of mass firings of employees who blog (being "Dooced") has not happened, with the exception of a few well publicized cases, like this one. Perhaps Web2.0 is subtly changing the expectation of transparency on the part of organizations and their customers - participation is becoming more of a norm.

Businessweek: The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit

This week’s cover of Businesweek appears to triumphantly announce Apple, Inc.’s comeback (sort of) into the enterprise, even if Apple isn’t actually marketing to that sector.

For Mac afficionados, this is a big change from Businesweek’s former pronunciation of near-death (see The Fall of An American Icon, from 1996, or the Apple Death Knell Counter from Mac Observer).

Okay, so Apple is back; however, the opportunity here for enterprise IT is not so much to bring on a new platform, it’s to explore more thoroughly the idea of “employee asset ownership.” I didn’t find much searching for this idea on Google (maybe there’s a more official name for this? If there is, please add it in your comments), except that a few companies like BP and Unisys are experimenting with it.


Read the rest of this entry »

• WMS Solution Components - SenseWear.com - A metabolic measurement system that doctors and patients can use to manage weight.
• National Health Information Network News - The Business Case | NHIN Watch - Running news service on NHIN status
• The Pill Phone - Verizon - Impressive - adherence is heating up as a Health2.0 app
• Social Media University, Global (SMUG) - Blog about social media and public relations professionals by Lee Aase
• Pharma Marketing Blog: Rejiggering the Marketing Mix a la Merck - How pharmaceuticals may be using Web2.0 in the future

This week’s photo was taken by DC Photographer MV Jantzen. It is a beautiful illustration of the challenge of the use of information technology in health care and in the workplace in general. It was taken during a Revolutionary War re-enactment here in the mid-Atlantic area.

For patients, it is a metaphor for the ways we ask them to be (or not be) involved in their care by restricting their access to 19th century technologies.

For health care providers and all employees, it is a metaphor for the restrictions we place on them when they leave the consumer IT sphere and enter the workplace IT sphere.

In most parts of health care, we are regularly asking patients, nurses, and doctors to forgo 21st century tools in favor of Revolutionary War gear.

Some companies, including British Petroleum, are exploring ways to support employees in leveraging all of the best tools to serve customers. We should all come to work prepared to leverage the best tools available, and have fun doing it, without checking our 21st century clothes at the door.

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