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Needed: Guided Navigation for Health Information Search
- Posted February 3rd 2010
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
There has been a lively dialogue occurring on the e-patients.net site this past week about how Google and Microsoft Bing display search results for health care queries. Google recently introduced a special result listing that provides links to Mayo Clinic, ADAM, WebMD and MedlinePlus when users type in a common health condition as their search term. For example, type in “hypertension” in the Google search box and the first listing in the search results will look like this:
| Hypertension | |
| Google Health Mayo Clinic Medline Plus WebMD | |
| Hypertension is the term used to describe high blood pressure. Blood pressure readings are measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and usually given as two numbers. For example, 120 over 80 (written as … www.google.com/health |
|
The thread on e-patients.net was initiated by Susannah Fox, Associate Director, Digital Strategy at Pew Internet Research and so far has elicited 73 comments about Google’s policy of providing special placement for these four specialty health sites. Further comments on the post focused on the inability of existing consumer health portals, aggregators, and search engines in guiding patients to information sources that may be more relevant to them. I highly recommend a thorough reading of Susannah’s post and the subsequent comments.
I contributed the following comments: “At this point, the big search engines focus on the broadest topics and Mayo, ADAM, WebMD and MedlinePlus are good sources for basic info on diseases and conditions. But, the common complaint I hear about these resources is that they are too broad, not deep enough, too removed from the current needs of the patient, and certainly not geographically specific.” Susannah wisely brought up the topic of how useful it would be to offer more guidance to people who are seeking more specific reliable information in their health-related query. She asks “I wonder if curated search results are the answer to the ongoing debate over information quality?”
It may be difficult to offer “pre-curated” health information that suits everyone’s needs because of the vast array of queries and the disparate number of sources that exists. The ‘big 3′ consumer health portals, WebMD, EveryDay Health[ii], and HealthCentral already serve as curators to the content they make available under their umbrellas. But, these sites share many of the same mile-wide, inch-deep characteristics of the previously mentioned sites. Even though there are some patient communities represented on these consumer health portals, it is often difficult to find the relevant community and relevant information buried in a post.
The discoverability problems in consumer health search relates to the early-stage of the health content product life cycle. Some online patient communities may have existed for a long time, but most are relatively new. Because many are small and specialized, it is unlikely they will ever achieve sufficient PageRank in Google’s relevancy algorithm to be listed on the first couple of search results pages on Google.
As social networking and other factors that drive the demand for healthcare information matures, there will be more demand for services that guide users through the process of researching, communicating, and recording health information. Who will be the likely winners in the race to provide guided navigation to health information? There are roles for EHR/PHR vendors, content companies (i.e., publishers), patient community sites, pharma and other vendors, providers, and payer organizations to create, distribute and sponsor health content. I expect to see a growing number of licensing and other content sharing deals between these health industry stakeholders in the coming years. And there will always be a role for aggregators and search engines that can improve the customer experience.
[i]Note, Google has changed the display to read “Google Health” instead of ADAM. Google licenses the content from ADAM.
[ii] Everday Health (the new parent company name for what was formerly Waterfront Media) filed to go public last week.
Open Data Will Be All the Rage in 2010
- Posted December 22nd 2009
- Comment (1)
- by Janice
Despite a dismal year for the media industry, there is one major trend we can all look forward to in 2010: Open Data.
Open data is more than a trend; it represents a shift in worldview about using research, business intelligence, and outcomes data. Tim Berners-Lee’s talk at TED in early 2009 promoted the power of raw data and described why we need to improve interoperability because “data are relationships” and analysis across larger collections of data help make “the world run better”.
At InfoCommerce Group we’ve always understood the importance of data and data management. Our roots go back to pre-Web 1.0 days when large print directories and buyers guides like the Thomas Register were being digitized. We’ve always understood that all digital content can be viewed as data whose value is increased when organized, categorized, sorted, modeled, analyzed, integrated, archived, updated–and shared.
In the healthcare industry, where I focus most of my attention, the possibilities for making the world run better by exploiting research, outcomes, and administrative data are enormous. Yet, the healthcare sector lags other industries by more than a decade in data management, data access and interoperability. (See: HISTalk interview with John Gomez, EVP/CTO Eclipsys, for frank talk on this issue.)
Support from HITECH funding surely will accelerate development of systems that enable data exchange and analysis in the healthcare industry. There are a lot of perceptions, attitudes and organizational changes that needs to occur, too; but there is no excuse for healthcare to continue to lag so far behind other industries in employing technology to improve performance.
Note, I just discovered a post by Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP, Product Management at Google, titled, “The Meaning of Open”. It’s a long post and I haven’t digested it yet, but will leave you with an outtake from the post [emphasis mine]:
“Open will win. It will win on the Internet and will then cascade across many walks of life: The future of government is transparency. The future of commerce is information symmetry. The future of culture is freedom. The future of science and medicine is collaboration. The future of entertainment is participation. Each of these futures depends on an open Internet.”
The impact of open data will reverberate throughout the publishing industry and is certain to be felt very strongly in the scholarly publishing sector, which currently dominates the distribution of medical research information. While it doesn’t spell disaster for this sector, it will impact traditional business models and relationships between researchers and publishers in a big way.
Happy holidays to everyone and best wishes for a brighter 2010!
Reinventing Business Publishing: HBR Relaunches
- Posted December 18th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Last night I attended a TweetUp to celebrate the launch of the redesigned Harvard Business Review (HBR) and came away with renewed hope for the future of established publishers. The first decade of the 21st century has not delivered many positive stories about publishers who have dominated in the past, even those with iconic brands, but from what I’ve seen of the changes at the Harvard Business Review Group, there is hope that the next decade will include more stories with positive endings.
On the surface, the redesigned HBR is glossier than the former publication. It resembles other business magazines such as Forbes in other ways, too, including the advertisements (should I mention the unfortunate Accenture ad with Tiger Woods in the Jan-Feb 2010 issue of HBR?).
However, the changes that matter most run deeper and can be found online. The new Harvard Business Review site aggregates content from what used to be two separate sites, which among other things allows for the creation of “Author Pages” that “give … a deeper view of the [authors’] contributions across the magazine, the site and our books”.(1)
One could say that a “digital first” attitude is at the core of the change in direction at HBR. On a fundamental level, HBR has shifted from being organized around the type of publication (book, magazine, case study, etc.) to organizing around the needs of its audience. As obvious as it sounds, most traditional publishers have not yet made this change.
On a lighter note, my spirits were lifted when Eric Hellweg, the editor of HBR.org, greeted me by name at last night’s event. We had never met, but he explained that I was showcased in an internal meeting because of my retweet of their post on Twitter to promote the TweetUp. Apparently, the marketing folks wanted to emphasize that Twitter can be an effective tool in reaching their target audience. It was fun to know that I played a role in proving the power of Twitter and social media to Eric and the team at HBR!
Follow Harvard Business Review on Twitter @HarvardBiz
Finally, thanks to Siobban Ford of HBR.org for organizing last evening’s event at the Asgard Pub in Cambridge.
(1) See: The New Harvard Business Review Site.
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