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Archive for the ‘WebMD’ Category

PHR Standards Big Step Forward

• Posted June 26th 2008
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• by Janice

While privacy concerns remain a deterrent to the adoption of personal healthcare records (PHRs), a lack of standards may be an even stronger one. Consumers don’t like to expend time and money on new technology that can’t easily synch up with other devices or content (certainly you remember “Betamax”?).

To help overcome both concerns, the Markle Foundation has just published a set of practices for handling PHR information in Connecting for Health Common Framework for Networked Personal Health Information.  The framework was developed with a workgroup that included payers, providers, health IT vendors, healthcare publishers and advocates, physician organizations and policy analysts.  The group includes Google Health, Microsoft, Intuit, WebMD, Revolution Health, Aetna, AARP, Kaiser Permanente, BCBS, Consumers Union, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dossia, Ingenix, Cisco, and others.  (See the complete list in the press release: www.connectingforhealth.org/news/pressrealease_062508.html.)

The publishing industry has a dismal record of developing standards that facilitate data exchange. That’s why it is important to note that the complete report includes seven sections on technology standards and requirements along with nine sections on policy issues.  In consumer health care publishing, policymakers and technology companies play important roles, so perhaps they will push content providers to create and adopt standards. In the section of the report titled, An Architecture for Consumer Participation, the importance of portability and interoperability of the PHR is emphasized:

For PHRs to become more universally useful to consumers, they must provide a convenient and secure means of connecting to personal data and interactive services from multiple sources, and they must provide a convenient and secure means of moving the data out of the PHR as well, in whole or in part.[1]

At last year’s Health Content07 conference, there was a wide divergence of opinion about how long it will take before PHRs become mainstream. The Technology Overview section of the Markle report depicts how “health care entities and consumer technology innovators operate under different cultures that can clash without basic rules of the road“.  The technology standards and policy principles laid out in the Connecting for Health framework are a first step towards overcoming the hurdles on the road to adoption of PHRs.  However, according to recent research also reported by the Markle Foundation, only about 2.7 percent of the population they surveyed are using PHRs. The question of how quickly consumers will adopt PHRs is clearly still open for debate. 

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[1] Connecting for Health Common Framework for Networked Personal Health Information, The Markle Foundation, www.connectingforhealth.org/license.html, section CT7, An Architecture for Consumer Participation, page 4, June 2008. 

 

WebMD: No Immunity to Ad Pullback

• Posted April 24th 2008
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• by Janice

WebMD, the bellwether of the online health information sites, is suffering from ad pullback.  It was widely reported this week that WebMD has lowered its guidance for 2008 and its stock has been punished as a result.   S&P has downgraded the stock to a sell and cut its target price to $23.

Concern about lower-than-expected pharma advertising was a major factor in the downgrade.  But, WebMD is not entirely dependent on online ads for its revenue, which mitigates the financial picture. WebMD is also a leading provider of online continuing medical educations (CME) programs, and also provides private portals and custom publishing.

Some seem to relish bad news about WebMD and are quick to ascribe the slowdown in pharma advertising for WebMD to competition from newer players that offer less-costly ad alternatives. See, for instance, the comments in Silicon Alley Insider.  We firmly believe that ad dollars will continue to shift online.  However, the advertising sector is notoriously cyclical, and considering the current economic climate, the ad pullback is likely to prove contagious in the short term.