HealthContentAdvisors

The Rise of the New Intermediaries

• Posted April 10th 2008
• by Janice

Intermediaries figure prominently in the theme of our Health Content08 conference this year. In essence all publishers are intermediaries. They assemble and distribute information. As a consequence, they build an audience of readers with a common interest in the topics that they cover. And, often, they serve as a market-maker for vendors that want to sell goods and services to that audience. This is especially true in the consumer publishing sector. 

With the avalanche of new health-related information comes an urgent need for publishers to interpret medical jargon for non-professional audiences, and this is giving rise to a whole new class of intermediary, one that functions in a similar fashion as today’s financial advisors function.

One such emerging class of healthcare intermediary is that of genetic counselor. Eye on DNA provides an interview with Elissa Levin, a genetic counselor at Navigenics a personal genomics company that is getting quite a lot of attention. Elissa describes her job as “working with people to help them understand complex information and what it means to them and to their family. This means staying on top of new technologies, research, risk communication strategies, and creating an infrastructure to provide accurate information responsibly”. The interview further explains the role of genetic counselor and how it relates to the burgeoning field of personalized medicine.

The current healthcare system is becoming ever more challenging to navigate. While information technology can be used to help organize data and make it more accessible, IT is also enabling the production of greater and greater amounts of data. Clearly, the role for intermediaries who specialize in understanding health information and can guide users to appropriate resources will be in demand – as advisors, counselors, information specialists/librarians, information architects, journalists, and some titles that haven’t been created yet. Look to meet many of them at Health Content08.